Cisco Secure Firewall Reviews

This solution is running behind the infrastructure and behind the hypervisor itself. We have two firewalls and two nodes in the cluster environment.

This solution is suitable for both cloud and hybrid-cloud deployments. I have implemented a cloud project, and one hybrid as well. The hybrid was between a public and a local cloud.

The Cisco security rules are very strict and very strong.

I like the Cisco ASDM (Adaptive Security Device Manager), which is the configuration interface for the Cisco firewall.

When comparing this solution to other products, the Fortinet UTM bundle has some better features in their most receive product. For example, there are better configuration features, the Sandbox is better, and so is the web censoring. These are currently in the Cisco solution, but they are better in Fortinet. The Sandbox and the Web Censoring in this solution need to be improved.

This solution has to be more secure from the cloud. The current trend is moving towards private cloud and hybrid cloud, so it is very important to consider the cloud security aspects when the solution is installed. This includes things such as IoT and the existence of user connectivity on the cloud.

The stability of this solution is great. The Cisco name and hardware are enough. The product is used in tier four data centers, so it is very trusted and very dependable. If you compare Cisco to others, the high industry and high workload have gone to Cisco. Stability is very, very high.

This is a scalable solution.

In terms of the number of users, it depends on the customer. A small customer may have less than twenty users. A larger customer can be complicated by having different branches with different users and different security rules. This means that you can reach up to the hundreds. 

Technical support for this solution is good. Most of the technicians are technical people that have certifications such as CCNA, CCNP, CCIE, and CCISP. I think that they are well knowledged and well educated about the Cisco culture, industry, and products.

The Cisco distributors are everywhere, even if I'm speaking about the Middle East. I can find distributors everywhere in Dubai. Here in Dubai, the support is great, including for firmware updates, and even replacing the hardware when the firewalls crash.

The initial setup of this solution is straightforward.

The deployment does not take much time. It is just a matter of installing the firewall and configuring the basic system to get it up and running. That's it.

There are, of course, different models of deployment, like deploying customers, that have to be considered. However, for the most part, deployment time is not an issue at all.

The pricing for Cisco products is higher than others, but Cisco is a very good, strong, and stable technology. If we compare Huawei or FortiGate or others then the prices are lower, but the higher Cisco price is acceptable because of the stability, trust, and reliability.

This is my first recommendation for firewalls, and my second recommendation is Fortinet FortiGate.

This is the number one firewall product that I recommend.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We primarily use this solution for network security.

This product has increased the visibility in our network.

The most valuable feature of this solution is its ability to integrate vertically.

There used to be information displayed about the packets in a module called Packet Flow, but it is no longer there. In order to accomplish the same thing you now have to wade through lots of information in the Syslogs.

This is a highly stable solution.

This solution is very scalable.

Technical support for this solution is good. The response times meet our expectations and we have not had any issues.

We have always been using this same solution, but previous versions. We update them in trying to keep up with the amount of data coming through, such as more streaming.

The initial setup of this solution was straightforward. We had the proper documentation to reference.

We deployed this solution in-house.

I don't work with the numbers, but I can say that it's great for security and has improved our effectiveness at the office.

The cost of this solution is high.

We did evaluate another option, but we stayed with the Cisco solution because it's trustworthy.

This is a good product from a trustworthy vendor, but it is not perfect.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I deployed the Cisco Secure Firewall at the Internet Edge for the most part.

We use the solution for deep packet inspection, Internet Edge functionality, IDS, and IDP.

The solution’s GUI could be better.

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for six years.

Cisco Secure Firewall is a scalable solution that allows you to add capacity.

The solution’s initial setup is straightforward.

The solution’s pricing is competitive.

I rate the solution's ease of management and configuration an eight out of ten. I would recommend Cisco Secure Firewall to other users based on what they want it for and a combination of price point and supportability.

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 use ASA firewalls to limit traffic between the networks.

We use an on-premises deployment model.

I like that it is easy to change the settings.

Cisco ASDM is a problem because it is old.

I've been working with it for a year, but my company has been using Cisco firewalls for 15 years.

We use Cisco Secure Firewall ASA 5506 and 5508.

Cisco Secure Firewall ASA's stability is good.

I recently had a case with technical support that took a couple of weeks to resolve. We use Cisco Smart Licensing and are not connected to the net. It was a big problem to get it to work. Cisco's technical support did not know how it worked, and I had to tell them how it worked. We haven't had interactions with technical support where there were more positive outcomes.

On a scale from one to ten with ten being the best, I would rate technical support at two.

Negative

The initial deployment is easy for this solution.

Overall, I would rate this solution at seven out of ten because Cisco ASDM needs to be updated.

We use them for VPNs and as firewalls, of course. We wanted to protect the network and have secure communication with our peers.

They secure the network and ensure our network is always available.

They are easy to maintain.

I would like to see them add more next-generation features so that you don't need a lot of appliances to do just one task. It should be a single solution.

I have been using Cisco ASA Firewalls for nine years.

In terms of stability, it is a really good product and platform. Overall, it's great.

It's not really cost-effective when it comes to scalability. It is a really expensive product if you go to the modular firewalls. You need to get new appliances to get new features.

Tech support is good but it could be improved on some points.

Neutral

I have used Fortinet, Check Point, and Palo Alto firewalls. Most of those solutions have everything integrated into them so you don't need multiple appliances. You get a single solution for your network. It would be better to have a centralized firewall, from Cisco, that can do everything.

The initial deployment was straightforward. The last implementation of an ASA took us about one to two weeks.

Our implementation strategy was to have good architecture and to have all the requirements for the project beforehand. Everything went really smoothly because of that.

We needed four or five people for deployment, including field techs and network engineers.

For clean and easy protection of an enterprise, it is a really good product. It can be also deployed as a virtualized solution in data centers.

We use it for content management and filtering. We wanted to separate DMZ traffic from normal customer traffic. We were also looking to set up portals for outside interests that needed to come in. We have our firewall set up for VPN and, with COVID breaking out, that became more important. We also use it for remote access control.

It improved our security. It keeps the outsiders on the outside and enables us to monitor the content that's going out from within the organization.

The ASDM (Adaptive Security Device Manager) which is the graphical user interface, works out, and Cisco keeps it current.

Cisco still has a lot of work to do. You can convert an ASA over to a Firepower, but the competitors, like Palo Alto and Juniper, are coming in. And believe it or not, they are a little bit more intuitive. Cisco has a little bit more work to do. They're playing catch up.

There is also content filtering. The bad actors are so smart nowadays, that they can masquerade as the data for a given port, and they can actually transfer data through that port. The only thing that the older firewalls know about is the port. They can't read the data going across it. That's where content filtering comes in, like Palo Alto has, with next-generation firewalls.

I have been using Cisco ASA Firewalls from the beginning, when they moved over from the PIX.

They're pretty reliable. Even from a hardware perspective, we haven't lost any power supplies or the like. An ASA works until we remove it. The maintenance is very minimal. 

It's very scalable. Every organization sets it up differently, but we've been able to perform upgrades with minimal service disruption. We have ASAs in multiple locations.

Being a government-supported organization, the technical support is great. They send us equipment. It's top-notch.

Positive

Cisco has been a leader in firewalls, and the US government primarily chooses Cisco first, before it chooses competitors.

We have a variety of providers from Juniper to Palo Alto, et cetera. But the Cisco GUI is pretty consistent, so most individuals catch on. But when it comes to the Firepower, we're going to need some more training on that, as we're upgrading and moving to the Firepower.

I like the ASA product, maybe because I'm an old guy, more so than the transition to the Firepower. The ASAs have worked ever since the PIX days and they work very reliably. Even with the upgrades, your rules don't change. That's true even with a major OS upgrade.

Things are changing and the ASAs are becoming dated. People want content filtering and so on now.

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.