When it comes to the product, I would rate it a ten out of ten. It's very good. For end customers looking to evaluate vendors, my advice is not to focus solely on one vendor. Instead of comparing features directly, consider your use case. For instance, I might recommend Cisco, while another might suggest Zscaler or Fortinet. Customers should base their decisions on whether a specific use case is better served by Cisco or another vendor, rather than a feature-by-feature comparison. It should be a use case-driven comparison.
You might need some level of support depending on what you're doing. Because even if it is in a cloud environment, as long as you understand the setup of what you want, you're good to go. I rate the solution an eight out of ten. Before now, there were things that you could log in and get them to do for you. Because we have Smart Net for our devices, that's the way to go most of the time because you are sure that at the click of a button, Cisco will always be there to help.
If you want to improve our infrastructure, you should consider implementing Cisco with appropriate configuration, along with a software-defined network and architecture. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.
It is a good product. It is valuable in terms of availability. Once configured and installed, the equipment runs for years. I rate it a seven out of ten as its support cost is high.
I have global customers who have applied this product. People who are buying this solution should know that they need and have the required solutions. I recommend Cisco IOS Security only for enterprises because it is expensive and involves complex implementation processes. It is not the easiest product available in the market and requires a strong infrastructure and an experienced workforce. Small and medium companies don’t have the required resources to apply this product and a lot of licensing is involved for each port. Given the price, stability, features, and other factors, I would rate it an eight out of ten.
Most of our customers are from the banking and financial domain. I have chosen the product after a thorough comparison and reading through whitepapers.
I look at companies and what they specialize in, and Cisco never really specialized in security. Other companies have security as their core focus. I will not be deploying any Cisco security devices in the near future. Overall, I rate Cisco IOS Security a seven out of ten.
I give the solution a six out of ten. We have over 1,000 people using the solution in our organization. We require around ten people for the deployment and maintenance of the solution. I do not recommend the solution because it is not secure and is complex.
Pre-Sales at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
Reseller
Top 20
2022-10-12T12:24:26Z
Oct 12, 2022
I'm working with Cisco products such as firewalls, ISE, routers, data centers, FTD, and most of the Cisco technologies. I have experience with Cisco IOS Security as well. My company is a partner and reseller of Cisco products. My customers, particularly enterprise customers, use Cisco IOS Security. My advice to others looking into implementing Cisco IOS Security is to do a POC first. It would help to be careful about performance, latency, and management issues with Cisco IOS Security. I'd rate Cisco IOS Security as seven out of ten.
Operations Specialist - MX Operations at Bank Alfalah Limited
Real User
Top 20
2022-08-29T15:19:36Z
Aug 29, 2022
I rate Cisco IOS Security seven out of 10. To make it a 10, Cisco needs to speed up all the processes to reduce downtime to a minimum. For example, if a department comes to me to do a UAT, I might find out I have to make some changes. There's an additional 10 minutes. It's a lengthy process for me. If you have the support for another firewall, I suggest researching your options. Go for the UAT environment and check as you're comparing them. I won't say that you should definitely go for Cisco.
We are a Cisco customer and end-user. We've been using the mid-range version since 2012. I'd rate the solution around eight out of ten. Cisco is great. It's likely number one in the world. I'd recommend the solution as it is a very powerful product. However, it's best to have Cisco experts on staff or available to you to make things easier.
Works at a non-tech company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 10
2022-08-01T18:05:43Z
Aug 1, 2022
We chose Cisco because the company has an excellent market rating, users are familiar with Cisco, and they can deploy Cisco products. Using Cisco also improves the security mechanism of all devices from end to end. On a scale from one to ten, I would give Cisco IOS Security an eight.
Before we can use any security feature on the Cisco router, we must first purchase an iOS security license. Yes, I would recommend this solution. It is more stable and less expensive than other firewalls. In some cases, it saves money for the project or the companies that work with it. I would rate Cisco IOS Security an eight out of ten.
I will continue using the solution because our customers demand it. I would recommend the solution to other users. I rate Cisco IOS Security a nine out of ten.
Technical Lead at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2020-12-23T10:57:32Z
Dec 23, 2020
We're just a customer and end-user. We don't have a business relationship with Cisco. We're using the latest version of the solution in our organization right now. We use both cloud and on-premises deployments, however, currently, we tend to use more on-premises deployments. I would recommend the solution. Overall, I would rate it at an eight out of ten.
Field Solutions Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
MSP
2020-09-29T05:58:00Z
Sep 29, 2020
My advice for anybody who is implementing this product is to ensure that they don't overlook the technical overhead that is required to get it set up and keep it running. From an SD-WAN perspective, there are more user-friendly options out there, so they are going to have their own shortcomings. However, if you're going down the route of a Cisco command-line-based solution then make sure that you're prepared to have the staff on hand to manage it or instead, have a trusted partner that you work with and has the expertise to manage it. From a feature-set perspective, as long as Cisco continues down the path of combining features from its products onto the unified platform, it will have all the features you need. It's a good product and it does exactly what it's intended to do, but there and stability issues and the price is expensive. I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.
Vice President - Network and Infrastructure at NJA LLC
Real User
2020-09-27T04:10:08Z
Sep 27, 2020
The advice that I would give to others looking into implementing this product is that I think they need to do their benchmarking. They should do due diligence beforehand in terms of their traffic. On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate this product overall as about an eight-out-of-ten. I do not know how they could realistically improve on that much. You never keep up with the hackers, they are always a step ahead of us when it comes to security.
My advice to people and companies considering this solution is to just do the research. Do compatibility research to compare with the other solutions that are out there. Definitely make sure that the firewall you choose is designed for your network architecture, application-layer attacks, and virus and worm protection. If that coverage is what you are looking for and you have an analog phone system. You might not be ready to go to VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) yet because you do not want to lose the phones that you have got. Some people add to that base as they scale. We can use something called SIPs (Session Initiation Protocol), for connecting all those analog phones to the VoIP. That is a good indicator that a Cisco firewall will be a good solution for you because it protects the unified communication and guards the SIPs, endpoints, and call-control resources. On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate this product overall as a ten, for sure, if you consider its advantages over the competition. If you add in pricing, I would have to lower that to a nine-out-of-ten. Price is the only place that I figure Cisco could do something. Or if they could offset the cost of their boxes using a cloud solution. We had a client do that. They had boxes, but they were trying to figure a better way to scale. I suggested to them that they just move the areas that they were scaling to the cloud. They did it with the new branches they have added, and now they are waiting to phase out their boxes. They will eventually move over to a complete cloud-based firewall solution.
Managing Director at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Real User
2020-09-21T06:33:00Z
Sep 21, 2020
We use a few different Cisco solutions. We're a Cisco partner. We have a business relationship with the company. We're dealing with the latest version of this particular solution. I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. The value for money it should be there. Which means good features, good functioning things are there, but they need to make it more affordable for big market. If they were able to price the solution to make it more affordable for more clients that may not be enterprise-level, they've have a bigger footprint.
Chief Technology Officer at Future Point Technologies
Reseller
Top 5
2020-08-11T06:17:00Z
Aug 11, 2020
We work with Cisco, and we top-rate Cisco firewalls to be sold and deployed. This is because they have good trading and expertise available. Cisco IOS Security is pretty reliable, and it also has really good documentation. It sometimes requires a slightly higher technical expertise to implement all the features as compared to other firewalls. Therefore, users definitely have to be trained first to get proper knowledge. Definitely, IOS security is well-documented, and it's pretty reliable. I'd advise just to make sure that they have adequate knowledge. The learning curve is slightly longer because it's a slightly complex product as compared to Fortinet, but feature-wise, it's very good. I would rate Cisco IOS Security a seven out of ten. It is a good product with scope for features such as link-by-link, integration with UTM, and load balancers.
My rating for this solution is a ten out of ten because it does everything I need and it is easy enough to use. My advice to others is to definitely have it on their list of vendors to take a look at. I really recommend this solution.
My advice is that this is a very secure option for platforms and gateways using the Cisco IOS security feature. I would rate Cisco IOS as ten out of ten.
My advice is to take this firewall. It is really good. I would rate Cisco IOS as eight out of ten. The next-generation firewalls, like UTM, have paper-thin single boxes. They should follow the same projects, like the next-generation firewall. They have everything like 40GBs in a single box, along with filtering applications, like VPN and SSN. They also have reporting features.
Product Manager - Wireless / IT Support Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
2019-06-30T10:29:00Z
Jun 30, 2019
In terms of advice, I would suggest others should use it. It is quite a good product, it is one of the market leaders. I believe it could be as good as other solutions. There are two things you require: one is support and the other one is credibility. Both are there with this product. I would rate this solution eight out of ten.
Cisco is one of the greatest. The Cisco stack is the best. If you don't know it, don't go for the solution because it gets very complex. If you are new to the security, don't go for Cisco. But if you are experienced and you know how to do it, it's one of the greatest solutions. I would rate this solution 7 out of 10. The solution is always stable, but there are many security features that Cisco is behind on today.
Networks Lead Engineer at a mining and metals company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
2019-06-23T09:40:00Z
Jun 23, 2019
Even now, we are not fully utilizing the features because it'll add complicated things. I would rate this solution 7 out of 10 because of both support and interface. After this experience, next time in any project we are going to go more secure.
It's a good product you just have to have someone that really knows how to configure it otherwise it's going to be a nightmare. I would rate it a seven out of ten.
Operational Risk Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
2019-03-11T07:21:00Z
Mar 11, 2019
Look at this solution and figure out what you're trying to accomplish. You should probably augment it with some other vendors as well. I'm not a big single-vendor type of person. I don't think anyone does it perfectly well. With Cisco, you bring them in for their core competencies which are routing, switching, and virtual networking. Then you augment it with some security vendors that have been doing security the entire time. I would rate it at eight out of ten. It's not a ten because of the criticisms around security.
Cisco IOS Software delivers a sophisticated set of security capabilities for a comprehensive, layered security approach throughout your network infrastructure. Cisco IOS security technologies help to defend critical business processes against attack and disruption, protect privacy, and support policy and regulatory compliance controls.
When it comes to the product, I would rate it a ten out of ten. It's very good. For end customers looking to evaluate vendors, my advice is not to focus solely on one vendor. Instead of comparing features directly, consider your use case. For instance, I might recommend Cisco, while another might suggest Zscaler or Fortinet. Customers should base their decisions on whether a specific use case is better served by Cisco or another vendor, rather than a feature-by-feature comparison. It should be a use case-driven comparison.
I would recommend this product if it fits the budget. Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Overall, I rate Cisco IOS Security a nine out of ten.
You might need some level of support depending on what you're doing. Because even if it is in a cloud environment, as long as you understand the setup of what you want, you're good to go. I rate the solution an eight out of ten. Before now, there were things that you could log in and get them to do for you. Because we have Smart Net for our devices, that's the way to go most of the time because you are sure that at the click of a button, Cisco will always be there to help.
If you want to improve our infrastructure, you should consider implementing Cisco with appropriate configuration, along with a software-defined network and architecture. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.
It is a good product. It is valuable in terms of availability. Once configured and installed, the equipment runs for years. I rate it a seven out of ten as its support cost is high.
I have global customers who have applied this product. People who are buying this solution should know that they need and have the required solutions. I recommend Cisco IOS Security only for enterprises because it is expensive and involves complex implementation processes. It is not the easiest product available in the market and requires a strong infrastructure and an experienced workforce. Small and medium companies don’t have the required resources to apply this product and a lot of licensing is involved for each port. Given the price, stability, features, and other factors, I would rate it an eight out of ten.
The solution provides a robust system. I advise others to understand the technology to use the system with ease. I rate it a ten out of ten.
Most of our customers are from the banking and financial domain. I have chosen the product after a thorough comparison and reading through whitepapers.
I look at companies and what they specialize in, and Cisco never really specialized in security. Other companies have security as their core focus. I will not be deploying any Cisco security devices in the near future. Overall, I rate Cisco IOS Security a seven out of ten.
I give the solution a six out of ten. We have over 1,000 people using the solution in our organization. We require around ten people for the deployment and maintenance of the solution. I do not recommend the solution because it is not secure and is complex.
I recommend the solution and rate it an eight out of ten.
I'm working with Cisco products such as firewalls, ISE, routers, data centers, FTD, and most of the Cisco technologies. I have experience with Cisco IOS Security as well. My company is a partner and reseller of Cisco products. My customers, particularly enterprise customers, use Cisco IOS Security. My advice to others looking into implementing Cisco IOS Security is to do a POC first. It would help to be careful about performance, latency, and management issues with Cisco IOS Security. I'd rate Cisco IOS Security as seven out of ten.
I rate Cisco IOS Security seven out of 10. To make it a 10, Cisco needs to speed up all the processes to reduce downtime to a minimum. For example, if a department comes to me to do a UAT, I might find out I have to make some changes. There's an additional 10 minutes. It's a lengthy process for me. If you have the support for another firewall, I suggest researching your options. Go for the UAT environment and check as you're comparing them. I won't say that you should definitely go for Cisco.
We are a Cisco customer and end-user. We've been using the mid-range version since 2012. I'd rate the solution around eight out of ten. Cisco is great. It's likely number one in the world. I'd recommend the solution as it is a very powerful product. However, it's best to have Cisco experts on staff or available to you to make things easier.
We chose Cisco because the company has an excellent market rating, users are familiar with Cisco, and they can deploy Cisco products. Using Cisco also improves the security mechanism of all devices from end to end. On a scale from one to ten, I would give Cisco IOS Security an eight.
This solution has some advantages over competitors, but it has weaknesses too. I rate Cisco IOS Security an eight out of ten.
Before we can use any security feature on the Cisco router, we must first purchase an iOS security license. Yes, I would recommend this solution. It is more stable and less expensive than other firewalls. In some cases, it saves money for the project or the companies that work with it. I would rate Cisco IOS Security an eight out of ten.
I recommend this solution to others and advise them to use the latest version. I rate Cisco IOS Security an eight out of ten.
I rate Cisco IOS Security an eight out of ten.
I will continue using the solution because our customers demand it. I would recommend the solution to other users. I rate Cisco IOS Security a nine out of ten.
We're just a customer and end-user. We don't have a business relationship with Cisco. We're using the latest version of the solution in our organization right now. We use both cloud and on-premises deployments, however, currently, we tend to use more on-premises deployments. I would recommend the solution. Overall, I would rate it at an eight out of ten.
My advice for anybody who is implementing this product is to ensure that they don't overlook the technical overhead that is required to get it set up and keep it running. From an SD-WAN perspective, there are more user-friendly options out there, so they are going to have their own shortcomings. However, if you're going down the route of a Cisco command-line-based solution then make sure that you're prepared to have the staff on hand to manage it or instead, have a trusted partner that you work with and has the expertise to manage it. From a feature-set perspective, as long as Cisco continues down the path of combining features from its products onto the unified platform, it will have all the features you need. It's a good product and it does exactly what it's intended to do, but there and stability issues and the price is expensive. I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.
The advice that I would give to others looking into implementing this product is that I think they need to do their benchmarking. They should do due diligence beforehand in terms of their traffic. On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate this product overall as about an eight-out-of-ten. I do not know how they could realistically improve on that much. You never keep up with the hackers, they are always a step ahead of us when it comes to security.
My advice to people and companies considering this solution is to just do the research. Do compatibility research to compare with the other solutions that are out there. Definitely make sure that the firewall you choose is designed for your network architecture, application-layer attacks, and virus and worm protection. If that coverage is what you are looking for and you have an analog phone system. You might not be ready to go to VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) yet because you do not want to lose the phones that you have got. Some people add to that base as they scale. We can use something called SIPs (Session Initiation Protocol), for connecting all those analog phones to the VoIP. That is a good indicator that a Cisco firewall will be a good solution for you because it protects the unified communication and guards the SIPs, endpoints, and call-control resources. On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate this product overall as a ten, for sure, if you consider its advantages over the competition. If you add in pricing, I would have to lower that to a nine-out-of-ten. Price is the only place that I figure Cisco could do something. Or if they could offset the cost of their boxes using a cloud solution. We had a client do that. They had boxes, but they were trying to figure a better way to scale. I suggested to them that they just move the areas that they were scaling to the cloud. They did it with the new branches they have added, and now they are waiting to phase out their boxes. They will eventually move over to a complete cloud-based firewall solution.
We use a few different Cisco solutions. We're a Cisco partner. We have a business relationship with the company. We're dealing with the latest version of this particular solution. I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. The value for money it should be there. Which means good features, good functioning things are there, but they need to make it more affordable for big market. If they were able to price the solution to make it more affordable for more clients that may not be enterprise-level, they've have a bigger footprint.
We work with Cisco, and we top-rate Cisco firewalls to be sold and deployed. This is because they have good trading and expertise available. Cisco IOS Security is pretty reliable, and it also has really good documentation. It sometimes requires a slightly higher technical expertise to implement all the features as compared to other firewalls. Therefore, users definitely have to be trained first to get proper knowledge. Definitely, IOS security is well-documented, and it's pretty reliable. I'd advise just to make sure that they have adequate knowledge. The learning curve is slightly longer because it's a slightly complex product as compared to Fortinet, but feature-wise, it's very good. I would rate Cisco IOS Security a seven out of ten. It is a good product with scope for features such as link-by-link, integration with UTM, and load balancers.
My rating for this solution is a ten out of ten because it does everything I need and it is easy enough to use. My advice to others is to definitely have it on their list of vendors to take a look at. I really recommend this solution.
This is a good solution, and one that I recommend, but sometimes we have bugs. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
My advice is that this is a very secure option for platforms and gateways using the Cisco IOS security feature. I would rate Cisco IOS as ten out of ten.
My advice is to take this firewall. It is really good. I would rate Cisco IOS as eight out of ten. The next-generation firewalls, like UTM, have paper-thin single boxes. They should follow the same projects, like the next-generation firewall. They have everything like 40GBs in a single box, along with filtering applications, like VPN and SSN. They also have reporting features.
In terms of advice, I would suggest others should use it. It is quite a good product, it is one of the market leaders. I believe it could be as good as other solutions. There are two things you require: one is support and the other one is credibility. Both are there with this product. I would rate this solution eight out of ten.
Cisco is one of the greatest. The Cisco stack is the best. If you don't know it, don't go for the solution because it gets very complex. If you are new to the security, don't go for Cisco. But if you are experienced and you know how to do it, it's one of the greatest solutions. I would rate this solution 7 out of 10. The solution is always stable, but there are many security features that Cisco is behind on today.
On a scale from 1 to 10, I would rate Cisco IOS Security at 9/10.
Even now, we are not fully utilizing the features because it'll add complicated things. I would rate this solution 7 out of 10 because of both support and interface. After this experience, next time in any project we are going to go more secure.
It's a good product you just have to have someone that really knows how to configure it otherwise it's going to be a nightmare. I would rate it a seven out of ten.
Look at this solution and figure out what you're trying to accomplish. You should probably augment it with some other vendors as well. I'm not a big single-vendor type of person. I don't think anyone does it perfectly well. With Cisco, you bring them in for their core competencies which are routing, switching, and virtual networking. Then you augment it with some security vendors that have been doing security the entire time. I would rate it at eight out of ten. It's not a ten because of the criticisms around security.