Cisco Secure Firewall Reviews

We use them in our data centers and on the client side. We have a small installation of Firepower in our main data center, and we are also using Cisco ASA firewalls. So, we have the old ASA platform and new Firepowers. 

It saves time because it's easy to operate and it's easy to add new zones or firewall rules. It's also easy to troubleshoot. It's a neat platform.

When I was managing these firewalls, I found them easy to understand, easy to deploy, and easy to maintain as compared to some of the other firewalls I have been involved with earlier. The opinion of my coworkers is that it's easy and quick to establish new zones, expand, and maintain.

I'm not very familiar with the largest Firepower models, but competitors like Palo Alto seem to have a more capable engine to do, for instance, TLS/SSL decryption. As I understand, Firepower doesn't let you export the decrypted traffic so that, for instance, the security department can look at the traffic or inspect traffic. It's all in the box. I've heard rumors that this is something Cisco is working on, but it isn't yet available.

We have been using Cisco firewalls for about 10 years. 

Its stability is good. We have a failover standby solution that works fairly well. It can have some improvements, but we are happy with it.

We had an issue where we had to install another cluster for the firewall because we went out of the capabilities on one of them. You need to analyze in advance how much your usage will grow in the future and you have to decide based on that. It's about adding more firewalls. We can scale in this way, and it's good.

Whenever I've used their tech support, they have been successful. They quickly pinpointed the problem and provided swift remediation for all the problems. My experience has been good. I'd rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

We decided to go for Firepower because we needed to expand, and we have a large installation of Cisco devices in our environment. It's 70% Cisco. We have one location where they are using Extreme equipment, but in that location also, we have Cisco firewalls. Having one vendor leads to ease of management. It's also easy in terms of competence. We have good knowledge of Cisco, so it's easy to maintain and operate a Cisco platform.

For network security, we have a central hub for all the external traffic. That is a huge load of traffic. On those applications, we are using Palo Alto. We have a mixed combination of Cisco and Palo Alto in our central locations.

Using Cisco firewalls has helped to eliminate or consolidate some of the tools and applications. We have some installations of AlgoSec to see what's going on or how the performance is, but we have, more or less, decided that we don't need them now because there is so much information that we can pull from CSM or FMC.

It's easy to deploy and maintain.

We have a partner for Cisco products. We have a contract with a new partner now for the SDA fabric on ACI.

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

The Cisco Secure Firewall is placed between the separate VLANs. It's a common and effective method of protecting VLANs against internal risks such as Checkpoints and external parameters.

It certainly saves time. You can detect anything if you have nothing. This is why, in the end, it saves time.

Collaboration with other Cisco products such as ISE and others is the most valuable feature.

it is difficult to say what it needs in terms of what needs to be improved. I don't work with it on a daily basis.

I haven't heard anything negative about it.

While this applies to all vendors, pricing can be always lower. In my opinion, Cisco is the most expensive. 

The pricing can be reduced.

Our organization has been working with Cisco Secure Firewall for three to five years.

There are no complaints about performance or stability.

There are no issues with the scalability. It works fine.

It is simple to upgrade.

We only need one person to maintain the product.

My colleague has experience with technical support. I'm not sure if it was with Cisco's technical support directly or through Conscia in between.

This was the first solution we were using.

We are primarily Cisco housed, and I believe that practically everything is Cisco. 

It might be part of the contract for a small fee. I don't think there's any particular reason.

I am familiar with CheckPoint, as well as Microsoft ISA.

We have an implementation partner.

It's a hands-on job with a colleague of mine.

I don't know if it is particularly easy or not.

There was also some learning involved, such as knowing the traffic. This took some time. It took six months to deploy.

With the implementation partner, everything was written out. It was the best-case scenario for us.

We did not use the Cisco Firewall Migration tool.

Conscia assisted us with implementation.

They are one of the best in the Netherlands.

I am not aware of the pricing. 

It's an all-in-one contract.

I would rate Cisco Secure Firewall an eight out of ten.

We pretty much use it as our edge firewall and data center firewall.

We have a colocation that is the center for all our campuses. That is where our edge firewall is. We use that for VPN as well, and it was a great thing during the pandemic because we were already ready to go with VPN. We didn't have to do anything extra on that part.

The solution has really enabled us to ensure our university is secure.

Cybersecurity resilience has been paramount. Because there is a threat of losing everything if ransomware or another sort of attack were to happen, the cybersecurity resilience has been top-notch.

The multi-context feature is the most valuable, especially in our data center. Having different needs for different departments is part of our organization. We can have five firewalls in one.

I would like it if they made the newer generation a bit simpler. You can do ASA code and FXOS. It is just a bit confusing with the newer generational equipment on what it can do.

I have been using this solution for five years.

I would rate the stability as 10 out of 10.

We do maintenance for software updates, etc. I don't think we have had any major hardware failures.

We haven't had to really scale up too much.

The technical support is excellent. Every time that we have ever had an issue, we got a result very quickly. I would rate them as nine out of 10.

Positive

We have always had ASA since I have been at the company. The ASAs were in place and we have upgraded to newer ASA Next-Generation Firewalls.

I am not a huge fan of Cisco licensing in general. However, I wasn't really involved with the pricing. That decision was made a little higher than me.

We are in the middle of an upgrade to the newer Firepowers.

We have used Palo Alto for another solution and they have a better firewall. It is a whole new GUI to learn. With Palo Alto, you simply get one code, then that is your firewall. With the newer Firepowers, there are two or three different ways that you can run it. So, we currently have our data center running in ASA code, then we are doing it a different way with our edge ASA. My supervisor has complained about all the different ways that the new hardware can be configured and installed.

Stay more up-to-date with equipment. The old equipment is what will get you, e.g., leaving Windows 7 machines on your network or 15-year-old switches.

Heavily research what can do cluster mode, HA pairs, etc. That is where we ran into the "gotchas". You have to run it in certain ways to have it clustered and run it another way to have it as an HA pair.

I would rate ASA Firewall as nine out of 10.

We are a Cisco partner and we implement solutions for our customers who are generally in the banking sector and other private sectors.

They are using it as a data center firewall and to secure their internet connections. Our customers usually integrate the firewall with ISE, with a Firepower module for IPS, and there are some NAC solutions.

The solution enhances the performance of the network. It blocks most of the threats and it updates attack signatures so it protects customer data better. The loss of data would be a crisis for any customer. With the deep inspection and analysis and the threat updates, it gives you more protection and safety.

Our clients use automated policy application and enforcement. For example, when you have a very big deployment or a bank needs to deploy more branches, this saves a lot of time when doing the implementation. Similarly, when you add more users or you add more devices, when you create a profile of the policies, they will be available in a matter of minutes, regardless of the number of branches or users or applications. It reduces the time involved in that by 75 percent.

The traffic inspection and the Firepower engine are the most valuable features. It gives you full details, application details, traffic monitoring, and the threats. It gives you all the containers the user is using, especially at the application level. The solution also provides application visibility and control.

The integration between the ASA and Cisco ISE is very easy because they are from the same vendor. We don't face any integration problems. This is one of the valuable points of Cisco firewalls. They can be easily integrated with different Cisco security products.

Our clients also use other products with Cisco ASA, such as Aruba ClearPass and different NAC solutions. The integration of these other products is also easy with Cisco. 

It integrates with email security and Firepower. For example, if you have an attached file infected or you have attacks through email, the traffic will be forwarded to the email security and it will be blocked by the firewall. It gives you a clear view of the file and it can be blocked at every stage, protecting your network from this threat.

One of the best parts is the traffic management and the inspection of the traffic packets. The Device Manager is easy to use to supervise things, and the Firepower application gives you clear threat detection and blocking of all threats. Cisco also provides a better analysis of the traffic.

In addition, Talos is an enhancement to Cisco firewalls, and provides a better view.

The device management options, such as Firepower Device Manager (FDM), Cisco Firepower Management Center (FMC), or Cisco Defense Orchestrator (CDO) add a lot of enhancements in the initial deployment and configuration. In migrating, they can help to create the migration configuration and they help in managing encryption and automation. They add a lot enhancements to the device. They make things easier. In the past, you had to use the CLI and you could not control all this. Now you have a GUI which provides visibility and you can easily integrate and make changes.

When I deal with other firewalls like Palo Alto or Fortinet, I think there is some room for performance tuning and enhancement of the ASA. I'm not saying there is a performance issue with the product, but when compared to others, it seems the others perform a little bit better.

There could be enhancements to the cloud part of the solution. It's good now, but more enhancements would be helpful.

Finally, 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.

I have been using Cisco ASA NGFW for more than 10 years.

The ASA is stable. There may be some small stability issues, when compared to others, but it is a stable product. There could be enhancements to the ASA in this area when compared to other vendors, but it is not a problem with the product.

It is scalable, with virtualization and other features.

In terms of future-proofing our customers' security, we recommend the ASA. We have tested it in large environments and it's working well. The lesson I have learned from using Cisco ASA is that Cisco's research is continuous. They provide enhancements every day. It's a product for the future.

Technical support is a very strong point in Cisco's favor. I would rate it very highly. The support is excellent.

The setup is of medium difficulty. It is not very complex. Generally, when working in the security field, things are a little bit complex because you are integrating with many vendors and you are defending against a lot of different kinds of attacks.

The amount of time it takes to deploy the ASA depends on the complexity of the site where it is being set up. On average, it can take about a week. It could be that there are many policies that need to be migrated, and it depends on the integration. For the initial setup, it takes one day but the amount of time it takes beyond that depends on the security environment.

Our customers definitely see return on investment with Cisco ASA because when you protect your network there is ROI. If you lose your data you have a big loss. The ROI is in the security level and the protection of data.

The value of the pricing needs to be enhanced from Cisco because there are a lot of competitors in the market. There is room for improvement in the pricing when compared to the market. Although, when you compare the benefits of support from Cisco, you can adjust the value and it becomes comparable, because you usually need very good support. So you gain value there with this device.

My advice is to take care of and monitor your policies and be aware of the threats. You also have to be careful when changing policies. When you do, don't leave unused policies around, because that will affect performance. You should have audits of your firewall and its policies and follow the recommendations from Cisco support.

Among the things I have learned from using Cisco ASA is that integration is easy, especially with Cisco products. And the support helps you to integrate with anything, so you can integrate with products outside of the Cisco family as well.

We use the Cisco firewall for a number of things. We've got VPN tunnels, IPsec tunnels. We also use it for basic network layer filtering for our internal service, because we have a number of services that we offer out to clients, so that is the first device that they come across when they get into the network.

We have a network of six remote sites and we use proxy to go to the internet, and from the internet Cisco is the first line of defense. We have internet banking services that we offer to our clients, and that also makes use of the Cisco firewall as the first line of defense. And we've got a number of servers, a Hyper-V virtual environment, and we've got a disaster recovery site.

We had VAPT (vulnerability assessment and pen testing) done by external people to see our level of security from inside and outside and they managed to find some deficiencies inside. That's when they recommended that we should put in network access control. By integrating the ASA with Cisco ISE, that is what we are trying to achieve.

The whole idea is to make sure that any machines that are not on our domain should not be able to connect to the network. They should be blocked.

We also have Cisco switches deployed in our environment. All our active switches are Cisco. The ASA is integrated with them. This integration was done by a combination of our Cisco partner and in-house, because we did this at the time of setting up the infrastructure in 2016.

The benefits we see from the ASA are connected to teleworking as well as, of course, having the basic functionality of a firewall in place and the prevention of attacks. The VPN is also helpful.

Among the most valuable features are the reports which are generated according to the rules that we've put in place to either block traffic or report suspicious attempts to connect to our network. They would come standard with any firewall and we're always monitoring them and taking any corrective steps needed.

We have the ASA integrated with Cisco ISE for network access control. The integration was done by our local Cisco partner. It took them about a month to really get the solution up and running. I would like to believe that there was some level of complexity there in terms of the integration. It seems it was not very easy to integrate if the experts themselves took that long to really come up with a working solution. Sometimes we had to roll back during the process.

Initially, when we put it up, we were having issues where maybe it would be barring things from users completely, things that we wanted the users to access. So we went through fine tuning and now I think it's working as we expect.

We have been using Cisco ASA NGFW since 2016, when we launched.

The ASA is utilized 100 percent of the time. It's up all the time as it's a perimeter firewall. It's always up. It's our first line of defense. It's quite robust, we've never had issues with it. It's very stable.

We haven't maxed it out in terms of its capacity, and we've got up to about 200 users browsing the internet at any given time. In terms of throughput, we've got an ASA 5525 so it handles capacity pretty well. There aren't any issues there.

We have a Cisco partner, so if ever we did have issues we'd go through them, but up until now — this bank has been open for four years — we've never had an issue with the Cisco firewall.

We went with Cisco because it's a reputable brand and we also have CCNP engineers in our team as well. It's the brand of choice. We were also familiar with it from our past jobs.

The ROI is the fact that we haven't been attacked.

It's a brilliant firewall, and the fact that it comes with a perpetual license really does go far in terms of helping the organization in not having to deal with those costs on an annual basis. That is a pain point when it comes to services like the ones we have on FortiGate. That's where we really give Cisco firewalls the thumbs up.

From the point of view of total cost of ownership, the perpetual licensing works well in countries like ours, where we are facing challenges with foreign exchange. Trying to set up foreign payments has been a challenge in Zimbabwe, so the fact that we don't have to be subscribed and pay licenses on an annual basis works well. If you look at FortiGate, it's a good product, but we are always under pressure when renewal time comes.

Where Cisco falls a bit short is because of the fact that, if I want IPS, I have to buy another license. That's why I have my reservations with it. If I want Cisco AnyConnect, I have to buy another license. That's where we have challenges. That's unlike our next-gen FortiGate where everything comes out-of-the-box.

My advice is "go for it," 100 percent. If ever I was told to implement a network, ASA would definitely be part and parcel of the solution.

The biggest lesson we've learned from using the product is about the rapid growth of the product's offerings.

In terms of the maturity of our organization's security implementation, I would like to believe that we are about midway. We still need to harden our security. We need to conduct penetration testing every two years and, resources permitting, maybe yearly. The guys out there who do cyber security crimes are becoming more and more advanced, so there is a need for us to also upgrade our security.

We have a two-layer firewall setup, which is what is recommended as the standard for the payment card industry. We probably need solutions linked with cloud providers from the likes of Cisco, and to put in some bank-grade intrusion detection solutions. Because we have already adopted two technologies, Cisco and FortiGate, we might be looking at solutions from those two providers.

We're also looking at end-point security solutions. We've been using the one which comes with our Office 365 and Microsoft product, Windows Defender. We are going to be trialing their new end-point management solution. We are trying to balance things from a cost point of view and providing the right level of security.

In addition to Windows Defender and the firewalls — ASA and FortiGate — and the network access control, we also have SSL for the website.

As for application visibility and control, currently we're just using logging. We don't have the Firepower installed, so it's just general logging and scheduled checks here and there. As for threat visibility, for us the ASA is a perimeter firewall. Behind that firewall we have an IDS and an IPA. We actually have the license for Firepower but we haven't implemented it; it was just an issue of priorities at the time.

Cisco Secure Firewall has impacted our cybersecurity cost efficiency.

The important features are IPS intrusion prevention, anti-malware, and anti-spam.

Cisco firewall needs experience with hardware. They should also enhance security antivirus, application detection, user detection, and ID detection. 

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for three years.

300 users are using this solution.

The support is good.

Positive

The initial setup is easy, but it takes some time to push the configurations. Also, it's a little complicated and not friendly to use. It is good only for IT and experienced people. 

The deployment took two months and a team of two to three people.

The pricing is average.

I recommend the solution to medium and enterprise customers since it is expensive. 

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I use the solution mostly to separate internal networks.

Being able to create and apply new policies to the firewall has been helpful. It is an object-oriented way of doing things that helps a lot because we can build and apply new policies. We can also test it and revert to the old one if it doesn't work.

The monitoring dashboard is valuable to us for troubleshooting. It lets us see if the packets get from the source to the destination correctly.

With the new FTD, there is a little bit of a learning curve. The learning curve could probably be simplified a little bit. I've come around that learning curve, and I'm able to get around it.

I have been using the solution for 15 years.

Cisco is known for its general stability.

The solution’s scalability is excellent. I don't know if the scalability has a downside or even a limit.

The support is really good. I have a good team that supports us, and I'm able to always reach out to them. It's nice to have somebody on the cell phone and just be able to reach out to them.

Positive

Years ago, I used different firewalls like Juniper, but mostly, it's been fixed to ASA and FTD. We switched to Cisco because our customers were using Cisco.

The initial setup had a little bit of a learning curve, especially because I came from ASA. I needed some help from Cisco. However, I knew what I was doing once it was set up, especially with FMC and Firepower.

We used Cisco’s support to deploy the product.

In general, we have seen an ROI on the product. Using it, applying policies, setting it up, and leaving it alone is helpful. It helps save resources.

I don't use the product for application visibility and control. I tend to worry more about blocking or allowing certain things versus looking deep into the servers and applications and how they work.

The product is great for securing our infrastructure from end to end. I'd like to be able to test out some of the other products, like dashboards and IPS/IDS, that work with it. For the most part, I set up a firewall, and I set up the rules. If things don't work, I monitor it through the monitoring dashboard and try to figure it out.

Cisco Secure Firewall has helped free up a lot of time for our IT staff. Apart from monitoring, unless somebody needs a firewall rule change or anything like that, there's no need to mess with it. Once we set it up, it just runs.

The solution has helped our organization to improve its cybersecurity resilience. Being a firewall, by definition of the term, the product has improved our organization’s security.

People should always evaluate other products. If you’re looking for a solid firewall, Cisco makes the choice so much simpler, especially now with FMC. We are able to apply policies easily and control different firewalls at the same time.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We use Cisco IronPort, Firepower, Secure Firewall, Email, and Secure Connect.

As with most products, integration could be better where needed. Sometimes, for example, the Cisco Secure Firewall and IronPort are in a class of their own. When it comes to management and logging, there's room for improvement.

Most of the products aren't configured on their own, but they are related together. There should be some sort of management. We would need a supervisor to manage it before using all of the solutions together.

They address services that belong together. For example, the Secure Client provides remote access. Authentication and multiple-factor authentication are two different products that belong together. There should be a link between both products and between both management interfaces to see, for example, troubleshooting or reporting so that you have both sources together.

It would be great to have all the data correlated to have an overview and one point of administration. 

The grouping of the solutions helps save time. If you have a problem and you have a high-level overview of the system, you can easily dig deeper into the problem. For example, I can check to see why ASA isn't working but the reason for the outage is actually because of Duo. I can spend a lot of time working in the wrong direction because I didn't have an overview.

IronPort stuff looks at first a little bit outdated. It's not a fancy-colored view, but it does its job and is extremely helpful. Debugging on this platform is very easy. 

Firepower's implementation and reliability need room for improvement. 

We address our problems with the relevant people. Some of the quality of their support has dropped. If your problem gets escalated, there are many skilled people who are absolute pleasures to work with. They are brilliant at what they do. 

If you talk to someone who solves the problem within five minutes you can't do any better. But on the other hand, the other end of the range needs improvement.

You can have a case that lasts 15 months in which you have to talk to 20 people to resolve. 

Neutral

The complexity of the installation depends. It's not so easy to install. Each topic needs one management interface. So you end up with 20 to 40 different management platforms. All of them use a tremendous amount of resources. If you're willing to install it, you need a huge pile of hardware. It is not clear what everything does. Some consolidation there would be helpful. Other vendors face the same problem.

We have seen ROI from using Cisco.

I chose Cisco because I've been working with them for 23 years. I choose it for its stability and because they have the right range of products. Most of our IT staff is happy with it.

I would rate it a nine out of ten.