We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and SonicWall NSa 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."With the pandemic, people began working from home. That was a pretty big move, having all our users working from a home. More capacity needed to be added to our remote VPN. ASA did this very well."
"Cisco ASA Firewall is a well known product. They're always updating it, and you know what they're doing and that it works."
"We definitely feel more secure. We have more control over things going in and out of our network."
"Cisco's technical support is the best and that's why everybody implements their products."
"I like its integration with the AnyConnect client. I also like how modular it is. For example, I can easily integrate the Umbrella add-on into it. We are planning on adding Umbrella. We haven't added it yet, but we have researched."
"The features I've found most valuable are the packet captures and packet traces because they help me debug connections. I like the logs because they help me see what's going on."
"This solution made our organization more secure and gave us better control."
"I did evaluate other options, but ultimately went with Cisco because of the support they offer. You can reach their tech support engineers at any time. Their documentation is great as well."
"I like this solution because we are focused on VPN and have many brands that need to link a VPN and have security, like ransomware, spyware, and basic protection."
"Overall SonicWall NSa is a good solution for our use case."
"For me, the most valuable feature of SonicWall NSa is the UTM."
"SonicWall has USCS and anti-virus at the gateway level. Everything is filtered, and if it detects an intruder, it drops the line."
"The filtering is excellent."
"Easy to scale solution that provides advanced threat protection. Their technical support is very good, very knowledgeable, and easy to reach."
"SonicWall's sales support is much better than other vendors'."
"The product is working okay. The product is working feature-wise."
"In general, they can make it easier to manage the solutions. They can make it easier in terms of administration and provide a single tool for different firewalling solutions. They have different tools to manage different firewalls, such as Firepower or ASA. Sometimes, both are on the same thing. You have ASA with Firepower modules, so you manage some of the things via HTML, and then you manage some of the things via another management tool. It's not seamless."
"I would like it to have faster deployment times. A typical deployment could take two to three minutes. Sometimes, it depends on the situation. It is better than it was in the past, but it could always use improvement."
"A major area of improvement would be to have more functionality in public clouds, especially in terms of simplifying it. The high availability doesn't work right now because of the limitations in the cloud."
"We have more than one Cisco firewall and it is difficult for me to integrate both on the single UI."
"Cisco ASDM is a problem because it is old."
"When we first got it, we were doing individual configuring. Now, there is a way to manage from one location."
"I'm not very familiar with the largest Firepower models, but competitors like Palo Alto seem to have a more capable engine to do, for instance, TLS/SSL decryption. As I understand, Firepower doesn't let you export the decrypted traffic so that, for instance, the security department can look at the traffic or inspect traffic. It's all in the box. I've heard rumors that this is something Cisco is working on, but it isn't yet available."
"I would like to see them add more next-generation features so that you don't need a lot of appliances to do just one task. It should be a single solution."
"The dynamics needs to be improved. The solution is not very compatible compared to the market products."
"SonicWall NSa has occasional bugs, particularly during upgrades, and that's an area for improvement."
"We also use the Sophos Firewall for web configuration, which we don't have in SonicWall. Only Sophos has those options. If SonicWall included that feature, that would be a benefit for us."
"The user interface could be better."
"The reporting and monitoring are a bit complex and should be easier in SonicWall NSa because other firewalls I have experienced have been more simple, such as Palo Alto. We are able to receive a clear view of our network. As a general user with little experience, it would be difficult for them to handle."
"The solution can be a bit expensive."
"The ongoing service fees are high."
"We have used other solutions such as pfSense and Linux native firewalls. I prefer SonicWall NSa but if you are going to use something for an enterprise you need another solution."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 111 reviews while SonicWall NSa is ranked 15th in Firewalls with 33 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while SonicWall NSa is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure 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 SonicWall NSa writes "Easy to scale advanced threat protection solution with knowledgeable technical support, but has occasional bugs". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Meraki MX, Palo Alto Networks WildFire, pfSense and Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, whereas SonicWall NSa is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. SonicWall NSa report.
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