In my previous role, we managed the IT infrastructure for U.S. military base schools worldwide. We implemented Cisco Secure Access primarily as a cloud-based firewall replacement. Previously, we utilized a centralized architecture with Palo Alto firewalls in a U.S. data center, which meant all of our global traffic had to be backhauled to the U.S. before going out to the internet. We rearchitected the network to enable local internet breakouts at every individual base. Instead of deploying expensive physical firewalls at each local site, we deployed Cisco Secure Access as our cloud firewall solution. Now, local traffic routes directly up to Cisco's cloud for filtering before reaching the internet, ensuring our users are secured regardless of their geographical location. I still closely support customers utilizing this architecture.

Cisco Secure Access has definitely helped our organization. All our users are now basically VPN users, and it has made things much smoother compared to the old way we had things set up. I would say it is a big plus.

It has cut incident response time at least in half. The extra analytics allow me to make more informed decisions. For example, I have users who are sometimes children because we have military bases across the world that are schools. When a child brings a Nintendo Switch to school and it joins the network, it looks to our cybersecurity team like a rogue device. Having the analytics to track that down and identify the exact device and the user it is assigned to really helps incident response time go down much faster. Now, from headquarters pinging the base, pinging the tech on site, and the tech walking into the classroom to remove that device from the network, everything is much quicker.

The actual technology itself is valuable. Cisco Secure Access functions as a cloud firewall where there is no real need for on-premises firewalls for many client devices. This feature is excellent because I no longer need million-dollar Palo Alto firewalls sitting at a data center where I would be forced to route all traffic through an MPLS circuit to those firewalls for filtering before getting to the internet.

Cisco Secure Access takes on the responsibility of filtering traffic, and I do not have to deal with hardware anymore. When hosting my own firewalls, I had to worry about upgrades, maintenance, and license costs for physical Palos. With Cisco Secure Access, I do have license costs, but they are very streamlined with their new smart licensing features.

From a network perspective, it makes management easier for my network operations team. Previously, I had complicated, complex, high availability meshed firewalls. Now I can have a single pane of glass solution where I can still get all URL filtering and content filtering done through web access. I no longer have to worry about hardware and setting up high availability pairs for physical firewalls. I am just focused on putting a client on the user's machine. Even if I do not want to put a client on a machine from an operational perspective, I can pair Cisco Secure Access with other Cisco products like SD-WAN. Even without the Cisco Secure Access client on actual laptops for the organization, I can still filter that traffic from the router level by telling my Cisco router that its next hop is the Cisco Secure Access cloud for filtering.

Coming from an environment primarily using Ruckus and Brocade at the Department of Defense, then switching to Cisco Secure Access to meet the zero trust requirements set forth by the Pentagon has been tremendous. It checks most of the boxes. I would say it is probably a little weak in the area of IPv6 still. I have actually gotten the chance to talk with the actual developers developing Cisco Secure Access at Cisco. There is still a lot to be desired in the IPv6 realm, but from what the developers are telling me, it is coming in the near future.

As I left the organization, we were getting into using more of the policy verification feature to help us since we have our hands in a lot of different areas at the Department of Defense. Policy verification definitely helps a lot because sometimes there are too many people making policies.

Cisco Secure Access provides great visibility with a single pane of glass. The data is actually useful, and I can make decisions based on it rather than just receiving raw data. For multi-organizational sites, it is absolutely a great tool.

The artificial intelligence assistance is tremendous. If I do not know something, I can use the Cisco AI to ask how to do something or how to get something working, and it will step-by-step tell me or point me in the right direction on what I need to do. On-premises solutions do not really have large language models or AI built into them, so I would be left needing to know what I need to do. This feature helps a ton.

Cisco Secure Access is probably a little weak in the area of IPv6 still. I have actually gotten the chance to talk with the actual developers developing Cisco Secure Access at Cisco. There is still a lot to be desired in the IPv6 realm, but from what the developers are telling me, improvements are coming in the near future.

After talking with Cisco, I was told that features are coming. The AI will actually be able to help generate reports that we want to see for certain executives. There is still a little to be desired, but it is coming.

I do not think IPv6 support is fully there yet. I think Cisco is heading in the right direction, but to really get to that true zero trust autonomous network as described in the Pentagon documents, there is still some work to do. Cisco is definitely heading in the right direction though. There are feature sets that definitely help streamline many processes and get me data that is actually useful. It is not those other products where I get a lot of garbage data that is not useful. Cisco Secure Access gives me data that I can actually use to make a decision on a zero trust network.

I want to see better IPv6 support and continued support for AI with constant improvements. If I could get to the point where I can ask the AI how to do something and it becomes agentic AI that actually starts doing things automatically, that would be incredible. For example, if I could tell the AI that I do not want any of the students in the classroom getting to facebook.com and it goes into Cisco Secure Access and automatically blocks it, that would be amazing. With agentic AI doing things for me rather than just telling me how to do it, I would not have to spend millions on people who are only certified to use this product. I could have lower-level techs who do not necessarily know how to do something but know how to talk to the AI to get things done.

I have been using Cisco Secure Access for about three years.

We did run into an issue with URL filtering where it would not filter a site properly. It took months to resolve by Cisco, but that is the only hiccup I would say there has been.

The customer service is amazing. I call, get my ticket, they pick up, work the ticket, and the issue gets resolved about 9.5 times out of 10.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. If there were any complexities, Cisco was right there with their support to help us. I would say it was pretty simple.

I definitely got my money's worth already with Cisco Secure Access.

A single pane of glass solution was important to me. Cisco Secure Access was just cheaper than putting a Palo Alto firewall solution at every school or using Prisma, their secure solution. It just worked out to be better. The integration into products like ICE, DNAC, and SD-WAN was a lot better on the Cisco side because Cisco to Cisco integration is better than Cisco to Palo Alto. Product integration among the other Cisco products we had was just better overall.

I would urge any customer to look up their numbers and see what works best for them. It is not always going to be the Cisco product that works best. Sometimes the Cisco product is the nicest product out there, but that does not necessarily mean it is going to be the best. Look at what works for your organization and go with whatever your staff feels most comfortable with because at the end of the day, your staff is going to have to support that solution. No one wants to support something that they do not really want in the first place. My overall rating for Cisco Secure Access is 9.5 out of 10.

I use Cisco Secure Access as an on-premises solution.

For security, we use Cisco Secure Access for email security, endpoint security, networking, and gateway-level firewall, and we are also using Cisco Meraki.

Cisco Umbrella helps us with securing applications, and we are using Cisco Umbrella.

Cisco Umbrella is helping us significantly with securing standard applications, but not in a complete manner, as there are some gaps in the product which the product team needs to focus on.

My perception of Cisco Secure Access's ability to provide secure security via protocols such as HTTP, HTTP/2, and QUIC is that the overall impact is significant.

After implementing Cisco Secure Access, I observed complete automation, a complete Zero Trust architecture, and complete automation of security.

It has worked well for protecting our organization from threats including ransomware, phishing, and spamming.

The maturity level of this particular product is not as high as what we see in the market.

Concerns are related to marketing strategy mostly, and the licensing model is typically very confusing.

The ease of managing Cisco Secure Access is quite challenging; it is not user-friendly, and we have to involve too much time to review the information available in the dashboard, which can be confusing.

The integration of Cisco Secure Access is quite difficult; it has too much dependency and is totally dependent upon the current IT infrastructure. It is compatible with only Cisco products, and if we have multiple vendor products in the network, then integration becomes quite challenging.

I chose Cisco instead of Fortinet because, while FortiGate has everything, Cisco is a leader in networking and is more mature compared to Fortinet.

Before choosing Cisco, I considered FortiGate as an alternative.

I chose Cisco instead of Fortinet because, while FortiGate has everything, Cisco is a leader in networking and is more mature compared to Fortinet.

The decision was more about Cisco's brand and complete branding.

The price of Cisco Secure Access is quite cheaper than VMware NSX.

I would rate this review as nine out of ten.

Cisco Secure Access serves as a replacement for customers' old VPN solutions while increasing security through Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA). We had a chicken production client that identified their current VPN as the lowest hanging fruit for increasing security. Since the customer already had Secure Client or AnyConnect previously, introducing the ZTNA module into Cisco Secure Client felt quite straightforward. We implemented it step-by-step, side-by-side, and rolled it out for that customer, which improved secure access for both on-premises and cloud solutions and turned out to be very effective.

Cisco Secure Access offers seamless access and replacement for VPN; VPN can be quite clunky when you need to access cloud solutions. With Secure Access, you create tunnels to everything basically in the solution, simplifying things while improving security for our customers. I particularly appreciate the ZTNA story and accessing SaaS, on-premises, and cloud resources all at once.

Usability is one of the key factors in selling the product; it has to be easy to use. I think Cisco has done a good job there with Secure Client, and since many of our customers and a lot of the market are familiar with AnyConnect, showing them Secure Client, which is basically the same thing but with a new coat of paint, and telling them that it improves security while not being more difficult to handle is great.

Customers spend much less time troubleshooting VPNs because ZTNA works more stably, and therefore it has become a pretty good point of sales for us as a reseller to increase our revenue at the customer level, because it's an extra layer of security that you can add to an already existing networking solution. On the customer side, it increases performance and helps ease of use, and from the reseller side, it's a great product to add on to existing network solutions.

The customer's experience has gone from "Our VPN doesn't work and we need to troubleshoot it all the time" to "Our ZTNA does work and we don't need to troubleshoot it all the time." Cisco Secure Access has been very stable.

Cisco Secure Access's scalability is great; from a technical point of view, it's quite simple. However, from a licensing and cost point of view, there could be improvements in ease of licensing and better pricing.

The multi-organization management capability of Cisco Secure Access is excellent; it's a great feature that you can do with the multi-tenancy mode, and I think it's great that you can roll it out to separate organizations.

A more granular license approach would be beneficial, allowing customers to grow with half a module or one module at a time and add on the CASB, the DNS security, or the ZTNA. If they can do it granularly and grow slowly, I think that would be really advantageous for the sales process.

The license model can be simplified; it is a bit tricky to understand exactly which licenses you need. The cost was pretty expensive but also pretty reasonable, and if the cost could be brought down a bit, that would make it a much more attractive product for the Swedish market.

Customer support is decent; it is slowly getting better now with the new NIS2 and cybersecurity laws that are being implemented.

I have been using and reselling Cisco Secure Access for the past two years.

Customer support is decent; it is slowly getting better now with the new NIS2 and cybersecurity laws that are being implemented. I would give customer support a rating of five.

We previously used Cisco AnyConnect VPN, so it was more of an upgrade rather than a switch; we switched from AnyConnect to Secure Client to SSE.

I do not have concrete numbers that I can share because I do not currently have them, but the customer's experience is that they are spending pretty much no time troubleshooting ZTNA, down from spending a lot of time troubleshooting VPNs. I would estimate it is probably in the 60 to 70% range of time saved when it comes to VPN troubleshooting.

We looked at FortiSassy, Cisco Secure Access, and the customer also looked at Cloudflare.

The AI access feature of Cisco Secure Access is really interesting. I do not think it is really there yet; the product has to mature a bit more for us to give it an honest evaluation. However, from what I have seen in the upcoming feature releases, I think it is a really interesting way to go for the AI agents in the solution.

We do not use VPNaaS in Cisco Secure Access.

I do not know how it has impacted incident resolution time because we have only used the Experience Insights feature in a proof of concept stage, and I have not yet done it in a full rollout.

The AI assistant feature in Cisco Secure Access has helped with the documentation and with administrative duties.

We have not integrated Cisco Identity Intelligence with Secure Access.

Everybody has a need for a VPN; VPN is not as secure as it once was because the market is moving fast. Cisco Secure Access and ZTNA is the way forward to ensure easy access and secure access to your preferred on-premises or cloud instances. I would suggest to customers that they allow us to help them by choosing ZTNA rather than VPN. I rate Cisco Secure Access an eight because an easier license structure, easier pricing structure, and better pricing structure would bring it to a ten.

Cisco Secure Access is used for CTNA with a couple of applications deployed on it. There is a journey underway to move all applications off VPN into CTNA, but some applications are too old and legacy and will not support it very well. Business input into testing is required, and everyone is busy with everything, making it quite difficult. The VPN is working wonderfully.

The integration of Cisco Secure Access with Meraki is going well and has been a very positive experience compared to the previous deployment of Check Point. The difference this time around is having a Customer Success Manager and a direct path to the product owners, where feature requests can be made and feedback received. Cisco has been quite involved in the onboarding process.

Cisco Secure Access is significantly different compared to Check Point. Nearly a year since deployment of Cisco Secure Access, users have likely forgotten about turning the VPN on as it is now automatic. Users just open their laptop and are connected straight away regardless of whether they are home or not. From a user point of view, it has been very good. Things such as the ThousandEyes module have been deployed into it along with posture assessments, so all these different modules have been put into one single agent, which has helped get a unified view of everything.

The features of ThousandEyes integrate with Cisco Secure Access by providing end-user ThousandEyes licenses and end data center ones, which gives a holistic view. That is all complemented with Cisco Catalyst Center, providing an overarching view of what is going on on the network. The service desk can have access to that so they can see what is going on across the entire environment. This has provided a single pane of glass, which was not available with two different vendors before.

Regarding Cisco Secure Access, there are some areas that are not positive. Dedicated IP addresses for Cisco Secure Access platform took quite a while to obtain, and the process can be streamlined and improved. Issues arise because everyone is coming off a single IP address and sites such as YouTube think there are bots, asking to verify or just blocking access. When this was raised with Cisco, the official response was that accounts need to be signed up for or Gmail accounts created, with nothing that can be done on Cisco's side as it is on the end website. This is somewhat understandable, but those relationships should exist between large organizations. For instance, when presenting a PowerPoint with an embedded YouTube video, it suddenly says it cannot verify identity, causing issues for all levels. Three or four people come to the service desk every week with this issue, and the response is to use a generic Gmail account or sign up independently, which is probably not adequate.

Another issue has been with VPN profiles. When creating different VPN profiles, the underlying infrastructure has had to be replicated or provided, such as another RADIUS server for authentication. The whole VPN profile side of things can be improved for different subsets of users, such as guests or people who bring their own devices. Different profiles are wanted for different user bases, and it is quite complex on Cisco Secure Access to set all that up at the moment. Historically, with ASAs or Check Point firewalls, VPN profiles could be set up quite easily and what they had access to and what they did not have access to could be limited. There is interest in seeing how it can further integrate with Cisco Identity Services Engine because there is scope there to allow people on the environment via the VPN, but also restrict what they can access or not based on their profile. Those two can work a bit closer together.

Cisco Secure Access was deployed internally for approximately 2,400 users in April of last year.

Cisco Secure Access is stable and reliable if certain features are not used. Initially, SSL decryption was enabled, where certificates are decrypted, and when that was turned on, the performance was very unpredictable, plummeting significantly. In the end, it had to be turned off, and since it was turned off, there has been a great experience. It is understood that it requires much more processing power to decrypt things before they hit the network, but the unpredictability of the performance was only realized once it went live, and it had to be immediately pulled.

Cisco Secure Access can scale, integrate with other solutions, and meet the needs of users. Many things are in the pipeline which suggest Cisco is moving towards more integration and a single point of view, which is positive. There has been indication that Cisco will be looking at the Identity Services Engine integration.

The experience with Cisco Secure Access customer support is good. They have always been reachable, and fortnightly cadences have been established now that things have settled down. Meetings with the actual product engineers working on the solution have also been arranged. When there are more complex issues, they work with the team to pull that data directly from systems and take that back to improve on it and work on it. This has been a very collaborative experience.

Cisco support is rated an 8 overall. From feedback received from the team, it is between an 8 and a 9.

An expedited deployment of Cisco Secure Access was conducted. A proof of concept was run in December 2024, and then the solution was deployed between January and March, which was very quickly because the Check Point contract was ending on April 1st. It was quite a quick, speedy move, but support was provided all along the way with the managed service partner as well as Cisco, so the delivery was successful.

The price to value from Cisco Secure Access is justified. Money has been saved by moving to one vendor, and that has been a material cash saving that was able to be handed back to the business. It has not only been a better solution overall, but also been cost saving, which is unusual—too good to be true at one point, but it has delivered. Approximately half a million pounds a year is the amount that has been saved.

AI Assist is quite good at how it can collect information from various sources and pull it all together to give an answer. It can also resolve issues further down the line, so it appears quite powerful.

Cisco Secure Access is rated an 8 overall. It is good at what it does at a fundamental level, but when it comes to trying to customize it slightly for what is needed, because it is a cloud-based solution, it is much harder. There are some features that are missing from it that used to exist in the older platforms. The overall review rating for Cisco Secure Access is 8.

My main use case for Cisco Secure Access is to secure our network. A specific example of how I'm using Cisco Secure Access to secure my network is that we use it for our customers as an internet service provider to ensure everything is safe.

In my experience so far, I haven't noticed any best features that stand out with Cisco Secure Access. One feature that does sound useful to me is Zero Touch.

The Zero Trust feature in Cisco Secure Access works very well, but I have no idea about its specifics. Some common positive impacts I mention include faster troubleshooting, which I have noticed since using Cisco Secure Access.

Cisco Secure Access has helped with faster troubleshooting because when we were troubleshooting a loop in a network of our customers, with just a few clicks, I found where it came from and where it was going, so I closed this interface and everything is good.

I am using the AI Assistant feature in Cisco Secure Access, and it has helped in improving my security administrative tasks by summarizing pages or outputs of troubleshooting, which is helping so much. The most helpful thing the AI assistant has done for me is making recommendations for solutions during troubleshooting, which helps me focus on what to think about.

I think Cisco Secure Access can be improved, but as I said, I'm still new in this field, so I can't say something now. I plan to improve my skills more and gain more experience, and maybe I can send them an improvement by mail or something similar. I do not have more to add about the needed improvements.

I have been using Cisco Secure Access for approximately two months.

In my experience, Cisco Secure Access is very stable, and I do not have issues with downtime or reliability.

Cisco Secure Access' scalability seems to keep up with my needs as my organization grows.

My experience with customer support for Cisco Secure Access has been okay, but it is not very fast.

I did not previously use a different solution before Cisco Secure Access, so I'm not sure about that.

Cisco Secure Access is deployed in my organization on-premises. I'm not sure if we use VPNaaS in Cisco Secure Access. I haven't used the Experience Insights feature powered by ThousandEyes yet; I know about ThousandEyes, but we do not use it yet.

I'm not sure if I have integrated Cisco Identity Intelligence with Cisco Secure Access. I haven't used policy verification in Cisco Secure Access as I am still new and do not configure any policies. I help mostly with troubleshooting something that's already running, just looking for anything wrong here and there.

I do not have anything unique to add about how I or my customers are using Cisco Secure Access.

Since using Cisco Secure Access, I haven't seen a return on investment and I do not have this information regarding saved time, money, or fewer employees.

Before choosing Cisco Secure Access, we evaluated a few solutions such as Cisco Meraki, Cisco ISE, and Catalyst Center.

Since I started using Cisco Secure Access, I have noticed positive impacts on my organization. My advice for others looking into using Cisco Secure Access would be to try it; it is very nice to have in a good environment, such as service providers. I would give this product a rating of 8 out of 10.

Our company's use case is exclusively for VPN, specifically for remote users at this time. We are exploring what other possibilities or functions are available, such as ZTNA and other features, but we have not reached that point yet. The only business case that stacks up currently is the replacement of a legacy VPN with Cisco Secure Access. We are looking to explore further functionalities that come with it.

Using Cisco Secure Access for VPN as a service is key, especially with hybrid working where many users are home-based or traveling around the world. It is crucial that we get the VPN up and running consistently, especially if people need access to secure resources. Based on our use case, I think it has been really good to see the statistics and the number of users connecting daily, and we receive great data from it. There are many more things we can do, such as integration with ThousandEyes and Cisco ISE, but we have not done that yet. For now, we only use the basic functionality, which is a VPN as a SaaS service, but we are looking to expand to zero trust network access and various other features available.

The most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Access is the VPN, which I find very easy to use. It has a great GUI, and it is easily explainable to people. When we have remote users, it is quite easy for them to understand how they can log on, and even setting up the solution, we probably accomplished it in a record 24 hours. We worked with your expert and the product was up and running in 24 hours. We had a few more things to sort out, but it was fully functional in 36 hours with users able to log on. It is a great product.

I do not think there is anything I would improve about the product other than the support issue. I know there are various integration things when it comes to SASE, and Cisco Secure Access is one of the products that will help us in that journey. We have many Cisco routers and there is more we can do with the product, but we have not been able to use it to its full capacity yet, which is one of the plans we are working towards for this year.

I have been using Cisco Secure Access for 14 months.

I find the solution stable. Other than when you do work in your data center, I think that is where we need to improve a bit. When you have planned works in your data center, I think you need to carry out some post-checks to ensure we are not affected as users.

I think it is scalable. You can run much more, and as I mentioned, there are so many things you can do with it. It is just that we need to find a proper business case and get everybody on board; it is going to be a journey.

My experience with Cisco support has been brilliant. We had a couple of issues recently, but I think the team has been very helpful. We had some planned upgrades in Cisco's data center, and after that, we had some posture issues. We escalated to Cisco, and once the issue was identified, we received really good support. I am pleased with the support we have from Cisco.

I would rate Cisco support an eight out of ten. I would have given them a ten if we did not have those issues last week. Based on that, I would probably say eight. The recovery was alright, but I think there is quite a bit of work to do around making us aware of the works taking place and what we need to be aware of. Other than that, I think it is brilliant support from Cisco. I quite appreciate your experts; specifically Luke Abditch has been a brilliant resource. He helped us set up the entire platform.

The issue from last week was that during planned maintenance, you specifically performed posture checks and updates that had compatibility issues with Cortex. We were not really notified about what it was going to affect. In the morning, when users tried to log on, nobody was able to log in, and we had to get the right people from Cisco on the call to diagnose the faults. I think that is probably an improvement area, so people know what sort of works took place and where we need to concentrate to investigate the issue. After it was identified, I think it was spot on, and we were back up and running.

To make it a ten, I think it is both ways. I have not explored the product to its full extent, so once we make use of it more, then maybe we will face a few more challenges with integration. Other than that, for now, it is an eight for us.

What would help me explore it more is really about getting everybody on board from our side; it is not to say it is a Cisco issue. It is more us trying to inform people about what else we can do with this product. We do not want to rock the boat, but we want to do it in a phased manner.

Cisco could help me with onboarding more users and features. My overall review rating for Cisco Secure Access is eight out of ten.

Our main use cases for Cisco Secure Access focus on information security direction in companies like banks, and we are implementing it in on-premise or cloud systems while integrating it into third-party vendors, particularly with information security teams.

I appreciate the posturing feature of Cisco Secure Access because it is very useful, especially when our company needs a hybrid system combining on-premise and cloud systems to work together with security; there are many features, and while I cannot tell you specific ones because it is part of the business, I basically value all of them.

I can provide that these features of Cisco Secure Access benefit not only our company but also the business that implements this approach, as our company is a professional team who knows how it works, and we are implementing what they need; our benefit is that we know it very well, and Cisco also supports us in this direction while we develop our IT and security knowledge.

When we started to use features such as AI assistance in Cisco Secure Access, it became very helpful for the IT and infosec staff because they have more visibility, and as an operational team, it saves them time.

I evaluate the AI Access feature of Cisco Secure Access as very new at this moment since we are just starting in a testing regime; we are now working on trusting everything about how it works, but I can say that deep dive visibility is more available now than it was before with these AI assistance features.

We are integrating Cisco Identity Intelligence with Cisco Secure Access, and it is the engine of everything.

This integration influences our identity management and security measures to be 100% better than they were before.

Cisco Secure Access could be improved with fewer bugs; we need to address less software bugs, as there are technical issues and errors in the software, which we are trying to resolve to achieve a more stable version that companies can use without issues, but it is a working process, and we understand this.

We started to use Cisco Secure Access about two years ago, especially in the government and financial sector, so we have two years of experience.

Technical support from Cisco is very helpful.

I would rate technical support a nine and customer service a 7.5.

The ratings reflect our region; it is not a global assessment, but in our region, it is this way.

Prior to adopting Cisco Secure Access, we were using another solution to address similar needs.

My experience deploying Cisco Secure Access is that it is very intuitive for a technical team, though the challenge lies in understanding the underlying processes; once that knowledge is acquired, deploying Cisco Secure Access becomes much easier, and if the team does not understand how the underlay routes work, that presents complexity.

I have not seen a return on investment with Cisco Secure Access.

Setup costs and pricing for Cisco Secure Access are not our case since we are doing it ourselves, and I think the pricing and licensing are acceptable and comparable to other solutions.

We are using Cloudflare, and I believe the factors that led us to consider a change involve the different approaches of Cloudflare compared to Cisco Secure Access, which depend on business requirements.

Before choosing Cisco Secure Access, we considered using Palo Alto Prisma, and compared to Cisco, Palo Alto is a more expensive option for business, which is one of the most differentiated reasons why we are using Cisco Secure Access at this moment.

The help desk ticket volume and end-user experience have been impacted by Cisco Secure Access deployment such that it may take two to three months, with a reduction of two times.

We are just starting to use the AI assistant feature in Cisco Secure Access.

At this moment, I cannot answer how effective AI supply chain risk management is specifically for the pre-enforcement controls for developers downloading AI models because I have no experience.

I use ZTNA in Cisco Secure Access every day.

Cisco Secure Access is client-based or clientless, depending on business requirements.

It is always difficult to transition the mindset of the company to Zero Trust and least privilege principles, but after deep dive work, it works.

After integrating identity management and ISE in the company, everybody starts to use all policies and begins understanding the security policies; it is a unified solution for all business segments, not just IT, which has greatly benefited the entire company and influenced its development.

We do not use the Experience Insights feature, Digital Experience Monitoring, or DEM powered by ThousandEyes of Cisco Secure Access at this moment in our company.

In comparison to past years, Cisco Secure Access has improved very well at this moment.

It is very flexible, a very competitive solution, very helpful, and very secure; it includes everything a business needs, and the pricing is also available.

I advise other companies considering Cisco Secure Access to first evaluate their business requirements, then make a demo to compare with other solutions, and subsequently try to step-by-step migrate all their services and policies, ensuring they achieve the best solution for their IT and security teams. I would rate this review a nine overall.

I use Cisco Secure Access as a VPN service. Cisco Secure Access provides not just securing and filtering capability on the traffic, but also a cloud VPN capability. This basically relieves the company from using the traditional perimeter firewall to connect via VPN. VPN connectivity through the cloud is incredibly flexible and is not constrained by the power of the firewall the company has, because the VPN is through the cloud. This allows companies to provide VPN capability to any remote user on a very short notice and not be limited by their firewall.

I use ZTNA with Cisco Secure Access, which is another very clever capability that Cisco Secure Access has grouped along with several other interesting capabilities in one product. I always recommend and suggest to customers to try a proof of value or proof of concept of the product, which is very easy to do. Cisco allows any customer, literally for free, to test the product by themselves and test, for example, ZTNA capability. Customers can see for themselves with a proof of value how easy it is to install the product and how quickly it can be delivered in production.

I use it with my clients both client-based and clientless with Cisco Secure Access. There are requirements for customers to allow connectivity to subcontractors who cannot install a client on the endpoints. Cisco Secure Access is a crucial solution in these situations because it can protect both employees and subcontractors, or any situation where a client is not feasible to install on the endpoint, while still allowing the same kind of level of protection.

Cisco Secure Access has helped my clients transition from Zero Trust and least privilege principles. It provides protection even with technology such as MFA installed. It provides that seamless, transparent experience for a user that can use an agent installed. Cisco Secure Access covers a different spectrum of situations where the customer needs to protect remote access. There is also a flavor of Cisco Secure Access specific for IoT, which allows recording of the session. This is crucial for contractors when they need to access facilities offshore. This is a classic example of remote access where we cannot install any agent for the subcontractor, but we can record the session for whatever they do.

There are a couple of features that are currently the most valuable in Cisco Secure Access. First of all, the solution deploys very fast, and the other one is the performance. Cisco Secure Access adopted the QUIC protocol, which allows anyone, even when working from a plane with a very bad connection, to perform very well because it is basically a protocol that is adopted now by the industry. Cisco used it in Cisco Secure Access well before other vendors. It is a brilliant solution that allows branches, for example, to connect to cloud resources much easier than using the traditional way of communicating through a firewall.

I have worked with the Experience Insights feature, experience monitoring, and DEM powered by ThousandEyes with Cisco Secure Access. This is another acquisition that Cisco did some years ago, and it has been really instrumental for lots of companies to find out where the communication problem sits. One of the problems the customer faces is identifying where the communication problem is. If we start from the endpoint, we know the endpoint reached the access point, then the network, and then the provider and the internet. However, identifying where the problem is in the communication was difficult. Until ThousandEyes was adopted, it was pretty much a blame game between the provider and the customer, saying who was at fault or where the problem in the communication was. ThousandEyes allows us to say definitively, "This is the provider issue because we can see our network is working very fine until that point," or identify if the problem is in the network. It worked very well in several situations. Cisco in-built ThousandEyes in products such as Meraki and Cisco Secure Access, and you can see it basically now in-built in any product because that visibility is crucial.

Cisco is expanding Cisco Secure Access by protecting AI, especially the AI agent. This has been announced in the keynote this week. I am looking forward to knowing what Cisco is doing about protecting agentic AI. Cisco Secure Access is one of the best products to provide these kinds of capabilities because of the flexibility of the deployment and the ease of installation. It is quite pervasive because it reaches and protects the user wherever they are. For the agent, this is quite a crucial requirement.

For AI, I believe this capability is still in the roadmap for Cisco Secure Access. It should be announced possibly in the second quarter. This is something that, if asked how Cisco Secure Access can be improved, I would say the capability to protect agentic AI is a key improvement area.

I have been working with Cisco Secure Access for six years.

Some years ago, I worked with the technical support for Cisco Secure Access. However, I am now more of a consultant, so I am happy to advise our customers on the best technology available.

The setup generally depends on the scale of complexity, but if you go for a standard deployment of Cisco Secure Access, a couple of hours is all that is needed to have the system going. Depending on the complexity of the policy you want to configure, that could be longer. However, it is amazing that the same day you install the product, you can really use it.

Cisco Secure Access is more than a mature product at this point. Cisco capitalized on the experience with Umbrella, which was basically the previous product, and expanded with capabilities to provide a very effective connection for remote workers wherever they are and using technology such as QUIC, which is adopted by Google. It provides not just security, but also very effective communication wherever the user is working from. I would rate Cisco Secure Access as a nine out of ten because I believe there is always room for improvement, and I am really looking forward to what is coming regarding agentic AI, as I think Cisco Secure Access will play a lead role for that.

We operate in the financial industry, specifically banking, where security is a primary concern when it comes to financial transactions. Our use case always prioritizes security requirements specific to the financial industry.

Cisco Secure Access offers exceptional ease of use as its most valuable feature. The single pane dashboard gives my team the ability to perform tasks on one dashboard and execute changes with a shorter duration. This is particularly beneficial because we have multiple layers of security when it comes to the data center, which helps us capture requirements in a single go.

Our security posture has improved significantly with Cisco Secure Access. Being in the financial industry, we undergo multiple audits from various regulatory bodies and government agencies. Cisco Secure Access helps us answer their questions and meet their requirements.

From a licensing perspective, there could be some enhancement. What I have observed from Cisco regarding licensing and pricing is that there are multiple license tiers, whether Essential, Advanced, or multiple layers of licenses. This creates confusion about which license type we need and which type this product requires. Some clarity or enhancement in this area could provide greater visibility and peace of mind.

I have been using Cisco Secure Access for around five years.

Cisco Secure Access is reliable and helps us execute policies during runtime without any downtime.

Cisco Secure Access is scalable.

I did not evaluate any other solutions because we run most of our products from Cisco, which helps us achieve quick adoption.

I would not characterize Cisco Secure Access as easy or difficult to deploy. When it comes to security, you need to understand the application requirement, the flow, the requirement from the user's perspective, and how the data will flow. This understanding helps us gain visibility so we can deploy exact rules.

I do not currently use it as a VPN as a service. I plan to use it for the hybrid private access feature, but it has not been adopted yet.

We have started a proof of concept for using ZTNA because we were using other products from the Zero Trust perspective, but we are currently in the phase of running a proof of concept to roll out this functionality as well.

I would rate this product an overall score of eight out of ten.

The main use cases for Cisco Secure Access are placing the product and attempting to place the product for the customer. People who do not have an SSE solution and do not know what it is need to be educated about it. I have to explain what it is and what the advantages are. There are two situations: people who do not know that they need it already and people who really need it and do not know which product to choose. Therefore, I guide them to a Cisco product.

The first targets for Cisco Secure Access are organizations with remote customers who are working from different places. They have many on-premises apps and many SaaS apps. The benefits are that people just need to connect and they have their whole environment available for everybody. It feels the same as if they were in the office, plus they are safe against malware.

A feature of Cisco Secure Access that I appreciate the most is its remote browser isolation. When I show them remote browser isolation, they see nothing different initially. Then, you have to look down right where there is a small Cisco blue square with text stating this page has been isolated, and suddenly the customers think that is wonderful. It is one of my favorite features because it puts a browser in the background. Many customers already have something similar to browser in a box, but it is local. When I explain to them that they can have the same feature in the cloud, which is safer, they appreciate it.

The good thing about Cisco Secure Access in terms of multi-organization management capability is that if you have multiple organizations, they were working with different softwares. Now they just work with one software, which is beneficial. It is pretty easy to manage. That is why I prefer to use it. Since you have one software, you do not need different teams. There is just one team working on the software. You can have two teams as a backup, but ultimately it is just one team for one software, which is good.

I am not using the AI assistant feature for Cisco Secure Access because it is not working properly. Sometimes if you write something very basic such as where can I find the connectors, it responds to go there. However, as soon as I target a specific case, it responds that it is unavailable at the moment.

Regarding the AI Access feature, I would say it has room for improvement. It is not bad; it is good, but it could be better.

In general, I think Cisco Secure Access can be improved. I have worked a lot with Cisco Secure Connect, which is very intuitive and easy. With Cisco Secure Access, things are very complicated. Everybody who has experience with Cisco Secure Connect and touches Cisco Secure Access responds with surprise and confusion about why this is needed and where to find things. I believe there is room for improvement. You have workflows, which is already good, but you can push the workflows even more. It is just the basics, and workflows with really specific problems and specific instances would be good.

I have been using Cisco Secure Access for two years.

Regarding crashes, bugs, or downtime, I do not think we faced any related to Cisco Secure Access as far as I remember. We saw downtime because customers were doing their own things, but not because of the software.

I do not know about the help desk ticket volume since in most cases, we are in direct contact with the customer. It could be, but I do not think so.

My experience with deploying Cisco Secure Access involves starting a proof of concept when the customer is almost ready to buy. I have a flyer that I set up to explain how it is going to work. Before starting the proof of concept, I create a questionnaire, asking how many private apps they have and how many remote workers they have, and I gather all the information. We usually conduct a proof of concept with the customers, meeting their requirements in a short amount of time. As soon as the customer is satisfied, they can test in real time how it is going to function. You also have to educate the customer on what is new, explaining how the traffic apps work, including blocking pages, warnings, and all features. It is fundamental during the proof of concept, as the customer has many questions about why certain things are done a particular way. That is pretty much how the deployment works. We do the proof of concept, present the software, take the formula to meet the requirements, put them in place, and as soon as it is ready to go, we make the switch and it runs.

I believe it is too soon to say that I have seen a return on investment from having Cisco Secure Access. The good thing with it is that you can also place other products, such as Cisco Duo for example. Today, I saw Neil present something at the convention, and now you can combine Cisco Duo directory with Cisco Secure Access. So, there will be a return on investment, but it is too soon.

My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Cisco Secure Access is positive. It is good because you want to push Cisco Secure Access, and regarding the price, it is very much below other products. So for the price, it is good now. I recommend keeping it that way.

Since I am working for the Cisco competence center, I did not consider another solution before choosing Cisco Secure Access. We just sell Cisco, so no Palo Alto, no FortiGate, no Zscaler.

I definitely use VPNs in Cisco Secure Access.

The transition from VPN to ZTNA with Cisco Secure Access has not really influenced users. People use the VPN to connect so they can directly access their on-premises apps. ZTNA is more for contractors and everything for the browser, but we do not really use it.

I use it in a client-based manner.

I am not really using the hybrid private access feature for varying the enforcement location for ZTNA private traffic right now.

My experience with the Insight feature, particularly digital experience and monitoring, is positive since ThousandEyes is already included in Cisco Secure Access. Customers can see a lot of details and monitoring, and they appreciate it. They do not usually use it, but they can see everything. So this is good.

It has impacted the incident resolution time since we have not had an incident regarding our customers. So, I would say it has potentially helped.

I have not integrated Cisco Identity Intelligence at this time.

For everything overall regarding Cisco Secure Access, I would rate it an eight. It is not a bad product, but for certain things, there is definitely room for improvement.