Cisco IOS Security Reviews

We're using it for internet traffic security. It's for protection. 

We don't have a problem with the user interface and it is pretty user-friendly.

We don't mind the cost.

The security is very good. 

Cisco is very good, very powerful. 

It's a reliable, stable product in general. It's better than the competition. 

The product is easy to set up. 

It is a stable product.

We find the product to be scalable. 

How to improve the solution depends on the usage. 

Sometimes I find it difficult to manage. Some configurations are difficult for new engineers, for example. 

It could be more flexible. 

I've been using the solution for the last ten years. 

This is a very stable, reliable product. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

It's a scalable product. 

We have 500 to 600 people using the solution.

Before, it was very easy to get in touch with support. However, it's become more difficult. It can take a long time to get an answer. We also have to deal with time differences, which can make it harder to get an answer. 

It is very easy for me to implement the solution. It's very good, it's very easy. There are command planning and equations. Cisco is very simple. We don't have issue with Cisco.

The deployment depends on the product you use and the network design. 

You can do it in small batches. It can take some time to refresh. It might take one or two days. 

The cost may be around $5,000 to $10,000 a year. If you want support you have to pay at least this price. 

We are a Cisco customer and end-user. 

We've been using the mid-range version since 2012.

I'd rate the solution around eight out of ten. 

Cisco is great. It's likely number one in the world. I'd recommend the solution as it is a very powerful product. However, it's best to have Cisco experts on staff or available to you to make things easier. 

This has improved the way our organization operates very well.

The most valuable feature is the support that we get.

In the next release of this solution, we would like to see support for the 100BT and 7000 models.

We have experienced bugs in the solution.

This solution is stable.

I would rate the scalability of this solution at about eighty percent.

Technical support for this solution is very good.

The initial setup of this solution is straightforward.

We deployed this solution ourselves.

There is a return on investment with this solution. 

The licenses for this solution are expensive.

This is a good solution, and one that I recommend, but sometimes we have bugs.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case for this solution is internet security at the edge.

Cisco IOS Security gives us a level of trust at the edge as far as being the first line of defense for anything that's trying to get into our network.

The feature I find most valuable is that the solution doesn't really change from year to year. The basics are there and I have so much experience with it that it's easy to use. I also like the security this solution offers.

External threats are changing every day, so there are new features coming in. We're more into the command line interface rather.

The stability of this solution is excellent. 

We are very satisfied with the scalability of this solution.

The technical support is excellent. We've contacted the tech team a few times and the turnaround time was always almost immediately.

We've always been using this solution and we haven't seen a need to change from it so we haven't looked at other vendors in quite a while because we are totally satisfied with what we have.

The initial setup was straightforward and we did the deployment ourselves. We could go on the internet for any reference that we needed.

We have to renew our license every three years.

My rating for this solution is a ten out of ten because it does everything I need and it is easy enough to use. My advice to others is to definitely have it on their list of vendors to take a look at. I really recommend this solution.

We use Cisco IOS Security for integration purposes. We have Cisco features and Cisco devices in our organization. We use it as an integration system for Cisco devices.

Cisco products are very secure and integrate easily with other devices.

The graphical user interface or the GUI could be better. Beginners can use some devices with the GUI, but some security devices are configured using CLI. It would also be better if it had its own Intrusion Protection Service and Intrusion Detection Service on the server.

I have been using Cisco IOS Security for more than three years.

Cisco IOS Security has been stable so far.

The device is not scalable because the device was manufactured with a specific product specification. To scale, you have to plan and add more devices. We have about 12,000 users.

They are supportive and have the technical skills to support us. If I have challenges with a Cisco product, they help me based on their subscription fee.

On a scale from one to five, I would give Cisco technical support a five.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward for IT users. It takes about one hour to implement this solution because we have to upgrade the framework on some of the devices. 

On a scale from one to five, I would give the initial setup a five. 

Cisco IOS Security is not very expensive, and pricing depends on where you live. It's affordable for both individuals and institutions.

On a scale from one to five, I would give Cisco's pricing a four.

We chose Cisco because the company has an excellent market rating, users are familiar with Cisco, and they can deploy Cisco products. Using Cisco also improves the security mechanism of all devices from end to end.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Cisco IOS Security an eight.

We basically use it for security. It can be used as the internet as well as the data center security firewall.

The hardware is pretty stable. It's also a very good product performance-wise. 

Initially, it wasn't mature like a firewall and there were other leaders, but now they have included almost all the features of next-generation security. Basically, it's a good product to work with. 

I would love it if it has a link-by-link feature, integration with Unified Threat Management (UTM), and load balancers.

They haven't got any link-by-link feature right now, which can be a very attractive option. This link-by-link feature can also be made available for Cisco's UTM firewalls. The link-by-link feature is available in some of the other firewalls. 

Currently, integration with UTM is missing. Cisco IOS Security also doesn't have the load balancers and a few things that need to be done to get a good UTM firewall. Normally, other firewalls have UTM. As a next-generation firewall, it's good, but as a UTM, it has to do some work.

We have been working with this solution for around 15 years now.

Cisco IOS Security is very stable.

It's pretty scalable. The hardware is good, and it's scalable.

The main reason for going with Cisco is their support. They have very skilled people and a very good support structure as compared to many other companies. They invest heavily in support maintenance. 

We are pretty comfortable with Cisco technical support, but with the new acquisitions, they also need to ramp up their support. For the older Cisco IOS and other stuff, they have very mature teams, but with the new acquisitions, sometimes it takes time to do the transition up to that level. For example, when Cisco acquired Sourcefire for the firewall, it took some time for Sourcefire to act like Cisco's other products. So, support is good, but still, there is a learning curve involved with new acquisitions and their support.

The initial setup was complex when we compare it with some other vendors.

The setup is easy if you have good knowledge. As compared to the earlier types, it is very easy now, and the major stuff is graphical. It's pretty easy, and we don't need a lot of people, at least one to two people for backup are good enough to manage the firewalls.

Cisco IOS Security is for medium and large enterprises. When we talk about the price as well, it's more suitable for medium and large enterprises, but recently they included a few good SMB options. They have introduced a cheaper version of it in the last year with SMB option, which can be looked into for small enterprises, but it's more suited towards the large enterprises and medium enterprises.

We prefer selling Cisco firewalls. We also sell Fortinet. Because Cisco's presence in our country is very good as compared to Fortinet and Palo Alto, the local customers seem comfortable with Cisco.

When we talk about Cisco, definitely the hardware is more reliable and scalable as compared to others. The support is also pretty good. These are the two good things. Definitely, Cisco Firewall is all around pretty good as compared to Fortinet.

We work with Cisco, and we top-rate Cisco firewalls to be sold and deployed. This is because they have good trading and expertise available. Cisco IOS Security is pretty reliable, and it also has really good documentation.

It sometimes requires a slightly higher technical expertise to implement all the features as compared to other firewalls. Therefore, users definitely have to be trained first to get proper knowledge. Definitely, IOS security is well-documented, and it's pretty reliable. I'd advise just to make sure that they have adequate knowledge. 

The learning curve is slightly longer because it's a slightly complex product as compared to Fortinet, but feature-wise, it's very good.

I would rate Cisco IOS Security a seven out of ten. It is a good product with scope for features such as link-by-link, integration with UTM, and load balancers.

The solution is used for enterprise and NAC connectivity.

This kind of technology has the advantage of being very flexible to any size organization. It is a cornerstone as a part of the basic network infrastructure.

It can be used as a simple switch to connect your network devices with security features embedded - such as port security, for example. This allows companies to limit to a fixed address per port, avoiding external or malicious assets for accessing the network.

For example, if you have a retail business, and you have a lot of small stores spread nationwide, you just need to connect some cameras and sales points to the network. iOS security solutions allow you to have a secure LAN and you could add a secure WAN connection through your Internet provider with LTE links as backups. You can set up on-demand VPN connections from store to store for voice/video calls, or do inventory queries direct to the HQ database.

As a Cisco partner/reseller, security has been a concern for many years. Cisco has a security concept that begins right when you try to connect to the network. Security is a complete system and is not just put on security devices at the perimeter or between tiers inside a data center.

iOS on routers is a mature solution, allowing easy setup of a traditional ISAKMP V1 or V2 VPN, and a very mature proprietary VPN flavor called DMVPN. DMVPN allows on-demand VPN establishment with minimal setup configuration and creates a pseudo full mesh avoiding bottlenecks. 

Cisco Technical Assistance Center works on a follow-the-sun concept and gives real 24x7 customer support, which is a great advantage when you have a service contract with them.

The best features include the Auto Secure script, port security, spanning-tree root and loop guard, 802.1x, DMVPN, GET VPN, SD-Access, and Secure SD-WAN.

The software offers plenty of security solutions that can work in the most sophisticated enterprise but also works well for small/mid-range enterprises.

A simple switch is able to run basic security as port security, limiting the MAC addresses allowed on a port, or by running a script you can set up ACL and some control plane policies to protect control and management planes and basic DoS protection.

The same software is able to work with sophisticated security options going from the basic 802.1x to MACSEC, NAC, and trustsec, and can be integrated with automation tools in order to do auto onboarding tasks (for wired devices), profiling, and more interesting security tasks.

It allows for easy traditional ISAKMP V1 or V2 VPN setups and has a very mature proprietary VPN flavor called DMVPN. DMVPN allows on-demand VPN establishment with minimal setup configuration involved and creates a pseudo full mesh (avoiding bottlenecks as a hub-spoke topology does). Dynamic VPN establishment allows spoke-to-spoke traffic flow on-demand, optimizing VoIP/SIP calls setting up direct tunnels among spokes, reducing latency compared with a hub/spoke topology.

Switch and router iOS can be automated and orchestrated with secure SD-WAN and SD-Access Cisco solutions. Having the iOS software is relevant for small and large enterprises; it works fine for all size networks.

There are the usual bugs that are inherent to some software upgrades. Sometimes this provides some unexpected issues, however, it happens with all brands all the time.

Some additional features could be improved. For example, the licensing for DNA environments could be better. In some countries, the end-user does not want to go to orchestration/automation environments. They just want to have a small network for their small budget and they never will go to these environments. They consider it unfair that they have to pay for a license/subscription that will never be used.

I've used the solution for ten or more years.

It is very stable.

The product is very scalable.

Technical support is great.

Positive

My customers have used other brands that just gave connectivity and did not offer security over LAN switches. The VPN scheme was limited to site-to-site over hub-and-spoke topologies.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We are the vendor team that handles implementations.

Cisco is not a cost-effective brand, however, in the end, you get what you pay for. Regarding licensing, some customers will not use automation/orchestration environments and do not like to pay a subscription for something they will never use.

We use it for routing and switching, VPNs, connectivity to some degree, and firewalls.

In certain spots it has improved our security program's maturity, for example around virtualization and network segmentation.

The most valuable feature is the scalability. The nice thing with the bigger vendors is that they're very good at scale.

I would like to see much more embedded security that works and that isn't a bolt-on.

It's pretty stable. The stability has been good.

I would rate the technical support at eight out of ten. We've had a lot of good feedback. 

Different products come and go but we've been using Cisco for 20 years. 

We use every consulting firm and probably most integrators, depending on the project. On any day it could be Deloitte, Accenture, etc.

I'm sure we've seen ROI. Routing is better than picking up a file, carrying it to you and handing it to you. But it's been in place for quite a long time.

Look at this solution and figure out what you're trying to accomplish. You should probably augment it with some other vendors as well. I'm not a big single-vendor type of person. I don't think anyone does it perfectly well. With Cisco, you bring them in for their core competencies which are routing, switching, and virtual networking. Then you augment it with some security vendors that have been doing security the entire time.

I would rate it at eight out of ten. It's not a ten because of the criticisms around security.

One of the main features is that the hardware is extremely reliable.

I think they should bring back remote VPN for users. However, I understand the attempt is to have these functions inside the firewalls and not the routers or the IOS devices.

The stability of the solution is great. I feel very confident working with them because I have a customer that has a router running for almost 10 years and in other cases more than 10 years.

The technical support has been impressive. I know there are no other brands that have the same good service.

I have been working with Palo Alto Networks and Fortinet in the past but they do not have technical assistance centers around the globe as this solution does. However, Palo Alto solutions are more intuitive, the graphic user interface is better, and has higher performance. Cisco is catching up and closing the gap with new releases.

Palo Alto networks are more expensive than this solution and this is why you will see more products like this one in Mexico.

I have been working with the next-generation firewalls by Palo Alto and the license tends to be better. For example, Palo Alto Wildfire, the licensing is more dynamic than Cisco products.

I rate Cisco IOS Security an eight out of ten.