Cisco NGIPS Reviews

I use Cisco NGIPS as a firewall.

The most valuable features of Cisco NGIPS are protection and reporting.

We have a separate management controller for Cisco NGIPS. If they have not done it already they should integrate Cisco NGIPS with the Cloud Portal.

The solution has some bugs that sometimes take time to resolve.

I have been using Cisco NGIPS for approximately two years.

The stability of Cisco NGIPS has been good since we have been using it.

The scalability of Cisco NGIPS is good.

Cisco has better technical support than other competitors, such as Check Point IPS or Palo Alto. Cisco has very good support, they are always ready to help their customer if there are any production issues.

Cisco NGIPS should add a technical person to the chat support. They correctly do not have a specialist. The knowledge base of the chat agent should be better.

I have used Check Point IPS solutions.

The implementation of Cisco NGIPS is straightforward.

You have to do your own implementation of the Cisco NGIPS hardware, but for the configuration, Cisco support can be involved from day one. That's what I have experienced. There was some exception but I have involved the Cisco support team from day one when I started configuring my firewall.

We have seen a return on investment by using Cisco NGIPS.

There is a license required to use Cisco NGIPS and it can be a one or three-year license.

I would advise others to use the support from Cisco, they are helpful.

I rate Cisco NGIPS an eight out of ten.

The primary use case is for intrusion prevention. We install the solution between the firewall and the call switches.

The most valuable features are the intrusion detection ones. We channel the intrusion engine to create a policy of prevention. We only use this solution for intrusion prevention, not as a firewall.

There is room for improvement in the policy documentation. It gets confusing trying to understand what all of the policies mean. We need clear documentation explaining what each policy does.

For the Cisco STD, if we lose the connection with the SMC and STD, we can only assist with the STD via the CLI, so we can only do some troubleshooting. I think this is an area that needs improvement. In terms of the architecture, it needs to be more comfortable to change our own managed STD via the UI even if SMC is not available.

The technical support has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for six years.

Some of the engineers within Cisco's tech support are knowledgeable and others are not. Sometimes we have to go back and forth for a week to get an answer.

Neutral

The initial setup is not complex; we only need to define the IP address and add the SMC IP. Both STD and SMC have the capability of SDM. Also if we don't have SMC, we mainly require the anti-SDM in UI. However, after we enroll the Cisco file from the SMC, we can no longer manage the STD from there. Therefore, it is very difficult to roll back if there is a connection loss between the STD and SMC, as SMC cannot manage the STD via the UI. In comparison, if there is a connection loss between Palo Alto Panorama, we can simply lock it with Palo Alto following the file and do some configuration. 

I give the solution a seven out of ten.

Cisco NGIPS offers defense mechanism and intrusion prevention for your environment. 

I like the way the tool pushes the packets from the node level. 

Cisco NGIPS' performance could be better. 

I have been working with the product for 24 years. 

Cisco NGIPS is stable. 

The tool is scalable. My company has over 2000  users for the product. 

The tool's deployment is not straightforward. You need a technical and competent person to do it. A four to five-member technical team can handle its deployment and maintenance. 

The tool's ROI is good. 

The tool's licensing costs are yearly. 

I rate Cisco NGIPS a ten out of ten. 

The NGIPS handles all of the IPS functionality for our security.

The most valuable feature for our cloud-based deployment is the autoscaling.

For our on-premises deployment, clustering is the most valuable.

I think their fingerprints are good in terms of how they whitelist and blacklist. This is because of Talos, which is really awesome. We use that a lot.

The anomaly detection capabilities are awesome.

The only thing I think they may need to improve on a little bit is identifying software more correctly when you do network discovery. You need that to really handle finding anomalies properly. In the past, I've noticed that some applications are not identified correctly, based on the OS and the fingerprints that they're pulling from the host.

In the future, we would like to see more involvement with the on-premises hybrid cloud. We want to see Cisco do more in the cloud space, and basically improving the connection between on-premises and the cloud. This including things such as automation.

I have been using Cisco NGIPS for almost seven years.

The code is well-stabled right now and we've never had issues upgrading from one version to another. We've had it since version 2.0 and for every time we upgrade, it gets better. We're currently on version 6.6 and we're expecting that when 6.7 comes out, it will get better.

This is a very scalable product. You can add multiple devices to the same policy and then push that out.

In the cloud space, scaling is done automatically based on the amount of traffic and the amount of bandwidth that's generated. It scales up and down, back and forth, as needed. For example, if there is not much traffic then it drops, whereas if there is a lot of traffic then it creates another FTD, and then it just shares the load with load balancing.

Everything is scaled properly both in the cloud and on-premises.

Cisco's technical support is really good. I would say that they are number one. They follow up on their calls and tags, as well.

I also have experience with Check Point and I find that the pricing is better with Cisco.

The initial setup is straightforward. With the Firepower Threat Defense (FTD), everything is in one box. You can do everything from firewalls to IPS and more. It also includes the next-generation firewall.

It is an easy upgrade process that is easy to understand. I would say that from version 3.0, it has improved.

The cost of the license depends on the level of support that you have with Cisco. 

My advice for anybody who is implementing Cisco NGIPS is to read and understand all of the documentation before you start. Whatever it is that you might need help with, reach out to Cisco support and let them help you. The documentation is available and it is very understandable so you may not need their help. I would say that if you take your time to read it then you shouldn't have any problems in deploying.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Some of our customers are having DDOS attacks and ransomware attacks.

Earlier in July 2019, I noted that there was an attack. To mitigate future attacks from the ransomware in Columbia Bank and other similar situations, we at Cisco Talent, which is responsible for security intelligence, provided updated security rules. We offered intrusion policies and codes through signatures to help overcome such situations.

It's a good solution.

The solution is not that bad. Next-generation firewalls work from my experience, they work. 

The URL filtering feature and the new locations feature are both valuable additions to the solution.

While the Management GUI and FMC could be improved, the devices themselves function well.

I have been using Cisco NGIPS for more than five years.

I provided support for version 6.4, but in our company, we do have Firepower version 7.0.

Cisco NGIPS is a stable solution.

Cisco has great support.

I would rate Cisco NGIPS an eight out of ten.

We use Cisco as a firewall. It is an intrusion detection and prevention solution.

The malware detection, threat defense, sandboxing, VPN, and mail security have all been valuable features of Cisco NGIPS.

The performance of CISCO Firepower could be improved. 

We moved from Sophos to Cisco before the pandemic. During the pandemic, there was an increase in VPN connections. We had a layer of security within CISCO Umbrella, and now with Cloud. The firewall protects the internal system, but we needed to add another layer of security for the endpoints that are outside the local area network. We needed another product to cover this lack of security.

We prefer to have integration with the points that are outside our local area networks using the same brand using one single console. Because the firewall only protects the people inside the network, we required another solution.

I would like to see Cisco NGIPS include home office support in one single product.

Our organization has been using Cisco NGIPS for two years.

Cisco NGIPS is stable most of the time.

This solution is not easily scaled. I would like Cisco NGIPS to be easier to scale. With the increase in work from home, we needed to add another layer of security to ensure we can meet the demand of stability, high availability, and connection.

Our company has two layers of support with Cisco. One is the local support, which is very good. The second support is directly from Cisco. They are quick to respond and have quick solutions to the problems.

We moved from Sophos to Cisco Firewall because we were looking for better integration between all the appliances and data center. All of our core switches, our wireless system, and other tools are the Cisco brand, meaning that all our monitoring options are integrated under Cisco.

We hired a professional service to install this solution.

With the increase in work from home, companies may need more than just a firewall. I recommend anyone considering Cisco NGIPS evaluate all the demands from their in-home offices and determine if their solution needs to be bigger, or wider, for security and performance.

I would rate this product a 9 out of 10, particularly if you work in a LAN environment.

We use the solution for traffic filtering, security, and antivirus capabilities.

I have found the filter and the antivirus to be most valuable.

The user interface needs some improvement, it is a little rudimentary and not very intuitive. If you are not very technical inclined you may need to be assisted or might struggle to set it up.

The newer version tends to use a lot of system resources. For example, your processor and RAM.

I have been using the solution for approximately four years.

The solution is stable and reliable, it does the job well.

The scalability is excellent, they can support a large environment. However, a large size organization will need its own dedicated appliance.

The customer support is very good.

We have used and still use Darktrace. We do not use it to replace Cisco's NGIPS solution but we use it predominantly as an in-network snooper.

The installation is complex.

We used an in-house team to do the deployment and it takes roughly a day and a half depending on the size of your organization and the configuration. Setting up the rules, all the features, and the licensing takes time.

To do the maintenance you need somebody familiar with Cisco and networking technologies.

By using this solution we have received a return on our investment. 

Cisco products are not cheap and this solution is no different. However, the price of all of the Firepower is part of a bundle when you buy the actual firewall, the Cisco firewall. It is part of the whole bundle package, but Firepower IPS itself has its own costs.

We are on a yearly license and the price depends on the environment, we pay approximately $33,000. The solution has additional components, and each one of the components cost extra.

For those wanting to implement this solution, I was advice before deploying the solution, understand exactly what you want it to do for you. The product has a couple of different capabilities, do you want to expand, or you may not want to expand. These are scenarios that you have to take into account. I would not recommend the solution for small organizations, it would be too time-consuming for that.

I rate Cisco NGIPS an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case is as a firewall segregating networks and defending the perimeter.

I would consider this to be a medium product in its field across the board.

Some features, for instance, are a way for the management console to be able to manage each specific firewall, for instance. Because if we have more than one firewall configured in the management center, we cannot delegate administration, just one of the equipment. I think the part of IPS and everything else needs to be better equated to the real needs or current needs of the business compared to the other manufacturer, because it is not straightforward, a way to configure it compared to the other competitors.

I have been using Cisco NGIPS for one year.

It is more or less stable. Sometimes I have some issues normally when we need to upgrade it to newer versions. I think it does the job. The hardware does the job, and the current models do the job.

We have around four thousand users and that would be an example of its scalability.

Technical support is good. If you open a case about the support, it is good. Compared to the other manufacturer, it is very good.

The initial setup was complex and the upgrade took a lot of time with a very big image to download and everything else. We had many versions and patches that had to be installed. The deployment took between two and three hours.

In this case, we did it in-house and I was the integrator.

I think we have to have a good knowledge of the product. It is not easy to set up from the beginning. And I am also using the comparison with the other manufacturer. You need to have very good training before managing the product. I would rate Cisco NGIPS a seven on a scale of one to ten.