We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Sonicwall TZ based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Of the two solutions, Sonicwall TZ seems to be the more desirable product because of its easy deployment, great set of features, and affordable price.
"I have not contacted technical support. There is a lot of information on the internet for troubleshooting. All you need to do is use a search engine and you will find the information you are looking for easily."
"It brings us the ability to work from anywhere and has allowed us to work remotely without having to incur a lot of other costs. If we didn't have this type of solution, since we have so many on-prem services that are required, we would have likely lost money and been unable to deliver. We have a video services team who helped build the content for our sporting events. When you are watching a Leaf game and those swipes come by as well as the clips and things, those are all generated in-house. Without the ability to access our on-premise resources, we would have been dead in the water. So, the return on that is pretty impressive."
"The user interface is very easy to manage and find rules. You can do object searches, which are very easy. Also, the logging is very simple to use. So, it is a lot easier to troubleshoot and find items inside the firewall."
"Its Snort 3 IPS has better flexibility as far as being able to write rules. This gives me better granularity."
"Cisco's technical support is the best and that's why everybody implements their products."
"When it comes to the integration among Cisco tools, we find it easy. It's a very practical integration with other components as well."
"I like the ASDM for the firewall because it is visual. With the command line, it is harder to visualize what is going on. A picture is worth a thousand words."
"It's very scalable. You can go to different models of the ASAs and they scale up to as big as you want to go."
"The most valuable feature is the user-friendly navigation."
"The site-to-site VPN connections, content filtering, and in our current remote working situation, SSL VPN remote desktop connectivity are the most valuable features."
"We like the central interface and we like the security features. Additionally, we use SonicWall with VPN connectivity and we have had no problems with SonicWall all these years."
"Technical support is good."
"SonicWall TZ is very user-friendly and has network MAC binding. Additionally, the firewall works well."
"I've found the technical support to be helpful."
"Its user interface and simplicity are the most favorite parts for our clients. They find it stable and easy to use. Its performance is also good."
"We like the unified threat management for defense-in-depth. We can terminate our site-to-site and remote access VPNs with it."
"It would be great if some of the load times were faster."
"It needs to provide the next-generation firewall features that other vendors provide, like data analytics, telemetry, and deep packet inspection."
"If they want to add better features to the current Cisco ASA, they can start by increasing the encryption. That is the only thing they need to improve."
"We are replacing ASA with FTD which offers many new features not available using ASA."
"I think the ASA layer is thin. It's always Layer 3 or Layer 4 source controller and doesn't control the Layer 7 traffic. It's important, and you'll need an additional firewall."
"I have used Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Check Point previously and I prefer the process of everything working together."
"Cisco Firepower is not completely integrated with Active Directory. We are trying to use Active Directory to restrict users by using some security groups that are not integrated within the Cisco Firepower module. This is the main issue that we are facing."
"Cisco is still catching up with its Firepower Next-Generation firewalls."
"The solution should provide some additional ports."
"The marketing of SonicWall has to be increased. Currently, when it comes to firewalls, most people go for Cisco and Palo Alto. SonicWall should improve its marketing and branding policies to increase sales. Other than that, it is good."
"I think content filtering is the area this product should improve. It's a little tricky to get put in correctly."
"Support for SonicWall TZ needs improvement, particularly the time it takes before you're able to speak to a support person, e.g. you have to wait for at least 30 minutes on the phone."
"I would like the solution to build in more redundancy. I"
"Its pricing can be better. It is very expensive."
"It could probably be more user-friendly, and it could be more scalable with releases and subscriptions."
"Its reporting can be improved. Currently, we cannot directly get the user names. It only shows the IP, which makes it a bit confusing because we need to use the IP to find the user. If we could directly get the name of the user, it would be better."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 91 reviews while SonicWall TZ is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 38 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while SonicWall TZ is rated 8.2. 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 TZ writes "Multifeatured firewall solution with a user-friendly interface, high availability, scalability, and stability". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Meraki MX, Palo Alto Networks WildFire, pfSense and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas SonicWall TZ is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Sophos XG, pfSense, SonicWall NSa and Meraki MX. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. SonicWall TZ report.
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We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
