We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Meraki MX based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Meraki MX is the winner in this comparison. It is easier to set up and more user-friendly than Cisco ASA Firewall. In addition, Meraki MX is a less expensive solution than Cisco Secure Firewall.
"You can purchase switches and you don't need to do anything with them. You just put in the firewall and the switches get all the policies and rules that you already have in the firewall. With Fortinet, you just connect the FortiSwitch to the Fortinet and that's it."
"Unified Threat Management (UTM) features."
"The product offers very good security."
"Layer-3 firewall and routing are the most valuable features."
"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 solution is extremely reliable."
"The user interface is relatively easy. The devices are easy to deploy and figure out when you have experience with other security appliances."
"The email protection and VPN features are the most valuable."
"It's protecting the organization against the impact of cyber threats and cybersecurity. We run manufacturing plants that have hazardous material, and we don't want that manufacturing process to be impacted by break-in exposure, cyber threats, or any other similar thing."
"Cisco Secure Firewall is robust and reliable."
"Valuable features include DMZ segmentation, and IDS and IPS."
"It has definitely improved our organization. It gives us remote connectivity, helps workers connect remotely, and also gives us good connectivity to our other branches."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is AMP (Advanced Malware Protection), as this is really needed to protect against cyber threats."
"Another benefit has been user integration. We try to integrate our policies so that we can create policies based on active users. We can create policies based on who is accessing a resource instead of just IP addresses and ports."
"The solution is pretty easy to deploy."
"The solution offers very easy configurations."
"We work also with domain control (DC) from Microsoft or Amazon. We use a whole virtual appliance with Meraki."
"Its ease of configuration and management is very useful for us and for other companies that don't have an onsite IT person. It is easy to configure and easy to manage. It is easy to configure the VPN with the Auto VPN feature."
"I like the automatic firmware updates. We use the Active Directory to authenticate VPN users."
"They have very good technical support and I have relied heavily on them."
"The security level of our organization has changed by using Meraki MX Firewalls. We didn't have the UTM before, but now we have sandboxing, tray scanning, attack preventions and monitorization. Our security level has improved."
"We switched to Meraki because it lets you see what's happening in your LAN and WAN in a graphic and web environment."
"The simplicity of configuration is the most valuable feature of the solution."
"It is a robust SD-WAN solution."
"This product could be improved with Active directory integration and better handling in IPsec and GRE Tunnels."
"I have to say that the initial setup was complex. The deployment took a few days to get set up. Initially, we were using an IPVanish. We switched to this tool since we thought it would be easier. But it turns out it wasn't easier to set up and run."
"Difficult to add or define, and not that easy to configure and manage."
"There could be more integration between the logging and analytical platforms to make it more seamless and integrated."
"The stability could be a bit better."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a firewall solution and once it's deployed, you can rest assured that your system is secure."
"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 monitor and the visibility, in this proxy, is very weak."
"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."
"The artificial intelligence and machine learning (behavioral based threat detection), which I can this will be coming out in another year, these are what we need now."
"UTM features would be nice or some NextGen features."
"If I need to download AnyConnect in a rush, it will prompt me for my Cisco login account. Nobody wants to download a client to a firewall that they don't own."
"It is not easy to configure."
"The solution is overcomplicated in some senses. Simplifying it would be an improvement."
"Most of the features don't work well, and some features are missing as well."
"It's mainly the UI and the management parts that need improvement. The most impactful feature when you're using it is the user interface and the user experience."
"It is very expensive."
"As far as what needs to be improved — nothing really comes to mind. It does what we need it to do."
"The product could incorporate tools like ThousandEyes into the system so we can see things directly."
"When we do API integrations with Meraki, they have always been hard as well as tedious to build. The data that we want out of the API integrations has been only recently available. Six months ago, it was hard to get someone to build something correctly or useful with Meraki APIs. Recently, they have made more data available on the API, but it is just a start. They need to do more."
"They need to improve the link between Meraki and Active Directory."
"Load balancing options and ability to manage a couple of Internet connections."
"In the next release, because the security is pretty basic, I think they could include additional security features."
"Management can be improved in Meraki MX."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 57 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Meraki MX is rated 8.2. 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 Meraki MX writes "Cost-effective, simplified, easy to manage, and reliable with advanced security features and granular visibility". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, whereas Meraki MX is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, SonicWall TZ, Netgate pfSense and SonicWall NSa. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Meraki MX report.
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Meraki is designed for zero deployments and no in-house firewall specialist personnel. Best to secure Networks like remote offices, branches or home offices. Also to protect Internet Access (your computer accesses the internet).
Cisco ASA is more of a professional firewall, not only protecting internet access but also providing security for publishing services like web servers, data centers, central services. They will need a specialist to install and support them. Therefore offer much more sophisticated protection features.
So you can't really compare these solutions, as they are targeting different markets.
You might compare Cisco to Sophos, but again, these are different protection solutions, one for network protection, the other for client protection. If you look only at the firewall part, you miss a lot in the total protection approach with Sophos.
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) software is the operating software for the Cisco ASA suite. It supports network security and firewall options. We researched both Meraki and ASA. We liked that ASA provides a solid VPN setup and integrates with other Cisco security offerings.
Cisco ASA is great for routing and accessing remote office locations via the remote VPN. We also liked the high availability and customizable nating (Network Access Translation). It is very reliable and easy to use. You can easily configure a site-to-site VPN to connect multiple sites. The support is great - they respond 24/7/365 and there is a lot of documentation available.
The downside is that ASAs are aging. Therefore, Cisco ASAs are best suited to small businesses. If you need something affordable that gets the job done, ASA is a good option.
We chose Cisco Meraki, because, in our opinion, it is a step forward from ASA. The level of security and intrusion detection is great, and because it is cloud-based, it is easy to change the configuration without downtime. Logging is very comprehensive, and management is very simple.
The best feature is content filtering with granular control. Cisco Meraki offers advanced malware protection, including traffic shaping. Another feature we really like is that you can pre-configure devices before they arrive at the installation.
It doesn’t work with DMVPN, which is a downside. Another feature that could use some improvement is reporting, which is not real-time. The price can get expensive but if you can afford it, a full-stack Cisco Meraki system does a great job keeping your network secure.
Conclusions:
If you want a robust but basic firewall, ASA is your best choice. Cisco Meraki is a better choice if you are looking for a next-generation firewall with advanced security features and easy management.