"We get the Security Intelligence Feeds refreshed every hour from Talos, which from my understanding is that they're the largest intelligence Security Intelligence Group outside of the government."
"Provides good integrations and reporting."
"It is one of the fastest solutions, if not the fastest, in the security technology space. This gives us peace of mind knowing that as soon as a new attack comes online that we will be protected in short order. From that perspective, no one really comes close now to Firepower, which is hugely valuable to us from an upcoming new attack prevention perspective."
"There are no issues that we are aware of. It does its job silently in the background."
"The most valuable features of this solution are advanced malware protection, IPS, and IDS."
"Feature-wise, we mostly use IPS because it is a security requirement to protect against attacks from outside and inside. This is where IPS helps us out a bunch."
"The customer service/technical support is very good with this solution."
"IPS and Snort are very important because they also differentiate Cisco from other vendors and competitors."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are the reports, monitoring, filtration, and blocking incoming and outgoing traffic."
"The solution is very easy to use and configure."
"The GUI is easy to understand."
"I especially like the VPN part. It works like a charm."
"pfSense is easy to use, has user-friendly dashboards, and useful blocking features."
"At our peak time, we have reached more than 5,000 concurrent connections."
"It is a stable solution. It is also easy to install and can be deployed and maintained by one team member."
"Sophos Intercept X is scalable. Currently, we have almost 30 people using it in our company."
"I believe that the current feature set of the device is very good and the only thing that Cisco should work on is improving the user experience with the device."
"FlexConfig is there as a bridge for features that are not yet natively integrated into Firepower. It is a way of allowing you to be able to configure things that wouldn't otherwise be possible until the development team can add them into Firepower's native capability. There is still some work that needs to be done around FlexConfig. There are still quite a few complex things, like policy-based routing, that have to be done in FlexConfig, and it doesn't always work perfectly. Sometimes, there are some glitches. It is recommended that you configure FlexConfig policies with Cisco TAC. It would be good to see Cisco accelerate some of those configurations that you can only do in FlexConfig into the platform, so that they are there natively."
"My team tells me that other solutions such as Fortinet and Palo Alto are easier to implement."
"The change-deployment time can always be improved. Even at 50 seconds, it's longer than some of its competitors. I would challenge Cisco to continue to improve in that area."
"I'm not a big fan of the FDM (Firepower Device Manager) that comes with Firepower. I found out that you need to use the Firepower Management Center, the FMC, to manage the firewalls a lot better. You can get a lot more granular with the configuration in the FMC, versus the FDM that comes out-of-the-box with it. FDM is like Firepower for dummies."
"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."
"They could improve by having more skilled, high-level engineers that are available around the clock. I know that's an easy thing to say and a hard thing to do."
"An area of improvement for this solution is the console visualization."
"Lacks instructional videos."
"We are at the moment looking to use it as a proxy service so that we can limit what websites people go and view and that sort of thing. That's an area I've struggled with a little bit at the moment and it could be a bit easier to set up."
"The integration of pfSense with EPS and EDS could be better. Also, it should be easier to get reports on how many users are connecting simultaneously and how sections connect in real-time."
"The technical support needs to be improved."
"We had training from an advisor for the configuring of this solution and it was not difficult. However, if we were not trained it would have been not as easy."
"Could be simplified for new users."
"The usage reports can be better."
"In an upcoming release, the reporting could be more user-friendly. For example, the reporting in graphs and charts for the host can be cumbersome."
More Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 53 reviews while pfSense is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 58 reviews. Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall is rated 8.2, while pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall writes "The ability to implement dynamic policies for dynamic environments is important, given the fluidity in the world of security". On the other hand, the top reviewer of pfSense writes "Feature-rich, well documented, and there is good support available online". Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Cisco ASA Firewall, Meraki MX, Palo Alto Networks WildFire and Azure Firewall, whereas pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Fortinet FortiGate, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall and Zyxel Unified Security Gateway. See our Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall vs. pfSense report.
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