We compared Cisco Secure Firewall and Azure Firewall based on our users' reviews across several parameters.
Cisco Secure Firewall is regarded highly for its strong security features, user-friendly interface, and seamless integration within Cisco's security ecosystem. Customers appreciate the value they receive for the price paid and the efficient deployment process. Azure Firewall is praised for its competitive pricing, centralized network security management, and high performance in managing traffic. Users find the setup process straightforward, although some face challenges with customization and integration with other services. Both products receive positive feedback on customer service and support.
Features: Cisco Secure Firewall stands out for its robust intrusion detection and prevention system, seamless integration with Cisco's security ecosystem, and powerful threat intelligence capabilities. On the other hand, Azure Firewall is commended for its centralized network security management, seamless integration with Azure services, and high performance in handling large traffic volumes.
Pricing and ROI: Cisco Secure Firewall's setup cost is praised for its straightforwardness, offering users value for money. In comparison, Azure Firewall's competitive pricing and reasonable setup cost are highlighted, with flexible licensing options catering to diverse organizational needs. Cisco Secure Firewall offers a higher ROI with its strong security features and user-friendly interface. Azure Firewall, although cost-effective, lags in advanced security measures and comprehensive features.
Room for Improvement: Cisco Secure Firewall offers enhanced user-friendliness, efficient traffic handling, improved visibility, better integration with security solutions, regular updates, enhanced reporting, and scalability. Azure Firewall needs improvement in setup difficulty, protocol support, rule customization, logging, and integration with Azure services.
Deployment and customer support: Users found Cisco Secure Firewall to have a quicker setup process, emphasizing efficient deployment. Azure Firewall was noted for a longer implementation phase, causing frustration among users and highlighting the delay in establishing the new tech solution. Cisco Secure Firewall boasts efficient and reliable customer service, with users praising the support team's helpfulness and responsiveness. Azure Firewall customers appreciate the team's efficiency and effectiveness in addressing issues.
The summary above is based on 123 interviews we conducted recently with Cisco Secure Firewall and Azure Firewall users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The stability of the solution is excellent, as it is with other Fortinet products."
"The most important features of Fortinet FortiGate are the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and firewall control applications."
"There are great templates, so you don't have to customize them if you don't want to. You do have the option to custom create some folders and some reports, however, with what is there, you don't really need to go through extra effort, as they already give you a lot of predefined views of reports and so forth."
"The reporting you receive out of this appliance is excellent. You will not need an external management system."
"The solution has very good threat and content filtering switches."
"The most valuable features are that it is very simple to configure and to manage."
"The solution can scale well."
"It's very good and very stable for businesses. It works very well."
"All its features are good. That's why we recommend it."
"We secure the entry point to the virtual data center with the firewall."
"The Layer four features are okay and meet my business needs."
"I can easily configure it."
"The firewall policy control, URL content control, and antivirus are all the most valuable aspects. Threat prevention is as well quite good."
"It's auto-scalable, which is a great feature."
"I like its order management feature. It doesn't have the kind of threat intelligence that Palo Alto has, but the order management makes it much simpler to know the difference."
"One of the best features is that it natively integrates with Azure Services and tools. When you have a third-party offering, that is not the case. But Azure Firewall provides a comprehensive and seamless security solution for your Azure resources."
"We found the initial setup to be easy."
"Once you add Firepower onto to it and you start enabling some of its features, you get some IDS/IPS involved with it and you can even do web filtering."
"The technical support is excellent. I would rate it as 10 out of 10. When there has been an issue, we have had a good response from them."
"What I found the most valuable about Cisco Secure Firewall is that if a client is educated about the solution, it can help him or her avoid many problems and mistakes."
"The product is easy to manage and simple. It works with the rest of our Cisco products. You can drop in new ones if you need more performance. The training and documentation provided are good."
"The initial setup was not complex."
"FMC is very good in terms of giving a lot of visibility into what the firewall is seeing, what it's stopping, and what it's letting through. It lets the administrator have a little bit of knowledge of what's coming in or out of the device. It's excellent."
"One thing I like about the product is the logging features, the way it logs, the way it forwards the logs in Syslog."
"The cloud features can be improved."
"The cloud management and automation capability could be improved."
"The solution can have more features in a single box that can be multi-applied to integrate everything."
"There is a lot of improvement needed with SSL-VPN."
"There are SD-WAN network monitoring, SD-WAN features, Industrial Databases, Internet of Things, Detection, etc., however, we do have not licenses for those features. We thought that if you bought a product, you should have all of the features it offers. Why should you need to make so many extra purchases to enable features? They should have one price for the entire offering."
"There aren't really any negative aspects to discuss."
"The logging details need to be improved."
"I would like to see improvements in the support from Fortinet. Here in the Philippines, whenever we have problems with a Fortinet product, we mostly ask for support from distributors and resellers and not directly from Fortinet."
"The development area and QA area could be improved. With those improvements, we can improve projects and take even less time to implement them."
"There should be better monitoring and logging. Currently, it is put in Sentinel. It should be more seamless and from the interface."
"Azure Firewall has limited visibility for IDPS, no TLS inspection, no app ID, no user ID, no content ID, no device ID. There is no antivirus or anti-spyware. Azure Firewall doesn't scan traffic for malware unless it triggers an IDPS signature. There is no sandbox or machine learning functionality, meaning we are not protected from Zero-day threats. There is no DNS security and limited web categories."
"It needs a lot of improvement, especially on intruder detection. They are working hard on that."
"For large organizations, a third-party firewall would be an added advantage, because it would have more advanced features, things that are not in Azure Firewall."
"It's a little heavy compared to a FortiGate or other firewalls."
"The interface could be improved, it's not very user friendly."
"The reporting, logging, and monitoring features, as well as the flexibility of the policies, need to be improved."
"Its configuration through GUI as well as CLI can be improved and made easier."
"<p>If there is old hardware, or appliances, it does not necessarily work with the new Cisco generation firewalls."
"The operation of the ASA is good but the problem is that whenever you require an upgrade, there are multiple pieces of software that you have to upgrade. Extensive planning is required, because if you upgrade one piece of the software it has to be compatible with the others as well. You always need to check the compatibility metrics."
"It is slowly not supported and other vendors are a few years ahead of Cisco in development."
"I was just trying to learn how this product actually operates and one thing that I see from internal processing is it does fire-walling and then sends it to the IPS model and any other model that needs to be performed. For example, content checking or filtering will be done in a field processing manner. That is something that causes delays in the network, from a security perspective. That is something that can be improved upon. Palo Alto already has implemented this as a pilot passed processing. So they put the same stream of data across multiple modules at the same time and see if it is giving a positive result by using an XR function. So, something similar can be done in the Cisco Firepower. Instead of single processing or in a sequential manner, they can do something similar to pile processing. Internal function that is something that they can improve upon."
"Security generally requires integration with many devices, and the management side of that process could be enhanced somewhat. It would help if there was a clear view of the integrations and what the easiest way to do them is."
"We would really like to see dual dual power supplies for some Cisco Firewall products."
"It is surprising that you need to have a virtual appliance for the Firepower Management Center. It is not good if you have to setup a VMware server just for it."
Azure Firewall is ranked 16th in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Azure Front Door, whereas Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Azure Firewall vs. Cisco Secure Firewall report.
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