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.
"I am "headache free" that I don't have to categorize all the websites and that security has been pre categorized by the people, and that the services are getting updated. At least one part of my problem is over."
"Reliability is the best feature. We faced some issues when we were setting it up, but the service, portal, and administration are good."
"The notable features that I have found most valuable are that it includes the antivirus, and also IPS, and even SD-WAN."
"Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable."
"It's very easy to configure."
"The stability and scalability of this solution are satisfactory. Its SD-WAN, VPN, and URL filtering features are very useful."
"The simplicity of the product is great. It's very easy to use, which is a compliment we get all the time in terms of feedback."
"The solution is scalable."
"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."
"The firepower sensors have been great; they do a good job of dropping unwanted traffic."
"The TAC is always very helpful. We pay for Tier 1 support, so we get whatever we need from them. They always give us a solution. If they can't give us an answer that day, they get back to us within at least 24 hours with a solution or fix. I have never had a problem with the TAC. I would rate them as 10 out of 10."
"The primary benefits of using Cisco Secure solutions are time-saving, a robust API, and convenience for the security team."
"My confidence continues to build upon using Cisco firewalls."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is AMP (Advanced Malware Protection), as this is really needed to protect against cyber threats."
"A powerful enterprise security solution that is dependible."
"IPS and Snort are very important because they also differentiate Cisco from other vendors and competitors."
"The technical support people from Meraki are brilliant."
"It prevents us from being hacked and delivers information about who and where the attack came from."
"What I like best about Meraki MX is that it's easy to deploy remotely. The product works. It has automatic updates. I also like that Meraki MX is a brilliant device. You turn it on, stick the key in there, activate it, and then you're done. Meraki MX does what my customers need at the end of the day, so I also like that."
"It is easy to manage, which is one of the most important things for us. It is also flexible, stable, and scalable."
"I think cloud management is key. The cloud management and support are the two things that make the product great."
"In general, Meraki MX is easy to work with."
"A strong, reliable solution for small companies with little or no dedicated IT department."
"I like the automatic firmware updates. We use the Active Directory to authenticate VPN users."
"The platform's interface could improve."
"A sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."
"The stability of Fortinet FortiGate could improve."
"If they had better integration with security products, such as Cisco ISE or Rapid Threat Containment, then it would be an improvement."
"The user interface could be improved."
"In the balance between links feature normally you can just choose one option to balance. It would be better for the solution to have more than one option, preferably three."
"I would like Fortinet to add more automation to FortiGate."
"I would like to see improvements made to the dashboard and UI, as well as to the reporting."
"The configuration is an area that needs improvement."
"I'm working on a slightly older version, but what it needs is a better alert management. It's pretty standard, but there's no real advanced features involved around it."
"The solution's deployment is time-consuming, which should be minimized and made more user-friendly for us."
"A feature that would allow me to load balance among multiple ISPs, especially since we have deployed it as a perimeter firewall, would be a great addition."
"I don't have any specific improvements to recommend. However, when you compare the throughput of a Cisco firewall to the competitors, especially Fortinet, what you find is that Cisco has lagged a little bit behind in terms of firewall throughput, especially for the price that you pay for that throughput."
"I would like more features in conjunction with other solutions, like Fortinet."
"Cisco's inspection visibility could be better."
"In NGFW, Cisco should be aligned with the new technology and inspection intelligence because Cisco is far behind in this pipeline."
"Could possibly use deeper configurations."
"Right now, you can postpone the update but eventually, if you don't do the update, it will install the updates automatically for you and that's something that is not working for me."
"We could have more reporting options and the ability to send alarms to the administrator."
"What I would like to see in the next version is to have more interfaces for WAN links."
"Meraki MX firewalls are great for small to medium-sized businesses, but other solutions are better for enterprise-sized companies."
"MX can only be managed via a web interface, but I'm accustomed to using a CLI or a graphical interface. I would also like to see more reporting features. It doesn't provide enough information for me to know precisely about some clients."
"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."
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.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
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.