We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Zscaler Cloud Firewall 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.
"It increases security posture and is helpful for firewall reporting, intrusion protection, web filtering, and SD-WAN implementation."
"The most important features of Fortinet FortiGate are the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and firewall control applications."
"The reporting you receive out of this appliance is excellent. You will not need an external management system."
"Layer-3 firewall and routing are the most valuable features."
"Anti-Spam web content filterinG."
"The performance is good."
"Good anti-malware and web filtering features."
"From the firewall perspective, the rules and policies are very sufficient and easy to use."
"Cisco ASA is very strong."
"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 ASDM (Adaptive Security Device Manager) which is the graphical user interface, works out, and Cisco keeps it current."
"Simple to deploy, stable."
"Firepower NGFW has improved my organization in several ways. Before, we were trying to stamp out security threats and issues, it was a one-off type of way to attack it. I spent a lot of manpower trying to track down the individual issues or flare-ups that we would see. With Cisco's Firepower Management, we're able to have that push up to basically one monitor and one UI and be able to track that and stop threats immediately. It also gives us a little more granularity on what those threats might be."
"I would say the Firepower module is most valuable. I'm trying more to transition to this kind firewall. I had to study a little on Palo Alto Networks equipment. There is a lot I have to learn about the difference."
"The VPN feature is the most valuable to us because it accomplishes the task well. We're able to do everything we need to do."
"The dashboard is the most important thing. It provides good visibility and makes management easy. Firepower also provides us with good application visibility and control."
"It provides in-depth visibility into your network, ensuring that traffic flowing into your organization, be it from offices or individual users, is effectively filtered and secured through multiple layers of protection."
"Most of the features that Zscaler has to offer, we will deploy."
"Zscaler provides effective protection against various cyber threats ensuring a safe environment"
"It helps a lot of companies to reduce their downtime. Also, It helps businesses in terms of being secured and protected from any threats."
"Once you have Zscaler running you have access to configure it however you want."
"The visibility and log availability offered are highly valued for troubleshooting purposes, and this is a key factor driving customer interest in the firewall module."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"It is a stable solution."
"The UI could be improved."
"We would like to have the ability to disable some of the security functionalities."
"The pricing could be a bit better, especially when you consider how they have the most basic offering priced."
"Its reporting can be improved. Sometimes, I don't get proper reports."
"In the next release, I would like to see the interface simplified to be more user-friendly."
"Backup can be improved."
"Monitoring and reporting could be better."
"Its customer service could be better."
"The initial setup was a bit complex. It wasn't a major challenge, but due to our requirements and network, it was not very straightforward but still easy enough."
"Cisco is still catching up with its Firepower Next-Generation firewalls."
"The Firepower FTD code is missing some old ASA firewalls codes. It's a small thing. But Firepower software isn't missing things that are essential, anymore."
"Our latest experience with a code upgrade included a number of bugs and issues that we ran into. So more testing with their code, before it hits us, would help."
"One of the problems that we have had is the solution requires Java to work. This has caused some problems with the application visibility and control. When the Java works, it is good, but Java wasn't a good choice. I don't like the Java implementation. It can be difficult to work with sometimes."
"HTTPs inspection and higher throughput/spec would be good."
"I would like to see an IE version of the solution where it is ruggedized."
"They should work on making it a little more intuitive for users and not quite as complex. Still, it's a good product."
"The product could improve its integration with some legacy systems."
"The issue right now is probably that Zscaler is not providing web browser isolation. Another solution, Menlo, offers this. For one customer, we had to send traffic to Menlo to do the isolation for us. It was requested by the customer so that they could integrate any iframe. Zscaler needs to add this type of feature in their next release."
"We are having some issues with internet access being denied when organizational ID-based policies change. For example, a lower level employee ends up getting the same level of access as that of a higher level employee."
"There are some areas it could improve when it comes to blocking, we have to block some things manually. For example, if we block a top-level domain we have seen that the new IPs come through, the IPs are not blocked. There should be some more granular way of doing it. My only request is if you're blocking something at a top level, the sub-level sub-domains and all those other IPs should be blocked too automatically."
"Pricing is a challenge."
"Certain criteria need to be met if you want to scale this solution."
"They do not provide a few components that are fundamental to differentiate the products"
"Because it's on cloud, it doesn't allow application of extra settings."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Zscaler Cloud Firewall is ranked 23rd in Firewalls with 15 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Zscaler Cloud Firewall is rated 8.4. 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 Zscaler Cloud Firewall writes "A highly stable and comprehensive cloud security and access solution". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Zscaler Cloud Firewall is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, OPNsense, Sophos XG and Cisco Multicloud Defense. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Zscaler Cloud Firewall 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.
