We have utilized Cisco Secure Firewalls for both perimeter defense and internal segmentation purposes. Our use cases include implementing secure gateways between IT and OT networks within manufacturing environments, where divisions require separation for operational purposes. This ensures that internal OT networks, crucial for manufacturing pumps, remain distinct and secure from IT networks. It plays a pivotal role in maintaining the integrity and security of these segregated networks.

The Cisco Management Center provides centralized management for a variety of Secure devices and policies. Typically, Cisco's centralized management is facilitated through the DNA Center platform, offering different flavors of DNA solutions. Although Cisco Prime has been utilized to some extent in the past, the predominant method for centralized management revolves around Cisco DNA.

In our organization, we utilize Cisco Firewalls along with Fortinet for monitoring and analyzing work traffic. Cisco continues to maintain its position as one of the top leaders in the industry. With a strong lineup of products, Cisco's brand reputation in-network services and equipment is widely accepted and trusted. Selling Cisco products is generally easier due to their established name and reputation.

The Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center offers numerous benefits, including the stability and quality of its products, which feature almost all the latest market-leading features. This ensures a long product life cycle, reducing the need for frequent tech refreshes. Cisco's robust lifecycle management and clear roadmaps enable customers to plan refreshes and replacements without unexpected downtime, contributing significantly to operational efficiency. Moreover, Cisco's exceptional support minimizes customer losses due to unplanned downtime, while ensuring smooth transitions and upgrades.

Working with a single vendor significantly reduces the complexity of future security operations. This approach eliminates situations where products from different vendors fail to communicate effectively, leading to disjointed management and increased reliance on technical support for troubleshooting and break-fix tasks.

Cisco Secure products, particularly the Cisco Secure Firewall, offer robust defense mechanisms against denial-of-service and distributed denial-of-service attacks. In many instances, despite the occurrence of such attacks targeting customer networks, the impact on operations was significantly minimized due to the presence of Cisco Secure Firewall at the perimeter. While these attacks were detected, their disruptive effects were mitigated effectively, highlighting the critical role of the Cisco Secure Firewall in safeguarding customer operations.

One of the most valuable features of Cisco Secure Firewalls is their seamless integration with other Cisco products. This integration streamlines the process of creating policies and correlation rules, making management more efficient through a centralized management and monitoring portal. This ease of integration is particularly beneficial for networking admins in mid to large enterprises, where Cisco equipment is predominantly used.

Areas for improvement include pricing points and the range of products available at any given time. Cisco could potentially address these aspects more effectively to better accommodate the needs of customers across various tiers and levels.

We have been using it for approximately twenty-four years.

In terms of stability, conducting a pilot test before integration proves invaluable as it ensures thorough testing of policies and rule definitions prior to production deployment. Once this testing phase is completed and the product is integrated into the environment, it typically exhibits high stability. Challenges may arise occasionally due to software bugs in releases or the need to integrate legacy devices. In such instances, assistance from Cisco technical support is sought to address these challenges effectively.

The solution is highly scalable.

Cisco's technical support stands out as the key differentiator among other product brands in the market. Cisco consistently ranks as the top choice for technical support, thanks to the expertise of its engineers and the promptness with which defective materials are replaced, provided that all warranties and contracts are in place. It continues to be top-notch and arguably the best in the industry, providing valuable assistance whenever needed.

The initial setup is typically straightforward, especially for those familiar with Cisco's command lines, menus, and layouts, which are widely recognized in the industry. Given our extensive experience with Cisco over the years, there's minimal learning curve for us. However, newcomers may find it slightly challenging initially.

The first step of the development process involves assessing the network topology and design to ensure proper placement and sizing of the solution. Once these aspects are addressed, integrating the product becomes more straightforward. Typically, this involves taking inventory followed by setting up a test or pilot environment to verify connectivity and ensure that applied policies won't disrupt operations. After successfully integrating all implementation details, the solution is deployed in the production environment. This sequential approach helps to ensure a smooth deployment process.

Despite potentially higher upfront expenses, the overall operational costs are significantly reduced due to its efficiency. Consequently, the return on investment is notably faster or greater compared to competing products from other brands.

One of the advantages of Cisco is its range of flexible licensing options. Whether customers are seeking a lighter version or a comprehensive feature set, Cisco offers various licensing tiers to accommodate different use cases. This versatility ensures that customers can tailor their solutions to their specific needs without overcommitting. Additionally, since most features can be enabled or disabled through licensing, customers have the flexibility to activate additional functionalities as needed without requiring a complete replacement of their existing setup.

To date, we've successfully sold these products to approximately 125 customers. The attrition rate away from Cisco has been minimal, with only around 10% to 15% of customers opting for alternatives.

I highly recommend Cisco as the market leader. Whatever solution a customer is seeking from Cisco, the company undoubtedly possesses the capabilities and technical expertise to provide the right solution and seamlessly integrate it into any complex environment. However, it's crucial to carefully size and plan the solution during the initial stages to avoid any misconfigurations or introduction of unsuitable products into the infrastructure. Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.

I use Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center in my company to compare it with other firewall products. In our company, my supervisor wants me to check and compare three firewall products and figure out which product works the best, making it one of the projects in my organization for which I need to make a report.

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center's GUI is very user-friendly, and it allows me to use Cisco Adaptive Security Device Manager (ASDM). I really like Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center, including its areas like policy-making and rules that can be defined very easily. Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center provides a very good interface.

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center's dashboard needs to be modified.

Due to the lack of enough tutorials available online, I face problems with Cisco. There needs to be enough sources provided by Cisco from where users can learn more about Cisco products. It would be great if Cisco could provide users with tutorials that help with dashboards and CLM since Cisco does not provide much information in the aforementioned areas.

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center for two months. I use the solution's latest version, along with Cisco ASAv and Cisco Modeling Labs.

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten. The firewall is good.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

I currently use firewall products from Palo Alto and FortGate, along with Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center, to make a comparison report between all three products.

The product installation was easy since I had received proper documentation from Cisco to help me. The documentation did not have many tutorials like the ones available for Palo Alto or Fortinet on YouTube and the internet. Even on the Fortinet website, there are free tutorials available for users, which are very helpful when it comes to the area of management, such as how to use the dashboards and how to make rules. Cisco ASA ASDM is very easy to install.

Compared to the other products that I deal with, I feel that Cisco products are easy to install.

The solution can be deployed in two to three hours.

I use the free version of the product.

As I work in the cybersecurity department of my company, I had to compare Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center with the firewall products offered by other vendors in the market, like the ones from Fortinet and Palo Alto.

I prefer Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center since many of the organizations in the market prefer to use it because it is a great tool.

My supervisor told me to do some simple configurations with the product and take screenshots to present it in a project format.

I recommend the solution to those who plan to use it.

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center generally works well, but when it comes to the free version of the product, I can't do many things with it. In Palo Alto's free version, users can use and do everything in the product, but in Cisco's free version, there are a lot of things I can't do. I think the free version of Cisco should provide all the features so that new users can learn them and know how to use them.

I rate the overall tool a seven out of ten.

It acts as a security center that deals with anti-malware, antivirus, and protection against network attacks.

It acts as a safeguard against external threats such as viruses, malware, and offers URL scanning. Cisco Secure Firewall's strength lies in its regular updates and automated blocking of threats, reducing the need for manual intervention.

The most valuable aspects are the antivirus and URL filtering.

Cisco Firepower has been effective in solving various problems, but it could be improved by making it simpler and more user-friendly like Fortinet. Additionally, making it available for offline practice through an emulator would be beneficial.

I've been working in my organization for the past six months, and during this time, we deployed it in our office. Previously, we were using a basic Cisco ASA firewall, and we managed it using the ASDM. Now, we've upgraded to a more advanced firewall and manage it through the MMC.

I would rate it a seven out of ten.

Scalability needs to be improved and I would rate it a six out of ten.

They don't offer sufficient materials on their website, unlike Cisco. Moreover, the FMC (Firepower Management Center) is expensive, and there is a lack of helpful materials available online. The existing documentation can be quite extensive and challenging to comprehend.

They opted for the Cisco Firepower Management Center due to new, more complex threats that the basic ASA couldn't effectively handle. They did evaluate other options like Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Juniper, but their management recommended Cisco, leading them to choose it.

I rate it on a scale of one to ten, with one being highly difficult and ten being very easy. In terms of technical analysis, I would rate it a three. It's also rather difficult to deploy.

It took about one or two hours consistently because it's quite heavy to deploy.Initially, I need to set up a virtual machine, which is the first step. After that, I deploy it as a virtual machine, and then I go through the process of configuring the license features and adding the devices. This is a somewhat lengthy task.

It is rather expensive.

I will advise them to explore simpler solutions like Palo Alto Networks or Fortinet UCC, which offer more straightforward options. I would rate it six out of ten.

The solution is easy to use.

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center needs to reduce its price.

I have been using the product for more than ten years.

I rate the tool's stability an eight out of ten.

I rate the product's scalability an eight out of ten.

I rate the tool's deployment a nine out of ten. It is easy and was completed in minutes.

I rate the tool's pricing a four out of ten. The licensing costs are yearly.

Our clients for Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center are medium to large businesses. It is a very scalable and reliable solution. I rate it a ten out of ten.

We use the Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center to manage our firewall devices. Every configuration is applied to the management center, and any policy will be pushed and deployed to the firewall. We use the solution for management, reporting, and logging analysis.

The solution has a great UI and a policy deployment mechanism, and all the configuration is easily manageable for the firewalls.

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center's logging functionality could be improved.

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center for four years.

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center is a stable solution.

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center is a highly scalable solution.

The solution's technical support team is very supportive.

Around 20 people are required to deploy and maintain the Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center.

The solution has great functionality and a user-friendly interface. It also has great functionality for reconstruction. It's also automated and can be integrated with other devices, services, or interfaces.

Overall, I rate Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center a nine out of ten.

We use Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center to exclude traffic between some zones in the network.

The solution is very useful for enterprise companies.

The solution is useful and powerful.

The solution should improve the user interface. It could be more user-friendly.

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center in my company. We are using the latest version, FMC 3000.

The stability of the solution is very good.

The solution is scalable. It is very good.

We have around 10 or 12 enterprise companies working with this solution.

Because of the sanctions in Iran, I don't have access to Cisco's technical support.

The initial setup of the solution is easy and takes about a week to deploy. Since we are a consultant, I have done the deployment by myself.

There are many ways to deploy the solution. We can either do it remotely here, or I can do it myself.

We have around three to four people for deployment and solution maintenance.

The solution is not so expensive, it is somewhere in middle.

I will suggest considering your use case. All companies need this solution, but it is very useful for enterprise companies.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

I like its system management and filtering options as a layer seven firewall. You can also use a multi-mode environment, which means you can use multi-ISP. You can utilize that particular standard, and that is helpful.

Moreover, there is an SDM in Cisco, though we are using Cisco FMC. FMC manages multiple FDT devices, and an entire organization can be managed over Cisco.

Some duplicated values and security standards are not working in some high-application protocols with Cisco's next-generation firewalls.

I have worked with Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center for five years.

Sometimes we face issues because VDP updates are happening frequently from Cisco. At that time, I have sometimes seen it rebooting FDT devices. It stabilizes once the solution updates the new policies. It is stabilizing now, whereas earlier, there were some bugs.

The solution is very easy to scale. Three people in my organization are working on it.

The core customer support is good, but they don't help us immediately. For example, if it is a P1 issue, they do not contact me immediately because it takes time to contact us. It will take time to resolve the issue if it's an emergency.

The installation is not that easy and not that tough also. When you learn Cisco, you can do the initial setup step by step. Some specific knowledge of rules is required to set up the solution. The deployment process takes more than a week, and five engineers are required to deploy it. Only two engineers are enough to maintain the product.

The solution is expensive. We have a multi-license, and we pay extra for support.

It is better to go with Palo Alto right now. Palo Alto is better from a price point-of-view, and some applications are better with Palo Alto than Cisco. However, Cisco is easy to learn compared to other solutions, and many people are learning to use Cisco. There are many documents for Cisco on the Internet. I rate Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center a nine out of ten.

We use the product as a traditional firewall. We also use it for advanced malware detection. The tool detects and blocks any malware that tries to penetrate the environment. The product also provides application visibility and control. It is a Layer 7 firewall. We know what kind of application traffic is being transmitted to the tool. We also have Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention System. Any intrusions from outside or inside are detected and mitigated by the solution.

Advanced Malware Protection and Intrusion Prevention System are valuable features. These features are more productive because they operate on signatures. We also have a threat intelligence feed from Talos. Talos provides a lot of rich threat intelligence feeds for blocking off indicators of compromises.

The product must improve its performance. When we push policies from the console, it takes a lot of time. It takes five to seven minutes to push one policy. If someone pushes a wrong policy and there is an outage in the banking system, they would have to wait six to seven minutes to revert it. We have highlighted this issue to Cisco.

A year ago, we told Cisco that we need APIs for integration with SOAR for pushing policies. We cannot push policies or run playbooks from SOAR to block any IOCs on the web and email gateway because Cisco doesn’t expose the APIs. It is one thing for which we have been following up with Cisco for the last year, but I don't think they've developed the API integration. Palo Alto and Fortinet provide this feature to their users.

I have been using the solution for the last five to six years.

We haven't seen any performance degradation or outages on the tool. It is stable.

The tool is scalable.

Cisco's support and services are far superior to any other security product in Pakistan. We have a Cisco-based team stationed in Pakistan. That's one of the reasons why we opted for the product. Cisco has a huge knowledge base. The technical support is excellent.

We were using Juniper. We replaced it with Cisco ASA. After 2015, when next-generation firewalls were introduced, we switched to them.

The initial setup was easy. Integrating Cisco within the existing network is not a challenge. Cisco products are easily integrated, especially when we have a Cisco-based ecosystem. I don't see any challenge in it. Integrating Cisco with SOAR is a challenge.

The return on investment is good.

The solution’s pricing is reasonable. The licensing cost depends on the versions, the capacity we need, and the licensing model. We pay separately for each Cisco tool. We use many Cisco products. When we procure a Cisco license or a product, we procure a three-year subscription cost and capitalize it with the procurement of the product. After three years, we pay an annual subscription fee for the products.

Pakistan’s geography has some limitations because we don't get the support and services from Palo Alto, but we get it from Cisco. Apart from routers and switches, we have a lot of Cisco products. We have Cisco Firepower Next-Generation Firewall on the perimeter. We have Cisco at the core level as a data center firewall. We also have an email security gateway and Stealthwatch. These are good and stable products. However, when it comes to security, Palo Alto and Fortinet outweigh Cisco.

The solution is good and stable. We need a five-year roadmap of whether we want to develop a security operation center or integrate the tool with other products. We need to consider these aspects before choosing the solution. However, there won't be a challenge if we go across the board with Cisco products.

As far as security is concerned, Cisco has invested heavily in security for the last five to six years. We opted for a red team/blue team service from Cisco and evaluated it. During the evaluation phase, we found out that Cisco is not really good at it. They started the service two to three years ago. So we opted for another vendor.

Similarly, Cisco has to improve Cisco Secure Managed Detection and Response because it's a recent service. I don't find value in it when compared with FireEye or CrowdStrike. Cisco is not a services company. It's a product company that has evolved into a services company. Customers value different services. Cisco needs to improve its services.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight or nine out of ten.

We use the product to manage our infrastructure.

The product's user interface is very easy to use and convenient.

The product's setup could be easier.

I have been using the product for one and a half years.

My company has 15-20 users for the product.

The product's setup was moderate which was not too easy or hard. We had encountered some hiccups but we managed through it.

I would rate the product a ten out of ten.

I'm comfortable using it. It's okay; I use it quite frequently. I kept logs, but they indicate that suddenly the interface is overwhelmed with traffic, which leads to two types of errors. I generate a weekly report that I usually send to tech support. The main issue may be that the software is outdated or has some bugs.

We have used it before, and I'm comfortable managing this type of device. So I have requested our management to purchase a license and update the maintenance contract since I need to support that equipment and perform updates, patches, firmware, and other tasks.

I need to prepare the report based on the previous contact and make a request to the upper management. They decided, and as I mentioned earlier, I need to find a local partner. So I have discussed many times with the top partners, but I got declined.

Since it became unlicensed, there have been constant issues that became problematic. I can't understand why it happened. It was stable, stable, stable, and suddenly, there was a huge influx of traffic from the outside interface.

And basically, the services get disabled. I see SLA agents crashing and Smart Life Protection errors occurring. I believe it's due to the lack of license, but I can't explain why it's happening. So there have been many issues with stability.

It's not very user-friendly and can be somewhat disorganized.

In additional features, I think the login process could be improved. It's currently a big challenge, and creating proper and easy-to-generate reports is not very straightforward. There are some gaps that need to be addressed.

It has been working since 2019, but recently, for the past year, we have encountered many issues with the software. It's currently completely out of license. So I usually have a backup, you know, to retrieve when it crashes. However, even with the backup, it doesn't work properly. There have been errors and disconnects for about two weeks. I'm currently using version 7.0.1.

We have Cisco Firepower 2100 series devices, and the actual software that manages the equipment is the Firepower Management Center. It's a tool with a visual environment on VMware bundle. That type of VM requires licensing.

It's hard to determine an exact rating for the stability of the solution because it depends on the specific version we use. For example, with the previous version, we encountered some issues, such as high CPU load.

However, after upgrading to version 7.0.1, those issues were resolved. So, overall, I believe the software has shown improvement compared to the previous management center. I would rate it around six out of ten.

It's a fine solution in terms of scalability. It offers extensive scalability and flexibility. I would rate it a ten out of ten. There are around 1500 end users.

Personally, I have not yet used the support directly since a third-party company has a contract with our organization. They handle most of the support and account management. In case we require support, we reach out to our partner for assistance.

The installation is relatively easy. I haven't found any issues with the installation. It's straightforward to install and deploy. I use a certain tool to install this product, then retrieve the backup from the SCUs.

It takes about fifteen minutes to deploy. It's just me handling the deployments. Moreover, I can manage the maintenance myself. However, for advanced troubleshooting or remote technical support, we would need experts to handle some advanced issues. So, for the standard maintenance, I can manage it myself.

I would say it's quite an expensive product. However, it could be considered relatively cheaper when compared to some other vendors in the market.

I would say it's around six out of ten, so it's quite pricey. The license cost was approximately $148,000 for a two-year or three-year usage period. Personally, I have not paid any additional costs because I started working after the licensing was already in place.

I would definitely recommend the product. However, I must emphasize that there are areas where the software itself could be improved. Based on feedback from other colleagues in my line of work, it should be more user-friendly and better organized. On the positive side, it allows for great customization and the ability to create quick reports or logs using templates.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.