Cisco Secure Firewall Reviews

We have two devices in Active-Active mode, acting as a perimeter firewall. It is the main firewall that filters traffic in and out of our organization. This is where there are many rules and the mapping is done to the outside world. We use it as a next-generation firewall, for intrusion detection and prevention.

It's also linked also to Firepower, the software for network policies that acts as our network access control. 

I find it very useful when we're publishing some of our on-prem servers to the public. I am able to easily do the NATing so that they are published. It also comes in very handy for aspects of configuration. It has made things easy, especially for me, as at the time I first started to use it I was a novice.

I have also added new requirements that have come into our organization. For example, we integrated with a server that was sitting in an airport because we needed to display the flight schedule to our customers. We needed to create the access rules so that the server in our organization and the server in the other organization could communicate, almost like creating a VPN tunnel. That experience wasn't as painful as I thought it would be. It was quite dynamic. If we had not been able to do that, if the firewall didn't have that feature, linking the two would have been quite painful.

In addition, we have two devices configured in an Active-Active configuration. That way, it's able to load balance in case one firewall is overloaded. We've tested it where, if we turn off one, the other appliance is able to seamlessly pick up and handle the traffic. It depends on how you deploy the solution. Because we are responsible for very critical, national infrastructure, we had to ensure we have two appliances in high-availability mode.

I love the ASDM (Adaptive Security Device Manager) which is the management suite. It's a GUI and you're able to see everything at a glance without using the command line. There are those who love the CLI, but with ASDM it is easier to see where everything is going and where the problems are.

The ASDM makes it very easy to navigate and manage the firewall. You can commit changes with it or apply them before you save them to be sure that you're doing the right thing. You can perform backups easily from it.

It also has a built-in Packet Tracer tool, ping, and traceroute, all in a graphical display. We are really able to troubleshoot very quickly when there are issues. With the Packet Tracer, you're able to define which packet you're tracing, from which interface to which other one, and you're able to see an animation that shows where the traffic is either blocked or allowed. 

In addition, it has a monitoring module, which also is a very good tool for troubleshooting. When you fill in the fields, you can see all the related items that you're looking for. In that sense, it gives you deep packet inspection. I am happy with what it gives me.

It also has a dashboard when you log in, and that gives you a snapshot of all the interfaces, whether they're up or down, at a glance. You don't need to spend a lot of time trying to figure out issues.

Our setup is quite interesting. We have a Sophos firewall that sits as a bridge behind the Cisco ASA. Once traffic gets in, it's taken to the Sophos and it does what it does before the traffic is allowed into the LAN, and it is a bridge out from the LAN to the Cisco firewall. The setup may not be ideal, but it was deployed to try to leverage and maximize what we already have. So far, so good; it has worked.

The Cisco doesn't come with SD-WAN capabilities which would allow me to load balance two or three ISPs. You can only configure a backup ISP, not necessarily an Active-Active, where it's able to load balance and shift traffic from one interface to the other.

When I joined the organization, we only had one ISP. We've recently added a second one for redundancy. The best scenario would be to load balance. We plan to create different traffic for different kinds of users. It's capable of doing that, but it would have been best if it could have done that by itself, in the way that Sophos or Cisco Meraki or even Fortigate can.

A feature that would allow me to load balance among multiple ISPs, especially since we have deployed it as a perimeter firewall, would be a great addition. While I'm able to configure it as a backup, the reality is that in a modern workplace, you can't rely on one service provider for the internet and your device should be able to give you optimal service by load balancing all the connections, all the IPSs you have, and giving you the best output.

I know Cisco has deployed other devices that are now capable of SD-WAN, but that would have been great on the 5516 as well. It has been an issue for us.

I have been using Cisco ASA Firewalls since November 2019.

Cisco products are quite resilient. We've had problems due to power failures and our UPSs not being maintained and their batteries being drained. With the intermittent on and off, the Cisco ASAs, surprisingly, didn't have any issue at all. The devices really stood on their own. We didn't even have any issue in terms of losing configs. I'm pretty satisfied with that.

I've had experience with some of the new Cisco devices and they're quite sensitive to power fluctuations. The power supply units can really get messed up. But the ASA 5516 is pretty resilient. We've deployed in a cluster, but even heating up, over-clocking, or freezing, has not happened.

We also have the Sophos as a bridge, although it's only a single device, it is not in a cluster or in availability mode, but we've had issues with it freezing. We have had to reboot it.

It's easy to scale it up and extend it to other operations. When we merged with another company, we were able to extend its usage to serve the other company. It became the main firewall for them as well. It works and it's scalable.

It's the main perimeter firewall for all traffic. Our organization has around 1,000 users spread across the country. It's also our MPLS solution for the traffic for branch networks. It's able to handle at least 1,000 connections simultaneously, give or take.

Prior to my joining the organization, there was a ransomware attack that encrypted data. It necessitated management to invest in network security.

When I joined the project to upgrade the network security infrastructure in our organization, I found that there was a legacy ASA that had been decommissioned, and was being replaced by the 5516. Being a type-for-type, it was easy to pick up the configs and apply them to the new one.

When I joined this organization, the solution had just been deployed. I was tasked with administrating and managing it. Managing it has been quite a learning curve. Prior to that, I had not interacted with ASAs at all. It was a deep-dive for me. But it has been easy to understand and learn. It has a help feature, a floating window where you can type in whatever you're looking for and it takes you right there.

We had a subsidiary that reverted back to our organization. That occurred just after I started using the 5516 and I needed to configure the integration with the subsidiary. That was what I would consider to be experience in terms of deployment because we had to integrate with Meraki, which is what the subsidiary was using.

The process wasn't bad. It was relatively easy to integrate, deploy, and extend the configurations to the other side, add "new" VLANs, et cetera. It wasn't really difficult. The ASDM is a great feature. It was easy to navigate, manage, and deploy. As long as you take your backups, it's good.

It was quite a big project. We had multiple solutions, including Citrix ADC and ESA email security among others. The entire project from delivery of equipment to commissioning of the equipment took from July to November. That includes the physical setup and racking.

Two personnel are handling the day-to-day maintenance.

We have seen ROI with the Cisco ASA, especially because we've just come to the end of the three-year subscription. We are now renewing it. We've not had any major security incident that was a result of the firewall not being able to detect or prevent something. That's a good return on investment.

Our device, the 5516, has been declared end-of-life. The cost of upgrading is almost equivalent to deploying a new appliance. But having had it for three years, it has served its purpose.

As with any security solution, the return on investment must be looked at in terms of what could happen. If you have a disaster or a cyber attack, that is when you can really see the cost of not having this. 

Cost-wise, it's in the same range as its competitors. It's likely cheaper than Palo Alto. Cisco is affordable for a large organization of 500 to 1,000 users and above.

You need a Cisco sales partner or engineer to explain to you the licensing aspects. Out-of-the-box, Firepower is the module that you use to handle your network access policy for the end-user. It's a separate module that you need to include, it's not bundled. You need to ensure you have that subscription.

A Cisco presales agent is key for you to know what you need. Once they understand your use cases, they'll be able to advise you about all the licenses you need. You need guidance. I wouldn't call it straightforward.

With any Cisco product, you need a service level agreement and an active contract to maximize the support and the features. We have not had an active service contract. We just had the initial, post-implementation support.

As a result, we've wasted a bit of time in terms of figuring out how best to troubleshoot things here and there. It would be best to ensure you are running an active contract with SLAs, at least with a Cisco partner. 

Also, we were not able to use its remote VPN capabilities, Cisco AnyConnect, because of a licensing limitation.

I would encourage people to go for the newer version of Cisco ASA. 

When you are procuring that device, be sure to look at the use cases you want it for. Are you also going to use it to serve as your remote VPN and, in that case, do you need more than the out-of-the-box licenses it comes with? How many concurrent users will you need? That is a big consideration when you're purchasing the device. Get a higher version, something that is at least three years ahead of being declared end-of-life or end-of-support.

We use it for data center security for both the north-south and east-west.

With Firepower, you get the next-generation functionality and the next-generation firewall features. Traditionally, when you have a layer three access list, it's really tricky to get the flexibility you need to allow staff to do what they need to do with their apps without being too prescriptive with security. When Firepower comes in, you get much more flexibility and deeper security. They were mutually exclusive previously but are not so much anymore.

We have, probably, 20,000 to 25,000 end users going through the firewalls. Physical locations-wise, there are four data centers in Northern Europe, and the other locations are in the public cloud, that is, Azure and AWS.

It has improved the organization because we now have more flexibility with deployment, and we can deploy solutions quickly and more securely. As a result, we're improving the time to implement change.

The deep packet inspection is useful, but the most useful feature is application awareness. You can filter on the app rather than on a static TCP port.

Licensing is complex, and I'd like it to be simplified. This is an area for improvement.

If we could create a Firepower solution that became like an SD-WAN or a SASE solution in a box, then perhaps we could exploit that on remote sites. We've already kind of got that with Meraki, but if we could pull out some of the features from ASA Firepower and make those available in SD-WAN in SASE, then it would be pretty cool.

I've been using this solution for probably six years as Firepower and for about 10 to 15 years before Firepower came in.

It's very stable. We've seen very few issues that aren't human-related. If I were to rate the stability, it would have to be 10 out of 10 because we haven't seen any failures.

It's tough to scale because it's a firewall appliance, but in terms of the ability to deploy it virtually, it's inherently scalable. That is, as far as a firewall can scale, it's very scalable.

I'd give technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

We used Check Point previously, and the reason we switched to Firepower was that it would be a common vendor and a commonly supported solution by our team. The consistency with Cisco is why we went with Firepower.

Our deployment model is both public cloud and private cloud. The physical devices are on-premises at a data center or virtual in an on-premises data center, and the network virtual appliances are in distributed public cloud platforms including AWS, Azure, Google, and private cloud.

We have between 20 and 50 people who are responsible for the maintenance of the solution through a various mix of ticketing systems and troubleshooting. Their responsibilities are operating the platform, that is, making sure that the connectivity works, analyzing the security, the posture that those firewalls are protecting, and implementing change.

There was no specific investment to make because there was a requirement to implement data center security. That's certainly been fulfilled, and the benefits now versus those previously are time to deliver change and having a more secure, rounded posture. Both of these are being realized.

The pricing was fairly reasonable. It was competitive and was slightly more than Check Point was. However, when we looked at the usability and the features that we would get out of Firepower, it was certainly reasonable.

Licensing is complex, and I'd like it to be simplified.

We evaluated Check Point. One of the pros was that we're a Cisco house, so having Cisco Firepower is useful.

Also, the architectural differences between Check Point and Firepower lend themselves to Firepower. The Check Point architecture is a bit more complicated.

It's a bit more complex to deploy and a bit more difficult to troubleshoot. I think troubleshooting with Firepower is much more intuitive, so it's easy for the operations guys to manage, and it's easy for people to consume.

My advice would be to compare equitable vendors and see where Cisco is strong and where they're not as strong. However, take into account your wider environment. If you've got a Cisco house and the solution has the same look and feel, those who are managing the service will say that it's Cisco and that they know it. That carries a huge weight, so pay careful attention to the rest of your environment.

Overall, I'd give this product a nine out of ten.

We are Cisco partners. We have been selling Cisco products for more than 25 years, and we are a major player in various African markets, such as Morocco and French-speaking countries in Africa.

We have been offering a wide range of Cisco-branded security products. The most important ones were the ASA firewalls, and now, we have the next-generation ones, XDR, and all the applications or all hybrid security solutions offered by Cisco, including Umbrella, on-premise Identity Service Engine, and all the other third-party solutions.

Our main objective is to show customers the added value of Cisco products and how they can tackle all the security issues and all the threats or the cyber security issues rising on a daily basis nowadays. Cisco Talos, for instance, is something that we propose, and we also propose all the restrictions to be up-to-date. Cisco's ecosystem is very wide in security, so we have very good use cases. 

In the beginning, customers used to implement ASA firewalls mainly as the network firewall in data centers, branch offices, all locations, and also in the DMZ. Nowadays, the perspective has changed, and also with the design requirement, the nature of the cloud hybrid solutions leads us to use more sophisticated tools based in the cloud, but we still cover all the security aspects from the branch office to the data centers.

Cisco adds value by providing various solutions such as Umbrella and Duo. It's a combination. An existing firewall system only protects or controls flow on a daily basis in a normal production environment, but when it comes to security threats, we need to add more components. This is why Cisco is offering a wide range of products. Cisco is completely handling all the aspects from end to end with micro-segmentation, for instance. Identity Service Engine can handle the end-users' protection, and in the end, for the data center, we have different tools, and this is how we can cover end-to-end solutions.

The most valuable feature is IPS. It's a feature that's very interesting for tackling the most current attacks. We also have Umbrella with Secure DNS because all the threats nowadays are coming from email servers. We also have the DSA solution to limit the threats coming from ransomware. Combining all of these with Talos provides the best security solution.

It's a question of performance. When we talk about data centers, we are talking about 100 gig capacity or 400 gig capacity. When it comes to active-active solution clustering and resilience and performance, Cisco should look into these a little bit more.

We have been offering Cisco Security firewalls from the beginning of ASA, which was more than 20 years ago. We then started offering all types of firewalls, including the ones for data centers and then the next-generation firewalls.

The stability of the Cisco firewalls is the best in my opinion. We used to have ASA firewalls running for more than five years. Even when we did software upgrades, we had a very stable platform providing high performance without any outage, so customers can rely on Cisco firewall solutions.

For daily operations and projects, scalability is very important. Cisco provides a way of mixing and clustering firewalls to enhance scalability. We have many ways to scale, and as our clients grow, we can have the Cisco firewall solution grow as well.

We work with different vendors based on customer needs. We have a specification that we need to have a combination of different vendors, which is the best practice in the data center architecture and design. We cannot have one vendor at all levels, and we should have a combination. 

As a vendor, Cisco has a complete range of products to handle all the security aspects. When I look at the architecture design, the implementation of Cisco firewalls is the best. We have data centers based on Nexus for instance. We have routing components. All the compliance and architectural design requirements are met, and we can meet the customer needs according to the Cisco design guide and validation guide. When we look at the security aspect and the guidelines in terms of next-generation firewalls, in terms of redundancy on both sites or multi-sites, we have better performance with Cisco than other vendors in some cases.

Our customers use Cisco firewalls mainly in data centers, branch offices, and campus environments. They don't only use basic firewalls. They also use next-generation firewalls, which have email control, web filtering, and IPS. So, we have Cisco firewalling at all levels for providing the strongest protection policy.

The deployment of Cisco firewalls is very easy so far. We have the security expertise and all the knowledge that we need to deploy them and secure our customers' facilities. Networking and architecture are not really complicated, but you need a well-defined plan before doing implementation and going live.

Based on my 25 years of experience, 100% of our ROI expectations are met with Cisco products. The equipment is strong enough, stable, and well-developed. We have had the equipment running for more than five years without any outages, which leads to lesser costs of operations. There is also a reduction in cost in terms of upgrades or replacements, and this is why the ROI expectations have been met.

With the bundling mode with Duo licensing, it's now better. It's better to have one simplified global licensing mode, and this is what Cisco has done with bundling. The next-generation firewalls include a set of features such as filtering, emails, and IPS. This combination offers the best way for customers to manage their operating expenses.

One way to evaluate Cisco products is by looking at the experience. Gartner provides a good overview of Cisco products based on customer feedback, but the best way is by trying the product. Try-and-buy is a good model. Nowadays, all customers, enterprise service providers, and ISPs, are aware of Cisco solutions. They don't just purchase based on the technical specifications.

As a Cisco partner for over 25 years, we provide value by bringing our experience. We have worked so far with a different range of products, from the oldest Cisco firewall to the newest one, and we continue to promote them through design recommendation, capacity specification, deployment, engineering, high-level design, low-level design, migration, go-live, and maintenance and support. We cover the whole lifecycle of a product.

Our partnership with Cisco is a win-win partnership. Cisco provides us with the latest experiences and latest solutions, and on the other hand, we are doing business with our customers by using Cisco products, so it's a win-win relationship with Cisco, which leads to enhancing, promoting, and excelling in Cisco products. I would tell Cisco product managers to go fast with security platforms. Other vendors are going fast as well, and we need product managers to tackle the performance and capacity issues. It's not really an issue in itself, but it's something that can enhance and bring Cisco to the first place in security solutions.

I'd rate it an eight out of ten. The reason why I didn't give it a ten is that they have to make it better in terms of the capacity and performance for the 10 gig interface, 40 gig interface, and 100 gig interface, and in terms of how many ports and interfaces we have on appliances.

Our use case is mostly for the data center. We are introducing a security zone in the data center, and Cisco is helping us to identify the traffic that is coming from north to south or from outside the data center to inside the data center. It helps us to manage the traffic and ensure that it's secure and allowed to go inside the data center. We have almost completed the project. We are currently tuning the access policies to only allow what's allowed to go inside.

We are using all the firewall models for the data center. AMP, detection, and prevention are a part of the solution.

It was a requirement from our security and compliance team that any traffic going to the data center needs to be checked and secured. We are almost at the final stage of this project to allow only secure access to the data center. We are almost there. We haven't yet completed the project, but it will definitely be a very critical service for us. Our data center is huge with more than 1,000 applications. It will protect and secure our services.

We are using Cisco firewalls not only in the data center but also on the internet edge. We also have it on the OT system or OT network. We are using most of the products from Cisco, and it was easy to integrate with other services. We have the Cisco ACI solution in the data center. We could integrate Cisco ACI with our firewall. We also have Cisco Stealthwatch and Cisco ISE. We can easily integrate different technologies.

Integration and troubleshooting are the main challenges of having multiple vendors. Having an end-to-end solution from one vendor makes life a lot easier because there is an ease of integration. We don't need a third party. It is also easy in terms of support. One engineer from the same vendor can help us with various technologies. We don't need engineers from different vendors, and we also avoid that common scenario where they start to blame the other one for the issue.

Having an end-to-end solution from the same vendor simplifies the implementation. We are able to have centralized management of different products. We were able to integrate and centrally manage even the older versions of Cisco firewalls.

I'm not a security person. I'm a planner, and we were interested in the advanced features of the firewall to allow us to manage the traffic. At the current stage of implementation, their help in implementing a policy has been valuable. It simplified the implementation. Cisco's engineer helped us with a lot of scripting to see what existed. Previously, we didn't have a proper policy. In fact, we didn't have any policy because we didn't have any firewall for the data center, so generating a policy was a big challenge. Cisco's engineer helped us to do some scripting and find out what kind of policy we can have and organize those policies. That was nice.

Its implementation was not straightforward. It was mainly because we were running two projects together. In terms of features, at this stage, I don't have inputs for the area of improvement. We are still in the implementation stage of our project. After we have the solution ready and we test it, we can go to phase two and see how to enhance the solution in the future. We can then see which features will allow us to do that. After we implement it, the next stages will be to maintain it, tune it, and build on it. We will then see how flexible it is.

I've been using Cisco firewalls for about 20 years. The last model we bought for the data center is 9300.

Cisco is always there to support customers and their businesses. They are there 24/7. Whenever you have an issue or challenge, they are always there. For us, a good thing about Cisco is that there is a Cisco office in Oman. Our colleagues coordinate and communicate with them almost daily. They are always there to support us through any challenge or issue. All vendors are not available in Oman, so having a trusted partner who would always help us was a key factor for investing in Cisco. 

When we open a ticket with Cisco support, we always get someone to help us. We have a dedicated engineer who knows our infrastructure and can help us and track the issues. We are a big organization, and we have critical services. We are the biggest oil producer in Oman, which is the main economy of the country. We can't afford any interruptions. We are trying our best, and Cisco always supports us. They handle our cases in an urgent manner because they know the criticality.

For the data center, we didn't have a security zone previously. It was one of the key requirements to come up with the security zone. We chose Cisco firewalls because we were implementing ACI in the data center, and we thought that having one vendor for both activities will reduce our time of implementation, which didn't turn out to be true.

It was not a straightforward implementation. The main challenge was that we were running two projects together, so we ended up doing the same activity twice. We had two requirements: refresh the data center devices and secure them because there was no security zone. We went for the ACI implementation, which was new for us and required a lot of discussions, and when we tried to introduce the firewall, we again had a lot of discussions with Cisco about whether to go with clustering or active standby.

We discovered that our ACI was not compatible with the firewall that we are introducing. So, we ended up upgrading our ACI. That was a big activity because we had to interrupt our data center. It should have been a seamless upgrade, but because some of our services didn't have dual links, we had to do some maintenance for that. After that, we also ended up upgrading our switches because they were not supporting 40 gigs, which is what the firewall interface supported. That was another challenge that we had. After that, going to active-standby or clustering was another challenge because the switch fabric didn't work well with our design. So, we ended up going with active-standby.

It was a journey, but in the end, we managed to overcome those challenges and implemented our solution.

We've definitely seen an ROI. It was a requirement, and looking at the way it went, especially in terms of coming up with the policy and securing our data center, there has been a value-add. We now have a security zone, and we have policies. We can manage and monitor the traffic coming in and going out.

In addition, we have the flexibility of sending any traffic to the firewall, even internally from the data center. Whenever we have a doubt about any application or traffic to any application, we can just send it to the firewall and let it check and monitor. We have this visibility that we didn't have before. We can see any traffic that comes in. 

We bought a three-year license as a part of the enterprise agreement, which includes help with implementation and troubleshooting. We have a big data center with many applications, so implementation was not straightforward. We had to put effort into it. It wasn't an easy or straightforward implementation. The support that we got from Cisco engineers with the three-year premium license was helpful. The enterprise agreement helped to consume the licenses in a practical and faster way and streamline the implementation.

We are very pleased with Cisco for the automation they did to help us in coming up with a policy. That was a big challenge because we didn't have any policy in place. It was a big help for us that they came up with a policy or at least proposed a policy for us.

Our engineers are familiar with Cisco firewalls, and they are not new to them. However, things are changing and technology is changing, and new features are getting added. Automation will be the main challenge for us. Some of our engineers are not yet very good at scripting. They're still learning. The way forward would be to have people do some amount of programming to come up with useful information to enhance the solution in the future.

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

We are an insurance company. The core of what we do is service. We manage people and security. We have all the implementation for security. 

We have one ERP running on-prem and another one is running on the GCP cloud. We have a cloud service that runs that ERP on GCP. Our other service is running with Microsoft 365. So, we have an in-house AD that syncs with the cloud AD, but it is the firewall that is managing the communication process in between. The on-prem AD sync with the cloud AD is managed by the firewall. It is like a gateway. 

A vendor implemented this system for us to use and manage the process. We have an integration with the GCP. We've integrated this system with our network in such a way that you cannot access the GCP applications or infrastructure if you are not on-premises. This integration with the GCP and our virtual network online has been done locally.

In general, the management of our infrastructure is now easy. I can manage remotely. I can manage on-prem. I can always log in. I have a couple of users who work remotely via VPN because of the license. Not everybody works remotely in my organization. For people who work remotely, we have licenses for them to log in remotely from where they are and use the service. So, managing people, resources, and devices is easy. It has been a good experience. I don't intend to change it because it's giving me the service I need.

In terms of money, it has saved a lot of money. A lot of other organizations that don't have this kind of easy-to-manage layer of security are going through different kinds of attacks. We have a culture of being careful, even though you cannot be a hundred percent careful. When I hear that people have some security issues, I come and check my devices, and I notice that my firewall has actually blocked a lot of things. It gives me rest and peace. So, it saves a lot when you consider the cost of the organization's operations going down, even for one, two, or three hours. We would lose a lot if that happens. It probably saves us over a million dollars a year. The investment is totally worth it.

Our network is a little bit flat. We have a load balancer before getting into our network. We have configured the load balancer on the device itself. We have two major service providers. We have a core business application, and there are some people who use the core business application. We also have some light users. We have set up criteria to give priority to the people who use the core business application. I have a provider that gives me 300 MB to 500 MB, and I have another provider that gives me 20 MB to 25 MB as a backup. I have set priority based on the usage. If you're using the core business application, it pushes you to the fast network. Otherwise, it sends you to the other network. All that has been done on the firewall. It has been very good for this. I have no complaints.

It enables us to implement dynamic policies for dynamic environments, which is important for us. We can control the network based on different kinds of users. We can quickly and easily define the policies. We can set priorities based on different applications, systems, and users on our network.

Its security and filtering are most valuable. Every layer of data that comes into the organization goes through it. After setting up the criteria, it automatically filters the traffic. We don't have to check it often. Sometimes, when users complain that they are not able to see a particular thing, we log in to check the scan and see what it has scanned and filtered. It is usually something it has filtered out. It works perfectly.

It is easy to use. There is a GUI, and there is a backend that is being managed by our consultant. When we log in to the GUI, we are able to do anything we want to do. Its user interface is good, but it could be better. Currently, you have to know what to do before you can manage a device. If you don't know what to do, you can mess things up. There are some devices that are easier, such as FortiGate. The user interface of FortiGate is more intuitive. It is very easy to log in and configure things. With Cisco, there is also a lower limit on virtual accounts. In FortiGate, they could be in thousands. Cisco is also more expensive. 

I have been using this solution for about three to four years.

It is very stable. I've not had any thought of reconfiguring it. I have just applied my criteria, and I'm good.

Scalability is not a problem because I still have a span of five to seven more years. After that, I might have to go for a bigger device. For now, I have no issues. I can scale up or down. I'm good with that.

Their support is very good. We had an issue where the OS got corrupted. We got Cisco to log in. They did the reset on it, reformatted it, and sent it back to us. Because of the subscription we have with Cisco, we got a copy back in no time. We're now good. We've not been calling their tech support very often. We only call them when we have a very serious issue. I would rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

It wasn't simple. Its implementation doesn't take much time, but we had to get a consultant in. Implementing a Cisco solution from scratch is harder than implementing FortiGate. With FortiGate, I can do my implementation and put all the criteria easily, but with Cisco, I need to do a lot more research, and I need to get someone to help me, but after implementation, it just works.

We had a consultant from a local vendor here called Incognito. Our experience with him was good. I can refer him to anybody.

When we have issues and we need improvement, he comes in. There was a time we noticed that we had lag on our network. We were trying to figure out the cause for it. We were using two service providers but the same backbone. We called him to make the required modifications.

It is more expensive than the other solutions. 

I'm the CIO here. When I came here, I did an audit of the IT infrastructure to see what was there. I looked at what was existing and thought of improvement. I got in all the vendors and had a meeting with them. I also got in a Cisco vendor and sat down with him and told him about the implementation I wanted. Because of the cost, I didn't change any equipment. So, he did the implementation. At any other place, I would look at the users and implement what is easy for them to manage. For a big enterprise with a whole crew, I would definitely consider Cisco. For any other place, I would go for Fortinet. Cisco is harder to implement and manage, but its stability is good. It is also more expensive. There are other cheaper solutions I would have gone for, but I had to focus on what was existing and improve. I had to make sure I worked with what was existing. We also have Cisco switches.

What it's been configured to do, it does it well. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

A lot of them are used for campuses. Basically, it is HA pairs so it is just used to firewall off different networks from the internal network, i.e., security. 

We also use them for DMZs, where there are untrusted networks coming into trusted networks, managing traffic between the two zones.

Currently, we have almost 100 firewalls spread out all across our county. Our ASAs could be anywhere in any building, wherever there is a purpose. So, if we need to firewall off a network that we don't want touching our internal network, where we want it controlled, then it would be there. All our campuses have some form of that.

It is easier to protect our internal network and identify unknown networks. We can put descriptions on what they are, thus we are able to see different traffic coming from different networks. So, there is better visibility.

The user interface is very easy to manage and find rules. You can do object searches, which are very easy. Also, the logging is very simple to use. So, it is a lot easier to troubleshoot and find items inside the firewall.

The one thing that the ASAs don't have is a central management point. We have a lot of our environments on FTD right now. So, we are using a Firewall Management Center (FMC) to manage all those. The ASAs don't really have that, but they are easy to use if you physically go into them and manage them. 

I would like ASAs to be easier to centrally manage. Currently, in our central management, we have almost 100 firewalls in our environment, and it is almost impossible to manage them all. ASAs are now about 20% of them. We have been slowly migrating them out, but we still have some. Normally, what we would do with ASAs is physically go into those devices and do what we need from there, whether it is find rules, troubleshoot, or upgrade.

We have had ASAs in our environment for 10 years.

The ASAs are solid. They have been around a long time, so there is a lot of documentation out there. They are easy to manage and make it easy to look at logs.

They have been in the environment for 10 years. They are still running and doing their job. 

The only time that we really touch them is if we need to do a rule or code upgrade. We check vulnerabilities a lot to make sure that nothing major has come out. If something has, then we go ahead and patch the firewalls. This is done by network groups, e.g., network engineers or analysts. We usually look at security. We are alerted to any new security advisories that come out from Cisco. For anything that is critical or high, we definitely will address it if we need to. Sometimes, we go three months or months without an upgrade. Other times, we could upgrade in a month. It just depends on what comes out.

We use them for smaller campuses. Though, if we need to upgrade a model, then we go ahead and do that. For example, with our bigger campuses, we need to have a bigger model. They have specs out there that you can kind of line up with what you need.

Cisco tech support is spotty. Sometimes, we get good support. Other times, it is not so good. It is very up and down.

It seems like they have been short staffed recently. We have been waiting a long time for some of our tickets now, though they aren't critical tickets. However, that is one of the big issues which Cisco has going on right now - their staff shortage. We can open a ticket and keep following up, following up, and following up, but it might take weeks to resolve an issue. These aren't critical issues. For critical issues, we escalate and they are able to help us right away.

They handle it appropriately. Though, it depends on the time and on what they need. Sometimes, in one session, issues are resolved. Other times, you need to do multiple sessions for them to resolve it. However, for anything critical, those are resolved pretty fast.

I would rate the technical support as seven out of 10.

Neutral

Before I started, they also had Juniper SRXs. The big issue with them was the logging. It wasn't as good. We switched to ASAs for better stability, better management, and easier logging.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. It was very simple to deploy and replace. We did a lot of replacing, which was just copying the rules over from the old one, then deploying it in kind of the same manner.

The pricing was pretty comparable to other solutions when we purchased it.

We looked at what we had and saw that Cisco was much better.

I would rate them as nine out of 10.

We are specifically using 7.0 Firepower in several different areas. We have them as an IPS within the core, IPS on the edge, and we're also using the AnyConnect Client as our basis for VPN connection into corporate and other applications.

Firepower NGFW has improved my organization in several ways. Before, we were trying to stamp out security threats and issues, it was a one-off type of way to attack it. I spent a lot of manpower trying to track down the individual issues or flare-ups that we would see. With Cisco's Firepower Management, we're able to have that push up to basically one monitor and one UI and be able to track that and stop threats immediately. It also gives us a little more granularity on what those threats might be. 

We were able to stop hundreds of threats. For killing threats, we were able to get several hundred now in comparison to the one-off that we used to be able to do.

Dynamic policies are very important for us because we do not have the manpower to really look at everything all the time. So having a dynamic way of really registering, looking at, and having certain actions tied to that are incredibly effective for us in slowing any kind of threat.

We're getting there as far as using the application, using it to go to the application level, we're at the infancy of that. We're looking at definitely tying that into our critical applications so that we can see exactly what they're doing, when they're doing it, and being able to track that.

Firepower's Snort 3.0 IPS allows us to maintain performance while running more rules with the advent of 3.0 comparatively to 2X, we have seen at least a 10 to 15% increase in speed where it seems to be more effective. The updates seem to be more effective in finding malicious information. We've definitely seen at least a 10 to 15% increase on tying policy to 3.0.

The features that we find the biggest bang for the buck are for Firepower overall. We're looking at AnyConnect, which is one of the big features. The other valuable features are IPS along with the Geotagging and the Geosync features, and of course the firewall, the basic subset of firewall infrastructure and policy management.

We've looked at other vendors, but Cisco by far has taken the lead with a holistic approach where we don't have to manage multiple different edges at one time. We can actually push policy out from our core out to the edge. The policy can be as granular as we need it to be. So the administration, also the upgradability of the edge is for us because we need to have it 24/7. The upgradability is also another piece of management, logging, and all the other little aspects of the monitoring part.

Using deep packet inspection, especially with 7.0, since it's just come out in 7.0, we're able to see much more granularly into the packet where before we could actually give a general overview using NetFlow. This gives us much more granularity into what is exactly happening on our network and snapping in the Cisco StealthWatch piece gives us the end-to-end way of monitoring our network and making sure that it's secure.

The overall ease of use when it comes to managing Cisco Secure Firewall is one of the reasons that we ended up going with Cisco because the ease of use, basically having one UI to be able to control all of our end devices, policy, geolocation, AnyConnect, all the different pieces of that in one area has been phenomenal.

Cisco Secure Firewall helped to reduce our firewall operational costs because previously if we were not using Cisco's Firepower, we would have had either Cisco ASA or another manufacturer, and we would have had those everywhere. We would have had still two at every site, several within our infrastructure, and the management of those is much more difficult because it's done by one-off.

As far as saving Adventist Health money, I would have to say that it's not necessarily the actual physical product, but the time, labor that we would have had to have to be able to monitor and administer that, and also the time to find malicious issues and security areas that we were unable to see before. So, it's tough to put a cost on that, but it would probably be several hundred thousand dollars overall if you're looking at whether we got hit with malware or with some of the other issues that we're seeing, especially within healthcare. If we were hacked, that would cost us millions.

One of the few things that are brought up is that for the overall management, it would be great to have a cloud instance of that. And not only just a cloud instance, but one of the areas that we've looked at is using an HA type of cloud. To have the ability to have a device file within a cloud. If we had an issue with one, the other one would pick up automatically.

The other part of that is that applying policy still takes longer than we expect. Every version that comes out, the speed is actually increased, but I would love to see that, even a little more as far as when we're actually deploying policy.

We have been using Firepower's series for at least the last six years.

We're staggered right now. The Firepower Management Console is at 7.0 and most of our Firepower units are at 6.6.

We have two areas for deployment. We have them as an edge at our markets, we term our hospitals as markets, but each one of the hospitals will have an HA Pair of the Firepower model. And we also have them in our core, within the ACI infrastructure. We use them as a core firewall along with an Edge firewall.

We've been using Firepower, the Threat Defense, and the Management Console for about six and a half years and I think we've had maybe two issues with it. And most of those were due to either our policy settings or something that we messed up. We've never had to return a box and we've never run into any major bugs that have actually hindered the actual security of the system.

Scalability so far has been fantastic because we started with four Firepower Threat Defense boxes, but really after that, now we have 14 and we're going to be pushing that to 44 to 46 devices. The implementation has been pretty seamless and pretty easy. It's been great.

We use it exclusively for edge and core for firewall and for policy and for IPS and AnyConnect. We plan on continuing to integrate that tighter. So in the future, we probably will not grow that many physical devices, but we plan on actually integrating those tighter into the system, tighter with integration, with Cisco's ISE, and tighter integration with our ACI infrastructure. So at the end of the day, we don't see us going any further away from using Firepower as our core security edge device.

My company has been using Cisco for many years. One of the huge pieces for us is, of course, the supportability and ongoing update, maintenance, and care. We've had a great relationship with Cisco. The tech is outstanding. Typically, we will open a tech case and they will know exactly what the issue is within two to three hours if it's a very difficult one. Typically they even know what it is when we actually open the case.

We've actually had a fantastic relationship working with Cisco. They've had a fast turnaround, great tech support, and we have not run into any issues thus far with the Firepower overall.

Prior to actually using Firepower, we were still a Cisco shop. We used Cisco ASA exclusively, and it was fantastic. But with the advent of Firepower, being able to manage, monitor, and upgrade has really cut back our time on those processes by less than half of what we had before. We were using the good old ASA for many years.

We found that the initial setup using Firepower products was actually very simple. The initial configuration for the Management Console was very straightforward. Adding devices usually takes a few minutes. And then once you've got them physically set up in your Management Console, it's streamlined. It's actually very simple.

One of the great features of having the Cisco Firepower Management Console is having the ability to group. So we have each one of our hospitals as a group, so we can actually do any device configuration within a group. They're HA so that when we do an upgrade, it is seamless because when it fires off the upgrade, it will actually force the HA over automatically as part of the upgrade. And the other part of that is policy management. We have several policies, but specifically, one for the general use at our hospitals has been phenomenal because you build out one policy and you can push that out to all of your end nodes with one push.

We require two staff members to actually implement and devise the initial configuration.

At my company, you have to be at least a senior or an architect in order to manage any type of firewalling, whether that's the IPS, the actual firewall itself, or AnyConnect. So we have senior network engineers that are assigned for that task.

We typically have one person that will actually rotate through the group for the maintenance. There's a senior network engineer that will maintain that on a daily basis. Typically, it doesn't take maintenance every day. The biggest maintenance for us comes to updating policy, verifying the geolocation information is correct, and any upgrades in the future. So typically that takes about one to two people.

We did not actually use any external authority as far as setting up, maintenance, and configuration. It all comes directly from Cisco because of our partnership with Cisco, we have had a fantastic cast of system engineers and techs when needed. We haven't had to go out of our partnership with Cisco to actually implement these, to upgrade, or update.

Cisco's pricing is actually pretty good. We get a decent discount, but when you look across the board, if you're looking at a Cisco firewall, Firepower device, a Palo Alto device, or a Juniper device, they're going to be pretty comparable. A lot of people say, "Oh, Cisco is so expensive." But when you boil it down, when you look at the licensing structure for Firepower, you look at the actual device cost and how much that costs over time, they pretty much are right in line, if not less, depending on what you're buying for Firepower. So we've actually had a great run with that, and we feel confident that we're getting the best price. I haven't seen anything better than the supportability of that.

We actually did look at another vendor when we were looking at initially grabbing Firepower, to bring in as our corporate firewall and our main inspection engine. So we did look at Palo Alto and we also looked at Juniper SRX series, but both of those didn't really have the overall manageability and tightness with the Cisco infrastructure as we would want it to. So there was nothing necessarily security-wise wrong with them, but they were not a good fit for our environment.

The biggest lesson that we've learned is in a couple of different ways. One is how to keep your policy clean. We've learned that we've really had to keep that from overextending what we want to do. It also has great feedback as you're building that out so that you can look at it and you figure out how you are going to be able to really implement this in a way that won't break something or that won't overshadow some other policy that you have. That's probably one of the biggest things that we've learned. The way that you build out your policy and the way that you use that on a daily basis is very intuitive. And it also gives you a lot of feedback as you're building that out.

The advice that I would give anybody looking at Firepower is to look at it from an overall standpoint. If you want something that you can monitor and administer well, that you can update very quickly, and that gives you all of the security aspects that anybody else can on the market, it's going to be really hard to beat because of the Management Console. With this, you've got one tool that you can actually do the device updates, device configuration and all the policy management in one area. So I would say, definitely take a look at it. It's got a great UI that is very straightforward to use. It is very intuitive and it works really well out-of-the-box. And it does not take math science to be able to implement it.

I would rate Firepower a nine out of ten. I can't think of anything that would be a 10. It's mature, it's effective and it's usable.

For companies prioritizing security, the optimal choice is one that offers a range of feeds to cater to diverse needs. This is particularly crucial for organizations implementing DDoS mitigation. The preferred solutions typically align with the top server vendors, with Cisco, Forti, and Barracuda consistently ranking among the top three vendors we collaborate with.

It's not unexpected, but it's a common scenario where customers request dual layers of security. For instance, when dealing with regulatory compliance, especially in financial sectors regulated by entities like the Central Bank, having two distinct units is often mandated. If a client predominantly uses a solution like Palo Alto, they may need to incorporate another vendor such as Cisco or Forti. Importantly, there's a significant disparity in interfaces and management platforms between these vendors, necessitating careful consideration when integrating them into the overall security architecture.

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for the past ten years. 

The solution is extremely scalable and based on my experience, I would rate it 7 out of 10.

Cisco is a well-established company, and it offers accessible support, both locally and through online resources. The abundance of information makes it easy to find the necessary details and assistance.

Positive

The implementation timeline for our firewall is contingent on the readiness of the policy. If the policy is prepared, the deployment can occur within a day. However, if the policy is not finalized, a brief meeting is convened to gather the necessary data for rule establishment. Once the information is ready, the implementation on VMware proceeds. Notably, there is a requisite waiting period, such as fine-tuning for optimal rule configuration, as each customer has unique requirements. It's crucial to tailor the rules to fit the specific needs of each customer, as there is no one-size-fits-all best practice in this context.

It is extremely expensive compared to its competitors and I would rate it 2 out of 10. 

I would recommend this solution and rate it 8 out of 10.