We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall vs. pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Cisco Secure Firewall and pfSense come out about equal in this comparison. Cisco ASA Firewall has a slight edge when it comes to service and support, but pfSense has an edge when it comes to pricing.
"The solution is very user friendly. The user interface in particular is quite nice."
"I am "headache free" that I don't have to categorize all the websites and that security has been pre categorized by the people, and that the services are getting updated. At least one part of my problem is over."
"The user interface is relatively easy. The devices are easy to deploy and figure out when you have experience with other security appliances."
"The solution can scale well."
"Overall, the pricing of the solution is very good. The product offers good value."
"The features that we have found most valuable are the SSL VPN and the User Portal."
"The technical support is great."
"The most valuable feature is the interface, which is very user friendly. We are utilizing most of the features, like content filtering. The firewall is powerful."
"Being able to use it as a policy-based VPN is valuable. It's very easy to understand. It's very easy to troubleshoot."
"The feature set is fine and is rarely a problem."
"The most important feature is the intensive way you can troubleshoot Cisco Firepower Firewalls. You can go to the bit level to see why traffic is not handled in the correct way, and the majority of the time it's a networking issue and not a firewall issue. You can solve any problem without Cisco TAC help, because you can go very deeply under the hood to find out how traffic is flowing and whether it is not flowing as expected. That is something I have never seen with other brands."
"URL filtering is valuable."
"If we look at the Cisco ASA without Firepower, then one of the most valuable features is the URL filtering."
"Even in very big environments, Cisco comes in handy with configuration and offers reliability when it comes to managing multiple items on one platform."
"Everything is all documented in the file or in the command line script that gets uploaded to the device. It gives us great visibility."
"Being able to determine our active users vs inactive users has led us to increased productivity through visibility. Also, if an issue was happening with our throughput, then we wouldn't know without research. Now, notifications are more proactively happening."
"Improved service performance and availability through redundancy."
"The tools' most valuable feature is load balancing."
"For everyday tasks, we just get alerts. It's anything that's suspicious, including from our Netgate. So, it's part of how we maintain cybersecurity in our school. This is working alongside our endpoint security solution."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"My technicians find the pfSense's web interface very useful. It is very easy to use. pfSense is very reliable and stable. We like the OpenVPN clients that can be deployed using pfSense very much."
"I am happy with the EPLS, the radius, and I am happy with the captive portal."
"The initial setup was simple and fast."
"The features I have found best are ease of use, GUI, and performance."
"A lack of integration between our data centers."
"We had a minor problem where there was a major system upgrade on the hardware platfrom and the Mac client was not available as soon as it might have been. The PC client was available immediately, but we had to wait a month or so, before there was a mac client. I was slightly irritated that it was not ready on time, but it was eventually resolved."
"I would like to see a more intuitive dashboard."
"There is room for improvement related to the logging and reporting aspect."
"The process of configuring firewall rules appears excessively complex."
"Vulnerability scanning could be improved."
"One of the features that I would like to have is to do with endpoint production, it should be integrated. For example, the firewall gets notified of any kind of forensic event that needs to be done, such as if there is a ransomware attack and how it originated, all those records have to be available from the firewall, which is not."
"There were quite a few problems with the stability of the system."
"I have a lot of difficulties with the solution's Firewall Management Center (FMC) and the GUI. Neither is responsive enough and should be improved."
"Setting it up is not as intuitive as other more modern NGFWs."
"I don't have any specific improvements to recommend. However, when you compare the throughput of a Cisco firewall to the competitors, especially Fortinet, what you find is that Cisco has lagged a little bit behind in terms of firewall throughput, especially for the price that you pay for that throughput."
"When comparing the graphical interface of this solution to other vendors it is more difficult to configure. There is a higher learning curve for administrators in this solution."
"We would really like to see dual dual power supplies for some Cisco Firewall products."
"These firewalls are not for beginners."
"One feature lacking is superior anti-virus protection, which must be added."
"ASDM needs to be able to customize applets."
"Many people have problems setting up the web cache for the web system."
"The stability could be improved."
"The configuration of the solution is a bit difficult."
"The interface is not very shiny and attractive."
"The VPN feature of the solution could improve by adding better functionality and providing easier configure ability."
"It needs to be more secure."
"It's just not listed as FIPS compliant for where we're at now in government, which is an issue."
"When I checked other packages, it seems they use different tools that are installed on the PSS for functionality. They rely on third-party tools, unlike Fortinet, for example, which has its own tools. In comparison, we also use third-party tools on pfSense. For example, we had a situation where we needed a tool to identify authorized users, and when I searched for a solution, I found a third-party tool. However, using such tools may come with additional costs."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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