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Cisco Secure Access vs Sangfor NGAF 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 Secure Access
Ranking in Firewalls
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (4th), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (3rd), ZTNA (5th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (3rd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (2nd)
Sangfor NGAF
Ranking in Firewalls
28th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Access is 0.5%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sangfor NGAF is 1.2%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Secure Access0.5%
Sangfor NGAF1.2%
Other98.3%
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2788500 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Operations Engineer at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Secure access has unified zero trust and web protection while AI assistance automates tasks
From a feature perspective, I have not experienced any issues, drawbacks, or shortcomings. However, the cost of Cisco's products and licensing is high. My clients usually prefer cheaper options if possible. Mid-size or smaller businesses typically cannot afford Cisco Secure Access. Additionally, there is a steep learning curve, as it is very intensive. Someone with significant knowledge can work on it, but a new professional would have to spend considerable time to get accustomed to it. It is hard to find engineers who can work on it. Overall, we get what we pay for, as it is a pretty good feature and service. The pricing of Cisco's products and licensing is higher than competitors. If they could be more reasonable, that would help. The support offered for two years also has higher costs. Overall, the client's IT budget gets affected. It was challenging to learn because, as mentioned, it has a significant learning curve and requires considerable training to become proficient.
AK
Network Administrator at GC University Lahore
Leverage detailed reporting for effective attack management
We are hosting applications over the platform, including websites and NAT traffic from our side. Because it's deployed in our data center, which is fully operational, we have various applications hosted there, websites, FTP portals, making it quite comprehensive. Essentially, it performs all the…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The integrated capabilities of Cisco Secure Access deliver significant ROI through reduced mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR), with resource efficiency notably improved as fewer personnel are needed for triage and system management."
"I like the dashboard feature of Cisco Secure Access the most, just how simplistic it is and user-friendly, with everything on one page as well."
"I use this solution for securing security controls like Secure Security Control (SSC) for local Internet breakouts."
"The integration has been really good for my identity management and security measures."
"Cisco Secure Client is really efficient for all the users and mostly for the enterprise, so I would say Cisco Secure Client would be the primary one."
"The product is giving whatever you need from a customer point of view."
"The features I have mentioned benefit our company overall by giving us one single pane of glass, where we can see all the rule sets, and our end customers appreciate having one single control point of the network."
"Cisco Secure Access is more than a mature product at this point."
"The capabilities are mostly within the box."
"We can utilize our own network rather than paying for a private one."
"The most valuable features are the WAN optimization, the internet access gateway (IAG), and the central console, which allows us to implement on their firewall."
"I think this solution is a very good example of a proactive solution that can detect problems and immediately fix the problems or issues."
"It enables us to not only detect but also prevent various types of incoming threats, allowing us to take appropriate corrective actions and exercise control over the network."
"The most valuable feature of Sangfor NGAF is its integration."
"I think Sangfor NGAF is more valuable than Cisco products because of its simplicity and ease of management. If I compare it with Palo Alto and Cisco, both are quite complex products. And if I compare it with FortiGate firewalls from Fortinet, I have also used all these products. Fortinet and Sangfor NGAF are similar products because the applications behind the application and policy layers are almost identical."
"Sangfor is a good solution that provides a WAF and firewall solution; most other vendors, like Sophos and Fortinet and Cisco, only provide one solution, and that's a valuable feature of Sangfor."
 

Cons

"For pricing, I consider this one of the few drawbacks of Cisco; Cisco is known for its high pricing, so I would give them a six."
"In general, I think features can be improved."
"Cisco could add new features in the future, such as enhanced automation capabilities."
"I would describe my experience deploying Cisco Secure Access as working well, though we are hitting bugs."
"One critique I have about the onboarding process is that for a lot of Cisco apps, you do have to sign back into everything."
"Cisco Secure Access could be improved with fewer bugs; we need to address less software bugs, as there are technical issues and errors in the software, which we are trying to resolve to achieve a more stable version that companies can use without issues, but it is a working process, and we understand this."
"Improvement on the pricing will help in expanding the market for Cisco Secure Access and then it can be affordable to much more number of companies than what it is right now."
"One main problem we have been having recently with Cisco Secure Access is that we have a lot of workstations out in our plant and they are all touchscreen devices."
"They need to improve their research team and they need to study their data to analyze it and build the product."
"The setup phase is quite complex."
"An area of improvement for Sangfor NGAF could be in the field of reporting and logging."
"Scalability for any network device is not very easy in terms of vertical scalability."
"It has an issue with the Sangfor Cloud Platform rather than the firewall. When we run a virtual machine, the window tabs display Chinese characters."
"Sangfor could improve by providing better real-time reporting, as the current reports don't offer the level of detail we need, especially for runtime insights."
"The web interface needs to be improved, making it more user-friendly."
"Sangfor NGAF could improve the policies and default criteria. They could be much better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For what you get, it's a fair price in comparison to other products."
"It is confusing. When you look at the prices, you have different licensing and years of licensing that you have to purchase. Additionally, it's unclear what service you get from those licenses regarding end-user support. We have a representative who has to walk me through it every time."
"The pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Cisco Secure Access have been very competitive compared to other platforms. I believe that if Cisco continues to improve costs or offers something similar to a Cisco credit, it would attract more customers."
"For over 2000 users, the cost is around 5000 to 6000 USD. If you want a web application firewall, you have to purchase an additional license for it."
"Sangfor NGAF price is reasonable and there is an annual license. However, the maintenance cost can be a bit high."
"Price-wise, I would not consider Sangfor NGAF to be a cheap product. It is an expensive firewall solution, though not as expensive as something like Palo Alto, which is costly. However, the higher price point is justifiable given the feature set the tool provides that other firewalls may not offer in a single dedicated appliance."
"We purchased one year technical support and return to factory support, and we also purchased one-year technical support services. So those were additional."
"When it comes to the price of firewall solutions, Sangfor NGAF takes the cake."
"For four to five physical appliances for a licensed firewall, it costs approximately $4,000."
"In my opinion, the price of the tool is good in the Pakistani market. We can easily get discounts if needed."
"The pricing is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise40
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Access?
The pricing is not too bad because it's per headcount with Cisco Secure Access. You check how many clients you have. If you have 500 users, then you base your pricing on that. It's still expensive ...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Secure Access?
I am dealing with Cisco Secure Access products. As a consultant and reseller, I am using it myself with Cisco Secure Access. You can have tenants with Cisco Secure Access. Tenancy is obviously part...
What advice do you have for others considering Cisco Secure Access?
The AI element of Cisco Secure Access should have better guidance on the logs. To be honest, I can't think of anything else because it's quite a robust feature. My overall review rating for Cisco S...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sangfor NGAF?
The licensing cost is quite high compared to other available firewalls in the market.
What needs improvement with Sangfor NGAF?
The cost of licensing is very high compared to other firewalls available here. There should be improvements in hardware scalability, allowing for more storage and memory capacity. Making the soluti...
What is your primary use case for Sangfor NGAF?
We are hosting applications over the platform, including websites and NAT traffic from our side. Because it's deployed in our data center, which is fully operational, we have various applications h...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Sangfor NGAF Firewall Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. IBM 2. Microsoft 3. Amazon 4. Google 5. Apple 6. Cisco Systems 7. Oracle 8. Intel 9. HP Inc. 10. Dell Technologies 11. Verizon Communications 12. AT&T 13. Comcast 14. T-Mobile 15. Sprint 16. Vodafone 17. Orange 18. BT Group 19. Deutsche Telekom 20. Telefonica 21. Nokia 22. Ericsson 23. Samsung Electronics 24. Sony 25. Panasonic 26. LG Electronics 27. Siemens 28. General Electric 29. Ford Motor Company 30. General Motors 31. Toyota Motor Corporation 32. Volkswagen Group
The Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (Indonesia), Lawson, Inc. (Philippines), Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin (Indonesia), TEK Automotive (Italy), etc.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Access vs. Sangfor NGAF and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,351 professionals have used our research since 2012.