Cisco Secure Endpoint Reviews

We deployed Cisco Secure Endpoint for our customers two to three years back. The use case was to secure their endpoints and servers by deploying the EDR.

Cisco Secure Endpoint is very good in machine learning, which allows it to secure offline contents even if not connected to the internet. We haven't encountered a single breach after it's deployed. It controls USB devices and has a separate antivirus solution called Tetra, providing security even for real-time, day-zero attacks through its strong Talos threat intelligence platform.

Cisco Secure Endpoint lacks features like DLP which other vendors offer. XDR is new, so integration capabilities with third-party tools need improvement. The forensic capabilities need enhancement, especially for deep forensic data collection.

We have been working with Cisco Secure Endpoint for almost four years or more.

The solution is pretty stable. We have not encountered any problems, so I would rate it as a seven for stability.

Cisco Secure Endpoint is definitely scalable. One of our customers has around 6,000 agents deployed. I would rate scalability as a seven.

Cisco has good technical support, especially considering these are newer solutions compared to traditional routing and switching products. However, the standard of their support has declined over the years. I feel that the response time could be quicker.

Neutral

The setup is not complex; it is pretty easy. The solution is cloud-based, providing straightforward installation and deployment.

Cisco is aggressive in pricing, making it competitive and sometimes even cheaper than other good products like CrowdStrike, Microsoft Defender, or SentinelOne.

Cisco Secure Endpoint is a standard solution, but future users should be well aware of the threat hunting capabilities and how to configure policies. Being clear on these can help in easily deploying the solutions. I would rate Cisco Secure Endpoint as seven out of ten.

We use Cisco Secure Endpoint primarily as a security measure for our internal teams. It's used for internal endpoint protection.

With Cisco Secure Endpoint, we now have visibility over what is happening on the endpoint side. We previously did not have any endpoint visibility, however, with this, we have clear insights across our endpoints.

The threat detection visibility and analytics data on the endpoint are very valuable. They allow us to easily drill down and see what has occurred on specific endpoints, which is immensely useful.

Previously, there were options to uninstall the agent without a password if you had admin access, and this could be improved. It may require a password for uninstalling clients, which would be helpful (if it doesn't already).

We have been using Cisco Secure Endpoint for almost two years now.

Cisco Secure Endpoint is a stable product. We haven't encountered any significant issues, and everything seems to be looking good.

The solution is very scalable. It seamlessly allows us to add actions on the dashboard without the need for additional servers.

Whenever we escalate or send an email, Cisco's support team responds promptly and continues to follow up until the issue is resolved.

Positive

We previously did not have any endpoint visibility.

The initial setup was straightforward because it is cloud-delivered. Agent installation can be done in a couple of minutes, although fine-tuning takes more time.

Our internal team handles technical support and maintenance. We don't rely on any third-party help.

Since implementing Cisco Secure Endpoint, we have significantly improved visibility into endpoint activities, which is now very useful.

I am not entirely sure about the exact licensing cost. It ranges from 2,000 to 2,500 INR annually.

We also use other vendors for certain entities.

I would recommend using Cisco Secure Endpoint for its integrated approach, covering endpoint, network security, and even cloud security, making it easier to manage all from a single platform.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

I'm working in a wholesale industry company. We are present in around 16 European countries and my company has around 5,000 employees. I have been using Cisco products since 2007, and in this company for around three years now.

I am using Cisco Secure Endpoint for around 6,000 endpoints, and I also use Cisco Secure Email, ESA product. It's a cloud-based solution from Cisco. I'm using Cisco Malware Analytics and Sandbox. I use Cisco SecureX to integrate all of these and monitor all these ecosystems from Cisco Secure.

Our use cases for using Cisco Secure products are to increase defenses, machine learning, to integrate all these solutions from the backend, do single dashboard threat hunting, do few clicks incident response, have visibility across the entire architecture, and more. We are happily using Cisco and have various different use cases.

We have backend integrations, front-end visibility, and then incidence response with a single click.

Cisco has definitely improved our organization a lot. In terms of business, our company feels safer. We actually switched from legacy signature-based solutions to threat intelligence-based and machine learning-based solutions, which is Cisco Secure. This has improved our security significantly, from 10% of signature-based technology security to 99.9% of the current one which we are running. We were happy.

The threat-based solution, the machine learning-based solution moving towards AI, the ecosystem visibility, and the single click of threat hunting and incident response, were the few major reasons to switch from legacy security to the latest one.

The implementation of Cisco Secure Endpoint has had a significant impact on reducing the operating expenditures of our organization. The savings amount to approximately half a million to a million euros every year. We don't need a lot of different solutions that collect all these threat logs, correlate them, and then automate them for incidents. We already have this with Cisco SecureX, more or less. Cisco is also saving on the FTE side, we need fewer resources to do threat hunting and incidence response.

We save approximately half a million to a million Euros every year with Cisco solutions. 

Cisco is good in terms of threat intelligence plus machine learning-based solutions, but we feel Cisco is lagging behind in using artificial intelligence in its systems. Today, Cisco is more than enough to protect us from the threats, or the evolving threats, using threat hunt, threat intelligence, and machine learning. We feel that in a couple of years, Cisco will lag behind if Cisco does not improve in artificial intelligence.

All these tools I am mentioning from Cisco need to be improved with AI so that it can reduce man-hours so that fewer resources need to monitor and respond. But AI is self-learning, taking self-defense, reducing the response time a lot, and also detecting not only threats and machine learning-based but abnormality-based. 

It's a little different than behavior-based protection, which currently Cisco has. AI models should keep learning and then attacking internet response immediately on top of that. We feel that Cisco needs to work a lot on the AI side, rather than sitting on threat intelligence teams, or machine learning. It is enough for today, but it will not be enough tomorrow.

Cisco has the world's number one, very well-designed support. I have worked as a partner and as a customer of Cisco Security Solutions. They are just one call away. 

That was also one of the top six major criteria to select Cisco Secure Ecosystem. We just call, talk to the support engineer, and then he is ready to solve the call within a few minutes, depending on the severity of the issue.

If you consider the top two vendors in the world, they do not provide this level of support. Even Microsoft and Apple do not. I rank Cisco support as the global leader in support. I would rank it around nine to 9.5.

I really feel that Cisco is doing a great job in after-sale support.

I think Cisco needs to do a little more on the training side before bringing the support team on board.

Positive

We evaluated three vendors in each domain We found that Cisco offers enterprise-grade security solutions. Other vendors may be good in specific niche markets, but they do not offer an ecosystem and backend integration with other solutions that allow for a single pane of glass for threat hunting and incident response.

There are a lot of API integrations and evaluations of different threat resources. We were focused on not only switching from the legacy Email Security solutions and the endpoint solutions, the main point was to get an ecosystem of security, where we have end-to-end protection and a single dashboard for visibility, incident response, and threat hunting. Cisco was offering that at an enterprise grade, and the competition was a little lagging behind on enterprise-grade security solutions.

For example, in EDR you can take the top two EDR solutions in the world. They don't have an ecosystem. If you take the top two global leading email security gateways, they also don't have an ecosystem. For firewalls, you can take the visibility from the SecureX side. They are good in their market segment, but when we need an ecosystem, they are not. Any top two domains did not prodive us with the ecosystem.

If Gartner says it's 60 euros per hour for an engineer to do an investigation on a threat, we are saving thousands of hours per FTE per year, because we can run a query and find all these results within seconds. We can block it within minutes, immediately reducing the mean time to detect and mean time to response from 270 average days to 270 seconds. 

On the licensing side, it has good pricing. On the ecosystem side, we don't need to go with the niche player and pay them a lot higher than Cisco is charging us. So in these two or three segments, we are saving costs. But in terms of ROI, for three years we never got ransomware. Even a single incident can cost us millions. We are a wholesale industry from B2B, so we pick from the factories, deliver a route to the businesses, and if we don't deliver, they will not have masks to wear during Corona. We are critical for the supply chain, and that definitely would cost us millions.

So far, Cisco has saved all these costs in business disruptions, the restore cost, and then it has the lowest price possible on the security ecosystem. All these factors have enabled us to have a great ROI from the Cisco ecosystem.

Pricing and licensing is good. Little tweaks are required. For example, on Email Security solutions, someone can send a maximum of 200 files per day to the Sandbox for sandboxing, which is not enough for 5,000 email boxes, or more. We were forced to buy more. A little redesign on the Email Security Gateway license is required.

When it comes to the tiers, like basic tier, premium, and enterprise, that's really, according to the needs of the segments. If it's a small company, it can go with a basic license, a bigger one bigger needs more requirements and can go with the premium license tiers. Those things are really very well-designed.

We are more than happy with the pricing structure of Cisco.

I rate Cisco Secure Endpoint an eight out of ten.

I chose a rating of eight out of ten for Cisco Secure Endpoint because it does not provide pure AI-based detection or AI-based learning, which is a core reason for my rating. While Cisco's current support is excellent, it may not be the same in the future. Additionally, there is a lack of visibility from Cisco about its AI-based security solutions. We are working with other vendors who excel in AI and are augmenting them with Cisco solutions in certain segments. However, we hope to see Cisco improve in the AI-based security space in the future, even though we don't have any insight into any AI-based security projects that Cisco may be working on.

We recommend the solution to our customers. The solution is used to identify the malicious content in a network. We install an agent. If any malicious content enters the laptop, the agent communicates with the AMP cloud. The AMP cloud validates everything.

The product provides sandboxing options like file reputation and file analysis.

We must install an agent on every laptop. We do not know how to do it for the network. We shouldn’t have to install agents individually if it's a corporate network. The product does not provide options like tunnel creation or virtual appliances. If there are 2000 users and only one network administrator, installing the agent on every laptop will be time-consuming.

I have been using the solution for four months.

The tool is stable.

The tool is scalable. I recommend the solution to small and large businesses.

The support is great. Other OEMs take time to provide support for configuration and technical issues. However, Cisco’s support is really fast.

Positive

We also use Cisco Umbrella. Secure Endpoint is for the security at an endpoint level. Umbrella secures the DNS traffic.

The implementation is easy. The deployment can be completed within two hours on average. The time taken for deployment depends on the corporate network.

Pricing is a big issue. Some customers find the price reasonable. Some customers do not agree with the price.

Talos is a major feature. We have STC access. We are pushing our partners and customers to purchase Cisco Umbrella and Cisco Secure Endpoint. Usually, customers are not aware of the product. They tell us that they already have an antivirus solution. We must educate them about the difference between antivirus solutions and Cisco Secure Endpoint. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

I use the solution in my company to protect our Windows and Mac devices.

The most valuable features of the solution are its ease of use, simple management of dashboards, and constant updates.

It cannot currently block URLs over websites. From an improvement perspective, I want the tools to have the ability to block URLs over websites from a threat prevention point of view so that everything stays protected.

The product needs to offer better integration capabilities.

I have been using Cisco Secure Endpoint for two and a half years.

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

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

Around 20 to 30 people use the product in my company.

The product is used extensively in my company.

The plan to increase the solution usage depends on the company's decision.

The product's initial setup phase was very simple.

The solution is deployed on the cloud model.

In terms of the time needed for the deployment process, my company requires one or two hours to upgrade the tool on our twenty machines.

One or two people who are engineers are required to deploy and maintain the solution.

The return on investment is fine. My company only looks at how the product can offer security.

You must make monthly payments towards the licensing charges attached to the product. There are no extra charges apart from the standard licensing fees associated with the product.

In the past, I have used ESET and Symantec in my company. The protection offered by Cisco is much better than that offered by ESET and Symantec.

I never used the tool's threat-hunting capability to see its impact on our company's security posture.

I have integrated Cisco Secure Endpoint with other security tools from Cisco, and I see that it has been great.

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

The product is reliable and stable. It also provides up-to-date security based on ongoing trends.

The benefits from the use of the product revolves around the fact that it helps our company to be secured, especially in a scenario where constant attacks happen on other companies.

If I consider the current trends in the cybersecurity world, I can say that the product offers main features that provide functionalities of an anti-virus solution.

I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.

Emphasizing robust prevention and comprehensive security measures, it offers stable functionality. There are several valuable features including strong prevention and exceptional reporting capabilities.

The pricing policy could be more competitive, similar to Cisco's offerings. Cisco recently introduced the SecureX platform, where all the different platforms are consolidated. This means you need a single account to access all the platforms, simplifying the process. However, it can still be a bit frustrating because the access isn't straightforward. There are different links for logging in, and depending on which link you use, you might encounter issues with admin rights, even if you are an admin. It seems there are some access problems during the transition and migration process, which has affected my system as well.

For instance, we had the Cisco Mail gateway, and I used to have specific links to report and configure guardian and spam checks for emails. Now, all of these have also been moved to the SecureX platform, which doesn't always function smoothly when logging in. Sometimes, I still have to log in using my old links. It's a bit inconvenient, but that's how it is.

I have been using Cisco Secure Endpoint for the past two years. 

I would rate the stability nine out of ten. 

It is a scalable product and I would rate it eight out of ten. 

They have separate support departments for different products, and the experience can vary depending on the product. For instance, Cisco Meraki Support is notably excellent and quick. In contrast, the support for some other Cisco products may be slightly less effective or even more outstanding. They tend to be slow when responding to inquiries. Personally, I have had a good experience with Cisco.

Regarding maintenance, we receive the latest updates automatically. I handle tasks such as installing the updates, assigning licenses, and installing the agent. Additionally, I check for insights on the computers where the agent is installed. These insights provide reports on various aspects, such as the computer's Windows update status and whether the antivirus is on the latest version, among other things.

It is a subscription-based product. 

I would overall rate the product an eight out of ten and recommend it to fellow users.

I implemented the solution in my company to use its managed endpoint protection in my company's use cases. Most of the users of Cisco Secure Endpoint in my company are unaware that they use the product. Our company only uses it to isolate possible malware on the endpoints. Our company uses the solution in collaboration with other software protection tools we have so that it helps us to look into cases where possible malware or attacks can happen.

The most valuable feature of the solution is its technical support. In most cases, it's very difficult or complicated to incorporate Cisco Secure Endpoint in the IT environment, and most of the messages that appear are not very clear. It is a reliable tool. After the setup phase, I realized that it is a reliable tool.

The initial implementation of Cisco Secure Endpoint can be a pain and is an area in the solution that needs improvement. After the initial implementation phase, a person gets support from Cisco, making it a solid tool.

The solution needs to improve in the area of the specific details of the threats it provides to its users.

I have been using Cisco Secure Endpoint for three years.

After the presence and use of the solution in our company for three years, I rate the solution's stability a nine out of ten.

Since we haven't had any expansion in our company's infrastructure, I won't be able to comment on the solution's scalability feature.

All of the employees in the back-end processes of our company are users of the solution since the product is implemented on all the PCs and servers. From an IT perspective, only two people use the solution in the company. One person looks after the maintenance of the solution, while the other person looks at the messaging part of the solution.

My company has chosen an outsourced option to get technical support of the solution since we don't get any technical support internally. 

The initial setup of Cisco Secure Endpoint is complex.

Speaking about the deployment process, during the initial phase of using Cisco Secure Endpoint, we were getting a lot of false positives in our company, making it pretty hard for us initially since we had to cut endpoints until we could stabilize the solution.

My company does make annual payments towards the licensing costs of the solution. Cisco Secure Endpoint is a little bit expensive. The pricing for licenses is pretty expensive for the moment, but it is a good solution.

My company wants to stop using Cisco Secure Endpoint and opt for another solution.

I recommend the solution to those planning to use it.

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

My company uses Cisco Secure Endpoint for its endpoint security and firewall.

The most valuable feature of the solution is that it protects our endpoint devices, especially the running ones, and it is useful since we have chosen the cloud version of Cisco Secure Endpoint.

Integration and dashboard are areas with certain shortcomings in Cisco Secure Endpoint.

I would like Cisco Secure Endpoint to have a better dashboard and integration with different software solutions in future releases.

I have been using Cisco Secure Endpoint for around four years. I am using the solution's latest version. I am an end user of the product.

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

There are no issues or drops in the solution's performance.

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

Around 400 people in my company use the solution, most of whom are security administrators.

The solution's technical support was helpful. We haven't needed any support for four years now. Whenever we contacted support, we used to get a quick response, especially when it was for some issues related to the firewall or the upgrading part of the firmware. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

We use a different product for DNS. I have previously used Fortinet. I use Cisco for our data center, while I use Fortinet since it provides an SD-WAN solution.

The solution is deployed on Cisco Cloud, which is a private cloud.

My company opts for an annual subscription model to pay for the solution's licensing cost. It is a product that is priced reasonably. 

I rate the pricing a five or six on a scale of one to ten, where one is expensive, and ten is cheap.

I chose Cisco Secure Endpoint from a security standard and integration perspective. I believe Cisco is the business leader and is a highly scalable solution.

The vendor from Cisco takes care of the maintenance. We need three people to take care of the tool in case of crashes. From the dashboard, we come to know about everything related to the endpoint. You can take action unless it is not the physical hardware to which something wrong has happened, especially if something wrong happens to the operating system.

I would definitely recommend the solution to those planning to use it.

To provide endpoint protection, I feel the product should be speedy enough to detect malicious programs and trojans. There are a lot of tools that are not acting as signature-based but as behavior-based antivirus. Cisco Secure Endpoint is required, especially if the customers don't have a sandbox.

Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

We use a lot of Cisco products to integrate into our services for about 160 customers in healthcare, local government, and social housing.

We are using tons of Cisco products. Besides all types of firewalls, we are using IronPort for email. We are using a lot of networking products as well, in which security is also embedded. We also use the SecureX platform to leverage our security automation.

We have about 160 customers, and each of these customers has its own compliance, set of rules, and governance. So, the use cases might vary, but it's all about keeping them safe on all levels; on a technical level, on a tech framework level, and also on a personal level. We try to prevent our customers from doing things that they didn't intend to do as well. The use cases vary, and we embed them in all our services and also in our security operations center.

Most of the customers don't even know that they are more secure. It's like they expect to be secure, but the moment we have a big threat from the outside, they will see and they will know that we are far faster and better able to protect them and react to threats from the outside.

Cisco Secure has saved us time, especially the SecureX platform has helped us to automate certain processes and do analytics. That prevents us from taking each individual part of the logging. They have the intelligence in there to do the first check for us, and that saves a lot of time.

There is a reduction in operating expenditures but not only from the Secure perspective. Our full stack is based on Cisco, so we leverage the full integration part of that. We have our compute, we have our networking, and we have our security, and that makes it easier because you have less interfaces with different products.

From a technical perspective, I would rate it quite high for securing our infrastructure from end to end. From a behavioral perspective, in terms of the end customers leveraging it, there's still a little bit of work to do because we need to help the end customers to be more aware of what they're doing. On the endpoint for a user, they don't exactly see what is happening. From a visual perspective, you also want to have a feeling that you're safe or you get some tips or tricks to be safer, but for the most important part, which is the technical part, I would rate it very high. We really trust Cisco.

The best feature that we found most valuable, is actually the security product for the endpoint, formerly known as AMP. It has behavioral analytics, so you can be more proactive toward zero-day threats. I found that quite good.

I'm also a big fan of Talos, which provides us with a lot of insights to react faster. We also created our own toolset to embed Talos input to the Cisco products, which was not a native function, but it's being enhanced right now in the new Secure and SecureX platform.

On the firewall level, they were lagging a little bit behind, but they are running up again. I have full trust in the new 3000 series of firewalls where we would also be able to look more into the traffic that we're monitoring and get more security layers in our services. That would definitely be a big step.

We have been using Cisco since we started the company in 2002. At the time, it was not branded as such, but security is embedded in every Cisco product.

I'd rate them a nine out of ten because we still had to do things ourselves. After they had done them for us, if it was just one click on a button, then I would've given them a ten. 

Positive

We were using different products before, but we made a strategic choice to use the endpoint protection part. We're very happy with this part because it works on all types of devices and all types of endpoints—not only the user endpoint but also the networking endpoint and a lot of server platform endpoints as well. That was a primary reason, and obviously, the cost or OPEX was a part of the strategic choice to do so, but the most important part was that it had the behavior analytics part in there, so we could be more prepared for zero-day attacks.

I was only indirectly involved in its deployment. As a board, we do look at the choices that we are making, but the real firm choices are made by our chief technology officer, our corporate information security officer, and the people in the operations. However, at the board level, we always look into what are the benefits and what are the costs, so I was involved indirectly, but I was not the one who made the decision.

The deployment of Cisco Secure solutions is a little bit in the midst. Because we had such a big install base, we took a lot of time. It was a program of approximately one and a half years. For us, it was a tough project. Was it tough because of Cisco? I don't think so. It was tough because it was such a big install base.

We handled it as a project. At first, we had to explain to our customers that we are going to use another product and why. We had to do a lot of marketing and communication beforehand. We had to train our people and our resources. We had to fix our automation. We also had our implementation plan per customer because it does impact the performance at first because it has to get to know the infrastructure and it has to get to know the services. After that, it all worked out well, and we are continuing to do so because this is a never-ending project. There are still new releases and new features. It's embedded continuously in our organization now. It's sort of cyclic maintenance.

We do not measure that on a product basis. We have a growth rate with a company that lies between 15% to 30% each year in our services and profits. It definitely adds to that as well. It's year-on-year, so we're doing quite well, and it's partly because of Cisco.

It can always be cheaper.

We only had one real runner-up, and it was Microsoft Defender, which is also a good solution, but it's less integrated with our Cisco infrastructure.

Don't take it to light and implement it with your customer in mind, and don't only implement it as a technical project. It's all about mitigating risks for your customers, and it might not always be technical. 

Be aware that implementing such a new embedded technology might also cause an impact on performance. So, keep informing your customers about the benefits and say that it might be a little difficult at certain times, but when we're finished, they are far safer than they were ever before.

Open Line has a big customer base in healthcare, local government, logistics, and social housing. Societal responsibility is quite huge in the Netherlands. Cisco might also be aware of the impact that they have. They shouldn't just look at us as a managed services company or a partner; just be proud that their social reach in the Netherlands is so high. They're part of that as well. At certain times, I don't think they're aware of that. They can be far prouder than they are right now.

I'd rate Cisco Secure an eight out of ten because we have a high ambition level. Perhaps with the new Cisco 3100 series firewalls, we'll go up a little bit because that will also help us in a risk-based security approach.

We are delivering Cisco solutions and security services to more than 100 customers. We use AMP, which I believe is currently called Cisco Secure Endpoint. We use Umbrella, we use SecureX, we use Meraki, and we, of course, use firewalls. So, it's a very broad range of Cisco products. 

Cisco Secure solutions have improved our company in the sense that we are now moving towards being a managed service provider, which is doing what Cisco is telling about combining your network, your hosting, and your security together in one company so that you can deliver IT services in a carefree way for your customers. So, Cisco is helping us in creating that goal of carefree use of IT.

I'm very glad that for most customers, we have onboarded Cisco Secure Endpoint because it helps us a lot in solving and detecting ransomware. It's being done automatically, so you don't have to worry. It's removing that. Therefore, it is called an EDR solution. It takes care of detection and response, and it's being done automatically. In the case some handling is needed, we have a connection from Cisco Secure Endpoint towards SecureX and ServiceNow. So, we are bringing that very simply to our support engineers. If any handling is needed there, they automatically get a ticket, and they can act.

It has helped a lot in saving time because when you have an automated flow of tickets, a ticket is immediately handled by the support people. They can immediately act in ServiceNow and see what they have to do if something is detected where a manual action is still needed. There are, however, not many cases because AMP already handles a lot of responses automatically. 

We are saving a lot of money on our operational costs because people don't have to enter tickets anymore in the system. Secondly, a lot of response is being done automatically by AMP. That helps us a lot as well in saving costs because, in the past, somebody had to do it manually.

The most valuable feature at this moment is that Cisco AMP or Cisco Secure Endpoint solution is delivering a lot of things, and I always say to a lot of customers that if we didn't have Cisco AMP, we probably would have had ransomware somewhere. So, it's protecting us very well from a lot of hackers, malware, and especially ransomware.

We would like to see the protection from the start of the endpoint till the end. Nowadays, we see that working from home is quite important, so there's a need to protect the whole layer, not only the network of the customer. There is a change towards starting from the process on the endpoint and then protecting that towards the application and the data on the back end. You need to protect that whole layer, which means that you have to have something on your endpoints that can protect. Today, at the Cisco Live event, I heard that there will be an AnyConnect solution from Cisco that will help us in delivering the kinds of security solutions that customers currently want. In some cases, we use AnyConnect, but because SaaS is coming up, many of the solutions or many endpoints are using a browser to make the connection to any place, anytime, and anywhere, so you want to have a secure connection at the start. It should be on every endpoint. I've heard Cisco is developing that right now to have all endpoints, not only laptops, desktops, and tablets, but also mobile devices, connected and secure towards the application and the data at the end. We are using AnyConnect as a VPN solution, but not as a whole set, which is currently being developed by Cisco.

They can combine the platforms and the management tools so that they are a little bit simpler and easy to use.

The integration of the Cisco products for security could be better in the sense that not everything is integrated, and they aren't working together. In addition, not all products are multi-tenant, so you can't separate different customer environments from each other, which makes it a little bit hard for a managed service provider to deliver services to the customers.

The quality of the product should be on top. For instance, when they are being introduced, some firewalls have some bugs, and they are known bugs. So, going to the latest version of the firewall is not always the smartest thing to do. There could be an improvement to help us go to the most modern version.

Cisco's support for their solutions is very good, but it always depends on people. We have a good account manager or service manager from Cisco, and he is helping us a lot in getting the right people from Cisco to talk to, etc. So, it's good. It's a very good arrangement. 

I'd rate them between eight and nine. I don't think that the support organization has to change, but if the tools that you have to use and the management consoles you have to use are simpler, then the support can also be much simpler, and the support department from Cisco can easily support the partners as well.

Positive

I was involved in the implementation of Cisco AMP. When we did a changeover from the traditional antivirus to AMP, I was highly involved. It was an interesting journey, and in the end, we achieved what we wanted to achieve.

It was easy in a certain way, but if you are a managed service provider, you also need to have multi-tenancy. The multi-tenancy support is within Cisco AMP. If you want to implement it, it's not always easy because you cannot do some of the things, such as specifying the policies you want to use, from the top level. You have to do them separately in every tenant, but I've heard that they are going to change it.

We have indeed seen a return on investment for the Cisco Secure solution we have implemented. We've seen the benefits in terms of earning money, but also in terms of extending our services and turnover in many cases.

The pricing and licensing of the security solutions of Cisco are very good in comparison with the competitors, but sometimes, it's difficult to see all the discounts and other kinds of things. So, you have to be careful, but the pricing is good.

I was a part of the evaluation process to go from a traditional antivirus package to a new solution called endpoint detection and response. Of course, there are only two big players, Cisco and Microsoft, in that area. We had to discuss what to do and how to deal with it. Of course, many customers have Microsoft in their workplace, but we are offering Cisco at least for the endpoint service where we have the hosting center. If they want, we can deploy AMP on the endpoints as well. However, there's something to say about the fact that you have two different kinds of EDRs. On your end-user devices, you have Defender, and on your server, you have Cisco, which makes it even more strong.

Traditionally, Cisco comes from the infrastructure. The difference between Cisco and Microsoft security solutions is that Cisco is coming from the infrastructure part, and Microsoft is coming from the data part. What you see is that Microsoft developed its solution from information, from data, and Cisco is coming from the infrastructure. It is deeper in IT. The solutions are deeper, and therefore, they sometimes might be stronger if you are only looking at the top of what's in IT. That makes it a little bit different. So, it's not about who's better or who's stronger. In some cases, they are an addition to each other.

Cisco Secure was the right solution for us. Of course, that was also because of the cost. Because we were already working together with Cisco, we chose Cisco for our hosting center and for all of our services. If the customer wants to have it on their endpoints and user devices, they could use our Cisco solution as well. If they want to have Defender, we support that as well on the endpoints of the user. 

To those evaluating Cisco Secure solution, I'd advise understanding the roadmap and the architecture of Cisco very well and seeing how it can add things. I have to mention Microsoft solutions because there is an added value on top of the Microsoft solutions, and that's what you have to look for. 

Cisco Secure solutions are currently at the level of a seven out of ten, and that's based on the fact that some management consoles are not working together, and in some of the new products, there are still, for instance, some known bugs. That's an issue that could be improved, and they are working on that.