Cisco Secure Firewall Reviews

Our primary use case for Cisco Secure Firewall is segregation between different environments. We put Cisco Secure Firewall between each of those environments to create this segregation. 

Cisco Secure Firewall improved our organization. We have it in every one of our French offices. 

What I like about Cisco Secure Firewall is that you get to integrate it into one box. For example, you can have one big switch with a model inside of it. This makes it easy to manage. 

One thing that Cisco could improve is the GUI. The graphic user interface should be more user-friendly. If you compare it with some of its competitor's GUIs, Cisco falls short in terms of how rules are pushed. 

We have also run into issues with functionality and flexibility. Cisco does fall behind its competitors in this regard. It's our opinion that Cisco is not a leader in security devices. 

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for two decades. 

We are satisfied with the level of support we get from Cisco. Getting support is quite easy. When we have a problem, our engineer just opens up a case and we get a reply quickly. The support usually has deep knowledge of the solution. 

Positive

I was involved in the initial deployment. It was quite simple, not complex at all. 

We have seen a return on investment in terms of price because we have a partnership with our provider. 

We chose Cisco Secure Firewall because we were already using Cisco switch routers and other products, so we wanted everything to be from one provider. However, we do use other products as an additional security measure.

The solution does help us save time because it enables us to do a good job of filtering from the get-go. This ensures we have fewer potential threats to look through.

Cisco Secure Firewall has not helped us consolidate tools because part of our security strategy is having multiple firewalls from different providers. Our company policy is that it is better to have different technology, so we do have some overlap.

We primarily use the solution for configuring the firewall.

It's an almost perfect solution.

The configuration is very easy.

The management aspect of the product is very straightforward.

The solution offers very good protection. 

The user interface itself is very nice and quite intuitive.

It would be ideal if the solution offered more integration capabilities with other vendors. For example, if you had a web security appliance, it would be great to be able to integrate everything in order to better report security events.

While I can't think of specific features I'd like improved, overall, they could do more to continue to refine the solution.

It would be nice if you didn't have to configure using a command-line interface. It's a bit technical that way.

We first started using the solution in 2015. It's been five years at this point.

The solution is very stable. We've found it to be extremely reliable. There are not bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

The solution can scale well. that's not a problem at all. If a company needs to expand it to fit their needs, they can do so.

We've been in contact with technical support on multiple occasions and each time we've had a good experience. We're satisfied with their level of support. They are fairly good.

I have nothing bad to say about the deployment. It went pretty well, and we can configure everything as we need to.

I don't really handle the billing, so I'm unsure of the pricing. I work more on the technical side. 

We're just customers. We don't have a business relationship with Cisco.

It's a very good solution. I'd recommend it to other users.

Overall, I'd rate it seven out of ten.

Although I can't speak to the pricing, I've found the solution works quite well for us. I'd rate it higher if it could integrate a bit better with other solutions.

In the new design, I put Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall as a LAN segment and as the data center firewall. In the old design, I just used FortiGate Firewall for configurations, and we are going to replace it. The complete solution will be replaced with a two-tiered data center.

I like that Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall is reliable. Support is also good. 

We only have an issue with time sync with Cisco ASA and NTP. If the time is out of sync, it will be a disaster for the failover.

I have been using Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall for about 11 years. 

Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall is a stable solution. 

Scalability is good, but just like the issue with Palo Alto and Fortigate, there is also an issue with Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall. I can configure it easily because of my Cisco background, but others in my team aren't comfortable with it.

Technical support is good. They were both fast and reliable and quick in making decisions. We faced specific issues, and tech support was efficient and provided an immediate solution. Other firewall vendors are slow to respond, and I'm not satisfied. It's also easy to Google and find solutions to our problems. We can't do that for other firewalls.

On a scale from one to five, I would give technical support a five.

Positive

We used FortiGate Firewall, but we are replacing it with Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall because we had issues with HP solutions. We also switched because I am Cisco certified, and my background and expertise are in Cisco.

The initial setup was straightforward. 

We have seen a return on our investment. 

I will tell potential users that the data center firewall is a good solution. But most of the companies are using other firewalls like Palo Alto and FortiGate. Most of the design architects prefer the parameters of the firewalls like we prefer the data center firewall.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall a ten.

We use Cisco Secure Firewall in our own company for site-to-site VPN to access our customers and provide remote support.

We sell the solution to our customers as well. They use the ASA or FMC for dedicated networking, for example, the process network. That is, they dedicate the process network or ASA to the user network.

As a Cisco Secure reseller, I add value with my professional background, for example, in Cisco TAC, to my customers. We choose to sell Cisco Secure Firewall because of our partner status with Cisco.

The most valuable feature for the customers is that they can control what communication is allowed and what is not allowed. That is, they can allow or deny client traffic.

It also secures the internal network to allow specific client traffic or machine traffic.

Cisco Secure Firewall helped reduce our clients' meantime to repair by 40%. This is because they can easily segment the network. It's easy to troubleshoot because of micro-segmentation.

Cisco Secure Firewall should be easier to handle. It uses ASDM, which is not easy to understand. It would be better if there was direct access via HTTPS.

I have used this solution for around five years, but my company has been using it for 30 years.

Cisco's technical support for security is good. The support staff are professional and know what to do. I would give them an eight out of ten.

Positive

The deployment of the firewall is more difficult if you want to use all of the features. However, if you're using it only as a VPN, then it's a little bit easier to deploy.

Compared to Cisco Secure Firewall, other firewall solutions are easier to handle because they do not use ASDM. They have direct access via web browsers.

If you're considering Cisco Secure Firewall, take a look at what you want to use the firewall for and what kind of handling you prefer. If you prefer easy handling via browsers, then you may need to use another solution because ASDM is no longer the state of the art.

Overall, I would rate Cisco Secure Firewall at seven on a scale from one to ten.

We use it for our VPN requirements. We wanted to allow people to work from home and we used the ASA to create VPNs through AnyConnect at the endpoints.

It has 

• allowed people to work from home when they otherwise couldn't
• improved response times when there are fires that need to be put out when people are not onsite.

The VPN feature is the most valuable to us because it accomplishes the task well. We're able to do everything we need to do.

I would like to see them update the GUI so that it doesn't look like it was made in 1995.

I've been using the Cisco ASA Firewall for between one and two years.

It's been very stable. I don't think we've ever had an issue with it failing entirely.

It scales well. We've had no issues ramping things up.

We're going to expand our usage of it. We rolled it out to about 200 users and now we're going to expand that to about 1,000 users out of our 3,000-user base. It has been really good.

The tech support is excellent. I've always gotten really good tech support from Cisco.

Positive

We did not have a previous solution.

The pricing could always be cheaper.

The solution always requires maintenance. I have about two people who are the "experts" and they help maintain it pretty well.

Cyber security resilience has been extremely important for our organization because of our customers' demands for security. The ASA has really helped to accomplish that with the VPN. My advice to leaders who are looking to build resilience is don't go cheap, and make sure you have backup solutions and high availability.

It's a good, robust firewall and VPN solution, with lots of knobs to turn. It is effective at what it does.

As a manufacturing company, we have to use many different concepts of firewalls. That's one reason we had to use a trusted firewall for security and trust reasons.

We use a top-down architectural level mostly. For this reason, Cisco Secure Firewall is the top product for us.

I would say that this solution has saved our organization's time because we are certified engineers and experts. It helps us to connect quite well with our customers on a professional level.

The features I have found most valuable are the ASA firewalls. I like to have features like most integrated systems in ACI.

I think that the solution can be improved with the integration of application-centric infrastructure. It could be used to have better solutions in one box.

I have been using this solution for around seven or eight years.

I've used different concepts of solutions before Cisco. Cisco is much better than Juniper, Brocade, or Foundry, as it is much easier to use and get directions from. It is also easier to integrate Cisco if you compare it with other customer concepts, such as Juniper, Brocade, or Aruba.

I am not involved in all Cisco firewall deployments. We also have an architectural team. We deploy based on a top-down level architecture and implementation structure.

When it comes to pricing, quality is important to us. When looking at products, we prefer quality over speed. Cisco is on that quality side mostly.

We are currently using the Cisco Firepower firewall, which is dependent on the situations in the data center and regional data center concepts. 

The way that this solution helps secure our infrastructure end-to-end is by enabling us to easily integrate all end-to-ends for monitoring.

Whether this solution saves us time depends on the situation. We use highly secure networks on the national security level and that's why it helps to use different products as Cisco is one of the best.

Overall, I would rate this solution a nine, on a scale from one to ten, with one being the worst and ten being the best.

We have a lot of use cases of FirePower. In one of the use cases, we have two offices, and we use FirePower on our two sites. One of them works through the site-to-site VPN, and we have a controller on this site.

I work with Cisco and other partners, but the Cisco team is the best team in our country. When I call them, they always help us. 

I started to configure the device with version 7.2. After that, I had a problem. It was not a physical problem. It was a software problem. They advised me to install 7.0. I uninstalled and reinstalled everything. It took time, but it started to work normally.

I am not a programmer, but on the business side, they should fix all such issues in the future. We are Cisco partners, and when we recommend Cisco FirePower to customers, they always think that FirePower is bad. For a single installation of FirePower, if I have to write about 18 tickets to Cisco, it's a big problem. There was an issue related to Azure. We had Active Directory in Azure. The clients had to connect to FirePower through Azure. We had a lot of group policies. After two group policies, we had to make groups in Azure, and they had to sign in and sign back. It was a triple-layer authentication, and there was a big problem, so we didn't use it.

We have been using this solution for about two years.

It's very stable now. Everything is fine for me.

I use just two devices. I've not tested anything else.

Their customer support is very good. We also work with other vendors, but Cisco's support is still the best. I'd rate them a 10 out of 10.

Positive

For me, it was very easy because I solved all problems, but I had to install it two times. 

We are a reseller, and for us, it's a 10 out of 10 because if we sell it, we will earn money, but customers have to agree with us.

We mainly use it for ICS security.

We definitely feel more secure. We have more control over things going in and out of our network.

Cybersecurity has been our top priority because of the last few attacks on our peers in the oil and gas industry.

The IPS solution helps us to not only navigate north-south traffic, but also east-west traffic.

Third-party integrations could be improved.

Not everything works out-of-the-box. Sometimes, you have to customize it to your needs. 

I have been using it for two years.

It is stable for the most part.

There is maintenance needed for software, firmware, and updates. Three or four people keep up with the updates, etc. 

It is pretty scalable. We can add as many devices as we want.

The technical support is good. I would rate them as 10 out of 10.

Positive

We previously had a different platform. We wanted to converge multiple platforms into one.

I switched companies. So, I have more experience with Palo Alto.

We saw immediate benefits after deployment from having more control and visibility.

Pretty much everything is included in the price for what we are using.

We looked at Check Point, Palo Alto, Fortinet, and a bunch of others. The management and support for the CIsco product is better.

Listen to your customers and see what their needs are.

The whole stack provided by Cisco is a holistic solution for cybersecurity experts, like myself, and companies who are looking to secure their network.

You should partner up with a good team to view all products available, which cater and are customized to your needs.

We haven't found any gaps where it is lacking.

I would rate this product as eight or nine out of 10.