Cisco Secure Firewall Reviews

Some branches are joint through Cisco ASA 5500-X VPNs. Executives or employees are connected via AnyConnect.

It joins all branches and permits employees to work outside their offices, but everything is based on high securities standards (PCI compliance).

• Reliability
• Robustness
• Security features
• High encryption, hashing, and integrity support
• Support
• High performance

Multiple WAN connections: Even though you can implement more than one interface to outside connections, it is lacking on load balances, etc.

The use case has been for the banking sector, for one of our banking customers. According to them, it's working perfectly.

Monitoring, of course - the dashboard. It enables you to see what is happening.

It's lacking one feature: VPN. That is a feature we're looking for. Otherwise, the new devices have very good support, and the performance is quite good.

Also, the 2100 Series lacks a DDoS feature. If they could add that to those platforms, that would be good.

So far, since we installed it, there have been no issues.

In terms of scalability, it is really expensive. It is scalable, but when it comes to pricing, the upgrading is a bit high.

It's not straightforward. You need to know what you're doing, you need to be trained. I don't know for other vendors whether it's the same issue, but for Cisco you have to be trained on the system.

Check Point and Fortigate. Generally, our customers choose Firepower because they've seen the system work somewhere before, and they see it is stable and working perfectly. Those are the reasons they opt for Firepower.

There are other solutions, like Fortigate, which are very good solutions, and cheaper for the customer. Even the support via subscription is favorable, in terms of pricing. I would really advise the customer to do some research first and come up with the best solution for their needs

I rate Firepower as an eight out of 10. It is a good solution but it is expensive compared to other products, like Fortigate. Still, some of our customers do prefer Firepower over the others.

My confidence continues to build upon using Cisco firewalls. I prefer to use Cisco firewalls to any others. 

Antivirus features must be integrated for end user security. They must be increased in the next version along with audit and restriction for the incoming user. Security must be increased when a new user connects over the LAN and an alarm must be generated.

We use it for our university department firewall. It replaced our 12-year-old Cisco ASA 5520, which used to protect web servers, mail servers, SVN repositories, office computers, research computers, and computer labs. It was used for blocking the internet for exams. It was not used for IPS, so we did not buy the new threat protection or malware license. We connected it to a Layer 3 switch for faster Inter-VLAN routing.

It works better through specs than our old ASA 5520. It seems to perform the same functionality unless you buy the additional threat protection licenses, so this is a disappointment. I found a bug where the ASDM could not be used with Windows 2016, but it did work with Windows 10.  

• Most of same old ASA 5520 config could be used for the new 5516-X model. The ASDM interface is improved and can also be configured to the Firepower settings. 
• I am used to the ASA syntax, therefore it is quite easy to make up new rules. I have found that DNS doctoring rules are useful, and I am not sure how other firewalls handle the issue of internal versus external DNS, so this was a reason to keep the same type of firewall.
• Customizing logging event of syslog to feed into Splunk is very useful for management and monitoring just for the importance events instead of a huge stream of thousands of unneeded events.
• I found it quite easy to block computers from the internet, e.g, in a computer lab with students doing an exam using software for the course when needed.
• I use access to a list to block IPs which have attacked our web servers on the outside interface, since I do not have IPS.
• I found that setting up rules for HTTPS and SSH access to the management interface are straightforward, including setting the cypher type.
• It is very useful to use the command line interface for modifying or adding to the config because sometimes the ASDM interface is hard to find when the setting is more complicated.
• The text config file is great to have, to know what is in the config, instead of having to check every setting in the GUI.
• While the CLI is used the most, sometimes the ASDM is faster and easier to use to set some settings.
  

• It is confusing to have two management interfaces, e.g., ASDM and Firepower Management Center. It would be nice to have a Windows program instead of a virtual appliance for the Firepower Management Center.  The ASA and Firepower module seem redundant, not sure which one to set the rules in, but maybe that was for backward compatibility. I am not sure that is very useful.
• It is surprising that you need to have a virtual appliance for the Firepower Management Center. It is not good if you have to setup a VMware server just for it.
  
• 10Gb interfaces should be available on more models. 
  

ASA pricing seems high compared to other firewalls, such as the Sophos XG models. 

The licensing features are getting more complicated. These should be simplified. 

I am using Cisco ASA as the firewall for my business to guard the boundary of my business. It has been very helpful in my sector of media with my clients, essentially focusing on how secure their data is, especially when we are working on a few projects which involve multiple citations across Europe. 

Our content, which is the main asset for our firm, is pretty elusive behind the firewall of Cisco ASA.

It has improved my client's trust. 

VPN load balancing: This has been particularly essential for my connections to integrate via multiple time zones.

I needed to be well-versed with all the command lines for Cisco ASA in order to fully utilize it. I missed this info and wasted some operational costs. I would like to advise others to please be wary from the start.

It was initially heavy on my pocket, but it soon actualised its worth.

We use it as a firewall and it has performed adequately.

It allows the securing of various network segments, based on use.

DMZ segmentation, and IDS and IPS.

It is fairly stable. However, Cisco suffers from some integration issues with other products, but this product, as a standalone, is fine. There is a problem with the Cisco Catalyst Switches in terms of assembling bursts and having them interact properly with the Cisco Firepower.

The scalability is good.

Tech support has been good.

We've been using Cisco. Prior to this it was Cisco ASA. This was the next evolution.

When selecting a vendor it is important that they have positive industry feedback, that they are a visionary leader.

I was involved in the initial set up and it was complex.

I give this solution a seven out of 10. Some of the tools are still a little bit difficult to use.