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Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall vs Menlo Secure comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall
Ranking in Firewalls
19th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Firewall Security Management (8th)
Menlo Secure
Ranking in Firewalls
54th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (25th), ZTNA (27th), Cloud Security Remediation (6th)
 

Featured Reviews

BC
Sales And Brand Strategist at CrossConnect
Smart switching has transformed data center security and now simplifies stateful segmentation
To improve Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall, I think right now awareness is the biggest area for improvement. Cisco should focus on raising awareness about what the firewall on the switch actually is and how policy has changed. That is a massive story that has not been emphasized enough regarding saving time and effort due to the combination of all these tools. From a feature perspective, I am discovering new features as we deploy, so I do not know if there is a good answer yet because we are at the forefront of this technology. I can tell you that whenever we ask for a feature while working with Cisco, within a day, we get the feature added. For instance, understanding flow data is crucial. Within the N9300, to be able to apply the policy as we are discussing, you need to understand your network flow and what communicates with what. We were able to collaborate with the Cisco BU to refine how we consume that data and migrate old policies to the new structure necessary with Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall and HyperShield.
reviewer2701794 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Bluechip Enterprise at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Provides strong protection and multiple use cases but struggles with market recognition
There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto. Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco. What can be improved is market awareness and adoption of the technology. When selling it in the channel, regardless of how good the technology might be, success depends more on market adoption and awareness.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"A year and a half after working with them, it has paid off tenfold, and we would not have been where we are now if we had gone with the traditional Nexus platform."
"Specific outcomes that show the positive impact of Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall include that, with a single management environment to perform many different network changes on, we find that we can aggregate different change requests through the change management program without having to split things up."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with all of the other Cisco tools that we have, and its platform-first approach."
"I believe there is a return on investment with Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall for every company that deploys it, as they typically see returns quickly, often within a few months, and the value measured is reasonable and comes back quickly."
"Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall optimizes the experience in a hybrid or distributed enterprise setup, and it has improved considerably with centralized management enhancements, making the experience much better now."
"What I appreciate most about Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall is the visibility that I gain into the network."
"The solution is invisible to our end users, so it doesn't have any impact on their work or performance."
"We have definitely seen ROI, as we save a ton of money and time because the numerous hits that we were receiving from our security tools prior to implementing them had to all be chased down, dispositioned, and endpoints had to be reimaged."
"This security technology addresses risk and enables people to conduct business without that risk, which is where the ROI is realized."
"For us, the primary goal is protection on the web, and that's extremely important. We're not using any of the other services at this time. The web part is key to the success of the organization. It gives us the ability to protect. It can isolate. It opens the session in an isolated format so that the code isn't running locally. It is running over in the Menlo environment, not in ours. It is not running on the local computer, whereas if you were to go to a normal website, it would run Java or something else on the local machine and potentially execute the malicious code locally. So, it does give us that level of protection."
"We are not aware of a single compromise from the web since implementing the solution."
"The fact that it is a cloud proxy solution is another feature we like. For example, if you acquire a new company, you can use it to protect that new company without the need to install anything physically on their networks."
"Accessing the internet with a proxy from anywhere is the most valuable feature. It ensures that users are only able to browse legitimate websites. If they happen to go to a legitimate website with a malicious payload, the isolation feature will take care of that."
"It has reduced security events to follow up on. While it is not 100%, there has been probably a 90% or more reduction. We were getting hit left, right, and center constantly from people browsing the Internet and hitting bad websites. It was not just bad websites that were stood up to be malicious, but good sites that were compromised."
 

Cons

"The biggest issue we encountered was a gap between expectations for features relating to the design team versus the coding team."
"Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall could be improved by refining the documentation around the migration path from Cisco Defense Orchestrator or Farsight Manager because when we were early adopters, the migration path was quite unset and very vague and ambiguous."
"For improving Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall, licensing is always a pain point and represents the worst aspect of the solution."
"Regarding how Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall can be improved, I would say pricing and discount structures could be enhanced."
"My experience with deploying Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall has been effective, with certain challenges and successes."
"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists. I have numerous entries, but are they all still needed? A report that would show me my list of who is allowed and whether we're actually using it would be useful because I can then go clean up my list. It would be easier to manage. We would eliminate the vulnerability of unused services."
"We are now transitioning to another solution. The main reason for that is that managing all of the exceptions and troubleshooting all of the issues our users have had connecting to the internet has become too significant in terms of workload, compared to what we hope we will have with another solution."
"Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco."
"In the best of all worlds, we wouldn't have to make any exceptions. However, that is a big ask because a lot of that depends on how websites are constructed. For example, there are some very complex, application-oriented sites that we end up making exceptions for. It is really not that big an issue for us to make the exceptions. We feel like we are doing that without a huge impact on our security posture, but we do have to make some exceptions for complex sites, e.g., mostly SaaS-type sites and applications."
"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists."
"The user monitoring could still be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"We save a ton of money and time. Previously, the numerous hits that we were receiving from our security tools, prior to implementing them, had to all be chased down, dispositioned, and endpoints had to be reimaged. It was just a ton of effort to do all that. That is where the savings from time and money come in."
"It is appropriately priced for what they're doing for us. Considering the protection provided, I feel their pricing is spot-on."
"The solution is expensive. It's more expensive than the solution I previously used. Compared with the other cloud-based solutions, it's very competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
14%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall?
My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall is that it was minimal compared to the cost difference between what traditional N9300 would have cost to empo...
What needs improvement with Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall?
Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall could be improved by refining the documentation around the migration path from Cisco Defense Orchestrator or Farsight Manager because when we were early adopters, the mig...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall?
My main use case for Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall is the consolidation of multiple tools into one management platform.A specific example of how I use Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall for consolidation is t...
What needs improvement with Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?
There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto. Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which mak...
What is your primary use case for Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?
People are mainly using it for zero trust web access. Menlo Secure is built from the ground up to provide zero basic access, and by doing it that way, it has multiple use cases. For example, it man...
What advice do you have for others considering Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?
Secure file sharing and data protection is not exactly what Menlo Secure is designed to do. While it can handle some of these functions, people typically choose another technology for those specifi...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall vs. Menlo Secure and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.