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.
"The technical support is great."
"The IPsec tunnels are very easily created, and quite interoperable with devices from other vendors."
"Fortinet FortiGate's reliability is valuable."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is load balancing. It can provide central management and VPNA. Additionally, it has enhanced our security environment."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is Quota."
"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 on offer is very good."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is security. They are known for efficiency and are on the top of Gartner Quadrant reviews. Fortinet FortiGate has an easy-to-use platform with a good graphical interface. The configuration is simple and the solution provides an overall good layer of security."
"We are using the Cisco AnyConnect for our end-user VPN with the ASA."
"There are no issues that we are aware of. It does its job silently in the background."
"It's got the capabilities of amassing a lot of throughput with remote access and VPNs."
"Their performance is most valuable."
"Cisco ASA provides us with very good application visibility and control."
"The most valuable feature is the Intrusion Prevention System."
"REST API offering with rich capabilities which makes the product very robust."
"The most valuable feature we have found to be the VPN because we use it often."
"We have found pretty much all the features of the solution to be valuable."
"It has an open license. It works very well, and there is an update every month."
"The most valuable features in OPNsense are reporting and visibility."
"I have found the solution has some great features overall, such as guest access capabilities, dashboards, and ease of use. There is plenty of documentation and support and it has the plugins that I needed."
"We can open a new VPN connection easily. It's much easier than with Fortinet in our experience."
"The graphic user interface is very good and it is user-friendly which makes the product easy-to-use."
"I feel that its valuable features are that it is simple and free."
"The most valuable features are reporting, the Sensei plugin, and firewall capabilities."
"The initial setup is complex."
"The firewall engine is not so strong as of now, in my opinion... My second concern is that, while they have Zero-day vulnerability and anti-malware features, the threat engine needs to be strengthened, its efficiency can be increased."
"I need user-behavior analytics, to find threat scenarios from inside the organization, insider attacks. That would be very helpful for us. In addition, I would like next-generation features for small and medium businesses. These businesses require UTM, all in one product. Fortinet must include it."
"The initial setup and configuration are not intuitive and require training."
"Security is a continuous process. In every product, there is a requirement for improvement. Its pricing should also be improved according to Indian market requirements. They must also improve on the reporting part. Its reporting can be more precise. If we can get a real-time report in a specific format, it will be helpful for customers to know about the current status of their security."
"It would be ideal if they had some sort of GUI interface for troubleshooting and diagnostics."
"The stability of Fortinet FortiGate could improve."
"I think that the infrastructure for the VPN could be improved. The way that it is bundled also made it difficult to use and sell as it is too expensive."
"Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall can be more secure."
"Firepower's user experience should be a little bit better."
"Initial setup can be complex. It is complex. We have to set up ASA, SFR module, and FMC separately, which sometimes requires extensive troubleshooting, even for smaller issues."
"The GUI interface could be improved when compared to other solutions."
"It seems very clunky and slow. I would like to be able to tune it to be a more efficient product."
"Critical bugs need to be addressed before releasing the version."
"There is huge scope for improvement in URL filtering. The database that they have is not accurate. Their content awareness and categorization for URL filtering are not that great. We faced many challenges with their categorization and content awareness. They should improve these categorization issues."
"There are some limitations with SSL. Regarding the security assessment for the ISO 27000 standard, there are certain features that Cisco needs to scale up. Not all products support it, so you need to be slightly careful, especially on the site track."
"I would like better documentation concerning the provided packages and their integration."
"The interface needs to be simplified. It is not user-friendly."
"In terms of improvement, the performance could be enhanced."
"The solution would not be suitable for anything large-scale."
"The IPS solution could be more reliable."
"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."
"The solution could be more secure."
"There are a few weaknesses. For example, there is a lack of some features that I have in certain commercial products."
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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