We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and OPNsense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Cisco Secure Firewall is highly regarded for its robust threat defense, comprehensive application visibility, effective troubleshooting capabilities, seamless integration with other Cisco products, and reliable high-availability capabilities. OPNsense is praised for its impressive scalability, excellent guest access capabilities, impressive flexibility, unwavering stability, and commendable IDS/IPS features.
Secure Firewall could benefit from enhancements in network performance, policy administration, customization options, and rule creation. It also requires better licensing flexibility, support for standard interfaces, and advanced features like web filtering. The management interface, deployment times, reporting, and logging functionalities should be enhanced as well. OPNsense needs improvements in its user-friendly interface, bandwidth management, multi-provider internet protection, high availability feature, logging, IPS solution, peer-blocking features, installation and deployment process, reporting capabilities, SSL inspection, and learning curve.
Service and Support: The feedback on customer service for Cisco Secure Firewall varies, with certain customers appreciating their technical assistance while others encountered delays and challenges. OPNsense's support has received both positive and negative assessments, with some customers finding it outstanding while others believe there is room for improvement.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Cisco Secure Firewall can be complex, relying on the user's knowledge and environment. OPNsense's initial setup is straightforward and does not present major challenges.
Pricing: Cisco Secure Firewall has a costly setup, involving additional expenses for licensing, support, and hardware. OPNsense is more budget-friendly, as the software itself is free, with expenses primarily related to hardware and deployment choices. Additionally, OPNsense provides a free version, whereas Cisco necessitates licensing.
ROI: Cisco Secure Firewall offers varying ROI depending on the use case and organization's architecture. It brings reduced operational costs and enhanced security, leading to positive ROI. OPNsense delivers ROI in under three months by eliminating recurring fees and recouping savings within that timeframe.
Comparison Results: Cisco Secure Firewall is the preferred choice when comparing it to OPNsense. The initial setup for Cisco Secure Firewall was generally considered straightforward and easy, thanks to the availability of Cisco's resources and documentation. Cisco Secure Firewall offers more valuable features such as threat defense, intensive troubleshooting capabilities, integration with other Cisco products, and advanced features like IPS and web filtering.
"We were looking for the VPN feature and controlling the inflow and outflow of all the traffic within the site and across the sites. We are also using it for the VPN and VLANs."
"The security fabric is excellent."
"Offers good security and filtering."
"A strong point of FortiGate is that the graphical interface is complete and easy to use, especially if we think there is a list of operations that we are able to perform inside."
"The multi-tenancy feature is most valuable. It integrates very well with FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer."
"It's super reliable. I don't think I've ever had a reliability issue with it."
"The solution is very easy to understand. It's not overly complex."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable solution."
"The traffic inspection and the Firepower engine are the most valuable features. It gives you full details, application details, traffic monitoring, and the threats. It gives you all the containers the user is using, especially at the application level. The solution also provides application visibility and control."
"The most valuable feature is the anti-malware protection. It protects the endpoints on my network."
"I like all of the features."
"Everything is all documented in the file or in the command line script that gets uploaded to the device. It gives us great visibility."
"Cisco Secure Firewall improved our organization. We have it in every one of our French offices."
"I like the way Firepower presents the data. It gives you two classifications for the evidence, something based on the priority of the evidence and another classification based on the impact of the evidence in your environment. This makes it very easy to spot the evidence that is most impactful to my environment. Instead of having to go through all the evidence based on that priority, I can focus on the evidence that has the most impact on my environment."
"One of the best features is the ease of use. It's also easy to teach new engineers to use the ASA CLI."
"The benefits we see from the ASA are connected to teleworking as well as, of course, having the basic functionality of a firewall in place and the prevention of attacks."
"The technical support is very good."
"The most valuable features of OPNsense are the GUI and frequent updates."
"The IDS and IPS features are valuable. From the usability perspective, there is a lot of good documentation. As IT professionals, we found it very easy to configure the firewall. It was easy to configure and use."
"The system in general is quite flexible."
"OPNsense is easy to scale when running on the hardware."
"I feel that its valuable features are that it is simple and free."
"What I like the most about OPNsense is that it offers an easy-to-use dashboard for device management and control."
"I find the solution to be user-friendly. It has a lot of reports and easy settings."
"It needs to improve its ISP load balancing."
"The sniffing packets or packet captures, can be simplified and improved because it's a little confusing."
"The performance and speed are aspects of the solution that could always be improved upon."
"The monitor and the visibility, in this proxy, is very weak."
"The process of configuring firewall rules appears excessively complex."
"The initial setup and configuration are not intuitive and require training."
"The renewal price and the availability could be improved."
"Currently, without the additional reporting module, we only have access to basic reporting."
"The solution needs to have better logging features."
"The virtual firewalls don't work very well with Cisco AnyConnect."
"It would be great if some of the load times were faster."
"The installation and integration of Cisco ASA with FirePOWER can be improved. The management with Fortigate is easier than Cisco ASA on FirePOWER. The management side of Cisco ASA can be improved so it can be more easily configured and used."
"The user interface is too complex for people who are not trained to or certified to engage with the product. The interface should be easier to use."
"For what we use it for, it ends up being the perfect product for us, but it would help if they could expand it into some of the other areas and other use cases working with speeding up and the reliability of the pushes from the policy manager."
"The only drawback of the user interface is when it comes to policies. When you open it and click on the policies, you have to move manually left and right if you want to see the whole field within the cell. Checkpoint has a very detailed user interface."
"You shouldn't have to use the ASDM to help manage the client."
"The interface of the solution is an area with shortcomings."
"The interface isn't so friendly user. But we have some technicians here who are quite confident with this tool. OPNSense could maybe add sets of rules so it's simpler to manage different groups with particular needs."
"The user interface could be improved, and the DNS section should be more intuitive."
"The logging could improve in OPNsense."
"The only thing that I would like to see improved is the Insight or the NetFlow analysis part. It would be good to have the possibility to dig down on the Insight platform. Right now, we can easily do only a few analyses. If this page becomes more powerful, it surely will be a well-adopted platform."
"OPNsense could improve by making the configuration more web-based rather than shell or command-line-based."
"There are a few weaknesses. For example, there is a lack of some features that I have in certain commercial products."
"I think the most important thing is that it should be easily accessible, but currently, that doesn't seem to be the case. We need a hardware platform that's based on common standards and open computing principles, which would be like a commodity and benefit us greatly."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while OPNsense 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 OPNsense writes "Robust network security and management offering a user-friendly interface, open-source flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, with challenges regarding initial setup and the absence of official support". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and SonicWall TZ, whereas OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. OPNsense report.
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