Cisco Secure Firewall Reviews

We have the Cisco 5585-X in our data center for perimeter security, internet protection, and for applications behind Cisco ASA DMZs. The challenges we wanted to address were security and segregating the internal networks and the DMZs.

Security-wise, it's given us the protection that we were looking for. Obviously, we're using an in-depth type of design, but the Cisco ASA has been critical in that stack for security.

The Packet Tracer is a really good tool. If someone calls because they're having problems, you can easily create fake traffic without having to do an extended packet capture. You can see, straight away, if there's a firewall rule allowing that traffic in the direction you're trying to troubleshoot. As a troubleshooting tool, Packet Tracer is one of the things that I like. It comes up in all my interviews. When I want to figure out if someone knows how to use the ASA, I ask them about use cases when they use the Packet Tracer.

One of the challenges we've had with the Cisco ASA is the lack of a strong controller or central management console that is dependable and reliable all the time. There was a time I was using what I think was called CMC, a Cisco product that was supposed to manage other Cisco products, although not the ASA. It wasn't very stable.

The controller is probably the biggest differentiator and why people are choosing other products. I don't see any other reason.

I've used the Cisco ASA going back to the 2014 or 2015 timeframe.

The ASA has been very stable for us. Since I deployed the ASA 5585 in our data center, we've not had to resolve anything and I don't even recall ever calling TAC for an issue. I can't complain about its stability as a product.

Our Cisco ASA deployment is an Active-Standby setup. That offers us resilience. We've never had a case where both of them have gone down. In fact, we have never even had the primary go down. We've mainly used that configuration when we're doing code upgrades or maintenance on the network so that we have full network connectivity. When we're working on the primary, we can switch over to the standby unit. That type of resiliency works well for our architecture.

TAC is good, although we've had junior engineers who were not able to figure things out or fix things but, with escalations, we have eventually gotten to the right person. We also have the option to call our sales rep, but we have never used that option. It seems like things are working.

Neutral

In the old days, we used Check Point. We did an evaluation of the Cisco ASA and we liked it and we brought it on board.

At that time, it was easy for our junior operations engineers to learn about it because they were already familiar with Cisco's other products. It was easier to bring it in and fit it in without a lot of training. Also, the security features that we got were very good.

The one we deployed in the data center was pretty straightforward. I also deployed the Cisco ASA for AnyConnect purposes and VPN. I didn't have to call TAC or any professional services. I did it myself.

We used a Cisco reseller called LookingPoint. I would recommend them. We've done a lot of other projects with them as well.

It's a great investment and there's a lot of value for your money if you're a CSO or a C-leader. As an engineer, personally, I have seen it work great wonders for us. When we're doing code upgrades or other maintenance we are able to keep the business going 100 percent of the time. We have definitely seen return on our investment.

I don't look at the pricing side of things, but from what I hear from people, it's a little pricey.

At the time, we looked at Juniper and at Palo Alto. We didn't get a feeling of confidence with Palo Alto. We didn't feel that it offered the visibility into traffic that we were looking for.

We use Cisco AnyConnect and we've not had any issues with it. During COVID we had to scale up and buy licenses that supported the number of users we had, and we didn't have any problems with it.

We pretty much use it as our edge firewall and data center firewall.

We have a colocation that is the center for all our campuses. That is where our edge firewall is. We use that for VPN as well, and it was a great thing during the pandemic because we were already ready to go with VPN. We didn't have to do anything extra on that part.

The solution has really enabled us to ensure our university is secure.

Cybersecurity resilience has been paramount. Because there is a threat of losing everything if ransomware or another sort of attack were to happen, the cybersecurity resilience has been top-notch.

The multi-context feature is the most valuable, especially in our data center. Having different needs for different departments is part of our organization. We can have five firewalls in one.

I would like it if they made the newer generation a bit simpler. You can do ASA code and FXOS. It is just a bit confusing with the newer generational equipment on what it can do.

I have been using this solution for five years.

I would rate the stability as 10 out of 10.

We do maintenance for software updates, etc. I don't think we have had any major hardware failures.

We haven't had to really scale up too much.

The technical support is excellent. Every time that we have ever had an issue, we got a result very quickly. I would rate them as nine out of 10.

Positive

We have always had ASA since I have been at the company. The ASAs were in place and we have upgraded to newer ASA Next-Generation Firewalls.

I am not a huge fan of Cisco licensing in general. However, I wasn't really involved with the pricing. That decision was made a little higher than me.

We are in the middle of an upgrade to the newer Firepowers.

We have used Palo Alto for another solution and they have a better firewall. It is a whole new GUI to learn. With Palo Alto, you simply get one code, then that is your firewall. With the newer Firepowers, there are two or three different ways that you can run it. So, we currently have our data center running in ASA code, then we are doing it a different way with our edge ASA. My supervisor has complained about all the different ways that the new hardware can be configured and installed.

Stay more up-to-date with equipment. The old equipment is what will get you, e.g., leaving Windows 7 machines on your network or 15-year-old switches.

Heavily research what can do cluster mode, HA pairs, etc. That is where we ran into the "gotchas". You have to run it in certain ways to have it clustered and run it another way to have it as an HA pair.

I would rate ASA Firewall as nine out of 10.

We are using it for border firewalls, VPN access, and site-to-site VPN tunnels.

It is deployed at a single location with about 2,500 users.

So far, the remote VPN access has been a perfect solution for our company.

The user interface is a little clunky and difficult to work with. Some things aren't as easy as they should be.

I have been using it for five years.

So far, it has been very stable.

It does require maintenance. There is a team of two who manage it.

We haven't scaled it much at this point.

The technical support has been good so far. I would rate them as eight out of 10.

Positive

The VPN solution works much better than our previous solutions.

We previously used Palo Alto. The switch was driven by Cisco's pitch.

It was fairly straightforward. We stood it up side by side with our nesting firewalls. We did some testing during an outage window, then migrated it over.

We used a partner, CDW, to help us with the deployment. Our experience with CDW was good.

Internally, it was just me for the deployment.

The pricing seems fair. It is above average.

Take the time to really learn it, then it becomes a lot easier to use.

I would rate the solution as eight out of 10.

We use it for VPN access for our two-factor authentication. We were looking to get access through AnyConnect, to gain access to devices behind boundaries and firewalls.

It has improved things greatly by giving us easier and better access, easier configuration, and allowing users to gain the access they need. We have also had less downtime using these firewalls.

AnyConnect has been very helpful, along with the ability to use LDAP for authentication. It's very robust and we are able to do many different things that we were looking to do.

The ASAs are being replaced with the new Firepowers and they have a different type of structure in the configuration to be able to migrate from one to the other.

I have been using Cisco ASA Firewalls for 20 years.

The stability is very good. It has been a very stable environment. Since the new AnyConnect came out, it's been very easy to use and very much self-sufficient.

You can vary scalability from very few users to thousands of users.

Technical support has been very helpful at times, helping us to know what bugs and what things are getting fixed in the next releases.

Positive

As an architecture team, we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it, so it was pretty straightforward and easy. We have each one across many different avenues and many different boundaries, so each one took about a day to deploy.

We needed two to three people to deploy them and another one to go over some things to make sure everything was good to go.

There is routine maintenance, keeping it up to date and making sure the licensing versions are all good to go. We have a four-man team for maintenance and they work a regular shift of eight hours.

We used a reseller, FedData. Our experience with them was good.

It took us about six months to see benefits from our ASA Firewalls. We've seen return on our investment in terms of the timeframe of downtime, and the ability to get users connected faster and more easily has been a big benefit.

The pricing of the products isn't terrible. They're not too expensive. They're a little more expensive than other products, but you are getting the name, the company, and the support.

It's also nice that you can buy different avenues of licensing, depending on how you want to go about using them.

We buy a support license to get support if we have any issues or problems or need help on how we want to implement things.

We evaluated other options, but that was a long time ago. We went with Cisco because it is so robust as well as because they have been able to integrate their solutions into many different architectures. That makes their products easier to use.

Each use case is different and things depend upon your cost analysis and how much you need. We have these firewalls in different avenues over about 30 different sites.

The biggest lesson from using the solution is being agile which has included learning to understand how to use the ASDM and figuring out how to configure everything—the little nuances—and what can and can't be done on the CLI.

These firewalls, along with the upcoming Firepower that they're being replaced by, are going to be very good assets for two-factor authentication and VPN access.

We are using it for security on everything from small customers to big data centers.

It is stable. We saw benefit from this in just a few days.

Cisco AnyConnect is my favorite. It is awesome. It also exists on Firepower and newer things.

Cisco ASA is starting to get old and Firepower is taking over. All the good things happening are with Firepower. Everything that I could wish for is in Firepower. We will probably not be doing too many new installations of ASAs since Firepower is mostly taking over.

I have been using it for 15 to 20 years.

It is stable and secure. There are a few bugs, etc. Overall, we are very happy with it. We have never looked at anything else because it works so well. I would rate the stability as 10 out of 10. It is very good.

There is maintenance. We have to keep an eye out for software upgrades and forced changes to the configuration. We have a network operations team of 15 people who take care of these things from day to day.

The solution's scalability is very good.

We use it on customers who have two employees up to customers with 5,000 employees. It is also used for customers who have one site or several sites. It is all over the place

Cisco tech is always good and helpful. I would rate them as 10 out of 10.

Positive

I didn't use another solution previously.

All our deployments have been different. Some have been really easy and others have been really complex. It could go either way: some are complex and some are easy. The complex solutions could take days or a couple of weeks to deploy. Easy solutions take a day.

If it was a big project, there would be a pre-project identifying what we were going to do and making a plan for it, then we would realize that plan. If it was a smaller thing, we would just jump into it.

It was deployed in-house. Depending on the solution and its complexity, it could take a single person to a team of 20 people to deploy it.

Our return on investment is having a network that we don't need to think too much about. It works, and that is it.

Cisco is always expensive, but you get what you pay for. It is expensive for a reason. It is a good solution, and good solutions cost money.

AnyConnect is an extra license. If you want the IDS/IPS things, those are usually extra too.

I evaluated Check Point, Palo Alto, and Fortinet, but Cisco won the race. Since we were already running most of our other networking with Cisco, it felt natural to land on Cisco.

I would rate the solution as 10 out of 10.

We use it for perimeter and internal firewalls. We wanted a firewall with traffic inspection, packet analysis, and decryption.

Our deployment is on-prem and hybrid. We don't use it in the cloud as we use other vendors for that.

I'm not sure the firewall has improved our organization because a firewall is a must. It's something that you pick up and then trust. It just works for us.

Cisco is still catching up with its Firepower Next-Generation firewalls. It's naturally growing and getting better.

I've been using Cisco ASA Firewalls for 15 years.

It's stable.

It's used around the world. We have 20 data centers and each data center handles six offices. We have Cisco in every single location. If something new comes up, we'll increase our usage of the product.

Cisco's technical support is good.

Positive

We're a multi-vendor shop when it comes to firewalls, and we use Check Point and Palo Alto in addition to Cisco. We used to have Fortinet but that amounted to too many vendors.

When the Cisco product changed from legacy traffic inspection to the new Firepower it became a next-generation firewall. It was just a new product. That's why we decided to try it and stay with Cisco. It's like two different products: the legacy product and the new one. The legacy product was much simpler and the new one is, obviously, more complex.

I'm a designer, so I don't do racking and stacking, but I'm hands-on when it comes to configuration. I have used this product for years, so for me, it's not like adding a brand new product. It is just a matter of adding features, a hardware refresh. I wouldn't call it a challenge.

For maintenance, we have two to three network engineers involved.

The pricing of Cisco firewalls, in the security market, is fair. Their pricing of other products is questionable, but for firewalls, it's fine.

Compare Cisco ASA with other vendors' products and compare the features one-on-one. Pay special attention to the security portion, such as traffic inspection. That's probably the most important aspect. And then look at performance.

We are using it for our VPN. We have a remote VPN and then a VPLS connection. Overall, it is a pretty big design.

We were looking for an opportunity to integrate our Firepower with Cisco ASA.

We mainly have these appliances on the data center side and in our headquarters.

It did help my organization. The firewall pretty much covers most stuff. They have next-gen firewalls as well, which have more threat analysis and stuff like that. 

The firewall solution is really important, not just for our company, but for every organization. It keeps away threats trying to come into my organization.

With the pandemic, people began working from home. That was a pretty big move, having all our users working from a home. More capacity needed to be added to our remote VPN. ASA did this very well.

The most valuable features are the remote VPN and site-to-site VPN tunnels.

I use the solution to write policies and analyze the data coming in via the firewalls.

It can be improved when it comes to monitoring. Today, the logs from the firewalls could be improved a bit more without integrating with other devices.

I would like to see more identity awareness.

I have been using it for over six years.

The stability is pretty good. They are keeping up the good work and making updates to the current platform. 

The support is good. They have been there every time that we need them. I would rate them as nine out of 10.

Positive

We have used Check Point and Palo Alto. We are still using those but for more internal stuff. For external use, we are using the Cisco client.

The initial deployment was straightforward. We have worldwide data centers. For one data center, it took three days from design to implementation. 

It was a self-deployment. It took eight people to deploy.

It was pretty good and not expensive on the subscription side. Cisco is doing a good job on this.

We also evaluated Zscaler, which is more cloud-based. It was pretty new and has a lack of support on the system side.

They have been keeping up by adding more features to the next-gen and cooperating with other vendors.

I would rate this solution as nine out of 10. It is pretty good compared to its competitors. Cisco is doing well. They have kept up their old traditional routing and fiber policies while bringing on new next-gen features.

We use it as a security solution. It is our firewall.

We run three data centers and have three ASAs at each data center.

It is pretty user-friendly and straightforward to use.

It is secure and very reliable.

I like the heartbeat between the two devices that we have. Because if something fails, it immediately fails over.

I have been using ASAs for 15 years at two different companies.

Cybersecurity resilience has been outstanding because it is very stable. There are not a whole lot of upgrades that we need to do for the firmware.

Four engineers support it. From time to time, there are firmware upgrades that we need to keep up to date with. Sometimes, we need to run debugs to figure out what's going on with it, and if it needs a patch, then we will figure it out. Usually, Cisco has been really good about getting us that.

Scalability is actually pretty exponential. In the grand scheme of things, we are a small network. We only have 15,000 subscribers. However, if we need to expand, it is reasonable.

The TAC is always very helpful. We pay for Tier 1 support, so we get whatever we need from them. They always give us a solution. If they can't give us an answer that day, they get back to us within at least 24 hours with a solution or fix. I have never had a problem with the TAC. I would rate them as 10 out of 10.

Positive

We haven't really used anything different. The only thing that we run inline with Cisco ASAs is Barracuda Networks. We kind of run that in tandem with this firewall, and it works really well.

We wanted to integrate Firepower with our solution, but it didn't have the capability to accommodate our bandwidth since they only had two 10 gig interfaces on the box. We run way more than that through our network because we are a service provider, providing Internet to our customers.

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I would rate the solution as eight out of 10.