We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall and Cisco Secure Firewall based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Cisco Secure is the clear winner in this comparison. It is powerful with a larger feature set than Azure Firewall. In addition, Cisco Secure also has excellent customer support and a significant ROI. Azure Firewall does have an edge in the pricing category, however.
"The most valuable feature is threat intelligence. It is based on filtering and can identify multiple threats."
"It provided ease of maintenance. If a new firewall was needed, we only had to run the pipelines for this. So, the maintenance was very easy."
"All its features are good. That's why we recommend it."
"In terms of the reporting, it's beautiful. It integrates with Azure monitoring and with Azure policies. That piece is a big help. You can set governing policies and you can use the application firewall, as well as the Azure Firewall, to enforce those policies."
"The solution is stable."
"I think that one of the best features is definitely the premium version, along with the IDPs in terms of the intrusion detection and prevention system."
"Azure Firewall's feature that I have found most valuable is its scalability."
"Azure's cost-effectiveness is its major advantage."
"We find all of its features very useful. Its main features are policies and access lists. We use both of them, and we also use routing."
"One of the best features is the ease of use. It's also easy to teach new engineers to use the ASA CLI."
"There are no issues that we are aware of. It does its job silently in the background."
"For our very specific use case, for remote access for VPN, ASAs are very good."
"The high-availability and remote VPN features are most valuable."
"Cisco tech is always good and helpful. I would rate them as 10 out of 10."
"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."
"If configured, Firepower provides us with application visibility and control."
"Right now, with Azure Firewall, we cannot have a normal inbound traffic flow. For inbound, Microsoft suggests using application gateways, so the options are very limited. I cannot use this firewall as an intermediate firewall because of the limitations, and I cannot point routing to another firewall. So if I want to use back-to-back firewall architecture in my environment, I cannot use Azure Firewall for that type of configuration either."
"An Azure firewall is not a real firewall."
"There should be better monitoring and logging. Currently, it is put in Sentinel. It should be more seamless and from the interface."
"The development area and QA area could be improved. With those improvements, we can improve projects and take even less time to implement them."
"Azure Firewall has limited visibility for IDPS, no TLS inspection, no app ID, no user ID, no content ID, no device ID. There is no antivirus or anti-spyware. Azure Firewall doesn't scan traffic for malware unless it triggers an IDPS signature. There is no sandbox or machine learning functionality, meaning we are not protected from Zero-day threats. There is no DNS security and limited web categories."
"You have to have a defined IP range within your network to associate it with your network. The problem is you have to plan ahead of time if you expect to use the firewall in the future so that you don't have to reconfigure your subnets or that specific IP range. Other than that, I don't any issues. I use it for basic configuration for a single application, so I really don't try to leverage it for multiple applications where I might find some complexity or challenges."
"It would be nice to be able to create groupings for servers and offer groups of IP addresses."
"It is a cloud service, but the lending speed for each region is not always the same. For example, in China, the speed is slow. They need to think about how to make sure that the service pace or speed is always the same in all regions. It would be a great improvement if they can provide the same pace worldwide."
"The ease of use needs improvement. It is complex to operate the solution. The user interface is not friendly."
"It would be good if Cisco made sure that the solution supports all routing protocols. Sometimes it doesn't."
"The Firepower FTD code is missing some old ASA firewalls codes. It's a small thing. But Firepower software isn't missing things that are essential, anymore."
"The virtual firewalls don't work very well with Cisco AnyConnect."
"It is my understanding that they are in the process of discontinuing this device."
"This solution could be more granular and user-friendly."
"Recently, we have been having an issue with the ASA firewall. We haven't found the root cause yet and are still working on it. We failed over the firewall from active to passive and suddenly that resolved the issue. We are now working to find the root cause."
"The visibility for VPN is one big part. The policy administration could be improved in terms of customizations and flexibility for changing it to our needs."
Azure Firewall is ranked 14th in Firewalls with 17 reviews while Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 122 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.0, while Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Good value for your money, good URL filtering, supports intrusion prevention, and is stable". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "The ability to implement dynamic policies for dynamic environments is important, given the fluidity in the world of security". Azure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Check Point NGFW and pfSense, whereas Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Meraki MX, Palo Alto Networks WildFire, pfSense and SonicWall TZ. See our Azure Firewall vs. Cisco Secure Firewall report.
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We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
