Cisco Secure Firewall Reviews

We primarily use the solution for the various firewalls.

Cisco is powerful when it comes to detecting intrusions. It's better than, for example, Fortinet.

Cisco has multiple products - not just firewalls. The integration between other items provides a powerful end-to-end solution. It's nice and easy. There is one management system and visibility into all of the features. Using the same product is more powerful than using multiple systems. Cisco is known by most customers due to the fact that at least they have switches. However, when clients say "we need an end-to-end option" Cisco is there.

The stability is very good.

Technical support services are excellent.

Before an ASA, it was a live log. It was easy and comfortable to work with. After the next-generation firewall, Firepower, the live log became really slow. I cannot reach the information easily or quickly. This has only been the case since we migrated to next-generation firewalls.

There is some delay between the log itself. It's not really real-time. Let's say there's a delay of more than 20 seconds. If they had a monitoring system, something to minimize this delay, it would be good.

It would be ideal if I could give more bandwidth to certain sites, such as Youtube.

I work with Fortinet also, and I find that Fortinet is easier now. Before it was Cisco that was easier. Now Fortinet is simpler to work with.

On firewall features, Fortinet is better. Cisco needs to become more competitive and add more features or meet Fortinet's offering.

I've been using the solution since about 2003, when I originally implemented it.

The solution is extremely stable. We don't have any issues whatsoever. It doesn't have bugs or glitches. It works well. Occasionally, it may need patches, however, there's very little downtime.

The scalability of the solution is very good. We have no trouble expanding the solution.

They have multiple products that fit in multiple areas. They also have virtual firewalls, which are working well in virtualization systems. They have the data center firewalls feature for data centers. It's scalable enough to cover most of the use cases that might arise.

Cisco offers excellent technical support.  They're useful and very responsive - depending on the situation itself. Sometimes we require the support of agents and we've found Cisco to have one of the best support systems in the market.

I also work with Fortinet, and it's my sense that, while Fortinet is getting easier to use, Cisco is getting harder to deal with.

The initial setup is not complex at all. It's pretty straightforward.

A full deployment takes between two and three days. It's pretty quick to set up.

The pricing is neither cheap nor expensive. It's somewhere in the middle. If you compare it to Fortinet or Palo Alto, Fortinet is low and Palo Alto is very high. Cisco falls in the middle between the two.

As far as deployment options go, they often have more wiggle-room with discounts, especially for larger deployments. Therefore, in general, it ranges closer to Fortinet's pricing.

We're partners with Cisco, Fortinet, and Palo Alto.

I work with on-premises deployments and virtual firewalls, however, I don't use the cloud.

The solution works well for medium-sized enterprises.

Overall, I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

I'd recommend users to layer in solutions. At the perimeter, if they have two tiers, I'd recommend Palo Alto as the first and then Cisco ASA as the second. Cisco can work on the data center or Fortinet. In the case of Fortinet, they have the best backline throughput from all of the other products.

Our use for Cisco Secure is for the firewall. 

Network segmentation is the most valuable feature.

The dashboard can be improved. 

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for seven years. 

It is stable.

It is scalable. A thousand-plus users are using the solution in my company. 

The initial setup is straightforward. 

Pricing is high.

Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten. 

I use the solution mostly to separate internal networks.

Being able to create and apply new policies to the firewall has been helpful. It is an object-oriented way of doing things that helps a lot because we can build and apply new policies. We can also test it and revert to the old one if it doesn't work.

The monitoring dashboard is valuable to us for troubleshooting. It lets us see if the packets get from the source to the destination correctly.

With the new FTD, there is a little bit of a learning curve. The learning curve could probably be simplified a little bit. I've come around that learning curve, and I'm able to get around it.

I have been using the solution for 15 years.

Cisco is known for its general stability.

The solution’s scalability is excellent. I don't know if the scalability has a downside or even a limit.

The support is really good. I have a good team that supports us, and I'm able to always reach out to them. It's nice to have somebody on the cell phone and just be able to reach out to them.

Positive

Years ago, I used different firewalls like Juniper, but mostly, it's been fixed to ASA and FTD. We switched to Cisco because our customers were using Cisco.

The initial setup had a little bit of a learning curve, especially because I came from ASA. I needed some help from Cisco. However, I knew what I was doing once it was set up, especially with FMC and Firepower.

We used Cisco’s support to deploy the product.

In general, we have seen an ROI on the product. Using it, applying policies, setting it up, and leaving it alone is helpful. It helps save resources.

I don't use the product for application visibility and control. I tend to worry more about blocking or allowing certain things versus looking deep into the servers and applications and how they work.

The product is great for securing our infrastructure from end to end. I'd like to be able to test out some of the other products, like dashboards and IPS/IDS, that work with it. For the most part, I set up a firewall, and I set up the rules. If things don't work, I monitor it through the monitoring dashboard and try to figure it out.

Cisco Secure Firewall has helped free up a lot of time for our IT staff. Apart from monitoring, unless somebody needs a firewall rule change or anything like that, there's no need to mess with it. Once we set it up, it just runs.

The solution has helped our organization to improve its cybersecurity resilience. Being a firewall, by definition of the term, the product has improved our organization’s security.

People should always evaluate other products. If you’re looking for a solid firewall, Cisco makes the choice so much simpler, especially now with FMC. We are able to apply policies easily and control different firewalls at the same time.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We use Cisco IronPort, Firepower, Secure Firewall, Email, and Secure Connect.

As with most products, integration could be better where needed. Sometimes, for example, the Cisco Secure Firewall and IronPort are in a class of their own. When it comes to management and logging, there's room for improvement.

Most of the products aren't configured on their own, but they are related together. There should be some sort of management. We would need a supervisor to manage it before using all of the solutions together.

They address services that belong together. For example, the Secure Client provides remote access. Authentication and multiple-factor authentication are two different products that belong together. There should be a link between both products and between both management interfaces to see, for example, troubleshooting or reporting so that you have both sources together.

It would be great to have all the data correlated to have an overview and one point of administration. 

The grouping of the solutions helps save time. If you have a problem and you have a high-level overview of the system, you can easily dig deeper into the problem. For example, I can check to see why ASA isn't working but the reason for the outage is actually because of Duo. I can spend a lot of time working in the wrong direction because I didn't have an overview.

IronPort stuff looks at first a little bit outdated. It's not a fancy-colored view, but it does its job and is extremely helpful. Debugging on this platform is very easy. 

Firepower's implementation and reliability need room for improvement. 

We address our problems with the relevant people. Some of the quality of their support has dropped. If your problem gets escalated, there are many skilled people who are absolute pleasures to work with. They are brilliant at what they do. 

If you talk to someone who solves the problem within five minutes you can't do any better. But on the other hand, the other end of the range needs improvement.

You can have a case that lasts 15 months in which you have to talk to 20 people to resolve. 

Neutral

The complexity of the installation depends. It's not so easy to install. Each topic needs one management interface. So you end up with 20 to 40 different management platforms. All of them use a tremendous amount of resources. If you're willing to install it, you need a huge pile of hardware. It is not clear what everything does. Some consolidation there would be helpful. Other vendors face the same problem.

We have seen ROI from using Cisco.

I chose Cisco because I've been working with them for 23 years. I choose it for its stability and because they have the right range of products. Most of our IT staff is happy with it.

I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

We use them for firewall purposes. We use the small ones with the partners for the services they need, such as VPN and security.

Their performance is most valuable.

The stability could be better because we have a lot of issues with the stability of Cisco Firepower.

I've been using Cisco firewalls for 20 years.

We have a lot of issues with the stability of Cisco Firepower.

It depends on the model. We are hitting some issues with scalability. It's getting very expensive to scale out.

They sometimes take too long and don't fix the issue quickly, but eventually, it is fixed. I'd rate their support a nine out of ten.

Positive

We have been using different Cisco firewalls for a long time. We are currently using Cisco Firepower and Cisco ASA. Cisco Firepower is better than Cisco ASA, but stability is an issue.

It's now easier than before. You can have virtual appliances.

We mostly have it on-prem, but some customers want on-prem virtual.

We considered using a different solution such as Check Point or Huawei. We chose to stay with Cisco because we're experienced with Cisco and because of the support.

The old versions or models saved us time, but the newer ones take our time. Overall, I'd rate Cisco Secure Firewall an eight out of ten.

We started using this solution due to challenges with throughput. We needed devices with more quantity of throughput and bandwidth. We use this solution in different locations and different departments and we have around 2000 internal customers.

Cyber security resilience is really important for our organization. It is necessary for all the points for interconnections between LAN networks and WAN networks as we receive daily attacks.

The IP filter configuration for specific political and Static NAT has been most valuable.

The access layer of this solution could be improved in terms of the way the devices interconnect with our network. We need to be able to analyze the traffic between the different interconnections in these areas.

In a future release, we would like to have an IP analyzer to try to identify the specific comportment of the customers.

I have been using this solution for seven years. 

This is a very stable solution. 

This solution would need an adjustment to be scalable. 

Our engineers usually fix the issues we have, depending on the issue. When we reached out to the technical support team, they were attentive and helped us. 

We previously used Palo Alto, Fortinet, and Cisco Firepower. We switched because Cisco is more stable and offers easy deployment for the platform.

This solution requires regular maintenance and I have 10 engineers that manage it.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten because it is a good product that is more stable than others on the market. 

We have the Cisco 5585-X in our data center for perimeter security, internet protection, and for applications behind Cisco ASA DMZs. The challenges we wanted to address were security and segregating the internal networks and the DMZs.

Security-wise, it's given us the protection that we were looking for. Obviously, we're using an in-depth type of design, but the Cisco ASA has been critical in that stack for security.

The Packet Tracer is a really good tool. If someone calls because they're having problems, you can easily create fake traffic without having to do an extended packet capture. You can see, straight away, if there's a firewall rule allowing that traffic in the direction you're trying to troubleshoot. As a troubleshooting tool, Packet Tracer is one of the things that I like. It comes up in all my interviews. When I want to figure out if someone knows how to use the ASA, I ask them about use cases when they use the Packet Tracer.

One of the challenges we've had with the Cisco ASA is the lack of a strong controller or central management console that is dependable and reliable all the time. There was a time I was using what I think was called CMC, a Cisco product that was supposed to manage other Cisco products, although not the ASA. It wasn't very stable.

The controller is probably the biggest differentiator and why people are choosing other products. I don't see any other reason.

I've used the Cisco ASA going back to the 2014 or 2015 timeframe.

The ASA has been very stable for us. Since I deployed the ASA 5585 in our data center, we've not had to resolve anything and I don't even recall ever calling TAC for an issue. I can't complain about its stability as a product.

Our Cisco ASA deployment is an Active-Standby setup. That offers us resilience. We've never had a case where both of them have gone down. In fact, we have never even had the primary go down. We've mainly used that configuration when we're doing code upgrades or maintenance on the network so that we have full network connectivity. When we're working on the primary, we can switch over to the standby unit. That type of resiliency works well for our architecture.

TAC is good, although we've had junior engineers who were not able to figure things out or fix things but, with escalations, we have eventually gotten to the right person. We also have the option to call our sales rep, but we have never used that option. It seems like things are working.

Neutral

In the old days, we used Check Point. We did an evaluation of the Cisco ASA and we liked it and we brought it on board.

At that time, it was easy for our junior operations engineers to learn about it because they were already familiar with Cisco's other products. It was easier to bring it in and fit it in without a lot of training. Also, the security features that we got were very good.

The one we deployed in the data center was pretty straightforward. I also deployed the Cisco ASA for AnyConnect purposes and VPN. I didn't have to call TAC or any professional services. I did it myself.

We used a Cisco reseller called LookingPoint. I would recommend them. We've done a lot of other projects with them as well.

It's a great investment and there's a lot of value for your money if you're a CSO or a C-leader. As an engineer, personally, I have seen it work great wonders for us. When we're doing code upgrades or other maintenance we are able to keep the business going 100 percent of the time. We have definitely seen return on our investment.

I don't look at the pricing side of things, but from what I hear from people, it's a little pricey.

At the time, we looked at Juniper and at Palo Alto. We didn't get a feeling of confidence with Palo Alto. We didn't feel that it offered the visibility into traffic that we were looking for.

We use Cisco AnyConnect and we've not had any issues with it. During COVID we had to scale up and buy licenses that supported the number of users we had, and we didn't have any problems with it.

For our customers, Firepower is a classic perimeter firewall. Sometimes it's also for branch connections, but for those cases, we prefer Meraki because it's simpler. If a customer has Meraki and requires advanced security features, we will offer Firepower as a perimeter solution for them. Meraki is for SD-WAN and Firepower is for the perimeter.

Firewalls are not a new technology but they have a very distinct role in an enterprise for defending the perimeter. Firepower is for organizations that have traditional infrastructures, rather than those that are heavily utilizing cloud services. For us, the clients are government agencies and ministries, and we have a lot of them as our customers in Latvia.

Most firewalls do the same things, more or less. Because we have to compete with other vendors, it's the things that are different that are important. With Cisco, it's the security intelligence part. It's quite simple to configure and it's very effective. It cuts down on a lot of trouble in the early phases.

IPS and Snort are very important because they also differentiate Cisco from other vendors and competitors.

I also like that, in recent years, they have been developing the solution very quickly and adding a lot of new, cool features. I really love the new web interface of Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center. It looks like a modern web-user interface compared to the previous one. And the recent release, 7.2, provided even more improvements. I like that you have the option to switch between a simplified view and the classic view of firewall policies. That was a good decision.

A major area of improvement would be to have more functionality in public clouds, especially in terms of simplifying it. The high availability doesn't work right now because of the limitations in the cloud. Other vendors find ways to make it work differently than with on-prem solutions.

This is very important because we have customers that build solutions in the cloud that are like what they had on-prem. They have done a lift-and-shift because it's easier for them. They lift their on-prem physical boxes and shift them to the cloud, convert them to virtual, and it continues to work that way. Many times it's not the most efficient or best way to do things, but it's the easiest. The easiest path is probably the way to go.

I have been using Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewalls for four or five years now, but before that, I worked with ASA Firewalls a lot. It was just a transition. I have been using Firepower almost from day one.

We are an integrator and we resell as well as provide professional services. We do everything from A to Z.

There are a lot of things that can be improved. As a Cisco partner, I usually take the first hit if something doesn't work. In recent years, the solution has improved and is more stable. But it has to continue to improve in that direction.

A Firepower firewall is a very important point of exit and entry to a network. It's a critical piece of infrastructure. They should have high availability.

By comparison, I am also a huge fan of Stealthwatch (Cisco Secure Network Analytics) and I use it everywhere. I've been working with that solution for 15 years but it's not mission-critical. If it doesn't work, your boss is not calling you. If it doesn't work, it is not collecting telemetry and it doesn't do its job, but you are not stressed to fix it. With firewalls, it's a little different.

Tech support really depends on how lucky you are. It depends on when you create a TAC case and in which time zone the case is created. That determines which part of TAC takes ownership of your case. I have had a few unpleasant cases but, at the end of the day, they were resolved. I didn't feel like I was alone in the field with an angry customer.

Positive

We made a gradual transition from ASA to Firepower because they first had this as Sourcefire services. That is what we used to install first for our customer base. Then Firepower defense appliances and firmware came out. It was a natural process.

My view may be a little bit biased because I do a lot of Cisco deployments, and I have a lab where I play all the time. But overall the deployment is not too complicated.

The deployment time depends on what type of deployment you have. If it's a physical deployment, it may be a little bit faster because you don't have to set up virtual machines. But I recently had a project in AWS, and I used Terraform Templates and it was easy. I still had to configure some additional things like interfaces, IP addresses, and routing. 

Because I know where everything is in the UI, the deployment is okay. One thing I miss a little bit is being able to configure things, like routing, via the command line, which is how it used to be done with the ASA Firewalls. But I understand why they've taken that ability away.

With ASA Firewalls, even when you were upgrading them, the experience was much better because it didn't have those advanced Snort features and you could usually do an upgrade in the middle of day and no one would notice. You didn't have any drops. With Firepower, that's not always the case.

It's hard to talk about pricing when you compare firewalls because firewall functionality is almost the same, regardless of whether it's a small box or a large box. The difference is just the throughput. Leaving aside things like clustering, what you have to look at are the throughput and the price.

Cisco's pricing is more or less okay. In other areas where we work with Cisco solutions, like other security solutions and networking, Cisco is usually much more expensive than others. But when it comes to firewalls, Cisco is cheaper than Check Point although it is not as cheap as Fortigate. But with the latest improvements in hardware and speed, the pricing is okay.

To me, as a partner, the licensing is quite simple. I'm responsible for providing estimates to my sales guys and, sometimes, as an architect, I create solutions for my customers and give them estimates. There are other Cisco solutions that have much more complicated licensing models than Firepower. In short, the licensing is quite okay.

Not all of our customers use Cisco and that means we have competition inside our company with Check Point. We also made some attempts with Palo Alto Firewalls, long before we became Cisco partners, but somehow it didn't work for us.

I enjoy working with Cisco because it's more of a networking-guy approach. It reminds me a lot of all the other Cisco equipment, like their switches and routers. The experience is similar.

I haven't worked a lot with Checkpoint firewalls, but I like how they look. What I don't really like is the way you configure them because it's very different from what networking guys are used to doing. I'm not saying it's bad, it's just different. It's not for me. Maybe it appeals more to server guys. Cisco has a more network-centric approach.