Cisco Secure Firewall Reviews

We use the solution to secure our external software application and user access through different ports.

URL filtering is valuable.

The virtualization aspect has room for improvement.

The scalability has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for three and a half years.

The solution is stable.

I give the scalability a one out of ten.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The price is good.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

Previously, our customers had to always utilize hand-to-hand delivery. Now, they are able to move completely to a secure digital method. They use a strictly dark fiber optics connection from a central location to the endpoint.

Our clients have been able to consolidate infrastructure products such as Talus for hardware encryption and Dell EMC for D2D de-duplication and backup.

FMC could be improved because management with FMC is quite difficult compared to using Firepower web-based management.

We've been selling Cisco Firepower for a year.

Our clients feel that Cisco has proven stability in enterprise networking, routers, and ASA firewall security.

We are very confident with Cisco's technical support and would give them a ten out of ten.

Positive

Previously, we sold Check Point and Palo Alto.

We choose to sell Cisco because it has been approved by NATO. Our clients use a strictly offline infrastructure, and there were significant issues with Check Point. In addition, we have good support from the local Cisco office, and they also suggested that the end user goes with Cisco.

As a Cisco Secure Firewall reseller, the value we bring is very good support. You will not get the same level of support from some other vendors. For instance,  Palo Alto and Check Point don't have direct support like Cisco. They have third-party support. Thus, you may get a response only when you escalate the issue to the third tier of the service level. With Cisco, everything is resolved within a day.

The initial setup is straightforward because most network engineers have worked with Cisco. Cisco invested in universities, and as a result, 40% of the network experience of students is with Cisco.

Our clients are mostly financial institutions and have strict policies that do not allow personal data on external clouds outside the country. As a result, they mostly use an on-premises or hybrid cloud deployment model.

We are currently having our customers switch from the 2000 to the 3000 series.

The price is not too high, but the subscription is a little bit high. We compared the activation of Cisco and Fortinet, and when we activated the whole portfolio of the UTM of Fortinet, the speed was reduced. We tested the same situation with the Cisco 2140 series, and there was no reduction in speed.

When you're evaluating the solution, take a look at the customer reviews.

We have had no issues with Cisco Secure Firewall, and I would rate it at nine on a scale from one to ten.

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.

Our primary use cases for this solution are as a traditional firewall, VPN system, IPS, and for URL filtering.

I think that the firewall feature is the most valuable to me as it is one of the oldest features for this solution. We also appreciate how stable the VPN is.

I have a lot of difficulties with the solution's Firewall Management Center (FMC) and the GUI. Neither is responsive enough and should be improved.

My organization has been using Cisco Secure Firewall for more than 10 years. 

My opinion is that this solution is quite stable.

We encounter tech issues often. Sometimes it's really good to work with the tech engineer, but sometimes it can be really frustrating that it's slow to go through the email chat and everything. It depends on the engineer you get.

Positive

I have had difficulties with the implementation of this solution. When I first encountered this solution, I had difficulties bringing it up and configuring it, but this was maybe due to the fact that back then it was a new technology. It is possible that I would have an easier time with it right now. 

I would say that this solution did help free up staff. Today, and even during COVID, a lot of customers are interested in VPN solutions and this demand will only keep increasing. I work from home mostly and the solution saves me two hours per day.

I do want to stress that this solution saves our organization time. We have 13 engineers in our company and even more staff in other departments and they also have the opportunity to work from home and with this, they save a lot of time. We plan on buying a smaller office thanks to this and this too will save a lot of money for the company.

The reason we chose Cisco is that some of my colleagues partnered with the provider when they came to Hungary, so they have been working with these solutions for a long time.

I do not have experience with the Cisco migration tool, but my colleagues do and they are really happy with it and its ease of use.

I would rate this solution a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 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 use them for firewall purposes. We use the small ones with the partners for the services they need, such as VPN and security.

Their performance is most valuable.

The stability could be better because we have a lot of issues with the stability of Cisco Firepower.

I've been using Cisco firewalls for 20 years.

We have a lot of issues with the stability of Cisco Firepower.

It depends on the model. We are hitting some issues with scalability. It's getting very expensive to scale out.

They sometimes take too long and don't fix the issue quickly, but eventually, it is fixed. I'd rate their support a nine out of ten.

Positive

We have been using different Cisco firewalls for a long time. We are currently using Cisco Firepower and Cisco ASA. Cisco Firepower is better than Cisco ASA, but stability is an issue.

It's now easier than before. You can have virtual appliances.

We mostly have it on-prem, but some customers want on-prem virtual.

We considered using a different solution such as Check Point or Huawei. We chose to stay with Cisco because we're experienced with Cisco and because of the support.

The old versions or models saved us time, but the newer ones take our time. Overall, I'd rate Cisco Secure Firewall an eight out of ten.

We have consulting engineers at the backend. We have our own SOC. We leverage Cisco solutions, and we add our services on top of them.

We also sell FTDs and Cisco firewalls ranging from the old models to the new models. We have Firepower from series 1000 to 4000.

A client of ours has a campus network. They're running all of their offices, branches, and multiple sites. They are managing all of their traffic through one point, and that point is secured.

It integrates with various Cisco security portfolios and products, and there is an easy and seamless integration for building a complete security framework for our customers.

It's a great intelligent platform where we can pull all the security insights.

The technology is evolving, and it's no more a stateful firewall, which is only for blocking certain ports. A lot of features, such as anti-malware protection and URL filtering, have been integrated into the firewall and extended to the network. 

We see a lot of vendors in the market with a lot of niche products. I understand that it's difficult to cover everything, but making it more open for integration with other vendors would be a value add for Cisco. Usually, the case I see with my customers is that they always have a multi-vendor setup for security. They have many products. When they have multiple products, each product does something very specific standalone, but there is always a challenge in how to correlate all these solutions or make them as one framework for securing the network.

Their support is perfect. When I used to be an engineer, Cisco's tech support was such a great help. Everything is well-defined in terms of services and SLAs as compared to other vendors. Cisco is doing a great job across all portfolios. This is what makes Cisco stand out as a vendor as compared to the rest. I'd rate their support a nine out of ten.

Positive

We had another product previously. All the vendors are doing a great job in security, but Cisco has such a big portfolio, and as a reseller, it's easy for us to be a one-stop shop for the customer covering wired and wireless networks, endpoint security, and so on. That's the main advantage of Cisco nowadays.

These firewalls are deployed on-premises. We offer all the latest versions. We always advise customers to be updated with the latest technology. That's the aim of our business, but I have not been a part of the deployment.

My role is mainly technical, but on the business side, there would be an ROI in terms of seeing the clients happy.

Our clients are happy. They always get an update about the roadmap and the features that Cisco is releasing down the road. Cisco is always ahead of others not only in terms of security but also in terms of portfolio.

Everything comes with a price. Security is something on which you cannot compromise because the loss could be massive. I see CTOs and CSOs spending a lot on that. Cisco is not really cheap, but there is great technology behind it.

The main value we add as Cisco resellers is our consulting services. We have consulting engineers on the backend and we have our own SOC. We leverage Cisco, and on top of that, we add our services, which makes it a great collaboration between every successful system integrator, reseller, and vendor.

I'd advise asking for a demo and getting involved or engaged with the product to see its value. Don't just read about it.

Overall, I'd rate Cisco Secure Firewall a nine out of ten.

We are using these firewalls for edge security or different zones of security. We use them throughout the whole organization, but they vary in size, depending on if it's a small office in Spain or a large office in another country. We have offices in many countries.

It saves time. It protects us from experiencing big or small attacks. If we are vulnerable to attacks, it would take us a lot of time to fix that and put out all the fires. Hopefully, we won't need that when we have several layers of security.

We feel that we can trust the security, and our assets and business are well protected. We need to have trust in it, but we also see that it works. We have a security company that has tested that it works.

They have already improved it to some degree. It has become easier, but I've not drilled down much myself. I mostly use CLI, but I can see that it's a little bit more GUI-based. So, improvement is already there. It's a good thing that we now have GUI-based control over the details, and that would be the way to go.

It integrates with other security products from Cisco, but sometimes, there can be glitches or errors.

I have been using Cisco firewalls for the last 20 years. We are now mostly using FPRs, but we also have some old Cisco firewalls that we need to change to newer technologies.

It has been a while since I used it myself. My experience was good. You get the correct engineer for the task. I'd rate them an eight out of ten.

Positive

We have firewalls from other vendors, but we will be moving over to Cisco. When we have the same vendor, it would take less time to train people to do their job because there is one technology rather than four or five different ones.

I was involved in its deployment, but that was a few years ago. It was not an in-depth technical installation; it was more of a physical installation. It was easy. We are a big company, so we need to plan the downtime and get approval from the business to take down systems and upgrade them. 

I'd rate Cisco Secure Firewall a seven out of ten.