Cisco Secure Firewall Reviews

We use them for site-to-site VPN solutions as well as other VPN activities, and for general application security.

We needed a good VPN solution and, as our network grew, we had more applications that were virtualized and that can be spun up. We needed a solution that would keep us ahead.

Cisco ASA provides great security for our applications.

One of the best features is the ease of use. It's also easy to teach new engineers to use the ASA CLI. When I first started learning firewalls, Cisco was the first one that was taught to me and it was pretty easy to grasp. When I'm teaching other engineers to use Cisco ASAs, the results of their learning are immediate.

It needs to provide the next-generation firewall features that other vendors provide, like data analytics, telemetry, and deep packet inspection.

Also, the ASAs need to be improved a little bit to keep up with the demand for high bandwidth and session count applications.

I've been using Cisco ASAs for about 11 years.

It's reliable. It doesn't have all the features of some of the newer firewalls, but it's very reliable. It doesn't break. It's pretty rock-solid.

We have at least a pair in every one of our data centers. We gateway our applications around the firewall system, meaning all application data goes through firewalls.

We have good support from Cisco for the ASAs. That helps us out a lot. Some of our ASAs are pretty old and technically not supported anymore, but TAC always helps us out.

The initial one, for me, was a little bit complex because I hadn't done it before. It was inline and an active/standby pair, so it involved a little bit more than just deploying one firewall. 

We had some documentation written and we tested it in the lab and then the deployment took about four hours.

We deployed it alongside different solutions and then we cut over to it when it wouldn't impact the customers.

The maintenance involves doing code upgrades periodically to keep up with the security environment requirements. One person handles that.

We deployed with a consultant from Cisco support. Our experience with them was good. They provided a lot of documentation ahead of time to help us with our configuration.

From our side there were two people involved. One was doing the configuration and the other person was checking to make sure there were no errors, looking at IPs and the like.

The licensing is straightforward and simple, so we don't have to keep relicensing every year as we do with other applications.

We use Juniper as well.

We use Cisco Secure Firewall for remote VPN.

Cisco Secure Firewall played a crucial role in enabling all our users to establish remote connections from their homes.

Cisco Secure Firewalls' application visibility and control are beneficial because they provide a management console that allows us to view logging and sessions.

It enhances our organization's cybersecurity resilience by enabling us to deploy multiple instances of it both in Azure and on-premises. This redundancy ensures that in the event of an outage or any other issues, we can seamlessly switch to alternative locations.

Cisco Secure Firewall is reliable, which is why we opted for it during the pandemic for our remote users.

The cloud does not precisely mimic what is on-premises. There are some new challenges with the features in Azure. Due to Azure limitations, we cannot synchronize configurations between an active standby. This aspect makes it difficult to perform such tasks in the cloud, requiring manual intervention.

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall ASA for ten years.

In my current role, I have not encountered any stability issues.

Cisco Secure Firewall is scalable.

Cisco's technical support is excellent, and its personnel are knowledgeable. I consistently receive prompt and satisfactory responses from them. However, there are occasions when we need to reach out to them for feedback follow-up.

Positive

We encountered some issues with the deployment because we run on Azure now. 

Although I am not directly involved in dealing with the pricing aspect of the Cisco Secure Firewall, I know that the licensing has improved over the years.

I rate Cisco Secure Firewall a nine out of ten.

The Cisco Secure Firewall is not a remediation tool but rather designed for secure remote sessions.

We use the same ASAs for firewall functionality as we do for VPN functionality.

Our organization is currently considering Palo Alto as an alternative to Cisco. However, I am not involved in the decision-making process.

We use the solution to secure our external software application and user access through different ports.

URL filtering is valuable.

The virtualization aspect has room for improvement.

The scalability has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for three and a half years.

The solution is stable.

I give the scalability a one out of ten.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The price is good.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

Previously, our customers had to always utilize hand-to-hand delivery. Now, they are able to move completely to a secure digital method. They use a strictly dark fiber optics connection from a central location to the endpoint.

Our clients have been able to consolidate infrastructure products such as Talus for hardware encryption and Dell EMC for D2D de-duplication and backup.

FMC could be improved because management with FMC is quite difficult compared to using Firepower web-based management.

We've been selling Cisco Firepower for a year.

Our clients feel that Cisco has proven stability in enterprise networking, routers, and ASA firewall security.

We are very confident with Cisco's technical support and would give them a ten out of ten.

Positive

Previously, we sold Check Point and Palo Alto.

We choose to sell Cisco because it has been approved by NATO. Our clients use a strictly offline infrastructure, and there were significant issues with Check Point. In addition, we have good support from the local Cisco office, and they also suggested that the end user goes with Cisco.

As a Cisco Secure Firewall reseller, the value we bring is very good support. You will not get the same level of support from some other vendors. For instance,  Palo Alto and Check Point don't have direct support like Cisco. They have third-party support. Thus, you may get a response only when you escalate the issue to the third tier of the service level. With Cisco, everything is resolved within a day.

The initial setup is straightforward because most network engineers have worked with Cisco. Cisco invested in universities, and as a result, 40% of the network experience of students is with Cisco.

Our clients are mostly financial institutions and have strict policies that do not allow personal data on external clouds outside the country. As a result, they mostly use an on-premises or hybrid cloud deployment model.

We are currently having our customers switch from the 2000 to the 3000 series.

The price is not too high, but the subscription is a little bit high. We compared the activation of Cisco and Fortinet, and when we activated the whole portfolio of the UTM of Fortinet, the speed was reduced. We tested the same situation with the Cisco 2140 series, and there was no reduction in speed.

When you're evaluating the solution, take a look at the customer reviews.

We have had no issues with Cisco Secure Firewall, and I would rate it at nine on a scale from one to ten.

Our primary use cases for this solution are as a traditional firewall, VPN system, IPS, and for URL filtering.

I think that the firewall feature is the most valuable to me as it is one of the oldest features for this solution. We also appreciate how stable the VPN is.

I have a lot of difficulties with the solution's Firewall Management Center (FMC) and the GUI. Neither is responsive enough and should be improved.

My organization has been using Cisco Secure Firewall for more than 10 years. 

My opinion is that this solution is quite stable.

We encounter tech issues often. Sometimes it's really good to work with the tech engineer, but sometimes it can be really frustrating that it's slow to go through the email chat and everything. It depends on the engineer you get.

Positive

I have had difficulties with the implementation of this solution. When I first encountered this solution, I had difficulties bringing it up and configuring it, but this was maybe due to the fact that back then it was a new technology. It is possible that I would have an easier time with it right now. 

I would say that this solution did help free up staff. Today, and even during COVID, a lot of customers are interested in VPN solutions and this demand will only keep increasing. I work from home mostly and the solution saves me two hours per day.

I do want to stress that this solution saves our organization time. We have 13 engineers in our company and even more staff in other departments and they also have the opportunity to work from home and with this, they save a lot of time. We plan on buying a smaller office thanks to this and this too will save a lot of money for the company.

The reason we chose Cisco is that some of my colleagues partnered with the provider when they came to Hungary, so they have been working with these solutions for a long time.

I do not have experience with the Cisco migration tool, but my colleagues do and they are really happy with it and its ease of use.

I would rate this solution a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

We are using these firewalls for edge security or different zones of security. We use them throughout the whole organization, but they vary in size, depending on if it's a small office in Spain or a large office in another country. We have offices in many countries.

It saves time. It protects us from experiencing big or small attacks. If we are vulnerable to attacks, it would take us a lot of time to fix that and put out all the fires. Hopefully, we won't need that when we have several layers of security.

We feel that we can trust the security, and our assets and business are well protected. We need to have trust in it, but we also see that it works. We have a security company that has tested that it works.

They have already improved it to some degree. It has become easier, but I've not drilled down much myself. I mostly use CLI, but I can see that it's a little bit more GUI-based. So, improvement is already there. It's a good thing that we now have GUI-based control over the details, and that would be the way to go.

It integrates with other security products from Cisco, but sometimes, there can be glitches or errors.

I have been using Cisco firewalls for the last 20 years. We are now mostly using FPRs, but we also have some old Cisco firewalls that we need to change to newer technologies.

It has been a while since I used it myself. My experience was good. You get the correct engineer for the task. I'd rate them an eight out of ten.

Positive

We have firewalls from other vendors, but we will be moving over to Cisco. When we have the same vendor, it would take less time to train people to do their job because there is one technology rather than four or five different ones.

I was involved in its deployment, but that was a few years ago. It was not an in-depth technical installation; it was more of a physical installation. It was easy. We are a big company, so we need to plan the downtime and get approval from the business to take down systems and upgrade them. 

I'd rate Cisco Secure Firewall a seven out of ten.

Our clients use Cisco Secure Firewall to protect them from data breaches. They also use it for site-to-site VPN connections and remote access.

The most valuable features are remote access, site-to-site VPN, and next-generation features.

The management of the firewalls could be improved because there are a lot of bugs.

I've been selling this solution for three years.

Most of our clients have deployed the solution on-premises and are slowly migrating to hybrid and to SaaS models.

When you configure it, it's very stable.

Cisco Secure Firewall is a scalable solution.

Cisco's technical support is good.

We used to sell Palo Alto firewalls and switched to Cisco because it was more cost-effective for clients.

As a Cisco reseller, I try to give our customers the best possible solutions for their problems.

The initial setup is straightforward for smaller organizations, but it can be complex when companies are larger.

Migrating certain components of a client's previous firewall configurations to Cisco Secure Firewall with the migration tool is simple, easy, and quick. However, it would be really nice if we could migrate complete ASA configurations to FTD with the migration tool and not just the policies and objects.

Maintenance-wise, we troubleshoot and make changes if required.

I deployed it myself with, and perhaps with one person from the client's end.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Cisco Secure Firewall at seven.

Our primary use case for Cisco Secure Firewall is segregation between different environments. We put Cisco Secure Firewall between each of those environments to create this segregation. 

Cisco Secure Firewall improved our organization. We have it in every one of our French offices. 

What I like about Cisco Secure Firewall is that you get to integrate it into one box. For example, you can have one big switch with a model inside of it. This makes it easy to manage. 

One thing that Cisco could improve is the GUI. The graphic user interface should be more user-friendly. If you compare it with some of its competitor's GUIs, Cisco falls short in terms of how rules are pushed. 

We have also run into issues with functionality and flexibility. Cisco does fall behind its competitors in this regard. It's our opinion that Cisco is not a leader in security devices. 

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for two decades. 

We are satisfied with the level of support we get from Cisco. Getting support is quite easy. When we have a problem, our engineer just opens up a case and we get a reply quickly. The support usually has deep knowledge of the solution. 

Positive

I was involved in the initial deployment. It was quite simple, not complex at all. 

We have seen a return on investment in terms of price because we have a partnership with our provider. 

We chose Cisco Secure Firewall because we were already using Cisco switch routers and other products, so we wanted everything to be from one provider. However, we do use other products as an additional security measure.

The solution does help us save time because it enables us to do a good job of filtering from the get-go. This ensures we have fewer potential threats to look through.

Cisco Secure Firewall has not helped us consolidate tools because part of our security strategy is having multiple firewalls from different providers. Our company policy is that it is better to have different technology, so we do have some overlap.