We performed a comparison between Cisco IOS Security and Cisco Secure Firewall 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."The reporting and monitoring are very good."
"There is an easy process for configuring it, and it is straightforward to implement the device from scratch."
"The usage in general is pretty good."
"The solution is easy to configure and maintain remotely."
"The solution is scalable."
"FortiGate SD-WAN facilitated a smooth transition for our customers between their two internet service providers, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity without any downtime."
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"We are very happy with the general bandwidth agility we have seen from one website to another website."
"I've found their network routing to be very good."
"One of the main features is that the hardware is extremely reliable."
"The most valuable features are DNS service and shell self-service within a network."
"Completely integrates branch offices with perimeter security."
"The solution is stable."
"There is a positive impact on security, particularly the intrusion feature, which helps keep the solution concealed and secure."
"Cisco products are very secure and integrate easily with other devices."
"The solution is easy to use."
"I have experience with URL filtering, and it is very good for URL filtering. You can filter URLs based on the categories, and it does a good job. It can also do deep packet inspection."
"Technical support services are excellent."
"It's got the capabilities of amassing a lot of throughput with remote access and VPNs."
"The features I found most valuable in this solution, are the overall security features."
"The integration of network and workload micro-segmentation helps a lot to provide unified segmentation policies across east-west and north-south traffic. One concrete example is with Cisco ACI for the data center. Not only are we doing what is called a service graph on the ACI to make sure that we can filter traffic east-west between two endpoints in the same network, but when we go north-south or east-west, we can then leverage what we have on the network with SGTs on Cisco ISE. Once you build your matrix, it is very easy to filter in and out on east-west or north-south traffic."
"The grouping of the solutions helps save time. If you have a problem and you have a high-level overview of the system, you can easily dig deeper into the problem. For example, I can check to see why ASA isn't working but the reason for the outage is actually because of Duo. I can spend a lot of time working in the wrong direction because I didn't have an overview."
"An efficient, easy to deploy and dependable firewall solution."
"What I like about Cisco is the security zone. By default when you configure it, it gives you a security zone, which other firewalls don't have."
"I think the only issue that needs improvement is the interface."
"A sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."
"Web security solutions can be improved."
"I need user-behavior analytics, to find threat scenarios from inside the organization, insider attacks. That would be very helpful for us. In addition, I would like next-generation features for small and medium businesses. These businesses require UTM, all in one product. Fortinet must include it."
"It would be ideal if they had some sort of GUI interface for troubleshooting and diagnostics."
"Improvement is needed in the Web Filter quotas to restrict users with allocated quotas."
"It should have a better pricing plan. It is too expensive. It should also have a more granular view of the attack. I don't have FortiAnalyzer, and it is difficult for me to have a complete view when there is an attack on my server."
"Some of the web policy reports could be improved."
"The configuration and reporting interfaces need a lot of improvement. It needs to be more accessible forsolide without a strong technical background. If you had a simplified dashboard, the lower-level techs could manage the solution and provide services. Cisco IOS Security requires someone who is highly trained to operate it."
"Cisco IOS Security could improve by having more compatibility with other Cisco solutions."
"With respect to user-friendliness, it is a command-line interface and those with such experience will get along just fine, whereas others may struggle."
"The solution is not user friendly and it is hard to manage the GUI interface."
"Cisco is a scalable product, but it is expensive compared to other vendors."
"If they could increase the performance a little better because the device sometimes gets slow."
"An area for improvement in Cisco IOS Security is the performance because it's not as stable sometimes. There's also some latency in the solution, which could be improved. Cisco IOS Security integrates with other solutions, but you'll encounter many errors after integration, so this is another area for improvement. I'd like to see enhanced performance and a simplified setup in the next version of Cisco IOS Security."
"There could be a bit more functions on offer that could make it easier to use."
"There should be more integration with Microsoft Identity."
"Migration with other appliances is not easy. It has to be done manually, and this takes a long time."
"I would like it if there was a centralized way to manage policies, then sticking with the network functions on the actual devices. That is probably the thing that frustrates me the most. I want a way that you can manage multiple policies at several different locations, all at one site. You then don't have to worry about the connectivity piece, in case you are troubleshooting because connectivity is down."
"I was just trying to learn how this product actually operates and one thing that I see from internal processing is it does fire-walling and then sends it to the IPS model and any other model that needs to be performed. For example, content checking or filtering will be done in a field processing manner. That is something that causes delays in the network, from a security perspective. That is something that can be improved upon. Palo Alto already has implemented this as a pilot passed processing. So they put the same stream of data across multiple modules at the same time and see if it is giving a positive result by using an XR function. So, something similar can be done in the Cisco Firepower. Instead of single processing or in a sequential manner, they can do something similar to pile processing. Internal function that is something that they can improve upon."
"The initial setup was complex."
"It should be easier for the IT management or the admin to configure products. For example, the firewall products are not very straightforward for many users. They should be easier to configure and should be more straightforward."
"Usually, the customers are satisfied, but I am going to recommend that all clients upgrade to FirePOWER management. I want Cisco to improve the feature called anti-spam. We use a Cisco only email solution, that's why we need the anti-spam on email facility."
"We would really like to see dual dual power supplies for some Cisco Firewall products."
Cisco IOS Security is ranked 23rd in Firewalls with 21 reviews while Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 112 reviews. Cisco IOS Security is rated 8.0, while Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco IOS Security writes "It's a reliable solution that will be around for a long time, but the configuration and reporting interfaces need improvement". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Includes multiple tools that help manage and troubleshoot, but needs SD-WAN for load balancing". Cisco IOS Security is most compared with Meraki MX, Fortinet FortiOS, Netgate pfSense, OPNsense and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Juniper SRX Series Firewall. See our Cisco IOS Security vs. Cisco Secure Firewall report.
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