We performed a comparison between Cisco IOS Security and Cisco Secure 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."The user interface is relatively easy. The devices are easy to deploy and figure out when you have experience with other security appliances."
"The multi-tenancy feature is most valuable. It integrates very well with FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer."
"The solution is highly scalable because they have devices that can handle a large amount of traffic."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"Offers good security and filtering."
"Its administrative panel is very intuitive and simple. It is simpler than the other solutions that we had. As an administrator, we are always looking for the easiest solution to manage network policies. We are able to filter everything on our network and also use the VPN feature, which is important these days when people are working remotely during COVID."
"It is a safe product."
"I like several features that this product has, such as antivirus and internet navigation inspection. It is also simple to use."
"Cisco has always been a premium product. There's a lot of other entry-level solutions. This is more robust."
"One of the valuable features of the solution is its flexibility and it performs great."
"It is less expensive than alternative firewalls."
"There is a positive impact on security, particularly the intrusion feature, which helps keep the solution concealed and secure."
"It covers everything we need it to without looking to secondary solutions."
"Cisco IOS allows us to keep the same security features as our principal offices."
"The VPN is the most valuable feature."
"The product is easy to use."
"I think Cisco ASA Firewall is the most stable firewall solution."
"It makes it very easy to have delineated roles and responsibilities between network engineering and network security."
"The user interface is easy to navigate."
"VPN and firewall are good features."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Firewall is its ease of configuration and that it's scalable for firewalls and VPNs."
"It is a very stable product. I've not had any issues with it. It is a super product, and I won't need to change it anytime soon."
"The web interface was easy for me. The configuration is logical, so it's easy to use and easy to understand how to protect, how to open a port, how to manage and how to route a device. That's why I prefer Cisco. It's robust and I never have issues with the hardware. That's why I choose Cisco and not another vendor."
"The most beneficial aspect of the Cisco Secure Firewall is the AnyConnect component within the firewall package, which we selected specifically for VPN usage due to its exceptional integration with various third-party devices and applications."
"Fortinet FortiGate is not very easy to use. The navigation could be improved to make it easier to use."
"The solution needs to improve its integration with cybersecurity."
"The support costs and licensing are sometimes so expensive."
"With the reports, you can see it, and you can get good feelings so upper management can go, "Oh, wow. That looks pretty." However, it's very basic."
"Fortinet currently has many products bundled with FortiGate including the basic firewall and load balancer, and I think that that they need to have separate product portfolios for each of these specialized services."
"Palo Alto has a feature called WildFire Analysis that is unavailable in FortiGate. WildFire is better than a sandbox because it can address zero-day threats and vulnerabilities. It can immediately identify zero-day threats from the cloud."
"There are some tiny bugs that sometimes affect the operations. In the past revision of it, there was a bug. Because of the bug, we had to downgrade the version. It happened only with the last revision."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"With respect to user-friendliness, it is a command-line interface and those with such experience will get along just fine, whereas others may struggle."
"Cisco IOS Security could improve its security features. There are competitors that have some additional security features, such as Fortinet FortiGate. Additionally, there should be better synchronization with Cisco IOS Security and other vendors, and improved AI features would be beneficial."
"Cisco IOS Security should improve its functionalities."
"If they could increase the performance a little better because the device sometimes gets slow."
"In the next release of this solution, we would like to see support for the 100BT and 7000 models."
"There could be a bit more functions on offer that could make it easier to use."
"The solution is not user friendly and it is hard to manage the GUI interface."
"We cannot directly upgrade the system. The tool's deployment is also very difficult in legacy environments. The tool needs to have bigger ports as well."
"They need a VTI. I know it's going to be available in the next software version, which is the 6.7 version. However, the problem with that is that the 6.7 is going to deprecate all the older IKEv1 deployment tunnels. Therefore, the problem is that we have a lot of customers which are using older encryptions. If I do that, update it, it's not going to work for me."
"More intuitive support for SIP services are needed. This took a long time to configure properly for the user."
"Cisco Secure Firewall's integration with cloud providers has room for improvement. We could do more in terms of integration, for example, if we had a tag on an instance."
"10Gb interfaces should be available on more models."
"I think the ASA layer is thin. It's always Layer 3 or Layer 4 source controller and doesn't control the Layer 7 traffic. It's important, and you'll need an additional firewall."
"Sometimes my customers say that Cisco Firewalls are a bit more difficult compared to Fortigate or Palo Alto. There is complexity in the configuration and the GUI could be improved."
"I would like the ability to drill down into certain reports because currently, that cannot be done."
"There used to be information displayed about the packets in a module called Packet Flow, but it is no longer there."
Cisco IOS Security is ranked 22nd in Firewalls with 47 reviews while Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews. Cisco IOS Security is rated 8.0, while Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco IOS Security writes "User-friendly and excels in documentation, making it easier to resolve issues". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". Cisco IOS Security is most compared with Meraki MX, Fortinet FortiOS, Netgate pfSense, OPNsense and Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB, whereas Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. See our Cisco IOS Security vs. Cisco Secure Firewall report.
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