Cisco Secure Firewall Reviews

Cisco Secure Firewall is a next-generation firewall that can be used for various security applications. 

The advantage of using Cisco is its integration within the Cisco fabric, which allows for effective threat detection and mitigation.

Cisco could improve its score by developing more features that integrate seamlessly with various applications and investing in hardware acceleration to enhance performance.

The product is stable with minimal glitches or latency issues.

The solution is easy to install, requiring minimal expertise. Deployment time varies, but it can take about two days for a medium-sized company with 200-300 users to configure and install.

After five years of product usage, the high return on investment and low total cost of ownership can be observed.

Pricing depends on partnerships and certifications. The engineering team's certifications can qualify it for seven to eight percent discounts.

The platform's integration capabilities depend on the project context. In some cases, integrating Palo Alto may provide better performance, but Cisco can still be effective.

However, its classification in industry comparisons, such as those from Gartner, is lower than that of competitors like FortiGate and Palo Alto.

Overall, I rate it seven out of ten. 

Cisco Secure Firewall has impacted our cybersecurity cost efficiency.

The important features are IPS intrusion prevention, anti-malware, and anti-spam.

Cisco firewall needs experience with hardware. They should also enhance security antivirus, application detection, user detection, and ID detection. 

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for three years.

300 users are using this solution.

The support is good.

Positive

The initial setup is easy, but it takes some time to push the configurations. Also, it's a little complicated and not friendly to use. It is good only for IT and experienced people. 

The deployment took two months and a team of two to three people.

The pricing is average.

I recommend the solution to medium and enterprise customers since it is expensive. 

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

We deploy the firewall on the customer end and the customer can facilitate the VPN for their clients. We use Cisco Umbrella to secure their network and their endpoints.

We only work with Cisco products. We have been working with Cisco products for many years. In that way, we save time and we don't want to change to other vendors.

The security features are the most valuable. My customers find the security products very useful because nowadays there are many threats from the internet and other malicious users. The security products really help.

So far, Cisco Secure for securing infrastructure from end-to-end so that we can detect and remediate threats is good enough.

It should be easier for the IT management or the admin to configure products. For example, the firewall products are not very straightforward for many users. They should be easier to configure and should be more straightforward. 

Some competitors are very easy to configure, you don't need to spend a lot of time reading the documents and learning them.

I have been using Cisco products for ten years. 

The support is good. Sometimes it has a long waiting time. The waiting time depends on the products. For some products, for example, the Data Center solutions, you have to wait for an hour, even though they said that they escalated the case. 

Positive

The initial deployment should be more straightforward. It's not that straightforward at the moment.

The licensing is not good, it's confusing. I'm an engineer so I don't care about the actual price that much but the licensing part is confusing.

We've evaluated other solutions. We've been consulted to use competitors' products. There are things that are good with those competitors, but everything has two sides.

We choose Cisco because we are a Cisco partner, so we only recommend Cisco products. They believe in us, so we have a good relationship with them. 

I would rate Cisco Secure products an eight out of ten. 

My advice would be to use them. 

We mainly use it in the data center. We are obliged to use a firewall. It's a necessity.

It has helped in securing our infrastructure from end to end so that we can detect and remediate threats. There is another office in my company that does threat detection, but it has been helpful.

It hasn't freed up any time. We still have to manage the firewall. It's something we have to do.

All the features except IPS are valuable. IPS is not a part of my job.

It's already pretty good. In terms of functionality, there isn't much to improve. There could be more bandwidth and better interface speed.

I've been using Cisco firewalls for 20 years.

Its stability is very good.

It's better to have a higher speed. I'd rate it an eight out of ten in terms of scalability.

We have multiple locations and multiple departments. We are a big company, and we have a lot of remote sites. We have about 6,000 of them.

They are very good. From time to time, Cisco employees come to us and provide information about the latest features and new products. I'd rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

We have other firewalls, and it hasn't helped to consolidate other solutions. We have to use the Cisco firewall and other vendors because of internal law. We have to use two firewalls, one from vendor A and the other one from vendor B.

We went for Cisco because it's affordable. It's something you can trust. It's something you know. It's a valued product. 

I've been involved in configuring it and assessing and ensuring that the configuration is up to date and there are no bugs, etc.

Its initial setup is not at all complex. I've been working with Cisco firewalls for 20 years, so I know them very well. It's not complicated for me.

We have all deployment models. We have on-premises and cloud deployments. We have everything. I belong to a big organization.

We had a consultant for integrating the product. Our experience with the consultant was good.

The number of people required for deployment varies, but one person can deploy the solution. It's quite easy to implement. It doesn't require a lot of staff.

It requires normal maintenance.

It's affordable.

Try it. You will be happy. 

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

We use them in our data centers and on the client side. We have a small installation of Firepower in our main data center, and we are also using Cisco ASA firewalls. So, we have the old ASA platform and new Firepowers. 

It saves time because it's easy to operate and it's easy to add new zones or firewall rules. It's also easy to troubleshoot. It's a neat platform.

When I was managing these firewalls, I found them easy to understand, easy to deploy, and easy to maintain as compared to some of the other firewalls I have been involved with earlier. The opinion of my coworkers is that it's easy and quick to establish new zones, expand, and maintain.

I'm not very familiar with the largest Firepower models, but competitors like Palo Alto seem to have a more capable engine to do, for instance, TLS/SSL decryption. As I understand, Firepower doesn't let you export the decrypted traffic so that, for instance, the security department can look at the traffic or inspect traffic. It's all in the box. I've heard rumors that this is something Cisco is working on, but it isn't yet available.

We have been using Cisco firewalls for about 10 years. 

Its stability is good. We have a failover standby solution that works fairly well. It can have some improvements, but we are happy with it.

We had an issue where we had to install another cluster for the firewall because we went out of the capabilities on one of them. You need to analyze in advance how much your usage will grow in the future and you have to decide based on that. It's about adding more firewalls. We can scale in this way, and it's good.

Whenever I've used their tech support, they have been successful. They quickly pinpointed the problem and provided swift remediation for all the problems. My experience has been good. I'd rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

We decided to go for Firepower because we needed to expand, and we have a large installation of Cisco devices in our environment. It's 70% Cisco. We have one location where they are using Extreme equipment, but in that location also, we have Cisco firewalls. Having one vendor leads to ease of management. It's also easy in terms of competence. We have good knowledge of Cisco, so it's easy to maintain and operate a Cisco platform.

For network security, we have a central hub for all the external traffic. That is a huge load of traffic. On those applications, we are using Palo Alto. We have a mixed combination of Cisco and Palo Alto in our central locations.

Using Cisco firewalls has helped to eliminate or consolidate some of the tools and applications. We have some installations of AlgoSec to see what's going on or how the performance is, but we have, more or less, decided that we don't need them now because there is so much information that we can pull from CSM or FMC.

It's easy to deploy and maintain.

We have a partner for Cisco products. We have a contract with a new partner now for the SDA fabric on ACI.

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

Our clients use Cisco Secure Firewall to protect them from data breaches. They also use it for site-to-site VPN connections and remote access.

The most valuable features are remote access, site-to-site VPN, and next-generation features.

The management of the firewalls could be improved because there are a lot of bugs.

I've been selling this solution for three years.

Most of our clients have deployed the solution on-premises and are slowly migrating to hybrid and to SaaS models.

When you configure it, it's very stable.

Cisco Secure Firewall is a scalable solution.

Cisco's technical support is good.

We used to sell Palo Alto firewalls and switched to Cisco because it was more cost-effective for clients.

As a Cisco reseller, I try to give our customers the best possible solutions for their problems.

The initial setup is straightforward for smaller organizations, but it can be complex when companies are larger.

Migrating certain components of a client's previous firewall configurations to Cisco Secure Firewall with the migration tool is simple, easy, and quick. However, it would be really nice if we could migrate complete ASA configurations to FTD with the migration tool and not just the policies and objects.

Maintenance-wise, we troubleshoot and make changes if required.

I deployed it myself with, and perhaps with one person from the client's end.

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

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.

The Cisco Secure Firewall is placed between the separate VLANs. It's a common and effective method of protecting VLANs against internal risks such as Checkpoints and external parameters.

It certainly saves time. You can detect anything if you have nothing. This is why, in the end, it saves time.

Collaboration with other Cisco products such as ISE and others is the most valuable feature.

it is difficult to say what it needs in terms of what needs to be improved. I don't work with it on a daily basis.

I haven't heard anything negative about it.

While this applies to all vendors, pricing can be always lower. In my opinion, Cisco is the most expensive. 

The pricing can be reduced.

Our organization has been working with Cisco Secure Firewall for three to five years.

There are no complaints about performance or stability.

There are no issues with the scalability. It works fine.

It is simple to upgrade.

We only need one person to maintain the product.

My colleague has experience with technical support. I'm not sure if it was with Cisco's technical support directly or through Conscia in between.

This was the first solution we were using.

We are primarily Cisco housed, and I believe that practically everything is Cisco. 

It might be part of the contract for a small fee. I don't think there's any particular reason.

I am familiar with CheckPoint, as well as Microsoft ISA.

We have an implementation partner.

It's a hands-on job with a colleague of mine.

I don't know if it is particularly easy or not.

There was also some learning involved, such as knowing the traffic. This took some time. It took six months to deploy.

With the implementation partner, everything was written out. It was the best-case scenario for us.

We did not use the Cisco Firewall Migration tool.

Conscia assisted us with implementation.

They are one of the best in the Netherlands.

I am not aware of the pricing. 

It's an all-in-one contract.

I would rate Cisco Secure Firewall an eight out of ten.