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145 reviews
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4-star reviews ( Show all reviews )

    Alex Fischbach

Comprehensive visibility has improved network insight and has supported reliable deployments

  • February 11, 2026
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We are deploying Cisco Secure Firewall for customers in the cloud, on-premise, or all around, depending on the customer. We have small customers that are migrating to the cloud, so we have to deploy virtual firewalls as well as on-premise solutions for both large-scale and small-scale operations.

What is most valuable?

The best return on investment when using Cisco Secure Firewall is the visibility. From my point of view, the best return on investment is the visibility. With Firepower Management and the FMC, you are able to really see everything that's going on in your network.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

From my point of view, the stability and reliability of the product is quite good. The firewall sensors and the management are quite stable. We are encountering some problems, but mostly when you implement the solution correctly, you don't have any problems besides hardware failure, which is really rare.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability for Cisco Secure Firewall is a good point. It's hard to say because mostly we are consulting and planning together with the customer. If they can see upfront or if they know when they have to scale big, then we can scale with them. I think the appliances are well scaled for the use of the customer.

How are customer service and support?

I have a lot of experience with the customer service and technical support of Cisco. Recently, we managed to get one of the Cisco engineers to connect with us to solve some customer problems.

My experience with the customer service and technical support of Cisco is quite excellent. The engineers are top-notch and they know what they are doing. They are really experts in their field.

Regarding customer service, I'm not as familiar with that aspect. However, with the technical support, when you know the right people and when you really have problems which you can't solve on your own, they are behind you and they can help you mostly.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Negative

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have worked with other solutions in the past, different ones. The vibe which is in Cisco equipment caught me from the early days. When I started, the first security appliance I saw was Cisco PIX. I worked sometimes with Cisco ASA, and this was all before I came to Bechtle. Now I'm where I want to be.

How was the initial setup?

Deploying Cisco Secure Firewall is getting easier, so I would describe the experience as straightforward. You are now able to preconfigure the appliances to send out, so you don't need engineers on site. In some cases, you can preconfigure and send it to the customer, and the customer is able to plug it in and it has access to WAN or to the internet. You are up and can run the system. I would rate Cisco Secure Firewall overall as an eight or a nine out of ten.

What about the implementation team?

This is mostly the system I'm working with, so I do work with other solutions other than Cisco Secure Firewall, but we do have other teams working with other vendors. We are at a point where things are getting more and more complicated and you need more and more knowledge to do the implementation correctly. My goal is to do Cisco and to do it the best I can and do it properly.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I'm mostly on the implementation side, so pricing, the setup cost, and the licensing are not really my part in the business. I hear it's quite expensive, but the service you get is worth it. When you invest so much, you will get a lot of service. About licensing, I don't have experience with other vendors regarding licensing, so I would say the licensing is quite good. I'm not sure if there are any other downsides, so I consider it acceptable.

What other advice do I have?



    reviewer2802147

Secure remote access has simplified employee and contractor VPN connectivity

  • February 10, 2026
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

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.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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.

How are customer service and support?

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.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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.

How was the initial setup?

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

What about the implementation team?

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.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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.

What other advice do I have?

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.


    reviewer2802027

Integrated security has protected our data center workloads and streamlined user access control

  • February 10, 2026
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

Our main use case for Cisco Secure Firewall is to protect the data center workloads and branch infrastructure.

What is most valuable?

Many features of Cisco Secure Firewall help us. One of the features is Cisco ISE to authenticate and authorize users and user devices, along with the data center switches and campus switches Catalyst, together with DNA Center.

For segmentation of our application workloads in the data center for East-West traffic, Cisco Secure Firewall is essential.

We primarily use Cisco Secure Firewall as a firewalling solution with basic ACL functionality.

What needs improvement?

I don't think there are things that could be improved or features that I would have in Cisco Secure Firewall.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for five to six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We did not have any major issues with Cisco Secure Firewall. Sometimes some features are a bit buggy, but it doesn't really result in any major outages.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have quite static infrastructure, so we did not have any growth requirements in the past with Cisco Secure Firewall, so I cannot provide information about that.

How are customer service and support?

We use customer service for Cisco Secure Firewall. Sometimes the GUI is very laggy and slow, and it improves with every update we receive, but sometimes that is a small problem. My rating for customer service is 4.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before having Cisco Secure Firewall, we used several solutions from different vendors.

We still use Check Point as well, even after changing to Cisco Secure Firewall.

How was the initial setup?

You need some knowledge to set up Cisco Secure Firewall, but overall, there is good documentation and it was doable.

What about the implementation team?

We do not currently have a dedicated implementation team for Cisco Secure Firewall.

What was our ROI?

It is hard to say if there was something we implemented with Cisco Secure Firewall that gives us a return on investment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cisco Secure Firewall, it is not that relevant, but from my experience, it can be very complex to oversee and to have a good view on the cost and licensing. It is a bit simpler with Cisco Smart, but it can be a challenge.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did consider another solution before selecting Cisco Secure Firewall. However, we did not want to have that many vendors in the enterprise.

What other advice do I have?

I prefer staying in the same Cisco ecosystem with one or two vendors maximum.

Check Point is one vendor on the firewall level that we still use.

We have to deploy the full feature set of Cisco Secure Firewall, so I cannot provide information about partial deployments.


    reviewer2802009

Network has been securely segmented and keeps critical train services operating without interference

  • February 10, 2026
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

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 is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

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.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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.

How are customer service and support?

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.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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.

How was the initial setup?

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.


    Alessandro Brusoni

Secure perimeter protection has supported reliable cloud integration and simple deployment

  • February 10, 2026
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What is most valuable?

Cisco Secure Firewall is highly performant and easy to manage.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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

How are customer service and support?

I have not needed to use customer service.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Negative

How was the initial setup?

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

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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.

What other advice do I have?

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


    Anupama Perera

Has enabled global teams to maintain consistent security policies with strong unified threat management

  • September 16, 2025
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

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.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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

How are customer service and support?

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

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The deployment of Cisco Secure Firewall takes one day.

What was our ROI?

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

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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.

What other advice do I have?

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.


    Philman Tjong

Intuitive management aids troubleshooting, but documentation and GUI need improvement

  • June 11, 2025
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

Our main use case for Cisco Secure Firewall is to protect our RTU traffic, specifically on the operational technology side, for SCADA systems. For our side, we don't have encrypted traffic; for the most part, we have the firewall to protect everything behind it when it comes to RTU traffic, which is remote terminal units.

How has it helped my organization?

The visibility and control capabilities of Cisco Secure Firewall benefit our company by making it easier for us to parse through traffic that is denied or allowed through, and that helps us with troubleshooting, so it does help cut down on troubleshooting.

What is most valuable?

The feature of Cisco Secure Firewall that I prefer the most is the use of ASDM where we visually are able to see all of our traffic when it comes through the firewall.

Cisco Secure Firewall does a good job unifying policies across our environments because we have many firewalls that have the same rules, so when Cisco Secure Firewalls are able to do that, that's very beneficial.

The fact that unifying policies will help us save time, costs, and be more efficient in general is very important for our company. Unfortunately, the impact of the cloud-delivered firewall on our company's security posture is negligible since we are an air-gapped system, and we do not deal with the cloud infrastructure.

Cisco Secure Firewall does a good job in helping our company implement a zero-trust security model, and it deserves an eight out of ten.

What needs improvement?

Cisco Secure Firewall could be improved in terms of the GUI and management. It could be more intuitive, as sometimes there might be too many features and buttons that make it harder when we're trying to parse through information.

To make Cisco Secure Firewall a ten out of ten, improving the documentation of all the features would help significantly. I sometimes feel I'm just searching around on Google for specific configurations compared to Palo Alto, which has more detailed steps.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using Cisco Secure Firewall for about 20 years. We've had it since the whole creation of our RT team.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

In terms of stability and reliability, Cisco Secure Firewall is reliable. We haven't had real issues where these firewalls have gone down or anything of that nature, so we're happy with the consistency.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

When it comes to the scalability of Cisco Secure Firewall, it scales very efficiently and is easy to implement with the growing needs of our company.

How are customer service and support?

Our experience with customer service or technical support through TAC for Cisco Secure Firewall could be more in-depth instead of going through the first levels.

We often find ourselves trying to escalate faster because we need timely responses. I would rate the customer service and technical support from Cisco Secure Firewall a six out of ten. They're good and know what they're doing in general. That said, it's not where we want it to be.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We considered Palo Alto before choosing Cisco Secure Firewall, and we do have some Palo Altos on the network to compare. We're mostly using Cisco products in general. I'm aware Palo Alto is a strong competitor when it comes to firewalls.

How was the initial setup?

The deployment is pretty seamless. Sometimes we do have some issues with Palo Alto Fireworks, where when it comes to deploying, it's not as intuitive. It doesn't work correctly, and there are some bugs that come up. So we have to troubleshoot that aspect. Cisco Secure Firewalls is pretty pretty seamless.

What was our ROI?

The biggest return on investment when using Cisco Secure Firewall comes from how intuitive it is. The more it's able to identify issues during troubleshooting, the better the ROI we achieve.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I'm not too concerned about the pricing of Cisco Secure Firewall. The pricing is fixed, and we're comfortable with it since pricing doesn't matter as much since we have to purchase it if there's a need for it.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The main differences between Cisco Secure Firewall and Palo Alto come down to the GUI. They are on par when comparing unified policy and how to make things more intuitive for monitoring traffic and creating rules based on that traffic.

What other advice do I have?

We haven't used any new features or functionalities in Cisco Secure Firewall recently. The features work efficiently, and I can't think of anything new that I would want right now.

I would rate Cisco Secure Firewall overall an eight out of ten; it's reliable, and we have no real issues.


    Chris Dalton

Central management simplifies policy unification and deployment speed, ensuring reliable security

  • June 11, 2025
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

My main use cases for Cisco Secure Firewall are mainly user access to the internet and blocking firewall sites.

How has it helped my organization?

With the centralized management of Cisco Secure Firewall, it's good in unifying policies across my environment. The simplicity and supportability are important to my organization as it's much easier if everything's the same as much as possible.

What is most valuable?

I appreciate that the central management of Cisco Secure Firewall is from one location, which saves a lot of time.

The IPS protection is good for us for security reasons.

The central management feature of Cisco Secure Firewall saves one location instead of having to log on to multiple locations, which speeds up deployment of any changes or requirements for monitoring.

What needs improvement?

The upgrading process of Cisco Secure Firewall is a long process on a per-firewall basis, and it would be nice if that could be improved. One firewall can take two to two and a half hours to upgrade, so we end up having to watch it. It becomes a problem; in the old firewall days, it would be about a ten-minute job. I know it's more complicated with the newer firewalls. It's just a long-winded process even if they have sorted it out a little bit with automation.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for probably about eight years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not had one Cisco Secure Firewall fail so far, which shows it is stable and reliable. Right now, I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues with Cisco Secure Firewall.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Cisco Secure Firewall scales with the growing needs of my organization, as we have different models and sizes, and our central boxes are powerful enough to cover whatever we want whenever we want.

How are customer service and support?

My evaluation of customer service and technical support for Cisco Secure Firewall is that I have generally hardly ever had to use them. We did two weeks ago, and it was a very quick response that identified exactly where the issue in our configuration was.

Two weeks ago, I received a very quick response from customer service, which identified exactly where the issue on our configuration was, and it went very smoothly, so out of ten, I would give it a nine.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Prior to adopting Cisco Secure Firewall, I was also using previous Cisco firewalls, and before that, we had Fortinet and Juniper.

The factors that led me to consider the change to Cisco Secure Firewall were actually price, as Cisco's was a very competitive price, and we received a very good deal.

How was the initial setup?

My experience with the deployment of Cisco Secure Firewall has been generally okay.

What was our ROI?

I have seen a return on investment with Cisco Secure Firewall since we run them for a long time.

Our current Cisco Secure Firewall units have been in place for probably over three years now, and at the moment, we're not looking to replace them, indicating a good return on investment since they last and are supported quite a long time after they're released.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Cisco Secure Firewall shows it can be expensive, especially the bigger boxes, since they do a lot more and handle a lot more, with a big jump from the smaller firewalls to the big firewalls.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The other solutions I considered before selecting Cisco Secure Firewall include Fortinet, Juniper, and Palo Alto. We're generally a Cisco house and have been for quite a few times with the old Cisco firewalls, so it was a natural progression.

What other advice do I have?

We did not purchase the product on AWS Marketplace.

We actually don't do that much encrypted inspecting traffic at the moment with Cisco Secure Firewall, which is something we want to look at. We just want to make sure we don't max out the CPU with the many jobs it does. Cisco Secure Firewall will be a building block part of our zero-trust security model, however, there will be a few other parts needed, such as Cisco Secure Access.

I have not really expanded the usage of Cisco Secure Firewall. My advice to other organizations considering Cisco Secure Firewall is that it does what it says on the tin; it works, it's reliable, and I have never had one fail, so I think it's good.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Cisco Secure Firewall a nine.


    reviewer2718408

Reliable troubleshooting tools improve efficiency in energy sector security

  • June 10, 2025
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

My main use cases for Cisco Secure Firewall include certain requirements from the energy sector, NERC CIP compliance, acting as a perimeter security device, doing layer three routing for us, and VLAN segmentation, as well as creating DMZs.

How has it helped my organization?

These features benefit my company by reducing my troubleshooting time, and in the energy sector, time is money, so it does help. The time reduction depends on how quickly someone gets used to it.

What is most valuable?

The feature of Cisco Secure Firewall I prefer most is troubleshooting, packet capture, and packet tracer; I love those features.

You can quickly run certain commands on CLI or on FMC CLI to find out what could be the root cause, and it varies from person to person, but it's very useful.

I prefer Cisco since it has been here for a very long time, we have a good relationship with the sales team and Cisco representatives, and the support is pretty good, providing us with 24/7 support, which makes me pretty happy.

Cisco Secure Firewall in helping my company implement a zero-trust security model. I've yet to try it, however, I'm very excited to work on it. My impression of the visibility and control capabilities of Cisco Secure Firewall in managing encrypted traffic is pretty good. We can build site-to-site tunnels and various ways of site-to-route based or policy-based, allowing us to see the packets and cap decaps, and Cisco CLI provides a way to see the packets inside, which is very helpful.

What needs improvement?

Cisco Secure Firewall's licensing model can be improved, as I struggle with it in an air-gapped environment. To make it a ten, a couple of challenges need to be addressed, particularly with the licensing model, as I'm looking for a permanent license solution for air-gapped environments.

The second issue is the ROMmon mode, where during power outages the firewalls go into ROMmon mode, causing outages and financial loss until we can send someone on-site.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for almost six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability and reliability of the platform are pretty stable.

The only challenge I see is with the substation, where when it loses power and there's no manual reboot, it ends up in ROMmon mode and requires a physical reboot, which means we have to send somebody on-site. It does not pick it up when the power goes out and comes back up, going into ROMmon mode, so I need better answers from Cisco about that.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I'm not sure how Cisco Secure Firewall scales with the growing needs of my company.

How are customer service and support?

My experience with customer service and technical support has been good. If I were to rate customer service and technical support on a scale of one to ten, I would give them an eight.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

In the past, we have used other solutions such as Palo Alto and other vendors. I am more of a Cisco person and prefer Cisco.

How was the initial setup?

My experience with the deployment of Cisco Secure Firewall is that it's pretty straightforward.

What was our ROI?

The biggest return on investment for me when using Cisco Secure Firewall is reliability and robust network design.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Regarding pricing and setup costs, apart from the licensing issue, Cisco products are on the pricier side. That said, they're worth it. We have over 500 substations plus our data center just on OT, and everything is Cisco, so we are a core Cisco customer, and as long as the product is reliable, it's worth every penny.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did consider other solutions before choosing Cisco Secure Firewall.

What other advice do I have?

I'm not sure how Cisco Secure Firewall's ability to unify policies across my environment is, as I haven't tried that.

I am not using Cisco SecureX with Secure Firewall; I'm using FMC for centralized management for the firewalls.

The impact of the cloud-delivered firewall on my company's security posture is tricky. For compliance, we are not supposed to have anything cloud-based, so it must be on-prem. We're a big company and we can use it in some other parts of the network, just not for my team.

Overall, I would rate Cisco Secure Firewall an eight out of ten.


    Ben Kusa

Central management provides more visibility and network control

  • June 09, 2025
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

My main use cases for Cisco Secure Firewall are to help secure the network and control what we allow in and out of the network.

How has it helped my organization?

The benefits of Cisco Secure Firewall's features for my company include giving us more visibility into what's going on when there's either an attack or just normal traffic, allowing us to see what's going through it.

What is most valuable?

The feature of Cisco Secure Firewall that I appreciate the most is the central management. The central management feature makes it easier to configure once, push out, and replace firewalls when they go bad. It's nice to have one pane of view, one pane of glass.

I assess Cisco Secure Firewall's ability to unify policies across my environment as definitely easy. We just do it through the one central management and then push it out from there. It is important for our organization to have such a feature. The importance of this feature lies in that it just helps standardize our configuration approach, allowing us to ensure that our ideas get pushed out to everything.

What needs improvement?

Cisco Secure Firewall could be improved by providing more visibility, especially regarding encryption, to be able to see what's in those traffic flows. More application visibility would also help; it knows about certain types of traffic yet not everything. It would be awesome if it knew everything.

To make Cisco Secure Firewall a better product or a perfect product, visibility is a good improvement area. You sort of have to know the product to use it, so user and technical improvements should aim for simplicity. There's so much it does that I don't know how much more simple it could go, so I'm not sure what really could be improved.

My impression of Cisco Secure Firewall's visibility and control capabilities in managing encrypted traffic is that somewhat limited. Most tools seem to be limited on encrypted traffic, so we don't get too much visibility into it—just the general type of traffic, not too much more than that.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using the solution for at least 15 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability and reliability of the Cisco Secure Firewall platform are very good; it's rock solid and has always just done its work.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Cisco Secure Firewall is growing and handling everything we ask it to do, so it's performing that part effectively.

How are customer service and support?

I evaluate customer service and technical support of Cisco overall as good; it's definitely one of the better companies to work with.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

While using Cisco Secure Firewall, we did consider other solutions. We recently upgraded all of them to the latest edition of Cisco, and we looked at Palo Alto and other tools at that time, but those firewalls have been in place for about 15 years. I don't know what happened when we initially put them in, but we did do an evaluation three years ago and decided to stay with Cisco.

How was the initial setup?

The deployment seems to go well. I'm not the one personally doing it. That said, the guys I tell to do it get it done when we need it done.

What was our ROI?

I don't see a return on investment with Cisco Secure Firewall; it's more of a needed tool, just something we need to do to get business done, so I'm not really looking at it as a tool that would give us an ROI.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

My experience with the pricing, the setup cost, and the licensing of Cisco Secure Firewall has been what I expect; I'd always prefer it cheaper, but nothing too exorbitant.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Familiarity was the biggest reason for staying with Cisco; everybody knows how to use the Cisco CLI, so it wasn't worth the effort to swap out, as there were no big benefits from other solutions.

What other advice do I have?

I'm not sure if there are any new features or functionalities that I have tried recently in Cisco Secure Firewall; it's just been doing its work for a while now.

I don't really use a cloud-delivered firewall as of today, so the only effect of not looking at it is speed. We're looking for the best performance we can get, and cloud usually isn't that. Cisco Secure Firewall helps us along the path to implementing a zero-trust security model, but there are a lot of tools and different paths to cover, so it's just really one tool in the arsenal.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Cisco Secure Firewall an eight.