Cisco Secure Firewall is a next-generation firewall that can be used for various security applications.
Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Virtual - PAYG
Cisco Systems, Inc.External reviews
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Has an easy installation process, but the integration capabilities with various applications need improvement
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The advantage of using Cisco is its integration within the Cisco fabric, which allows for effective threat detection and mitigation.
What needs improvement?
Cisco could improve its score by developing more features that integrate seamlessly with various applications and investing in hardware acceleration to enhance performance.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The product is stable with minimal glitches or latency issues.
How was the initial setup?
The solution is easy to install, requiring minimal expertise. Deployment time varies, but it can take about two days for a medium-sized company with 200-300 users to configure and install.
What was our ROI?
After five years of product usage, the high return on investment and low total cost of ownership can be observed.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Pricing depends on partnerships and certifications. The engineering team's certifications can qualify it for seven to eight percent discounts.
What other advice do I have?
The platform's integration capabilities depend on the project context. In some cases, integrating Palo Alto may provide better performance, but Cisco can still be effective.
However, its classification in industry comparisons, such as those from Gartner, is lower than that of competitors like FortiGate and Palo Alto.
Overall, I rate it seven out of ten.
A tool that offers protection and security features that needs to improve its price
What is our primary use case?
My company uses Cisco Secure Firewall for its protection and security features.
What is most valuable?
I won't be able to speak about the strong points of the product. I will need the input from my team to be able to speak about the advantages of the product. The solution's dashboard is fine, and in terms of support, Cisco is better than other OEMs in the market.
What needs improvement?
The solution's price can be lowered because, currently, it is pricier than the tool its competitors offer in the market. If the product's prices are lowered, it may help Cisco to expand its market base.
If Cisco reduces the price of its product, then it can gain more advantage and become much more competitive in a market where there are solution providers like Fortinet FortiGate.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for five years.
I don't remember the version of the solution since there is a support team in my company to manage it. My company has a partnership with Cisco.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Around 2,500 people use the solution in my company.
How are customer service and support?
Most of the time, the solution's technical support is helpful and responsive. There have been a few cases where a few black spots have been noticed, which I think is because Cisco opted for localization of support because, during holidays, nighttime, or weekends, it becomes difficult for users to reach the support team, though the rest of the time the support is good.
If you have already scheduled a call with the support team of Cisco, then it is good. If you need to reschedule a call with the support team when you face a new issue with the product, then it may get a bit of a problem to get a hold of someone from the support team of Cisco. Earlier, there were no problems with Cisco's support team. Recently, there have been a few issues cropping up related to the technical team of Cisco. Technically speaking, the support team is good, but the availability offered by the technical team has deteriorated.
I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I work with Palo Alto, Fortinet, and Check Point for different parts of our IT environment.
How was the initial setup?
The product's initial setup phase was taken care of by another team in my company before I joined my current company.
On our company's core payroll, we have a very small support team, but we do have a support team in my company for the product. The support team in my company consists of around 20 to 25 engineers who work around the clock.
The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I rate the product's price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is expensive, and ten is cheap. If we compare Cisco with other OEMs available in the market, Cisco needs to work on price improvement. Nowadays, there is a lot of competition in the market with newer solutions, like Fortinet, gaining popularity, amongst a few other names like Cyberoam, a product from a local Indian vendor. Palo Alto has also gained a lot of market share in recent years.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
From a security perspective, generally, there are only three solutions that our company looks at, which include Check Point in the last four or five years, among other options like Palo Alto and Cisco.
What other advice do I have?
I recommend the solution for SMB businesses.
I rate the overall tool a seven out of ten.
Provides great security for our applications
What is our primary use case?
We use them for site-to-site VPN solutions as well as other VPN activities, and for general application security.
We needed a good VPN solution and, as our network grew, we had more applications that were virtualized and that can be spun up. We needed a solution that would keep us ahead.
How has it helped my organization?
Cisco ASA provides great security for our applications.
What is most valuable?
One of the best features is the ease of use. It's also easy to teach new engineers to use the ASA CLI. When I first started learning firewalls, Cisco was the first one that was taught to me and it was pretty easy to grasp. When I'm teaching other engineers to use Cisco ASAs, the results of their learning are immediate.
What needs improvement?
It needs to provide the next-generation firewall features that other vendors provide, like data analytics, telemetry, and deep packet inspection.
Also, the ASAs need to be improved a little bit to keep up with the demand for high bandwidth and session count applications.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using Cisco ASAs for about 11 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's reliable. It doesn't have all the features of some of the newer firewalls, but it's very reliable. It doesn't break. It's pretty rock-solid.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have at least a pair in every one of our data centers. We gateway our applications around the firewall system, meaning all application data goes through firewalls.
How are customer service and support?
We have good support from Cisco for the ASAs. That helps us out a lot. Some of our ASAs are pretty old and technically not supported anymore, but TAC always helps us out.
How was the initial setup?
The initial one, for me, was a little bit complex because I hadn't done it before. It was inline and an active/standby pair, so it involved a little bit more than just deploying one firewall.
We had some documentation written and we tested it in the lab and then the deployment took about four hours.
We deployed it alongside different solutions and then we cut over to it when it wouldn't impact the customers.
The maintenance involves doing code upgrades periodically to keep up with the security environment requirements. One person handles that.
What about the implementation team?
We deployed with a consultant from Cisco support. Our experience with them was good. They provided a lot of documentation ahead of time to help us with our configuration.
From our side there were two people involved. One was doing the configuration and the other person was checking to make sure there were no errors, looking at IPs and the like.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The licensing is straightforward and simple, so we don't have to keep relicensing every year as we do with other applications.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We use Juniper as well.
A performant NGFW firewall
What do you like best about the product?
GUI is new and user-friendly. SSL VPN is straightforward with wizard and can satisfy many vpn needs of users seen that it is based on ANYCONNECT. Clsuter configuration is solid. prefilter rules concept is nice also.
What do you dislike about the product?
HIT counters are not compliant. FDM is very weak with limited configuration options. CLI console are complicated with many embedded consoles. Software is not stable; many upgrades are needed yet.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
EAST-WEST traffic segmentation, NORTH-SOUTH traffic filtering, Layer 7 inspections needs, network attacks detection, remote working solution, increasing performance by accelerating traffic analysis.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
a firewall that works like ASA
Cisco Firewalls - General
What do you like best about the product?
Scalable and reliable for the enterprise
What do you dislike about the product?
Cost is high and features are not very agile
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Perimeter security is a good benefit
Cisco firewall will they move to future?
What do you like best about the product?
Its simple and easy to use, lots of clear tabs - which shows each setting and guides show each steps and command line configuration which was really nice if you do not have access to asdm.
What do you dislike about the product?
Firepower module why it was so hard to build it earlier and integrate more - very poor performance of IPS access has to be limited as it cannot handle all traffic and memory is overloaded thenks to which firewalls fail over. I hope that future releses fix this. Also Firepower is very limited they just started adding features which in other firewalls are for months or years now.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Security and filtering, it nice to add all features and firepower licenses but the throughput of firewall then is not so great... and here you have to limit what is being filtered or not or you will end up with large bottleneck which will be your firewall.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Try other vendors which as today its much easier set up if you require IPS/URL filtering and monitoring
Solid solution for VPNs and inspact outgoing/ingoing traffic - nothig more
What do you like best about the product?
Configuration in CLI is still old PIX CLI with some new changes... Configuration and debug are in "Cisco" style - solid and good known...
What do you dislike about the product?
Evolve... PIX/ASA is 5 years in the past. Competition offers more. But if you want just configure access out or in and you have few branches you want to connect to your network via IPSec, this the best solution...
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Missing antivir, antispam, uselles web management... Easy configuration and troubleshooting wia CLI.
Good but behind the times
What do you like best about the product?
Very consistent look and feel across all versions
What do you dislike about the product?
Behind the times as a next generation firewall.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Not as good as Palo alto firewalls. Lacking in deep packet inspection and analytics.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
I would highly recommend looking at other vendors like Palo Alto
Cisco ASA
What do you like best about the product?
Fairly solid product. Widespread use so there is a lot of documentation available. Able to privde Malware protection, VPN service and Firewall on the same box.
What do you dislike about the product?
It uses Java for its GUI. Product line is a bit slow to adapt new technologies. Code has become a bit buggier over the years.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Basic firewalling. We also use anyconnect VPN on the device. VPN use is much better than our previous web based VPN. We were able to add the Firesight module to the device to provide better security at the application layer.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Do your homework. When I was deploying my ASA's there was not much choice for L7 firewalls designed for the midsize market. The ASA is a good firewall, although a bit over priced as are all Cisco products.
A workhorse firewall with a long legacy
What do you like best about the product?
I went to school for networking, and my curriculum was very heavy on cisco routers and switches. The fact that they use the same (or similar) syntax in the firewalls allows for a those with cisco router and switch experience to transition easily. However, what I like most about the product is the simple command line configuration that I can script ahead of time. Other firewalls such as fortinet or palo alto are a pain to configure from the command line.
What do you dislike about the product?
I dislike the lack of troubleshooting capabilities for routing. On a cisco router you can do "sh ip route " and see the exact route that the address is taking. On the cisco pix and ASA you have to do sh route | include and hack off octets until you find one that MIGHT match.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
As an MSSP, our customers prefer Cisco firewalls because of their long legacy as a stable and capable firewall platform.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
If you have a strong background in cisco devices, Cisco Firewalls are the way to go. However, if you are looking for something that performs excellent layer 7 firewalling, I'd suggest a Palo Alto over any of the cisco layer 7 firewalls.
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