We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Perimeter 81 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 offers strong threat defense capabilities, allows for application visibility, seamlessly integrates with other Cisco products, and provides high throughput. Perimeter 81 excels in offering a convenient single sign-on feature, easy configuration options, the ability to manage multiple networks, and efficient customer service.
Cisco Secure Firewall could enhance its network performance, policy administration, customization options, advanced features, management interface, deployment time, integration with other tools, and logging functionality. Perimeter 81 has room for improvement in defining different locations, login instances, user interface customization, tutorials, session timeouts, login/logout process, dashboards, QoS, traffic shaping, network traffic balancing, redundancy, security capabilities, and speed of upload and download.
Service and Support: Cisco Secure Firewall's customer service has received both positive and negative feedback. Some customers have commended the technical support provided, but others have encountered delays and challenges. Perimeter 81's customer service has garnered mostly favorable reviews, as customers have found their support to be prompt and beneficial.
Ease of Deployment: Users had varying experiences with the initial setup of Cisco Secure Firewall, with opinions being divided on its ease of use. Perimeter 81 was widely regarded as user-friendly and straightforward during the initial setup process, offering an intuitive interface and effortless connectivity.
Pricing: Reviewers have different opinions on the setup cost of Cisco Secure Firewall. Some consider it expensive because of additional expenses for licensing, support, and hardware. Users find Perimeter 81 to be reasonably priced and beneficial, offering various pricing options tailored to individual requirements.
ROI: The effectiveness of Cisco Secure Firewall in terms of return on investment depends on the specific use case and architecture of the organization. Some customers have reported positive outcomes while others have expressed dissatisfaction. Perimeter 81 has the capability to deliver a favorable ROI. Reviewers have mentioned the quick implementation process and the potential for cost savings.
Comparison Results: Perimeter 81 is the preferred option when compared to Cisco Secure Firewall. Users find the initial setup of Perimeter 81 to be easy and user-friendly, in contrast to mixed reviews regarding Cisco Secure Firewall's initial setup, with some users finding it difficult. Perimeter 81 stands out for its single sign-on feature, easy configuration, and user-friendly interface.
"This solution has helped our organization by having strong functions and a reliable firewall."
"FortiGate firewalls are easy to manage through a user-friendly web interface. They also have advanced features like DDoS and DLP. However, I wouldn't recommend enabling all of these features on one device because it can cause performance issues."
"It performs very well."
"The pricing is excellent. It's much less expensive than Cisco."
"The technical support is great."
"Virtual Domains (VDOMs) are a feature that we found valuable."
"I like Fortinet's cloud management. It allows me to manage all my devices in different branches for three cloud accounts. Even though I use on-prem devices, I can manage everything on the cloud."
"The main reason why I purchased the particular unit was that it had good reviews and what other people were saying as far as its completeness and its leading capabilities in terms of endpoint security was very good."
"Because of the deeper inspection it provides we have better security and sections that allow users broader access."
"There are no issues that we are aware of. It does its job silently in the background."
"Cisco Secure Firewall is a good solution. In some ways, it is a reactive solution and we have it sitting in a whitelist mode rather than a blacklist mode. It seems to work fairly well for us."
"We have been using a 5520 for seven years in our datacenter and we are satisfied by this version."
"Malicious URLs are being blocked."
"Right now, Cisco ASA NGFW has given us a lot of improvement. We are planning to move to a new facility and will be a much larger organization."
"It provides security for our company and users."
"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."
"Perimeter 81 has increased my security and privacy while maintaining solid internet performance."
"It has provided a seamless gateway to much-needed platforms."
"It is a scalable solution."
"It keeps us all accountable and ensures secure internet connections while we all work remotely."
"SD-WAN is one of the primary solutions offered by Perimeter 81."
"The feature that I have found to be most valuable is the reputation that the company has regarding privacy. Nowadays, this is critical, especially when you do all of your work online."
"The benefits are really built into the underlying protocol, however, Perimeter81 makes these available in a user-friendly way."
"The ease of use not only translates to quick adoption rates - it also ensures that our employees remain compliant with our cybersecurity protocols, enhancing the overall security posture of our organization."
"The integration with third-party tools may be something that they should work on."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having better visibility. Palo Alto has better visibility."
"WAN load-balancing could be a lot better at detecting when a link is poor or inconsistent, and not just flat out dead."
"It could use better throughput on some of the smaller boxes for the branch offices."
"The support system could be improved."
"Backup can be improved."
"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."
"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."
"The overall licensing structure could improve to make the solution better."
"<p>If there is old hardware, or appliances, it does not necessarily work with the new Cisco generation firewalls."
"Other firewalls, upgrading is a very easy task; from the graphical user interface, you just need to import the firmware versions into it and install it. In this firewall, you need to have a third-party solution in both. It's a process. It's a procedure, a hard procedure, actually, so there is no straightforward procedure for upgrading."
"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."
"Most of the features don't work well, and some features are missing as well."
"The ability to integrate (as options) all-in-one features -- like anti-spam, anti-virus, etc."
"We would like to see improvement in recovery. If there is an issue that forces us to do recovery, we have to restart or reboot. In addition, sometimes we have downtime during the maintenance windows. If Cisco could enhance this, so that upgrades would not necessarily require downtime, that would be helpful."
"This product is managed using the Firepower Management Center (FMC), but it would be better if it also supported the command-line interface (CLI)."
"If I were to be nitpicky, I would ask that Perimeter 81 offer the option for us to change the color of the graphical user interface, like maybe pink or green or so on."
"The overall UI could be improved and updated to bring a simpler feel to the application."
"One of our challenges is ensuring the security of our cloud-based operations."
"I have found that the log-in/out process takes quite some time."
"The platform still lacks relevant dashboards and the ability to customize them based on our needs."
"Perimeter 81 could enhance its reporting and analytics capabilities to provide more detailed insights into network activity."
"A Google Chrome extension would be handy instead of logging into the app."
"What would be useful would be a notification/warning that a session is due to timeout after exceeding the default connection limit."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Perimeter 81 is ranked 11th in Firewalls with 22 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Perimeter 81 is rated 9.2. 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 Perimeter 81 writes "Great SAML and SCIM support with the ability to deploy site-2-site tunnels with specific IP restrictions". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Perimeter 81 is most compared with Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, Cato SASE Cloud Platform, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Cloudflare Access and Tailscale. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Perimeter 81 report.
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