I use Cisco Secure Access for VPN resources in my day-to-day work to implement the VPN tunnel to the data center.

The best features Cisco Secure Access offers include stability. With 4,000 people using it and not many tickets, Cisco Secure Access has positively impacted my organization by providing stable VPN access to the data center.

This stability has led to measurable outcomes, as we have fewer tickets.

Cisco Secure Access is good, and I feel nothing more is needed for improvement. I chose a rating of nine out of ten because of the zero downtime, but that is nearly not possible, and I cannot tell you what to do better.

I have been using Cisco Secure Access for eight years.

Cisco Secure Access is good, and I feel nothing more is needed for improvement.

With 4,000 people using it and not many tickets, Cisco Secure Access has positively impacted my organization by providing stable VPN access to the data center.

I will contact our partner manager if the vendor has any questions or comments about my review.

We do use VPNs in Cisco Secure Access, and we already have Zero Trust, which has influenced our transition.

Cisco Secure Access is deployed in our own on-premise data center.

We are a partner of this vendor, which represents our business relationship beyond being just a customer.

The stability has led to measurable outcomes, as we have fewer tickets.

We do use VPNs in Cisco Secure Access, and we already have Zero Trust, which has influenced our transition.

We do use VPNs in Cisco Secure Access, and we already have Zero Trust, which has influenced our transition.

I would evaluate the AI access feature of Cisco Secure Access for providing deep visibility and control over AI applications, tools, and large language models by saying we will keep an eye on it and talk to our partner manager about the use cases of the AI implementation. My advice to others looking into using Cisco Secure Access is that it is a good solution. I gave this review a rating of nine out of ten.

Cisco Secure Access serves as our main remote access tool for all of our users, which number about two and a half thousand endpoints. Our primary use case involves deploying Cisco Secure Access across all clients for connectivity, as we are a very remote organization, mainly in the UK, with many people accessing from three main sites, including working from home. Additionally, it supports all of our internet connectivity from our offices, and all of our laptops have the remote agent, so it is essential for that as well.

We have implemented the ZTNA in Cisco Secure Access. We have adopted both client-based and clientless options within Cisco Secure Access. We currently have about five or six services on a clientless basis, which aligns with what Cisco recommends, and we are working to put more behind that. The client side consists mainly of some legacy private applications that remain on-premises that we have not yet migrated to clientless.

The features of Cisco Secure Access that I appreciate the most include the posture assessment side. Being in security, I value being able to get an end posture assessment on the device to ensure it has the latest updates and can take action against devices that do not meet core requirements. Furthermore, ZTNA access is a key area that we are currently migrating to.

The benefits of these features for my company include providing flexibility, which is a primary concern for us. Security keeps all of our users secure while allowing flexibility in their work locations, ensuring they receive the same policies and centralized control regardless of location. This gives us peace of mind that we maintain control from end to end.

To improve Cisco Secure Access, I believe there should be better clarity from Cisco regarding where organizations should focus their investments. When we onboarded a year ago, we fully adopted the VPN client; in hindsight, we might have done a split focusing more on ZTNA. The direction felt unclear at the time, and after attending two or three Cisco Lives, it seems ZTNA is the main focus, yet Cisco does not provide adequate guidance on best practices that align with other organizations. There is a noticeable gap in engagement from customer success managers about upcoming features and tools. Additionally, integrating with other third parties is essential; I see limitations in our Cisco XDR platform's integrations, and consolidating everything into a single pane of glass would greatly enhance visibility. Although AI Canvas is aimed at addressing some visibility issues, they seem to be behind and require more time for development.

I have been using Cisco Secure Access for just over a year.

I would evaluate the customer service and technical support as very good. Although technical support has been hit and miss at times, with some technical cases taking weeks for comprehensive feedback and necessary improvements, we have also submitted feature requests that resulted in visible changes. With our established point of contact within Cisco, our experience has greatly improved; we no longer log all issues through technical cases, as we can go directly to our account managers or customer service team, which expedites resolution. Based on my interactions, I would rate the customer service and technical support an eight or nine.

The main factors that led me to choose Cisco Secure Access after Check Point included cost; Cisco was substantially cheaper, and we also had a poor experience with Check Point, which we found unreliable. We faced constant tickets and multiple versions of the same client causing inconsistent user experiences, leading to difficulties in product cohesion. Ultimately, cost was the most persuasive factor.

The deployment process of Cisco Secure Access was straightforward. Deploying the client itself was very straightforward. We encountered a few teething issues mainly due to integrating with all our data centers and replacing our firewalls simultaneously with FTD firewalls; however, Cisco Secure Access deployment itself was simple.

The biggest return on investment from Cisco Secure Access, from my perspective, is the end usability from a client perspective. The end user experiences no interaction—they simply see that it works. Ticket numbers are very low, and it operates smoothly. It is one of those tools that needs to work right out of the box, and thankfully, it does; it is reliable, and the setup time was quick and straightforward.

My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Cisco Secure Access has been very competitive overall; it is cheaper than what we experienced with our previous renewal, which influenced our decision to switch. Overall, it has been a very positive experience.

In the process of choosing Cisco Secure Access, we considered only two options: renewing with Check Point or switching to Cisco.

The impact of the Secure Access deployment on help desk ticket volume and the end user experience has been a big improvement overall. We previously used Check Point, and migrating to Cisco has been a very positive experience. Our account team on the Cisco side has played a significant role in our customer success journey, resulting in low ticket numbers; after an initial peak of incidents due to teething issues, we now experience very low ticket numbers on a day-to-day basis.

Regarding the AI Access feature of Cisco Secure Access for providing deep visibility and control over AI applications, tools, and large language models, we are not currently using it as we do not incorporate any application layer integrations within Cisco Secure Access at the moment. However, it is something we are working towards, as I believe it is a relatively new feature. The AI Access feature is on our wish list, and we certainly intend to implement it. We know we need to do more around the DSPM functionality, which Cisco is working on, so as that stack builds from Cisco's side, we will look for an entry point to ensure full coverage that the tool provides. Currently, it is probably a little early for us to jump in, but in six months, we might consider it.

We are not using the Hybrid Private Access feature for varying enforcement locations of ZTNA private traffic; we are aware of it, but it requires integration with Security Cloud, which we have not completed yet. This feature is on our wish list.

We do not use the DEM feature, which is Digital Experience Monitoring, but we utilize ThousandEyes, which is installed on the Cisco client.

Transitioning to Zero Trust and least-privileged principles has been made easier from some perspectives with Cisco Secure Access. The identity-first approach is a significant part of this journey, and I know Cisco's ongoing improvements over the next twelve months will benefit this process. The traditional VPN is phasing out, with ZTNA being the new standard; however, some of our legacy infrastructure poses challenges in fully adopting ZTNA.

For companies considering Cisco Secure Access as their main solution, I advise starting the conversation early. Transitioning is not straightforward; it takes time. With all the ongoing changes in the product and AI integrations, early planning is crucial. While migration can occur quickly, incorporating add-ons and extras requires more time to effectively integrate into the product. We still have not fully utilized features we have had for a year, as we are still assessing their impact and exploring potential duplication with existing tools.

Regarding how Secure Access has helped prevent users from uploading sensitive and proprietary information to LLMs, we have not utilized that feature; we currently use Microsoft Defender Purview for this purpose. I understand it is a relatively new feature in Cisco, but we have not adopted it to that level yet.

I would rate this product overall as a nine out of ten.

My adventure with Cisco Secure Access started when I began my work, and my main use cases are focused on ensuring secure connectivity and protecting sensitive data.

My favorite feature of Cisco Secure Access is incredibly beneficial for a company, as it enhances security and user experience significantly.

Using ZTNA in Cisco Secure Access has positively affected my transition and my clients' transition to Zero Trust and least privilege principles, reinforcing the security posture.

The impact of Cisco Secure Access deployment on help desk ticket volume and the end-user experience has been remarkable, and I am using the AI assistant feature, which streamlines support. Cisco Secure Access has helped in preventing users from uploading sensitive and proprietary information to LLMs effectively, and I have heard from my clients regarding how they see it. They find that it works well and meets their security requirements.

In terms of usability and efficiency, the multi-organization management capability of Cisco Secure is robust. I believe Cisco Secure Access can be improved by changing some features, enhancing the user interface, and streamlining reporting.

I used VPNaaS in Cisco Secure Access, and it has greatly influenced my transition from VPN to ZTNA by simplifying secure access for users.

I evaluate the customer service and technical support of Cisco as consistently reliable.

I would describe the deployment experience of Cisco Secure Access as straightforward, without major challenges.

From my point of view, the biggest return on investment when using Cisco Secure Access is the significant reduction in security risks and improved operational efficiency.

My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Cisco Secure Access has been favorable.

I have worked with other tools that do similar things to Cisco Secure Access.

My advice to other companies thinking of deploying or getting Cisco Secure Access is to thoroughly assess their needs and goals, as it is crucial for maximizing the benefits. I gave this review a rating of 9.

We are about to start up with Cisco Secure Access now. We started this last year, but we have a lot of Umbrella that we are moving over to Cisco Secure Access. The main use cases for Cisco Secure Access are mostly the internet, but we are also looking for the client part, including ZTNA and so on, to move over that part from the traditional SSL VPNs.

The feature of Cisco Secure Access that I appreciate the most is the visibility and the ability to have one rule set for all the traffic. You can see the LAN connections and get them with SGT tags. This means you have all the things, not just your managed clients streaming through the policy set.

The features I have mentioned benefit our company overall by giving us one single pane of glass. We can see all the rule sets. We are partners, so we are building for our end customers and they appreciate having one single control point of the network. This is the most important aspect.

I am not using the AI assistant feature of Cisco Secure Access much yet. I think it is a little bit limited right now. This is something that can be improved, and I think it will be.

I hope there will be a good way to transform Umbrella installations over to Cisco Secure Access to improve the transition. I have not looked much into that part yet, but I hope there will be a smooth transition. Otherwise, that is an improvement that needs to be made.

We are about to start up with Cisco Secure Access right now, with the migration beginning last year.

Before using Cisco Secure Access, we were using Umbrella, which is also Cisco. We used Umbrella and also have a lot of traditional VPN as a service, SSL VPN and so on. We are coming from that part and moving to ZTNA. We are in a transition.

From my point of view, the biggest return on investment when using Cisco Secure Access is that we have not reached that point yet. As we have end customers, it is more up to them to say, but we think that it would be a better improvement and a better experience for the users, and probably fewer tickets and easier troubleshooting. I think it will provide a return on investment in the big picture.

My experience with the pricing, the setup costs, and the licensing of Cisco Secure Access is that it is not cheap, but I do not have exact numbers on what it costs. Comparing to Umbrella, I think we are getting a more future-proof solution, and I hope it is worth the money.

We did not consider other solutions before choosing Cisco Secure Access because we are almost 100% into Cisco with our services. We are using Cisco SD-WAN and Catalyst, for example, and we are looking forward to integrating that with Cisco Secure Access also. We are also using ICE and so on. We are quite integrated into the ecosystem with the services we are delivering, so we will use Cisco Secure Access for that part.

The impact of Cisco Secure Access on our help desk ticket volume and the end-user experience has been evolving. I do not have numbers for the help desk, but I think it is going in the right direction.

The deployment of Cisco Secure Access requires that if you do the internet part, you have to get the customer involved. They have to know which applications work well with a proxy and so on. For the ZTNA part and the client part, it is the same. You have to know your traffic patterns and so on, and you may have to start with a bigger, more allowing rule set and turn it down afterwards.

My advice to other companies considering Cisco Secure Access is to look over their needs and see what great opportunities it can bring to the company. The single pane of glass could be beneficial. You will also get your services together in one appliance, and not so spread out. I would rate this solution an 8 out of 10.

My main use case for Cisco Secure Access is providing access to private resources. For example, we have outstaff or any external partners, and we don't want to provide them wide access to our network. Cisco Secure Access provides us the opportunity to give access granularly, exactly for the resources that are needed for our partners, outstaff, and so on. It's one of the scenarios, and of course, besides ZTNA, we use internet access, which provides us the opportunity to control users through a web proxy and apply some policies to control them.

Regarding whether the deployment of Cisco Secure Access has impacted the help desk ticket volume and the end-user experience, I believe it has improved significantly. For example, we have two separate infrastructures; it is a hybrid one. In Ukraine, we have infrastructure in local data centers, and in Europe, we have it in the cloud with Google. To have access to private resources, we needed two different profiles of VPN. Using Cisco Secure Access and building IPsec tunnels between Cisco ASA and Cisco Secure Access, we can combine these two separate infrastructures and use only one account to access resources in Ukraine, in local data centers, and in Europe.

The feature I like the most about Cisco Secure Access is the whole concept of zero trust. It is exactly what we need, and I believe that Cisco Secure Access is the future of cybersecurity. For this year, one of the challenges for our team is to provide secure access instead of VPN.

An example of how Cisco Secure Access benefits the organization is that it can be maintained from one console, so we don't need a lot of staff to maintain it. With our current architecture with VPN, we need a lot of technical staff. We have a lot of processes like installing certifications, creating accounts in Active Directory, and so on. At that moment, we have Azure as an identity provider. We're connected with Cisco Secure Access, and we can do all of this from one space. And of course, if we're talking about security, it's the observability. We can control it from one admin panel.

In general, I think features can be improved. We have some issues regarding the routing, regarding some configurations, and so on. But we communicate with local Cisco partners, managers, and engineers, and they always help us to solve these issues. They are trying to push Cisco engineers to improve and develop more features that would be relevant for clients. So in general, I don't have any bad experience.

In my current field, I have been using Cisco Secure Access for more than seven years, and I believe this is the second year of implementing Cisco Secure Access.

Regarding customer support, I did not use it at some point, and we did not have any crashes or downtime during this period.

Cisco Secure Access is scalable to the growth of the organization.

Regarding customer support, I did not use it at some point, and we did not have any crashes or downtime during this period.

At the moment we decided to use Cisco Secure Access, I didn't think of having another solution. In the production environment, we use Secure Client. Of course, we had experience with another solution, with your competitors. We tried, for example, ZTNA from Cloudflare, but for our needs, we use exactly Cisco Secure Access.

The experience of deploying Cisco Secure Access depends on internal collaboration. If internally you have a nice collaboration with another team, it is easy. Because to deploy it, you need to collaborate with the DevOps team, with network engineers, and cybersecurity. If every one of these teams understands the reason why we would like to use it, it is quite easy and fast.

I cannot answer whether I have seen a return on investment from having Cisco Secure Access.

Regarding costing and licensing for Cisco Secure Access, we use a lot of services from the Cisco security bundle. Cisco Secure Access is part of this bundle.

I decided to use Cisco for a specific reason because historically we have used a lot of solutions by Cisco. At that moment, according to the functionality of Cisco Secure Access, it was one of the best solutions on the market.

Cisco Secure Access definitely utilizes the hybrid private access feature, with the configuration of conditional access and so on. Regarding the integration of Cisco Identity Intelligence with Cisco Secure Access, I am not sure.

The usability and efficiency of multi-organization management in Cisco Secure Access is quite high-level. Overall, I evaluate the AI applications in Cisco Secure Access positively as I don't have any bad experience. The AI Assistant in Cisco Secure Access is helpful sometimes, especially if it is something simple. I use the AI Assistant feature of Cisco Secure Access just during the configuration of the policy.

Cisco Secure Access is both a client-based and client-less solution. It depends on the case and situation. For some resources, for example, that store some sensitive information, I prefer agent-based.

The influence of Cisco Secure Access on the transition from VPN to ZTNA regarding users is that we just want to simplify the process of accessing private resources, and it only improves the user experience. The deployment of Cisco Secure Access has improved the help desk ticket volume and end-user experience by allowing us to combine hybrid infrastructure and reducing complexity with a simpler, unified access solution. Overall, I believe Cisco Secure Access deserves a rating of eight out of ten. It is a fast-growing solution, and I understand that it is in the process of developing, but your team is so responsible, and they are ready to help at any moment.

Our main use case for Cisco Secure Access is that we need a new way for our remote workers to work. We were working with VDI and remote desktop solutions, but these do not scale out for real-time traffic such as Webex.

The feature of Cisco Secure Access that I appreciate the most is the possibility to secure traffic at home on laptops, so they get secure access to the internet. We provide a good way to support all real-time applications. I also appreciate the GUI because it is very simple to use and does not require much time to learn.

The features of Cisco Secure Access benefit our company because we roll out very quickly. Customers are happy with the solution and we received positive feedback that they appreciate the way of working now. Real-time applications work much better, so they enjoy Webex now and can also use video.

Cisco Secure Access can be improved because, especially for administrators or troubleshooting, it would be beneficial to have more detailed GUIs with more logs. Currently there is very minimal information, so it would be helpful if there were more detailed information, particularly for administrators and troubleshooting.

We have been using Cisco Secure Access for one year, including a half-year proof of concept.

I have had experience with customer service and technical support already. It was not very good because we always have to escalate to engineering with our problems, so the TAC cannot help us.

Before Cisco Secure Access, I was using VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. I switched due to cost because VMware raised costs significantly and we moved away.

My experience with deploying Cisco Secure Access is that the setup was very fast, especially when connecting to Entra with cloud solutions, which was very simple. We have our own IDM system, which was a little more tricky. Documentation is sometimes limited.

The biggest return on investment when using this product is that I can be proud of my work. Previously, they were doing video calls over virtual desktop and remote desktop, and they all said IT was not working. Now they see that IT is working.

I considered other solutions before choosing Cisco Secure Access and I tried Palo Alto as well. I chose Cisco Secure Access instead of Palo Alto because we use many other Cisco products and it is easier to combine them, such as DNA and Meraki.

I do not know yet how Cisco Secure Access deployment has impacted help desk ticket volume and end-user experience. We do not have many tickets at the moment, so it appears the customers are happy. We are in the rollout process and have not fully rolled out yet, but at the moment it looks good. We received positive feedback from our service desk.

At the moment, we are not using the AI assistant feature in Cisco Secure Access. We use the API, but not the AI. I would evaluate the effectiveness of AI supply chain risk management by stating that we do not use it, so I do not know at the moment.

We do not use the VPNaaS Cisco Secure Access feature. We use ZTNA. Cisco Secure Access has affected our transition to Zero Trust and least privilege principles as we started with small applications, not everything, but we can roll it out to different customers and it works well at the moment.

We are not using the hybrid private access feature for varying the enforcement location for ZTNA private traffic at the moment. It is only with customers' business devices, so no private devices. I use the Experience Insights feature, which is the Digital Experience Monitoring or DEM. It looks very interesting and you get a lot of information. Currently it is only for interest.

We have not integrated Cisco Identity Intelligence with Cisco Secure Access at the moment. The advice I would give to other companies that are considering this solution is to do a proof of concept first. Try all your applications you want to deploy and then you will succeed. Cisco Secure Access has not helped prevent users uploading sensitive and proprietary information to LLMs because we do not block this or check it. I would rate this review as a 9 out of 10.

As of today, my main use cases for Cisco Secure Access are VPN solutions, and I'm looking forward to having more SASE solutions.

Indeed, I would say that since the VPN solutions that we have delivered and that our customers are consuming today are not that flexible, if we can transform them to SASE solutions instead, we could make more policy-based access and level up the security.

Since we are a partner to Cisco and we are working in the business-to-business with our customers, they rely on us to be a trusted advisor and a solution partner that can deliver secure solutions for their needs, and secure access is very much a part of securing their environments.

I do not use VPN in Cisco Secure Access yet.

In some customer solutions, we have done ZTNA, and we are very eager to get more of these SASE solutions in this ZTNA.

The feature I like the most about Cisco Secure Access is the posture of devices, to make sure that everything that is connected to my network is okay in terms of patching and all that part, ensuring that the device is okay if they are about to connect to my network.

For ZTNA, it is both client-based and clientless.

Overall, if I have to rate Cisco Secure Access from one to ten, with one being worst and ten being best, I would give it an eight.

In general, what can be improved about this solution is to not change the name of everything every year, as Cisco marketing are experts at making changes to everything, and I don't understand what this is; that was the AnyConnect VPN, and now it's Cisco Secure Access, and what's tomorrow? I would suggest trying to keep the names of products and services for some years.

Since I'm a pre-sale, I discuss Cisco Secure Access or the legacy of solutions for also more than ten years.

I did not use the customer service at any point.

I didn't think about another solution before choosing this one since we're moving into many services more and more, and we're basing the managed services on Cisco solutions; I would prefer to use as much of Cisco ecosystem in our managed services, as it's easier for us as a service provider to handle the customer needs if we can have everything in one ecosystem.

We have partnered with other vendors like Check Point and Fortinet, but I would prefer Cisco if possible.

I don't think it's complicated to describe the experience deploying Cisco Secure Access; my technicians say it's quite straightforward.

You have to ask an engineer whether the documentation about how to do it is good.

Since our customers buy it, there is a return on investment; I don't know the time frame for a complete ROI, but it exists.

I cannot speak to how Cisco Secure Access deployment has impacted the help desk ticket volume and end-user experience because I'm in pre-sales.

I am not using the AI assistant feature yet, but I am planning to in the near future.

I haven't tried it, so I can't really evaluate it.

Regarding how it affected my transition to Zero Trust; since the transition is usually a customer project that takes a lot of time, our engineers know how to do it, but the customer is very reluctant to put the information into the solution that gives the security and the least privilege principles that we need; we can make the rules, but we need the information into the rules from the customer to make sure that the least privilege is working, and it's a tricky part.

It depends on the customer if I'm using a hybrid private access, since we are delivering it to many different sectors in the business-to-business area.

I'm not sure about varying the enforcement location for ZTNA Private Access.

I have no experience with the Experience Insight feature, which is a digital experience monitoring.

I don't think I have integrated Cisco Identity Intelligence with Cisco Secure Access.

I think the multi-organization management capability of Cisco Secure Access is moving in the right direction in terms of visibility and efficiency.

My experience is that Cisco has been in an area where there have been many different solutions for security, and now they are converging, but they are moving into more of a 360 view, and I have more or less everything in the same platform, so Cisco is moving in the right direction.

There is nothing else more technical I would like to add.

My overall rating for this product is an eight.

Cisco Secure Access is used for remote access VPN, supporting approximately 6,000 users in my organization. Daily usage ranges from about 3,000 to 4,000 users actually utilizing the solution.

The most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Access for users is that it is stable and it works in terms of secure access.

The overall success of Cisco Secure Access has significantly improved my organization's security posture in terms of security and usability compared to the previous solution, which was fairly convoluted with several different hops required to log in every day from home. With Cisco Secure Access, the process is much simpler and works better, particularly in edge cases such as being in a hotel or on an unstable connection, which often caused disconnections and required a full reconnect with the previous solution.

There is nothing about the product itself that I would particularly like to see improved, as nothing comes to mind regarding Cisco Secure Access.

I have been using Cisco Secure Access for about a year.

I certainly do not experience downtime with Cisco Secure Access, and there are not as many reliability issues compared to the previous solution, making it much more stable.

My uptime with Cisco Secure Access is very good, although I cannot specify an exact figure.

Cisco Secure Access does scale for my organization with 6,000 employees, and I believe we have the right devices for it. There have not been any issues with scaling as it was right-sized when it was implemented.

I have contacted Cisco support many times, though not specifically for Cisco Secure Access but for other things.

I would evaluate them overall as generally good.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate them as a seven or an eight.

To make them a 10, it would be nice if there were not challenges in getting timely support due to our aerospace manufacturing constraints where we cannot share full telemetry or logs.

The previous solution I used before Cisco Secure Access was Ivanti Pulse Secure.

I decided to switch because Ivanti Pulse Secure was end of life, had vulnerabilities, and was not user-friendly, lacking features that you would expect from something like Cisco Secure Access.

The deployment of Cisco Secure Access was reasonably straightforward. Although it was not specifically me who completed it, everything has worked really well.

It took probably four or five months to deploy, as we had the kit for a little while, but the actual implementation was reasonably quick.

I have seen ROI from using Cisco Secure Access; it has provided benefits such as stability and ease of use since the previous solution was managed by third parties and now it is all in-house.

With reduced third-party costs associated with Cisco Secure Access, there is stability and reliability for the user base, resulting in less lost hours.

I do believe those vulnerabilities are covered now with Cisco Secure Access, as the support and patch support is better.

There is nothing that comes to mind that they can improve regarding vulnerabilities because as a Cisco product, I expect any vulnerabilities to be addressed quickly, and they do. They communicate clearly about what is going to happen and what needs to be done. With the previous product, there was often uncertainty about patch availability.

I am not using the AI Assistant feature in Cisco Secure Access.

Regarding VPNaaS, the answer is probably not.

I am not using the hybrid private access feature in Cisco Secure Access, but it is something we are considering, although progress is slow due to the regulations of where I work.

I have integrated Cisco Identity Intelligence with Cisco Secure Access and am in the process of doing it with some identity elements there.

The integration of Cisco Identity Intelligence has not influenced my identity management and security measures at the moment, as it is still a work in progress coming from a legacy solution where there was no identity management.

I am trying to improve my IAM management.

I cannot specify what would make it a 10 since I have not fully deployed it and do not know all the capabilities; it might also be related to limitations specific to my company.

The reason it is only an eight and not a 10 could be due to my company's specific limitations; for instance, always-on access and AI chatbots would be features I would appreciate having.

My overall rating for this review is eight.

The first use case is access to the private application on the data center. The second use case is access to the cloud application on the cloud, plus the branches connected to the branches.

When discussing how easy or difficult it is to manage Cisco Secure Access through the single cloud managed console, I find it very easy. Cisco Secure Access is similar to Umbrella and Meraki; it requires just a few clicks to configure what I need or what use case I have.

The features I have found most valuable in Cisco Secure Access include Data Loss Prevention, Web Security Gateway, Cloud-delivered Firewall, and CASB. All of these features are amazing on Cisco Secure Access.

Regarding the integration of Secure Access with CASB functionality for exposing shadow IT within my organization, it gives me powerful capabilities to control shadow IT and its integration and features for Data Loss Prevention.

For sales, it is easy to tell the client about the benefits because it is simple, with only one or two lines for pricing. For pre-sales, it is very good as I can configure it in two clicks on CCW. The use cases can be summarized in just two or three slides of presentation. The user experience is very easy because the security is invisible to end users, meaning they do not suffer from strict security preventing them from doing their job. I find it an amazing product, and as it is an upgrade for Umbrella, it has all the good sides of Umbrella while removing some bad sides.

Based on my experience, the main point for improvement is the full integration on the Meraki dashboard. Cisco Secure Access with Meraki MX forms what we call a SASE solution. However, currently, Cisco Secure Access does not appear on the Meraki dashboard; they are still using Umbrella, which does not fully unify with Cisco Meraki.

Regarding functionality, I do not find things that need to be improved, except that Cisco should make the security web gateway, URL filtering, IPS, and fire-walling more robust for large businesses. These features are suitable for small and medium businesses but may need enhancements for larger enterprises.

For large businesses, it does need some improvement, but if it improved, I think it will not be enough as it is targeting small and medium businesses. This is not a drawback, just correct sizing.

I have been working with Cisco Secure Access since its launch, which is about two years ago.

For stability, I would rate Cisco Secure Access a nine. It is a new product, and although two years is not long enough to fully judge stability, I have not found anyone who complains about Cisco Secure Access or even its predecessor, Cisco Umbrella.

Regarding scalability, cloud solutions inherently allow for scaling up and down without issues, but as I mentioned before, it is primarily for small and medium businesses. I cannot judge its applicability for enterprise use at this stage, but for certain, I would give it a nine.

For technical support from Cisco for Secure Access, I rate them ten out of ten. Cisco is known for its exceptional support, with a lot of team resources available.

Regarding the initial setup for Cisco Secure Access, I find it very simple, and it is a native cloud solution; it is not on-premises at all. If Cisco decided to create an on-premises version as a unique delivery option, it would be an outstanding out-of-the-box solution.

For pricing, I consider this one of the few drawbacks of Cisco. Cisco is known for its high pricing, so I would give them a six.

In my opinion, the main competitors in the market for Cisco Secure Access are vendors delivering SASE solutions such as Palo Alto, Fortinet, and maybe Huawei, but I do not have a real branding name for these. I have not done in-depth comparisons with these products, but we can compare features such as DLP on Cisco versus Forcepoint.

Cisco Secure Access operates on the Cisco native cloud and not AWS or Azure; it operates in Cisco data centers.

I can recommend Cisco Secure Access to other users, especially if their country approves cloud solutions for their people. I am 100% confident in recommending this solution. I rate this review an eight out of ten.

The use case depends upon the vertical, such as manufacturing or enterprise. Mostly customers are looking for secure remote access to their applications. They may have a vendor ecosystem where they do not want to install any client. If they are looking for a clientless VPN like ZTNA, Zero Trust Network Access, that is where it fits. Mostly they want to move away from the centralized filtering point of view, even if it is a proxy. They want to facilitate access wherever they are geographically distributed. Because Cisco Secure Access PoP is there everywhere in major regions, this helps.

If they have a use case of a user sitting in an office and a user sitting remote, and a vendor accessing their applications from outside their network, you cannot expect anything installed in the vendor laptop, which is a non-domain laptop. That time, you need to have a solution that supports secure access of that application for that vendor who is sitting outside the network and is not a domain user.

Private application access is definitely there with the resource connectors. The concept of resource connectors is there to ensure the backend traffic from the application to the user. I have use cases, but I mainly worked on SaaS web traffic where I position SSE. Internal traffic is there, but not much discussion. It is hybrid only. There are customers who are adopting data center and coming out from cloud to data center, and vice versa. Definitely it will be Hybrid Remote Access.

The price and license for Cisco Secure Access are fine. Cisco documentation is always good. As a product, in terms of Cisco SSE, I appreciate the feature set. It is simple. The product is giving whatever you need from a customer point of view. Suppose point A to point B if you have to send data, you need not worry about anything such as your data might get compromised or somebody can do a middleman attack because everything is secure. They are sending the traffic encrypted and categorizing the traffic based on the type, whether web traffic or internet traffic, and doing the security mechanism that is needed for the traffic type. You can tick mark that flexibility is there.

Cisco SSE has an AI model, so you can write the policies if you just write it in plain English, it can do that. It can also drill down to AI Canvas, which is the new product that Cisco has launched.

I sold ThousandEyes and had done proof of concepts. ThousandEyes is a good product. However, the major flaw for ThousandEyes is the way they are calculating and giving the costing to the customer. The way the units consumption pricing is structured is not that great. That is the biggest flaw, and that is where people are not adopting it. The success rate of ThousandEyes when going with a digital monitoring concept is that it will address from endpoint to the application level and cover all domains. However, the way you are structuring your pricing with respect to the consumption of the units is a major issue. The pricing structure is not good in ThousandEyes. Apart from this, it is a good product. It can identify the issues related to an endpoint, if it is a remote user, if it is an internet issue, or if it is an application issue. The HTTP response time and latencies, everything it is giving. However, when a customer is trying to adopt it, the pricing structure is not good.

I have been using the solution for one and a half to two years.

Performance is addressed in a different way. Suppose I have a user in a branch in Europe, or if I have a branch in Australia or if I have a branch in India, they are sending to the nearest PoP, SSE PoP. You can form a tunnel from your branch. In that case, the connectivity reaching out to Cisco Secure Access PoP is being addressed. They are having redundancy also because it will have two tunnels. If this tunnel fails, still you can reach out to Cisco Secure Access cloud.

There are no scalability issues because SASE is scalable.

Cisco TAC support is better compared to any OEM. That is what I feel. However, what happens with the TAC engineers is once their shift timing ends, they will just exit the call. Again, we need to explain to the other engineer. Even they will not refer much to the notes captured by the previous TAC engineer, and we are starting again. When their shift is done, they close the call. That is not proper support.

There are some customers who are using VPN still and maybe they are very slow in terms of technology adoption. The flaw of VPN, everyone knows now, and everyone is realizing the flaw because the moment I just enter into the network, I can go and have a lateral movement across the complete IT infrastructure. It is giving the whole access of the particular network. Whereas ZTNA will predominantly give you access as per your role, allowing you to access only that particular subnet or particular URL or particular application. In that way, you are segregating and you are not allowing certain lateral movement. That means they cannot enter into your holistic complete network. That is the basic difference and the basic flaw, and people are realizing it, but few people are not adopting ZTNA in terms of technology.

The setup is an eight out of ten.

We work with Palo Alto and we work with Zscaler, the same kind of thing. Zscaler is the one that started the proxies, the cloud proxies. We are very much aligned with Cisco.

We have done one major project with almost 350 outlets of one of the customers. It is fine.

I am not sure about Cisco Secure Access setup costs as I did not feel any issues. ThousandEyes I can address, but for Cisco SSE, I think the licensing structure is fine and easy to set up, quick, and documentation is good. Everything is fine.

I prefer Zscaler is good. After Zscaler, Cisco is good.

Ask for references and friends feedback. We work with Palo Alto and we work with Zscaler. Zscaler started the proxies, the cloud proxies. We are very much aligned with Cisco. It's a good product, but the major flaw is the way they are calculating and giving the costing to the customer. The units consumption pricing is not that great. My overall review rating for this product is an eight out of ten.