Cisco Secure Firewall ASA Virtual - BYOL

My use case for Cisco Secure Firewall  is because the old solution for the VPN access for the employees and also for the external contractors was already out of date, and there was no possibility of somehow prolonging it. So we did the search for a new solution and from the auction and bidding, Cisco Secure Firewall  came.

I consider the most valuable aspect of Cisco Secure Firewall to be that we are basically using it only for termination of the VPN, so that's basically the most valuable thing for us.

If I could improve Cisco Secure Firewall in any way, I have no clue, to be honest. I really don't know what to improve. It's working as it should be. Maybe it would be nice to have a better overview regarding the logging, regarding the issues a client can have with the VPN. But I can understand that because the primary feature for the firewall is not the VPN; it's the firewall, but we are not using the firewall.

There is still room to improve. There can be some things that can be better, such as some of the menu and some of the visibility. It's not chaotic, but it's not that user-friendly.

The GUI of Cisco Secure Firewall could improve, as there are better solutions in terms of how they look and how they can be navigated.

I find the solution reliable and stable, and I can say that there is no downtime. As I am used to Cisco products, they are stable and reliable.

I think that what we bought is overkill, but whatever. Basically, it can serve up to 1,000 clients on VPN, so for us it's basically unlimited. The largest number I have seen on the dashboard was 300 users connected on the VPN.

My experience with Cisco customer support has been nice all the time. Sometimes they can take their time, but if they are properly motivated, they can be fast.

If I had to rate their support from one to ten, with ten being best and one being worst, I would give it an eight.

I evaluated basically the new solution from Pulse Secure, which is now called Ivanti.

The reason we chose Cisco Secure Firewall was more or less politics because Ivanti didn't have the hardware, and they will not have the hardware in the foreseeable future. So we went with the only one who was able to provide it to us.

The deployment of Cisco Secure Firewall was kind of straightforward and was not problematic.

It took us two months, together with the migration, but the thing is that we needed to change the groups and rules and everything in the background. It was more or less up to us, not up to the platform. We needed to change things on our side.

It was internal, not the product's fault. The migration was lengthy.

Regarding the pricing and licensing of Cisco Secure Firewall, it's not up to me.

I know that it was purchased from our partner, from the local distributor.

On a scale of one to ten, with ten being best and one being worst, I would rate Cisco Secure Firewall overall with my past experience as nice. Because I cannot say it was good, from the point of view when I was able to look through Cisco Secure Firewall, it was nice. The FTD, the Firepower Threat Detection, is really mature, but the former ASA  was a pain in the ass.

The former ASA  was a pain in the ass because when someone is used to the Cisco way, the ASA was a strange thing. My overall rating for this product is 8 out of 10.

My main use case for Cisco Secure Firewall  is only as a VPN concentrator.

The only feature I find most valuable in Cisco Secure Firewall  is the VPN concentrator because we use it.

The only real benefit I realize from using Cisco Secure Firewall in this use case is that it's a different vendor, so a different attack vector.

A significant drawback for Cisco Secure Firewall is the ASA  software, as I have not used the Firepower software yet. The ASA  software has a GUI that is extremely ugly and appears to be made in the 1980s. At 28 years old, I am not accustomed to working with something that primitive.

The update procedures do not work, and the VPN creation wizard does not work. The GUI is useless for me and frustrates me to a very high degree, which led me to switch to the CLI for configuration.

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for three years.

I assess the stability and reliability of this firewall as both very good. I have had no issues with stability, as once they run, they run.

Since I am not using Cisco Secure Firewall for very heavy operations such as IPS or other intensive features, it scales quite well. We have two Firepower 1150s, and we are far under the limit of what our organization needs, so it scales well with our needs.

I have used Cisco support extensively, and I used it for this product once because during the setup there was an issue with the licensing, and I needed Cisco support to help me with the licensing for the ASA.

I am always satisfied with the level of support that I received. On a scale of 1 to 10, it is a 10 because they are reactive and effective. That is all we ask for in support.

We could accomplish this with another vendor such as Palo Alto, where we would not have to pay for licensing.

When I use the CLI, everything works quite well. I attempted to do everything with the GUI at the beginning, but nothing works. I managed to set up the HA pair with no issues once I used the CLI.

We are using quite a few other vendors for firewalls, and I do not think I can disclose which firewall we use where, but we use other major vendors such as Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Check Point. We have a bit of everything in our portfolio.

If it was my choice, I would have put another firewall there with something easier to configure, more straightforward, and a cleaner interface to maintain it.

My honest advice for someone who is evaluating Cisco Secure Firewall based on my experience would be that if you can get something else, go for something else. If you are going to use it, then use the CLI because the GUI is not usable. If I had the choice, I would not be using Cisco Firepower or ASA on top of it because in my opinion and the opinion of my colleagues and my management, it is not the best device for the role it is playing.

My overall rating for Cisco Secure Firewall is 5 out of 10.

Our main use case for Cisco Secure Firewall  is to have the different clients secured in their own VLAN and subnet, ensuring effective segregation of our network.

We do not have an internet connection with Cisco Secure Firewall ; basically, it is all on-premise. We have different use cases and those need to stay separated, so they do not interfere with each other.

My main usage for Cisco Secure Firewall is that I work in a train company where we are basically managing the network for the different use cases of the train. Those need to get separated, so the phone does not interfere with the cameras, for example, and we only allow the designated ports to the other.

What I appreciate most about Cisco Secure Firewall is that it has been working since we bought it without any failure, highlighting its reliability and performance.

An example of how Cisco Secure Firewall benefits my organization is that it performs its function very effectively. We use it as a router, and it works really well, ensuring our operations run smoothly.

I think the old interface could be improved, as it is not that good. Cisco Firewall Management  Center is much better, but I need to get more experience with that because we do not really have any experience with it. I did not work extensively with it as we are in the migrating phase.

I have been using a Cisco firewall, specifically the ASA , for ten years and now we are migrating to Cisco Secure Firewall, which represents our ongoing commitment to network security.

I assess the stability and reliability of Cisco Secure Firewall as performing really well. We have had one small issue, but it happened over ten years, and with the new one, we have had no issues.

I believe Cisco Secure Firewall can scale and grow with the needs of my organization because we bought the biggest model, so we do not really need to scale anywhere. We roughly calculated this and it should last the next nine to ten years, so if we buy a new one, it will probably have more performance, but the next ten years are secure.

I have used customer service for Cisco Secure Firewall. We have a partner between us and Cisco and only the extreme cases get to Cisco. Most of the time our partner, Logicalis, will solve the problem for us because they have experts, so only really problems with the software or these kinds of things get right to Cisco.

Before choosing Cisco Secure Firewall, we have a complete Cisco network, so we tried to keep the network together, completely Cisco. Therefore, there were no other solutions, as we did not use one before and we did not consider different options.

I would describe the experience of deploying Cisco Secure Firewall as very smooth. We used the migration software which just took the complete ASA  configuration and put it in Cisco Secure Firewall in Cisco Firewall Management  Center, and that was it; it worked.

My main use cases for Cisco Secure Firewall  include serving as a perimeter firewall between the data center and users, and as the firewall between the internet and users.

An example of how Cisco Secure Firewall  benefits my organization is that we use it with Azure , along with Azure  firewall and FTD, and it works very well.

Cisco Secure Firewall is highly performant and easy to manage.

Cisco Secure Firewall handles this adequately, but a simpler licensing model would be beneficial, especially when using the firewall in the cloud, since on-premises performance is limited by the hardware being used.

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for approximately fifteen years, starting from Cisco PIX.

Cisco Secure Firewall has demonstrated good reliability and stability. Although we did not invest heavily, which results in limited performance due to our license being restricted to one gigabit, that is our constraint rather than a Cisco limitation. I have not experienced any crashes or downtime with Cisco Secure Firewall, and everything has operated smoothly.

Cisco Secure Firewall can scale with the growing needs of my organization.

I have not needed to use customer service.

Deploying Cisco Secure Firewall is very straightforward and uncomplicated, as the systems are simple to deploy and the graphic interface is user-friendly.

My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cisco Secure Firewall is positive.

Before choosing Cisco Secure Firewall, I considered some competitors, as we have other firewalls from different vendors. It is beneficial to use firewalls from different vendors because if someone can overcome one firewall, there is the other firewall for protection.

I selected Cisco Secure Firewall because it works well in the Azure environment.

One of the biggest use cases for Cisco Secure Firewall  is Public Bank; they use it in Malaysia, but we implemented it in the Sri Lankan branches.

When a global company is using Cisco Secure Firewall , they would prefer to go with the same product with the same switching and firewall, making it an umbrella solution.

I think the UTM is the best feature of Cisco Secure Firewall.

The UTM features are indeed the best.

The reason why the UTM feature of Cisco Secure Firewall is the best is because the customer is more concerned with security; for a worldwide company, they need the most security, and I think it's very suitable for the most secure companies.

The centralized management console in Cisco Secure Firewall is effective and helpful.

Most of the partners are looking for AI-driven solutions now, so if Cisco improves more on the AI part than other products, it will be very good when they are trying to capture the market.

Cisco Secure Firewall has to enhance its AI part.

Customers using Cisco Secure Firewall are looking for UTM features, and some enhancements have to be done, such as when you block applications, more applications have to be able to be blocked and categorized.

I've been working with Cisco Secure Firewall for around 15 years as a partner.

Cisco Secure Firewall is stable, and there are no issues or challenges that my customers have faced with it.

Customers use Cisco Secure Firewall both on the cloud and on-premises, and it is a scalable solution and easy to scale.

My experience with Cisco support is good. I would rate the technical support of Cisco Secure Firewall eight out of ten.

The deployment of Cisco Secure Firewall takes one day.

Customers see a return on investment with Cisco Secure Firewall, and it is workable in terms of value for money.

Competitively, Checkpoint is the best, but considering pricing and everything else, Cisco Secure Firewall is also the best product.

Cisco Firewall is better in terms of cost and is cheaper; unlike other products, if the license expires, no features work, but Cisco isn't that way. Most of the time, they have perpetual licenses, so that's the best solution customers are looking for.

The threat intelligence functionalities in Cisco Secure Firewall are also good, but when considering Checkpoint and others, they have some enhanced features; there is some differentiation, but it's also good.

They need a global, one single vendor, which is why they see value for money with Cisco Secure Firewall.

I recommend Cisco Secure Firewall because it's a global vendor.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate Cisco Secure Firewall an 8.