Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) Reviews

Some of our customers are having DDOS attacks and ransomware attacks.

Earlier in July 2019, I noted that there was an attack. To mitigate future attacks from the ransomware in Columbia Bank and other similar situations, we at Cisco Talent, which is responsible for security intelligence, provided updated security rules. We offered intrusion policies and codes through signatures to help overcome such situations.

It's a good solution.

The solution is not that bad. Next-generation firewalls work from my experience, they work. 

The URL filtering feature and the new locations feature are both valuable additions to the solution.

While the Management GUI and FMC could be improved, the devices themselves function well.

I have been using Cisco NGIPS for more than five years.

I provided support for version 6.4, but in our company, we do have Firepower version 7.0.

Cisco NGIPS is a stable solution.

Cisco has great support.

I would rate Cisco NGIPS an eight out of ten.

I primarily use NGIPS as perimeter security firewall devices to filter traffic.

NGIPS' best feature is the separate IPSec tunnels, which makes the user's data more secure if they want to access it privately.

NGIPS' GUI interface could be improved and made more user-friendly, especially in comparison to Palo Alto's Next-Generation Firewall.

I've been using NGIPS for around five years.

The initial setup is complex and requires someone with a background in firewalls to set it up. Inexperienced users will find it very difficult to set up. For experienced users, deployment will take around forty-five minutes. I would rate the setup process five out of ten.

NGIPS is expensive.

I would recommend NGIPS to other users, but only as a second choice behind Palo Alto. I would give NGIPS a rating of eight out of ten.

Our primary use case is as a firewall segregating networks and defending the perimeter.

I would consider this to be a medium product in its field across the board.

Some features, for instance, are a way for the management console to be able to manage each specific firewall, for instance. Because if we have more than one firewall configured in the management center, we cannot delegate administration, just one of the equipment. I think the part of IPS and everything else needs to be better equated to the real needs or current needs of the business compared to the other manufacturer, because it is not straightforward, a way to configure it compared to the other competitors.

I have been using Cisco NGIPS for one year.

It is more or less stable. Sometimes I have some issues normally when we need to upgrade it to newer versions. I think it does the job. The hardware does the job, and the current models do the job.

We have around four thousand users and that would be an example of its scalability.

Technical support is good. If you open a case about the support, it is good. Compared to the other manufacturer, it is very good.

The initial setup was complex and the upgrade took a lot of time with a very big image to download and everything else. We had many versions and patches that had to be installed. The deployment took between two and three hours.

In this case, we did it in-house and I was the integrator.

I think we have to have a good knowledge of the product. It is not easy to set up from the beginning. And I am also using the comparison with the other manufacturer. You need to have very good training before managing the product. I would rate Cisco NGIPS a seven on a scale of one to ten.

We have a Cisco ASA firewall, which is like a standard firewall. We upgraded to Firepower Threat Defense, and it is like a next-generation capability, like NGIPS and NGAV, and has that kind of functionality. It also improves network security and threat defence.

It has helped to improve our cybersecurity and our network security posture.

The FTD has a GUI interface, which is very easy to work around with all the configurations. It is a client-based software based on Java. Now we have the GUI web interface, and it's very interactive and easy to navigate.

Cisco NGIPS runs the backend as a Snort engine, so it is like they customize it with Cisco. So they need to have an engine for threat defence.

We have been using this solution for two years and are using version 9.6. It is deployed on-premises.

It is a stable solution.

It is scalable. NGIPS is based on our user base, so we have around 2000 users. We require two network and security administrators for deployment and maintenance. We do not plan to increase usage because we have already upgraded.

I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

We updated from Cisco ASA to NGIPS FTD.

The initial setup is a bit complex because it requires a lot of configuration, firewall and zoning. The deployment was done in-house. We just purchased a box and installed it on our own.

We have seen a return on investment in improving security and defending the threats in our network.

I do not have details about the licensing costs. It has a user-based license and a different model license because it is modular software.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. From a recommendation perspective, before deploying the NGIPS solution, you need to work with your internal environment. It can minimize the load on the NGIPS, so you should do your IPS signature before moving to production.

It should have a network and content processor and a security process for additional features. Other OEMs have these capabilities to enhance the throughput and performance.

This product automatically blocks any form of threat in a network. Once a threat is detected, it will notify the IT team. It will show the full threat, the target destination, and perhaps a loophole that the intruder used.

What it reports depends on how you have configured it.

It's able to map the solutions that you have, detailing how they are connected. It gives you visibility in terms of what's happening without your network.

This is the leading Cisco solution across Sub-Saharan Africa.

The most valuable feature is that it is able to detect any form of infiltration. It does this in an automated fashion so that you don't have to do anything to it. Once it is properly configured, it will act on its own.

The visibility that it gives you is very good. You're able to know what has happened within your network.

The way it pushes policy rules is very good. It makes sure that your information is reliable, and that you have the right visibility and the right intelligence.

I would like to see a more user-friendly interface. This is true for Cisco in general, with many of the products that they have.

We have been selling Cisco NGIPS for approximately four years.

This is a very stable product. In Sub-Saharan Africa, it is used by every six or seven banks out of ten.

This solution is very easy to scale, depending on your organization's roadmap. I have had customers that are using it and scaling very fast, especially in the financial sector.

Being a clustered solution, you can have 500, 1,000, or 10,000 users. In fact, one of my customers has 20,000 users of NGIPS. I have another organization that has 1,200 users. The size of the solution is set based on the number of users.

The technical support from Cisco is good, and it is not expensive. Over the past couple of years, they have really improved when it comes to service delivery.

I have worked with a variety of security solutions. I have worked with products from Trend Micro, Cisco, and others.

This product is straightforward to install. A CCMP can complete the deployment in one day.

One skilled person is suitable for deployment.

This is a very affordable product.

This is a product that I can recommend anytime. I have sold millions of dollars of it, every year. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The Cisco NGIPS and IGS are used as network firewalls for IPS and IGS protection. I have both the Cisco Firepower and Cisco Meraki solutions in different customers' locations. They have the capability of the NGIPS built into it. We have different customers that they are using it. For example, on Edge, data centers, and campus networks.

Among all the different solutions I have worked with, such as Palo Alto many other firewalls. Cisco has the support, documentation, and design. The documentation is widely available and it can help you a lot with implementation. It makes the implementation much easier.

What I don't like about Cisco recently is they keep changing the names, which makes it hard for customers and sometimes even us as engineers to know what is the solution they are speaking about. For example, with AMP, now they call it Secure Endpoint and I don't know if in the next couple of years they're going to change it to something else. They should keep the names the same.

I have been using Cisco NGIPS for approximately 10 years.

Cisco NGIPS is stable, however, it is nothing special.

The scalability of Cisco NGIPS I am not too familiar with. The solution can do clustering and other operations. With the Orchestrator, I haven't worked with it yet but I hope that will help to make standard policies all run better. The most important part about scalability is how do you want to apply the same policy all around and across the different locations that you have. This is something that is not easy with any firewall unless you have a Secure Orchestrator. I don't see any issues with the scalability at this time.

The support from Cisco NGIPS is very good.

I have used many other solutions, such as Palo Alto.

I would rate the price of Cisco NGIPS a three out of five.

They are very expensive in some places and not reasonable at times for many customers. I have had customers choose another solution because of the high price.

When speaking about the features of Cisco NGIPS, what makes the feature good is dependent on what the customer likes and the skillset that they have. I cannot say what is the best feature because it depends on the use case.

There are times I see customers spend a lot of money on something which they really don't use. Whether this solution is good or not depends on what exactly the customer wants to implement and protect. They should pick the right solution with the skillset that they have.

I rate Cisco NGIPS nine out of ten.

We use Cisco as a firewall. It is an intrusion detection and prevention solution.

The malware detection, threat defense, sandboxing, VPN, and mail security have all been valuable features of Cisco NGIPS.

The performance of CISCO Firepower could be improved. 

We moved from Sophos to Cisco before the pandemic. During the pandemic, there was an increase in VPN connections. We had a layer of security within CISCO Umbrella, and now with Cloud. The firewall protects the internal system, but we needed to add another layer of security for the endpoints that are outside the local area network. We needed another product to cover this lack of security.

We prefer to have integration with the points that are outside our local area networks using the same brand using one single console. Because the firewall only protects the people inside the network, we required another solution.

I would like to see Cisco NGIPS include home office support in one single product.

Our organization has been using Cisco NGIPS for two years.

Cisco NGIPS is stable most of the time.

This solution is not easily scaled. I would like Cisco NGIPS to be easier to scale. With the increase in work from home, we needed to add another layer of security to ensure we can meet the demand of stability, high availability, and connection.

Our company has two layers of support with Cisco. One is the local support, which is very good. The second support is directly from Cisco. They are quick to respond and have quick solutions to the problems.

We moved from Sophos to Cisco Firewall because we were looking for better integration between all the appliances and data center. All of our core switches, our wireless system, and other tools are the Cisco brand, meaning that all our monitoring options are integrated under Cisco.

We hired a professional service to install this solution.

With the increase in work from home, companies may need more than just a firewall. I recommend anyone considering Cisco NGIPS evaluate all the demands from their in-home offices and determine if their solution needs to be bigger, or wider, for security and performance.

I would rate this product a 9 out of 10, particularly if you work in a LAN environment.

The way we use it in my company is just for a basic firewall.

It's a next-generation firewall. You can integrate it with external systems, like Cisco Talos, Cisco Umbrella, all these things. You can do threat detection, threat prevention. You can integrate with your active directory. It can block traffic based on the user or user group.

I use the product mainly for follow-up. I would say the most important is the integration with our directory services, the user directory services. We can block or allow traffic based on the specific users or specific user groups.

There are other features such as the connection with the intelligence systems such as Talos on Cisco. You can do zero-day prevention and detection. It's quite useful.

The solution is stable and the performance is good. 

My understanding is that the initial setup is simple. 

I'd like to see some cloud management. Cisco maybe already has it, however, my company doesn't use it as cloud management. That said, it would be great to manage your device through the cloud instead of managing through a server on-premise.

I've only used the solution for two months. It hasn't been that long just yet.

The product has been stable. Cisco is quite stable as a product. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. There are no bugs or glitches.

I can't really speak to the scalability of the solution as I haven't used it for long enough.

Due to the fact that all the traffic passes through the firewalls, I would say 500 people or maybe more use the solution in our organization.

Cisco technical support is great. They are helpful and responsive. We are very happy with their capabilities. 

I'm also aware of Palo Alto, which in many ways is a more solid product. We used it in my previous company as it was more mature and much simpler to use in comparison to Cisco. 

While I didn't set it up, my understanding is the implementation is straightforward. You read the documentation. It's this continuation from the old Cisco ASAs. People have used it for many years. Cisco's quite easy to set it up and keep up and running. You just need to add things on top of it, however, it's all quite easy. I have done an installation of the previous Cisco firewall. It's really straightforward. The upgrade is quite simple as well.

We have three technical personnel that can handle deployment and maintenance. We have to cover the whole globe, so we have three people on to handle everything 24/7.

You do need to pay a licensing fee. If you want the additional features, like prevention or integration with extended intelligence systems, you need to pay additional licenses.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using. It might be 6.4. It's likely whatever that latest version is.

I would recommend Cisco, however, I do find Palo Alto to be a good product as well, and in some ways more solid. 

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.