Cisco Secure Firewall Reviews

We have a lot of use cases of FirePower. In one of the use cases, we have two offices, and we use FirePower on our two sites. One of them works through the site-to-site VPN, and we have a controller on this site.

I work with Cisco and other partners, but the Cisco team is the best team in our country. When I call them, they always help us. 

I started to configure the device with version 7.2. After that, I had a problem. It was not a physical problem. It was a software problem. They advised me to install 7.0. I uninstalled and reinstalled everything. It took time, but it started to work normally.

I am not a programmer, but on the business side, they should fix all such issues in the future. We are Cisco partners, and when we recommend Cisco FirePower to customers, they always think that FirePower is bad. For a single installation of FirePower, if I have to write about 18 tickets to Cisco, it's a big problem. There was an issue related to Azure. We had Active Directory in Azure. The clients had to connect to FirePower through Azure. We had a lot of group policies. After two group policies, we had to make groups in Azure, and they had to sign in and sign back. It was a triple-layer authentication, and there was a big problem, so we didn't use it.

We have been using this solution for about two years.

It's very stable now. Everything is fine for me.

I use just two devices. I've not tested anything else.

Their customer support is very good. We also work with other vendors, but Cisco's support is still the best. I'd rate them a 10 out of 10.

For me, it was very easy because I solved all problems, but I had to install it two times. 

We are a reseller, and for us, it's a 10 out of 10 because if we sell it, we will earn money, but customers have to agree with us.

We mainly use it in the data center. We are obliged to use a firewall. It's a necessity.

It has helped in securing our infrastructure from end to end so that we can detect and remediate threats. There is another office in my company that does threat detection, but it has been helpful.

It hasn't freed up any time. We still have to manage the firewall. It's something we have to do.

All the features except IPS are valuable. IPS is not a part of my job.

It's already pretty good. In terms of functionality, there isn't much to improve. There could be more bandwidth and better interface speed.

I've been using Cisco firewalls for 20 years.

Its stability is very good.

It's better to have a higher speed. I'd rate it an eight out of ten in terms of scalability.

We have multiple locations and multiple departments. We are a big company, and we have a lot of remote sites. We have about 6,000 of them.

They are very good. From time to time, Cisco employees come to us and provide information about the latest features and new products. I'd rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

We have other firewalls, and it hasn't helped to consolidate other solutions. We have to use the Cisco firewall and other vendors because of internal law. We have to use two firewalls, one from vendor A and the other one from vendor B.

We went for Cisco because it's affordable. It's something you can trust. It's something you know. It's a valued product. 

I've been involved in configuring it and assessing and ensuring that the configuration is up to date and there are no bugs, etc.

Its initial setup is not at all complex. I've been working with Cisco firewalls for 20 years, so I know them very well. It's not complicated for me.

We have all deployment models. We have on-premises and cloud deployments. We have everything. I belong to a big organization.

We had a consultant for integrating the product. Our experience with the consultant was good.

The number of people required for deployment varies, but one person can deploy the solution. It's quite easy to implement. It doesn't require a lot of staff.

It requires normal maintenance.

It's affordable.

Try it. You will be happy. 

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

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. 

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.

Our primary use case for this solution is to use it as a firewall. This product secures the internet from internal and public users.

Cisco Secure Firewall helped add to my organization's value. It is a selling product for us here. They have great support and documentation, which makes the solution easy to sell to customers. The Cisco name has a lot of value and high brand awareness.

We are selected partners now but are looking to grow to become a primary partner for Egypt. 

Cisco Secure Firewall definitely saved us time. However, security is never 100% with any product, even Cisco. So, you will have to spend some time securing your IT regardless of which solution you use.

I would say that it helped my company cut time by 50%.

The solution cautions us against threats via email notifications and internally in the web interface of the product itself on the dashboard.

What I found the most valuable about Cisco Secure Firewall is that if a client is educated about the solution, it can help him or her avoid many problems and mistakes. 

I think Cisco would benefit from comparing its solutions to other products. There is a lot to learn from solutions like Palo Alto or FortiGate. These are top security products. For example, Palo Alto has better inspection visibility than Cisco. When we ask customers about Palo Alto, they say "I like Palo Alto. It helps me see problems on time. I can audit everything through it." Cisco could improve in this regard. Cisco's inspection visibility could be better. 

I have been using this solution for a long time; since the PIX version in 2003. This adds up to almost 20 years now. I have had a plethora of experiences with this solution as both just an employee using it and also as the owner of a company. We also have a range of customers using the solution. 

We did not use any other solutions. Our strategy from the beginning has been to grow with Cisco. However, our customers have the final say in which solutions they choose and sometimes that's not Cisco. That has much to do with their previous beliefs and brand loyalty and trust. The customer's opinion matters and if the customer is loyal to Palo Alto, we are going to have a hard time getting them to make the switch. 

I am not involved in the deployment of the product. I have a sub that deploys Cisco Secure Firewall. I'm involved in guiding the deployment on the management side and making sure it's done in line with the customer's wishes. 

I did evaluate other options but ultimately went with Cisco because of the support they offer. You can reach their tech support engineers at any time. That's important. Their documentation is great as well. Their site is wonderful. 

I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Cisco Secure Firewall should be consolidated with routers, switches, or VOIP.

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.