We compared Cisco Secure Firewall and Azure Firewall based on our users' reviews across several parameters.
Cisco Secure Firewall is regarded highly for its strong security features, user-friendly interface, and seamless integration within Cisco's security ecosystem. Customers appreciate the value they receive for the price paid and the efficient deployment process. Azure Firewall is praised for its competitive pricing, centralized network security management, and high performance in managing traffic. Users find the setup process straightforward, although some face challenges with customization and integration with other services. Both products receive positive feedback on customer service and support.
Features: Cisco Secure Firewall stands out for its robust intrusion detection and prevention system, seamless integration with Cisco's security ecosystem, and powerful threat intelligence capabilities. On the other hand, Azure Firewall is commended for its centralized network security management, seamless integration with Azure services, and high performance in handling large traffic volumes.
Pricing and ROI: Cisco Secure Firewall's setup cost is praised for its straightforwardness, offering users value for money. In comparison, Azure Firewall's competitive pricing and reasonable setup cost are highlighted, with flexible licensing options catering to diverse organizational needs. Cisco Secure Firewall offers a higher ROI with its strong security features and user-friendly interface. Azure Firewall, although cost-effective, lags in advanced security measures and comprehensive features.
Room for Improvement: Cisco Secure Firewall offers enhanced user-friendliness, efficient traffic handling, improved visibility, better integration with security solutions, regular updates, enhanced reporting, and scalability. Azure Firewall needs improvement in setup difficulty, protocol support, rule customization, logging, and integration with Azure services.
Deployment and customer support: Users found Cisco Secure Firewall to have a quicker setup process, emphasizing efficient deployment. Azure Firewall was noted for a longer implementation phase, causing frustration among users and highlighting the delay in establishing the new tech solution. Cisco Secure Firewall boasts efficient and reliable customer service, with users praising the support team's helpfulness and responsiveness. Azure Firewall customers appreciate the team's efficiency and effectiveness in addressing issues.
The summary above is based on 123 interviews we conducted recently with Cisco Secure Firewall and Azure Firewall users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The most valuable feature is the ease of configuration."
"The solution can scale well."
"Some of the key features of the solution is that it has good reporting, you can receive many details from the connection, for example, clients and website information."
"The product is easy to use and is stable. The SV1 functionality is a benefit."
"The solution is extremely reliable."
"The web filtering feature and the intrusion protection system are the most valuable. It is a resilient appliance. I never had an issue with it in terms of any security breaches."
"The FortiGate controls the user's activities and maximizes my bandwidth use overall."
"The stability of the solution is excellent, as it is with other Fortinet products."
"Network filtering is valuable. The scalability capability from the cloud-native service helps us a lot because it simplifies our day-to-day maintenance activity."
"We secure the entry point to the virtual data center with the firewall."
"Microsoft's technical support is very good. They're quite knowledgable and responsive."
"Azure Firewall is a cloud-native solution that removes the pain of load balancers."
"It's auto-scalable, which is a great feature."
"The SIEM that Azure Firewall provides us is very robust."
"It's helped us improve our security posture."
"The firewall policy control, URL content control, and antivirus are all the most valuable aspects. Threat prevention is as well quite good."
"An eight because it's a good security solution. It's more mature than its competitors."
"It helped us a lot with our VPNs for the home office during COVID. There has been more security and flexibility for VPNs and other applications."
"The feature I find most valuable is the Cisco VPN Interconnection."
"Cisco Secure Firewall is a good solution. In some ways, it is a reactive solution and we have it sitting in a whitelist mode rather than a blacklist mode. It seems to work fairly well for us."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to block almost all of the ports."
"It has a good security level. It is a next-generation firewall. It can protect from different types of attacks. We have enabled IPS and IDS."
"It is extremely stable I would say — at least after you deploy it."
"We can easily track unauthorized users and see where traffic is going."
"This product needs to have an analysis feature, rather than having the analysis done through the integration of a different product."
"When we cluster the two Fortinet FortiGate boxes together we have some issues."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve the integration with Active Directory. Additionally, I would like to have a Cloud Controller, such as they do in the Cisco Meraki solution."
"There could be more integration between the logging and analytical platforms to make it more seamless and integrated."
"We would like to see an upgrade to the VPN feature, we are using the VPN from outside of our office and there is a limitation to 10 connections, more connections would be suitable."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve if it had a cloud-managed solution."
"Its reporting can be improved. Sometimes, I don't get proper reports."
"The performance and speed are aspects of the solution that could always be improved upon."
"It would be much easier if the on-premises, firewall rules, had some kind of export-import possibility in place, which is not the case right now."
"The threat intelligence part could be better. I don't see why our customers have to get an additional solution with Azure Firewall. It would be great if they made it on par with Palo Alto."
"It's a little heavy compared to a FortiGate or other firewalls."
"Right now, with Azure Firewall, we cannot have a normal inbound traffic flow. For inbound, Microsoft suggests using application gateways, so the options are very limited. I cannot use this firewall as an intermediate firewall because of the limitations, and I cannot point routing to another firewall. So if I want to use back-to-back firewall architecture in my environment, I cannot use Azure Firewall for that type of configuration either."
"Azure Firewall definitely needs a broader feature base. It should be able to go all the way up to layer 7 when looking at applications and things like that."
"There is room for further integration of AI into the system."
"The reporting, logging, and monitoring features, as well as the flexibility of the policies, need to be improved."
"Azure should be able to work better as a balancer also, instead of just being a firewall. It should have a wider mandate."
"Critical bugs need to be addressed before releasing the version."
"On firewall features, Fortinet is better. Cisco needs to become more competitive and add more features or meet Fortinet's offering."
"An area of improvement for this solution is the console visualization."
"It is my understanding that they are in the process of discontinuing this device."
"A feature that would allow me to load balance among multiple ISPs, especially since we have deployed it as a perimeter firewall, would be a great addition."
"Cisco still has a lot of work to do. You can convert an ASA over to a Firepower, but the competitors, like Palo Alto and Juniper, are coming in. And believe it or not, they are a little bit more intuitive. Cisco has a little bit more work to do. They're playing catch up."
"When we're looking at full-stack visibility, it can be difficult to get the right information out of Firepower."
"The user interface for the Firepower management console is a little bit different from traditional Cisco management tools. If you look at products we already use, like Cisco Prime or other products that are cloud-based, they have a more modern user interface for managing the products. For Firepower, the user interface is not very user-friendly. It's a little bit confusing sometimes."
Azure Firewall is ranked 21st in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and Netgate pfSense, whereas Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Azure Firewall vs. Cisco Secure Firewall report.
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