Cisco Secure Firewall Reviews

With the ASA there are multiple products depending on your needs based on the two generations of the ASA. Roughly split-up there are 4 products.

1. 5500 Series basic/standard firewall - This I would rate as 7/10 due to the fact that it's easy to use, manage and deploy. Its scalable SSL, and IPSec VPN options, and is lacking throughput
2. 5500-X Series basic/standard firewall - This I would rate as 8/10 due to the fact that it's easy to use, manage and deploy. Its scalable SSL, and IPSec VPN options, and it has high throughput
3. ASA5500 Series with firewall and CX - This I would rate as 5/10 due to fact that even though the firewall and VPN part is easy to manage and deploy, the CX is lacking in stability, and features. Also, it is rather complex to deploy. Add to this the CX lowers the throughput even further
4. 5500-X Series with firewall and Sourcefire - This I would rate as 9/10 because it's easy to use, manage and deploy the firewall, VPN, and also the SourceFIRE. SourceFIRE works rather well and is by far the most advanced IPS system available. But it decreases the throughput more than you´d like

In general, I like both the SSL VPN and SourceFIRE. Firstly, for the VPN, both the client and client-less versions are very scalable, flexible, and dynamic in configuration and probably the best SSL VPN solution available in the marked. Secondly, SourceFIRE has improved the IPS functionality and stability of the ASA to a point where you can begin to enjoy the fruits of your solution and root out the bad seed in you network.

For many of my customers, the SourceFIRE solution has been an eye opener of exactly what their users are generating of traffic. Some customers, after reviewing the traffic application usage reports are astounded by the amount of traffic used, for example by Facebook and YouTube. My customers like the visibility into their network usage, and not necessarily wanting to block it, but just to know that they can control the network traffic and utilization if needed.

Definitely the throughput could use an upgrade when running the SourceFIRE/AMP with the ASA. Also, it could use better troubleshooting capabilities. You are, most of the time, bound to have access to TAC for troubleshooting advanced problems.

Customers where I have deployed these solutions have had them for three plus years, and most of them have, at the present moment have first generation solutions, or are planning an upgrade to the second generation ones (NGFW or NGIPS),

There are always issues when implementing key equipment like firewalls, especially if you are converting from an unfamiliar platform, activating SourceFIRE, or doing a general maintenance rule clear-up. If you don’t follow best practice, you can seriously impact network performance or unintentionally shut-down services.

In general the ASA has a great software stability reputation, and even though SourceFIRE for ASA is still young, the stability seems to be rather good. Of course you can’t avoid all issues, and you might have to reinstall the SourceFIRE software on the modules. If you're upgrading the ASA from pre code 8.3, you will need to redo the NAT and access rules of the ASA.

License scalability for SourceFIRE is really not good if you have an ASA in HA as you need two licenses of everything, which is really bad as you wont get double SourceFIRE other than that you need to remember to buy your ASA based on the SourceFIRE's throughput and not the inspection throughput.

If you have a service contract with Cisco you can have TAC assistance, software upgrades and next-business-day RMA (or faster) otherwise you are left to yourself or your Cisco partner. Basically without a Cisco service contract, you can't get any help or software from Cisco.

Should you have a Cisco service contract, you get access to TAC that will provide you technical assistance towards solving your issue. The TAC experience can vary a lot. In general I would rate it as very good, 4/5.

Mainly customers switch from other vendor because of VPN features, ease-of-management, and good consultant/partner relationship.

The initial setup is fairly easy and there are wizards for almost all the basic needs, including the initial setup and all types of VPN technologies that the ASA supports.

I am the vendor, and I am an expert with ASA.

Make sure you get the right product/license to do the job you need done. If you are in doubt ask a consultant or a Cisco Partner. I have seen cases where a firewall wasn't the right hardware for the job and you can't just switch off the firewall/inspector for some interfaces or networks.

With [my company], NIL, it's cross-domain. It's just not ASA, but in particular we work with customers where we talk about the physical boxes or even the virtual appliances that we're deploying. The use cases can be multiple, but mostly what we have seen is perimeter security, looking at blocking [and] allowing of traffic before accessing the internet.

The majority of the challenges that we see across customers and partners is looking at the data, the integrity, security, [and] looking at various areas where they need to put in boxes or solutions which could secure their environments. It's not just about the data, but even looking at the endpoints, be it physical or virtual. That, in itself, makes the use case for putting in a box like ASA. 

And, of course, with the integrations nowadays that we have from a firewall, looking at multiple identity solutions or logging solutions you could integrate with, that in itself becomes a use case of expanding the genres of integrated security.

The best features would obviously be the ones that are most used: the perimeter security, allowing/blocking of traffic, NAT-ing, and routing, or making it easy as compared to a router. If you were to do the similar features on a router, it would be way more extensive and difficult as compared to a firewall. These are the majority of the features that anyone would begin with.

But of course, they expanded to other features like IPS or cyber security or looking at vulnerabilities or scanning, port scans. Those are the advanced things.

[In terms of overall performance] in the last decade or so, especially in the last three or four years, the scale of where the architecture has been—all the numbers, the stats, everything—has gone up exponentially. It's all because of the innovations that are always happening, and not just at the hardware level, but particularly at the software level. Of course, we can always look at the data sheets and talk about the numbers, but all I can say, in my experience, is that the numbers have really gone up, and the speed at which the numbers have gone up in the last couple of years or so, is really progressive. That's really good to see.

We're reaching [the point] where we want it to be. If you go 10 years back, we did miss the bus on bringing in the virtual versus the physical appliance, but now that we have had it, the ASAv, for a few years, I think we are doing the right things at the right place. 

The only improvement that we could make is maybe [regarding] the roadmap, to have better visibility as to what we are targeting ahead in the next few quarters. That is where we, as partners, can also leverage our repos with our customers and making them aware that there might be some major changes that we may have to introduce in their networks in the near future.

I started back in the days with ASA when I was [with] Cisco. I was [with] Cisco for 12 years. I started as a TAC engineer, and one of the teams I was leading was the ASA team, firewall, and across VPN, AAA. it became like a cross-border team or cross-architecture, and it's been long enough. I've been working with ASAs for about 12 or more years now.

From the stability standpoint, it's way better. Is there a scope for improvement? Of course. There always is. But I can just speak from my experience. What it was and what it is today, it is way better.

We look at scalability for any product of Cisco. I cannot be confined to the ASAs. We have physical, virtual, and cloud deployments. Everything is possible, so scalability is no issue.

Support, when you look at any product from Cisco, has been top-notch. I was a TAC guy myself for 10 years and I can vouch for it like anyone would do from TAC.

Support has always been extensive. There is great detail in root cause analysis. Going back into my Cisco TAC experience, it's always the story that if you know the product well, you know the things that you need to collect for TAC or for any other junior SME to work with you collectively, to get down to the solutions sooner. Otherwise, they have to let you know what you need to collect. It's better to know the product, get the right knowledge transfer, work towards those goals, and then, collectively, we can work as a great team.

I have mostly been involved in the pre-sales stage, and then eventually the post-sales as well. But we do the groundwork of making sure that we have set the stage for the customer to get the initial onboarding. And at times, I do it with other engineers or other colleagues who take it over from there. In my experience, it has been pretty straightforward.

It's not just the implementation, but [it's] also managing or maintaining [the ASA]. It would depend on how complex a configuration is, a one-box versus cluster versus clusters at different sites. Depending on the amount of configuration complexity and the amount of nodes that you have, you would need to look at staff from there. It's hard to put a number [on it and] just say you need a couple of guys. It could be different for different use cases and environments.

[In terms of maintenance] it's about a journey: the journey from having the right knowledge transfer, knowing how to configure a product, knowing how to deploy it, and then how to manage it. Now, of course, from the manageability standpoint, there are some basic checks that you have to do, like firmware upgrades, or backup restores, or looking at the sizing—how much your customer needs: a single node versus multiple nodes, physical versus virtual, cloud versus on-prem. But once you are done with that, it also depends on how much the engineers or SMEs know about configuring the product, because if they know about configuring the product, that's when they would know if something has been configured incorrectly. That also comes in [regarding] maintenance [of] or troubleshooting the product. Knowledge transfer is the key, and making sure that you're up to date and you have your basic checks done. Then, [the] manageability is like any other product, it's going to be easy.

The return on investment is not going to be restricted to just the box, because nowadays, if you look at the integrated security that Cisco has been heavily investing into, it's not just about ASA doing the firewalling functions. Now, these genres have been expanded to cyber, to third-party integrations, having integrated logging, having integrated micro and macro segmentations. The scope has been widened, so the ROI, eventually, has multiplied.

Being a partner, we work with customers who already have different vendor solutions as well. At times, there are a mix of small SMB sites, which could be, let's say, a grocery. There are smaller stores and there are bigger stores, and at times, they do local DIAs or local internet breakouts. [That's where] you do see some cloud-based or very small firewalls as well, but when you look at the headquarters or bigger enterprises, that is where we would probably position Cisco.

[My advice] would depend [on] if they are comfortable with a particular product, if they've been working with a particular vendor. If it's a Cisco shop, or if they've been working on Cisco, or the customers are quite comfortable with Cisco, I would say this is the way to go. Unless they have a mixed environment. It will still depend on the SME's expertise, how comfortable they are, and then looking at the use cases and which products would nullify or solve them. That is where we should position it.

My lessons are endless with ASA, but my lessons are mostly toward product knowledge. When you look at the deployment side of things, or for me, personally, when I was TAC, to know how things work internally within ASA—like an A to Z story, and there are 100 gaps between and you need to know those gaps—and then, eventually, you will get to the problem and solve it in minutes rather than hours.

We use it for basic firewalling, building VPN tunnels, and for some remote VPN connections.

We have two ASAs servicing external remote connectivity sessions for about 300 users.

It has definitely improved our organization. It gives us remote connectivity, helps workers connect remotely, and also gives us good connectivity to our other branches.

It would be nice if it had the client to actually access the firewall. Though, web-based access over HTTPS is actually a lot nicer than having to put on a client just to access the device.

For Firepower Threat Defense and ASAs, I would like it if there was a centralized way to manage policies, then sticking with the network functions on the actual devices. That is probably the thing that frustrates me the most. I want a way that you can manage multiple policies at several different locations, all at one site. You then don't have to worry about the connectivity piece, in case you are troubleshooting because connectivity is down.

I have been using ASA for about three years.

It is stable.

We just run updates on them. I don't know if we have had to do any hardware maintenance, which is good.

We have been just using ASAs for a smaller environment.

I don't know if I have ever worked with ASA in a highly scalable environment.

I haven't really gotten involved with the technical support for ASAs.

I work with a lot of different companies and a number of different firewalls. A lot of times it is really about the price point and their specific needs. 

This solution was present when I showed up.

The pricing is pretty standard. 

I wish there was an easier way to license the product in closed environments. I have worked in a number of closed environments, then it is a lot of head scratching. I know that we could put servers in these networks and that would help with the licensing. I have never been in a situation where we connected multiple networks, i.e., having an external network as well as an internal network, as those kinds of solutions are not always the best. I think licensing is always a headache for everyone, and I don't know if there is a simple solution.

We can build GRE tunnels. Whereas, Firepower can't route traffic nor do a bit more traffic engineering within the VPN tunnels. This is what I like about using ASAs over Firepower.

Firepower Threat Defense has a mode where you can manage multiple firewalls through a single device. 

I really like how Palo Alto does a much better job separating the network functions from the firewalling functions.

I would consider if there is a need to centralize all the configurations. If you have many locations and want to centrally manage it, I would use the ASA to connect to a small number of occasions. As that grew, I would look for a solution where I could centrally manage the policies, then have a little more autonomous control over the networking piece of it.

Know specifically what you want out of the firewall. If you are looking for something that will build the GRE tunnel so you can route between different sites, I would go with ASA over Firepower Threat Defense.

I like the ASA. I would probably rate it as eight or nine out of 10, as far as the firewalls that I have worked with.

I use it to protect my DMZ from external attacks.

Last year, we received a lot of linear service attacks in our environment during the Black Friday season. Cisco Firepower blocked every attack.

The Adversity Malware Protection (AMP) feature is the most valuable. 

It is also very easy to use. Every technical user can operate this solution without any difficulty. The dashboard of Cisco Firepower has every tool that a security operator needs. You can find every resource that you need to operate through this dashboard.

Its interface is sometimes is a little bit slow, and it can be improved.

When you need to put your appliance in failover mode, it is a little difficult to do it remotely because you need to turn off the appliance in Cisco mode. 

In terms of new features, it would be good to have AnyConnect VPN with Firepower. I am not sure if it is available at the moment.

I have been using Cisco Firepower for two years.

We use it specifically for DMZ, so we don't need it to scale it up. Because we are using this solution for a specific environment, we don't plan to increase its usage.

We have a few teams who use this solution. We have the information security team for reading the logs and policies. We have administrators, and we also have contractors for the network operation center to analyze some logs and reports. 

We have used their technical support. They are amazing. Cisco's technical support is the best.

We have used Check Point and one more solution. The main difference is in the IPS signatures. Cisco Firepower has precise and most updated IPS signatures.

The initial setup is easy. The deployment took two months because we didn't have Firepower previously, and it took us some time to plan and implement.

We used our reseller and contractor to deploy Cisco Firepower. They were good.

I would recommend this solution. I would rate Cisco Firepower a nine out of ten. 

We primarily use the solution for internet access firewalls.

The solution allows you to be more agile and react faster.

The Sourcefire stuff itself is the most valuable feature. Signature detection, intrusion detection, IDS, and IPS are all very good. AMP is very useful. I like that you can put it onto devices as well.  The aggregated views in FMC that you get when you're a global shop which is centralized, and then offers gateways per region. In Europe, America and APAC, you have all the data coming together in the FMC. That's quite nice.

The FMC could be a little bit faster.

It will be nice if they had what you traditionally would use a web application scanner for. If the solution could take a deeper look into HTTP and HTTPS traffic, that would be nice.

The stability of the solution is very good. We can see that it gets even better with every release.

For us, the scalability is good, because we sized everything right, right from the beginning. If you size it right, it's very good. We don't plan on adding more firewalls, unless we suddenly grow exponentially, which we're not expecting to do at this point.

We only contacted technical support during initial implementation and that was all handled by the consultant. I have a lot of other Cisco related tickets open, so we're used to the process.

I would say, however, that we're also using Meraki, and the Meraki support is way better, in my opinion. 

Cisco support tends to take longer, and I mean really long given the fact that subject matter is sometimes also more complicated, so it really depends. When you compare that directly to Meraki, Meraki answers the same day, and I cannot say that about the legacy Cisco support items. I can understand that the market for the legacy service is so much bigger for Cisco, so I can see why it takes longer.

The initial setup was complex because we had to migrate old ASA firewalls. The ACLs, or rather the policies, are very different now, and way more elaborate, so that that took some tweaking, and some consulting and some time. 

Deployment took two months. We had to make sure that our old ACL base settings from the ASAs were correctly translated and implemented into the new FTD setups.

We used a consultant to assist with implementation.

We've looked at a few options, but we have an internal policy that says, unless noted otherwise, network equipment has to be Cisco based. We had to go with a Cisco product.

We are using the on-premises deployment model.

My advice for those considering the solution is this: if you want to migrate something, plan enough time for testing before you come over to the solution. You should also watch as many webinars as you can about that solution, or get a consultant and do a proper lab set up and go through the whole thing with them. It's is definitely worthwhile, given the complexity of the whole product.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

Our primary use case includes basic firewalls, VPNs, NAT, and our connections to customers.

It's used in our data centers to protect the network and customer circuits.

Cisco ASA Firewall has improved our organization by allowing connectivity to the outside world and into different places.

Cybersecurity resilience is very important to our organization. There are always threats from the outside, and the firewall is the first line of defense in protecting the network.

Cisco ASA Firewall is a well-known product. They're always updating it, and you know what they're doing and that it works.

It would be good if Cisco made sure that the solution supports all routing protocols. Sometimes it doesn't.

I've been using it for probably 10 to 15 years.

For the most part, it's stable.

It's a very scalable solution.

The technical support is very good, and I would give them a nine out of ten.

Positive

The pricing and licensing are getting more complicated, and I'd like that to be simpler.

We evaluated some Palo Alto and Juniper solutions, but Cisco ASA Firewall is better in terms of ease of use. You could get certified in it.

To leaders who want to build more resilience within their organization, I would say that the ASA, along with its features, is a good product to have as one of the lines of defense.

The solution does require maintenance. We have four network engineers who
are responsible for upgrading code and firewall rules, and for new implementations.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Cisco ASA Firewall a nine. Also, it's a very good product, and it compares well to others.

We use it for perimeter and internal firewalls. We wanted a firewall with traffic inspection, packet analysis, and decryption.

Our deployment is on-prem and hybrid. We don't use it in the cloud as we use other vendors for that.

I'm not sure the firewall has improved our organization because a firewall is a must. It's something that you pick up and then trust. It just works for us.

Cisco is still catching up with its Firepower Next-Generation firewalls. It's naturally growing and getting better.

I've been using Cisco ASA Firewalls for 15 years.

It's stable.

It's used around the world. We have 20 data centers and each data center handles six offices. We have Cisco in every single location. If something new comes up, we'll increase our usage of the product.

Cisco's technical support is good.

Positive

We're a multi-vendor shop when it comes to firewalls, and we use Check Point and Palo Alto in addition to Cisco. We used to have Fortinet but that amounted to too many vendors.

When the Cisco product changed from legacy traffic inspection to the new Firepower it became a next-generation firewall. It was just a new product. That's why we decided to try it and stay with Cisco. It's like two different products: the legacy product and the new one. The legacy product was much simpler and the new one is, obviously, more complex.

I'm a designer, so I don't do racking and stacking, but I'm hands-on when it comes to configuration. I have used this product for years, so for me, it's not like adding a brand new product. It is just a matter of adding features, a hardware refresh. I wouldn't call it a challenge.

For maintenance, we have two to three network engineers involved.

The pricing of Cisco firewalls, in the security market, is fair. Their pricing of other products is questionable, but for firewalls, it's fine.

Compare Cisco ASA with other vendors' products and compare the features one-on-one. Pay special attention to the security portion, such as traffic inspection. That's probably the most important aspect. And then look at performance.

It is for our VPNs and filters out websites. 

It helped us a lot with our VPNs for the home office during COVID. There has been more security and flexibility for VPNs and other applications.

Its security is easy to use.

I would like more features in conjunction with other solutions, like Fortinet.

I have been using it for five years.

It has very good stability.

It has really good scalability.

The customer service and technical support are good. I would rate them as nine out of 10.

Positive

We were previously using Fortinet. We switched to ASA and Firepower when our contract with Fortinet ended. Now, we are only using ASA.

The deployment was simple.

The ROI is good. Using ASA, we have saved 10% to 20% on our costs.

The pricing is fine. It is not too bad.

We had it integrated with the Umbrella solution a few years ago.

I would rate this solution as nine out of 10.