We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall and Meraki MX based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Cybersecurity resilience has been paramount. Because there is a threat of losing everything if ransomware or another sort of attack were to happen, the cybersecurity resilience has been top-notch."
"The IP filter configuration for specific political and Static NAT has been most valuable."
"It's a flexible solution."
"You do not have to do everything through a command line which makes it a lot easier to apply rules."
"The ASDM (Adaptive Security Device Manager) which is the graphical user interface, works out, and Cisco keeps it current."
"The whole firewall functionality, including firewall policies and IPS policies, is valuable. It has all kinds of functionalities. It has IPS, VPN, and other features. They are doing quite a lot of stuff with their devices."
"Cisco ASA provides us with very good application visibility and control."
"The feature set is fine and is rarely a problem."
"I can easily configure it."
"The most valuable feature is threat intelligence. It is based on filtering and can identify multiple threats."
"Network filtering is valuable. The scalability capability from the cloud-native service helps us a lot because it simplifies our day-to-day maintenance activity."
"All its features are good. That's why we recommend it."
"Among the most valuable features are the DDoS protection that protects your virtual machines, the threat intelligence, and traffic filtering."
"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."
"It is easy for me to protect certain ports or even the IP addresses, as well as do whitelisting, blacklisting, and the FQDN when we want virtual machines connected and to protect certain websites."
"I like its order management feature. It doesn't have the kind of threat intelligence that Palo Alto has, but the order management makes it much simpler to know the difference."
"I love the simplicity of Meraki MX — specifically, the simplicity of the dashboard."
"The technical support people from Meraki are brilliant."
"The most valuable feature of Meraki MX is I can manage the solution from anywhere remotely, I can throttle bandwidth, and create all rules. Additionally, it is secure for our customers."
"MX is easy to manage, configure and install."
"Point-to-point VPNs can dynamically follow IP changes with no need for static IPs."
"Dual WAN connections are greatly simplified and point-to-point VPNs automatically connect regardless of what WAN connection is active."
"I think cloud management is key. The cloud management and support are the two things that make the product great."
"Meraki makes it easy to be secure and know where the holes are to fix them. We have been fixing anything that we have ever found for 20 years. We keep up-to-date with firmware upgrades. We just try to stay on top of everything for security, like maintaining updates and getting rid of old systems. I feel like we're on top of it."
"Cisco is not cheap, however, it is worth investing in these technologies."
"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."
"Cisco Firepower is not completely integrated with Active Directory. We are trying to use Active Directory to restrict users by using some security groups that are not integrated within the Cisco Firepower module. This is the main issue that we are facing."
"The reporting and other features are nice, but there is an issue with applying the configuration. That part needs some improvement."
"The price can be better."
"One of the challenges we've had with the Cisco ASA is the lack of a strong controller or central management console that is dependable and reliable all the time."
"Sometimes my customers say that Cisco Firewalls are a bit more difficult compared to Fortigate or Palo Alto. There is complexity in the configuration and the GUI could be improved."
"There is limited data storage on the appliance itself. So, you need to ship it out elsewhere in order for you to store it. The only point of consideration is around that area, basically limited storage on the machine and appliance. Consider logging it elsewhere or pushing it out to a SIEM to get better controls and manipulation over the data to generate additional metrics and visibility."
"For large organizations, a third-party firewall would be an added advantage, because it would have more advanced features, things that are not in Azure Firewall."
"The threat intelligence part could be better. I don't see why our customers have to get an additional solution with Azure Firewall. It would be great if they made it on par with Palo Alto."
"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 should have a free trial version for new users so that they can evaluate it before deploying it."
"It has fewer features than you can get from other firewalls, like anti-spam and anti-phishing. Those kinds of things are not included. It only includes IDS and IDB."
"It would be nice to be able to create groupings for servers and offer groups of IP addresses."
"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."
"The reporting, logging, and monitoring features, as well as the flexibility of the policies, need to be improved."
"Meraki tech support staff have a lot more visibility into your network than you do, which is frustrating at times. I understand the approach is to keep the dashboard easier to understand. This will frustrate more advanced users at times."
"We had minor issues with Meraki MX. We had a couple of RMAs, so that could be an area for improvement, but in terms of how the RMAs went, the turnaround time and getting those back into redeployment were quick. Another area for improvement in Meraki MX is that when you're scaling for multiple locations, you need to use the same model, but the model you'd need is only available for a short time. The specific model you require could be out of stock, or Meraki isn't making that model anymore, so Meraki should improve that."
"We have been having a problem with the VPN. When the energy goes down and is back again, the VPN link doesn't get established. We have to manually turn off the modems and other pieces of equipment and manually establish the VPN. It has been around one month since we have been having this problem, and we don't have enough support from Meraki to solve the problem."
"The whole Cisco Meraki range requires easier access for cameras. For a security center, it would be helpful to have easier access to cameras through the portal. Its licensing cost could also be better."
"Meraki has some hidden features and information that is only privy to their engineers. If that information became available to us, then it would improve our ease of management, and we would be able to make certain adjustments instead of having to go to them."
"When we do API integrations with Meraki, they have always been hard as well as tedious to build. The data that we want out of the API integrations has been only recently available. Six months ago, it was hard to get someone to build something correctly or useful with Meraki APIs. Recently, they have made more data available on the API, but it is just a start. They need to do more."
"They need to improve the link between Meraki and Active Directory."
"It would be nice if the different services, including the SIEM SOC and endpoint detection and response (EDR) were integrated into one, so that I don't have to go to different vendors for different services."
Azure Firewall is ranked 14th in Firewalls with 17 reviews while Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 13 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.0, while Meraki MX is rated 8.8. 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 Meraki MX writes "Makes it easy to stay on top of everything for security". Azure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Check Point NGFW and SonicWall NSV, whereas Meraki MX is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, SonicWall NSa and Check Point NGFW. See our Azure Firewall vs. Meraki MX report.
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