Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center Reviews

Name: Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center
Brand: Cisco
Rating: 4.0 (25 reviews)

Vendor: Cisco

4.0 out of 5

25 reviews
86% willing to recommend

What is Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center?

The Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center is the administrative nerve center for select Cisco security products running on multiple platforms. It provides unified management of Cisco Secure Firewalls with Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) software for port and protocol control, application control, IPS, URL filtering, and malware protection functions. Firewall Management Center is the centralized event and policy manager for:

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Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center is the #6 ranked solution in top Firewall Security Management solutions. PeerSpot users give Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center an average rating of 8.0 out of 10. Based on the analysis of the 25 most recent Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center reviews, the overall sentiment is positive, with a sentiment score of 7.0. (Among the lowest in the category). Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center is most commonly compared to FireMon Security Manager: Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center vs FireMon Security Manager. Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 70% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a government, accounting for 18% of all views.

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center

November 2024

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Featured reviews

Awais Ejaz

Chief Information Security Officer at Allied Bank Limited

The product must improve its performance. When we push policies from the console, it takes a lot of time. It takes five to seven minutes to push one policy. If someone pushes a wrong policy and there is an outage in the banking system, they would have to wait six to seven minutes to revert it. We have highlighted this issue to Cisco. A year ago, we told Cisco that we need APIs for integration with SOAR for pushing policies. We cannot push policies or run playbooks from SOAR to block any IOCs on the web and email gateway because Cisco doesn’t expose the APIs. It is one thing for which we have been following up with Cisco for the last year, but I don't think they've developed the API integration. Palo Alto and Fortinet provide this feature to their users.

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Ajay Dand

Founder Director at Ninesec Integration Pvt. Ltd

The Cisco Management Center provides centralized management for a variety of Secure devices and policies. Typically, Cisco's centralized management is facilitated through the DNA Center platform, offering different flavors of DNA solutions. Although Cisco Prime has been utilized to some extent in the past, the predominant method for centralized management revolves around Cisco DNA. In our organization, we utilize Cisco Firewalls along with Fortinet for monitoring and analyzing work traffic. Cisco continues to maintain its position as one of the top leaders in the industry. With a strong lineup of products, Cisco's brand reputation in-network services and equipment is widely accepted and trusted. Selling Cisco products is generally easier due to their established name and reputation. The Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center offers numerous benefits, including the stability and quality of its products, which feature almost all the latest market-leading features. This ensures a long product life cycle, reducing the need for frequent tech refreshes. Cisco's robust lifecycle management and clear roadmaps enable customers to plan refreshes and replacements without unexpected downtime, contributing significantly to operational efficiency. Moreover, Cisco's exceptional support minimizes customer losses due to unplanned downtime, while ensuring smooth transitions and upgrades. Working with a single vendor significantly reduces the complexity of future security operations. This approach eliminates situations where products from different vendors fail to communicate effectively, leading to disjointed management and increased reliance on technical support for troubleshooting and break-fix tasks. Cisco Secure products, particularly the Cisco Secure Firewall, offer robust defense mechanisms against denial-of-service and distributed denial-of-service attacks. In many instances, despite the occurrence of such attacks targeting customer networks, the impact on operations was significantly minimized due to the presence of Cisco Secure Firewall at the perimeter. While these attacks were detected, their disruptive effects were mitigated effectively, highlighting the critical role of the Cisco Secure Firewall in safeguarding customer operations.

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Muhammad-Haris

Student at BCU

The product installation was easy since I had received proper documentation from Cisco to help me. The documentation did not have many tutorials like the ones available for Palo Alto or Fortinet on YouTube and the internet. Even on the Fortinet website, there are free tutorials available for users, which are very helpful when it comes to the area of management, such as how to use the dashboards and how to make rules. Cisco ASA ASDM is very easy to install. Compared to the other products that I deal with, I feel that Cisco products are easy to install. The solution can be deployed in two to three hours.

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Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center mindshare

As of November 2024, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center in the Firewall Security Management category stands at 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewall Security Management

Key learnings from peers

Last updated Nov 21, 2024

Valuable Features

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center offers valuable features including a user-friendly interface, intrusion prevention system, and seamless integration with other Cisco products. It enables centralized management for monitoring multiple devices and provides advanced malware protection, URL filtering, antivirus, and application visibility. The platform enhances security through security intelligence and policy updates based on geography. It facilitates scalable and effective firewall management for organizations seeking comprehensive security solutions.

"The technical support team is responsive and supportive."
"The tool's deployment is not complex."
"The platform's most valuable feature has been its centralized management capability, which allows us to monitor and control multiple devices from one location."

Room for Improvement

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center requires improvements in performance, cost-effectiveness, and user-friendliness. Users experience challenges with complex setup, slow policy deployment, and limited API integration. The interface and logging features need enhancement, while pricing remains a concern. Making it simpler like Fortinet and improving VMware performance would benefit users. There's also a need for better integration with other tools and more resources to assist users in learning and managing equipment efficiently.

"I recommend they work on usability and ensure the solution is more user-friendly."
"The tool is a little bit pricey. I was not involved much with finance, but it appeared to be really expensive."
"The product could be improved by simplifying its user interface and reducing complexity."

ROI

Users report varying levels of return on investment from Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center. Some find significant cost savings in operations due to its efficiency, despite higher initial expenses. Others find the return moderate but acknowledge its value, especially in terms of protection from threats like ransomware. Many appreciate the ease of managing policies, with the ease of learning being highlighted, although some feel they've yet to see a definitive return.

Pricing

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center is generally perceived as expensive, with costs including separate licenses for various functionalities like malware and URL protection. Permanent and flexible licensing options are available, providing users with the ability to tailor their solutions without recurring subscription renewals. Technical support incurs additional annual costs. Pricing varies based on selected features and capacity, with evaluations placing the product's affordability between mid-range and high when compared to other market solutions.

"The product pricing is reasonable and falls in the mid-range."
"My license offers all the protection, like malware protection, VPN protection, IDS, IPS, and endpoint protection."
"As for pricing, the tool is expensive for us. I'd rate it eight out of ten on a scale where ten is the most expensive."

Popular Use Cases

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center is primarily used for managing perimeter and data center firewalls, protecting servers, and implementing security layers including VPN and infrastructure management. It provides advanced malware detection, application visibility, control, and intrusion prevention capabilities. This tool supports enterprise network traffic exclusion and operates as a security center for anti-malware and antivirus tasks. Additionally, it is employed for network segmentation, access security, and comparative analysis with other firewalls.

Service and Support

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center customer service and support receive mixed feedback. Many rate support highly, highlighting helpful and responsive service. However, some note delays, especially in emergencies, and inconsistency in assistance from engineers. Due to sanctions, some regions lack access. Cisco is preferred in countries like Pakistan for its strong knowledge base. While some users bypass direct support by using local partners, others find the documentation extensive and hard to understand.

Deployment

Experience with Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center's initial setup varies. Some found it complex, requiring significant time and multiple team members, while others considered it straightforward, especially with proper documentation. Familiarity with Cisco systems influences ease of setup. Deployment times ranged from minutes to weeks, depending on complexity and previous experience. Assistance from support teams and available resources, such as tools and tutorials, impacted the setup process. Overall assessments of difficulty differed widely among users.

Scalability

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center is highly scalable, showing flexibility in expanding user counts and licenses. Organizations vary in size with hundreds to thousands of users. Several users rate its scalability between eight and ten, indicating robust capability even for large-scale deployments. While many users praise its scalability, one source notes potential room for enhancement, rating it lower. The flexibility to handle increased traffic and devices also supports positive views of its scalability.

Stability

Users report that Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center is generally stable, rating stability between six and ten. Some experience issues from version-specific bugs or high availability complications. Recent versions resolve previous problems, improving performance. Occasional challenges arise from frequent updates or complex environments, typically addressed with Cisco support. Many appreciate its reliability, ease of control, and performance without crashes or glitches, yet emphasize testing before full integration to ensure stability.

These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.

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