Cisco Secure Firewall Reviews

We are using the ASA in our network to create a VPN between six places. We also use it for servers and data synchronization.

The most valuable feature is that it's secure.

It is really stable and I've never had an occasion that due to this firewall, I have had issues with the network, a breakdown, or otherwise.

This is a user-friendly product. Once you have a specialist who can configure it properly, you'll be pretty protected everything you want is in it.

In the future, I would like to be able to use an IP phone over a VPN connection.

I have been working with Cisco ASA Firewall for at least seven years.

The stability is good.

We have not tried to scale our network. It was established a long time ago and nothing has changed since then.

I have been auditing their partners in Bulgaria and I am in contact with them on a regular basis. I have not had any real issues with my equipment but overall, I think that the support is perfect.

We were using the ASA 5505 and our network is faster now, so we are now in the process of upgrading our network to the 5506 model. The 5505 is a 100 megabit product, which is very low.

We had a company that set everything up for us. They have Cisco engineers and I'm paying them annually for next-business-day support. They do all of the maintenance for us.

They have a lot of different models but most of them are really expensive. This is the main thing because, for us, the price is important.

Overall, I am pretty satisfied with this product and I recommend it.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

In general, we support more public fiscal entities. Most of them are quite sizeable at 5,000-6,000 employees. We use it mostly for remote access.

The clusters in data centers are great.

We enjoy the use of the remote access VPN. We have a mechanical firewall with IPS and we have no more than these. In general, ASA is for remote access and the mechanical firewall right now is more used for data centers. 

We work to combine customers and we have a lot of customers that use networking from Cisco. They buy Cisco firewalls due to the fact that all of their networks are working with Cisco features.

It would be ideal if the solution offered a web application firewall.

We've had some issues with stability.

The solution has some scalability limitations.

The firewall itself has become a bit dated.

The pricing on the solution is a bit high.

Some individuals find the setup and configuration challenging.

I've been using the solution for ten years or more. It's been at least a decade at this point.

Normally, we don't have any problems with stability. That said, when we have problems, it may be difficult to resolve quickly. The tech from Cisco is really good. However, we have some problems that take more time. Issues haven't come up very often. We've only had two or three problems over ten years that took a while to resolve. Largely, it's quite stable. 

We typically work with large public organizations. Our customers are quite big. Some are even up to 8,000 employees.

My view is that the ASA is for data centers. When you need more performance or something like that, this may be a problem. This is due to the fact that we don't have the ability to add more performance - more CPU or more equipment - in our cluster when we deploy the solution in a perimeter. It's complicated to expand the performance with ASA on the perimeter.

We have a good relationship with technical support. They're very helpful. Sometimes we get a solution and sometimes we don't, however, they are always available to help us deal with issues.

I have been working with this equipment for years, so for me, the initial setup is pretty easy. For customers who use the Cisco solutions for the first time, maybe it's complicated. They probably feel it would be easier to configure if there was a simpler graphical view or something like that. Often a complaint is that it's difficult to configure. However, I don't have that issue.

To deploy one solution, how long it takes depends on the customer or the size of the enterprise. For a large enterprise or large public entity, we need more time or more resources to deploy the solution. That said, it's not too difficult for us as we work a lot of time with ASA. We can go fairly quickly.

We support ASA 5508, 5585, and 5525 - all the versions of the firewall. Again, we built a HTAB machine too.

We've worked with Cisco for many years and I love working with them.

Right now, ASA is getting older. A better recommendation may be to use Firepower, a Next-Generation Firewall, no ASA. In cases for some remote VPN access, we recommend ASA, however, for all of the deployments, the recommendation now is to use a Next-Generation Firewall from Cisco Firepower. 

Overall, I would rate the solution at a seven out of ten. That said, for remote access alone, I'd rate the product at a nine.

It's very stable and mature.

The content filtering on an application level is not as good as other solutions such as Palo Alto.

While the price is fair with all of the features that it has, it should be cheaper.

I have been using the Cisco ASA Firewall for seven years.

It's a stable solution.

We have plans to continue using this solution in the future.

It's a scalable product. We have 200,000 users in our organization.

Cisco technical support is good.

Previously, we used other products. We used Fortinet and CheckPoint.

We have a team of 50 or 60 Network Engineers to maintain this solution.

The price is fair. It's not the cheapest, but it's not bad.

Cisco ASA Firewall is a good product. I would recommend it to others who are interested in using it.

I would rate it a seven out of ten.

We primarily use the solution in order to create access rules. That's what I use it for mostly. Sometimes, if I need to do some mapping, I may also leverage this product.  

In terms of access, the solution is great at making sure that the firewall has the right IPs, or that the right IPs are passing through where they should be. 

The product does a good job of making sure that the connection is one that the user can trust. It keeps everything secure.

From what I've already done with ASA, I've noted that it's a very simple solution. 

It is a very user-friendly product. I started with the GUI version. There are different versions. You could have the CLA, and the GUI version if you like. Both are really user-friendly and they're easy to learn. 

We haven't been working with the product for too long, and therefore I haven't really found any features that are lacking. So far, it's been pretty solid.

One of the things that would make my life easier on ASA, especially for the CLA, is if it had an ASBN feature, specifically for the CLA. This would allow you to be able to see at once where a particular object group is being used without having to copy out all the object groups that have already been created.

I don't have to see all the object groups that have been created on that firewall. That's just something that I would really appreciate on the CLA, even though it already exists on the GUI.

I've been using the solution for six months now. It's been less than a year. It hasn't been too long just yet.

The solution has been quite stable.

Most of the clients that we deal with use this solution. No one has ever complained about having a breach or anything, to the best of my knowledge, even though we see some people combine different firewalls together, and use them alongside Cisco ASA. So far, we've not had any issue with Cisco ASA. It's reliable and keeps our clients safe.

I've never tried to scale the product. I haven't worked with it too long at this point. I wouldn't be able to comment on its scalability potential.

I've never dealt with technical support yet. I can't speak to their level or response or their knowledge of the product.

In the past, I've worked with Check Point and Fortinet as well.

I've been handling the implementation. So far, it's been good, even with no prior knowledge of the solution itself. It's my first time working with it.

On my team, lots of people are working on different aspects, and most of the setup is being done by those that have more knowledge about the firewall than we have. We don't have anything to do with the setup, we just make sure that we implement whatever connections the clients already have. It's already broken down that way, just to avoid as many mistakes as possible.

We already have a process for implementation based on the number of connections. The maximum we normally work on each connection is maybe 20 to 30 minutes. However, the process could be as little as one minute. It depends on how many connections we want to add at a time.

We're handing the implementation via our own in-house team.

I'm just handling the implementation and therefore don't have any insights on the pricing aspect of the solution. I wouldn't be able to say how much the company pays or if the pricing is high or low.

That said, the pricing isn't an issue. It's more about what's best for the customer or the client. We want to give the client the best service, and very good protection. If a client begins to worry about pricing, we can't exactly guarantee the same level of safety.

Our company has a partnership with Cisco.

We have different clients and therefore use different versions of the solution. Nobody wants to use an out-of-date version, and therefore, we work to keep everything updated.

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

The way we've installed Firepower was for the migration process. For example, there was a data center consolidation, and therefore we had to move everything. We offer data center products to our customers across VPN funnels. We had to move away from older ASAs, so it's a lift and shift. We move older ASAs, which were dispersed in many sites, and we consolidated a couple of services in a single site. Firepower was left there in place. I came in and I took over the administration duties, and now I'm trying to put everything together in a way that it makes sense.

With Firepower, they have better hardware. It's fitted for more throughput, more load. I'm trying to centralize service delivery on this high-availability pair and move all the remote access to Firepower. Then, it's all part of a transition process from a hybrid cloud to a full cloud deployment on a cloud provider. It's mostly just a necessary pain, until we move away from our on-prem deployments. Currently, I'm working with Azure, etc. and I try to look at the main design of the whole process, even though it's going to take two years. 

COVID has also made everything very, very slow for us as we try to move away from our initial plan.

The 2100 models are extremely useful for us.

It's got the capabilities of amassing a lot of throughput with remote access and VPNs. 

They need a VTI. I know it's going to be available in the next software version, which is the 6.7 version. However, the problem with that is that the 6.7 is going to deprecate all the older IKEv1 deployment tunnels. Therefore, the problem is that we have a lot of customers which are using older encryptions. If I do that, update it, it's not going to work for me.

We've been using the solution for about a year.

The solution is pretty solid in terms of stability, however, I prefer Palo Alto. For the enterprise world, it's better to have Palo Alto. For the service provider field, Firepower is quite well suited, I'd say. That said, Palo Alto, is definitely the enterprise way to go. For a smaller deployment, you can also go with FortiGate. It's simple, however, it works for smaller offices.

The scalability of the product is pretty good. If you need to expand it, you can do so with relative ease.

The technical support is amazing. They do reply quickly, and often within an hour. It's been great. I've worked at Cisco before, however, with the type of contract we are in, I find it super fast right now. We're quite satisfied with the level of support.

I don't have any knowledge as to what the product costs. It's not part of the business I deal with.

Palo Alto, it's my understanding, is a little more expensive, however, it depends on the users and on the design. It always depends on the contract

We're just customers. We don't have a business relationship with Cisco.

It's a solid, reliable product, however, if it's right for a company depends on the use case and the size of the organization. For a startup, this might not be a suitable option.

Overall, I'd rate this solution nine out of ten. As a comparison, if I was rating Palo Alto, I would give it a ten out of ten.

The solution is primarily used for protecting the environment, or the cloud environments for our customers.

All the specific features you find within the NextGen firewall are quite useful. The touch intel feature is specifically useful to us. We deliberately choose this kind of product due to its set of features. 

The implementation is pretty straightforward.

The security market is a fast-changing market. The solution needs to always check if the latest threats are covered under the solution. 

It would always be helpful if the pricing was improved upon a bit.

In a future release, it would be ideal if they could offer an open interface to other security products so that we could easily connect to our own open industry standard.

We've been using the solution for about five or more years at this point.

The solution is stable. It's very reliable. It doesn't crash or freeze and doesn't seem to be plagued by bugs or glitches.

The solution can scale quite well. A company that needs to expand it can do so easily.

In our case, we have clients with anywhere between 1,000 and 10,000 users.

We have our own in-house team that can assist our clients should they need technical support. They're quite knowledgeable and can handle any issues.

I also have experience with Fortinet and Check Point.

The implementation isn't complex. It's straightforward. However, it also depends on the specifications of the customer. Normally we check that out first and then we can make a judgment of how to best implement the solution.

Typically, the deployment takes about two days to complete.

In terms of maintenance, we have about five people, who are engineers, who can handle the job.

We deliver the solution to our customers.

You do need to pay for the software license. In general, it's a moderately expensive solution. It's not the cheapest on the market.

We're a partner. We aren't an end-user. We are a managed security provider, and therefore we use this solution for our customers.

We always provide the latest version of the solution to our clients.

Typically, we use both cloud and on-premises deployment models.

I'd recommend the solution to others. It's quite good.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate it at an eight.

We primarily use the solution for the various firewalls.

Cisco is powerful when it comes to detecting intrusions. It's better than, for example, Fortinet.

Cisco has multiple products - not just firewalls. The integration between other items provides a powerful end-to-end solution. It's nice and easy. There is one management system and visibility into all of the features. Using the same product is more powerful than using multiple systems. Cisco is known by most customers due to the fact that at least they have switches. However, when clients say "we need an end-to-end option" Cisco is there.

The stability is very good.

Technical support services are excellent.

Before an ASA, it was a live log. It was easy and comfortable to work with. After the next-generation firewall, Firepower, the live log became really slow. I cannot reach the information easily or quickly. This has only been the case since we migrated to next-generation firewalls.

There is some delay between the log itself. It's not really real-time. Let's say there's a delay of more than 20 seconds. If they had a monitoring system, something to minimize this delay, it would be good.

It would be ideal if I could give more bandwidth to certain sites, such as Youtube.

I work with Fortinet also, and I find that Fortinet is easier now. Before it was Cisco that was easier. Now Fortinet is simpler to work with.

On firewall features, Fortinet is better. Cisco needs to become more competitive and add more features or meet Fortinet's offering.

I've been using the solution since about 2003, when I originally implemented it.

The solution is extremely stable. We don't have any issues whatsoever. It doesn't have bugs or glitches. It works well. Occasionally, it may need patches, however, there's very little downtime.

The scalability of the solution is very good. We have no trouble expanding the solution.

They have multiple products that fit in multiple areas. They also have virtual firewalls, which are working well in virtualization systems. They have the data center firewalls feature for data centers. It's scalable enough to cover most of the use cases that might arise.

Cisco offers excellent technical support.  They're useful and very responsive - depending on the situation itself. Sometimes we require the support of agents and we've found Cisco to have one of the best support systems in the market.

I also work with Fortinet, and it's my sense that, while Fortinet is getting easier to use, Cisco is getting harder to deal with.

The initial setup is not complex at all. It's pretty straightforward.

A full deployment takes between two and three days. It's pretty quick to set up.

The pricing is neither cheap nor expensive. It's somewhere in the middle. If you compare it to Fortinet or Palo Alto, Fortinet is low and Palo Alto is very high. Cisco falls in the middle between the two.

As far as deployment options go, they often have more wiggle-room with discounts, especially for larger deployments. Therefore, in general, it ranges closer to Fortinet's pricing.

We're partners with Cisco, Fortinet, and Palo Alto.

I work with on-premises deployments and virtual firewalls, however, I don't use the cloud.

The solution works well for medium-sized enterprises.

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

I'd recommend users to layer in solutions. At the perimeter, if they have two tiers, I'd recommend Palo Alto as the first and then Cisco ASA as the second. Cisco can work on the data center or Fortinet. In the case of Fortinet, they have the best backline throughput from all of the other products.

I like them mostly because they don't break and they have great diagnostics. If something is awry, you can generally figure it out. And of course, everybody has a VPN, but I like the security of their VPN.

They should improve their interface and ensure that people actually know what they're doing before they start programming; that would make me happy. But that's never going to happen — it's a total pipe dream.

Some of the next-generation stuff that Cisco is doing now allows you to add web filtering and provides more security inside the device. That's why we were looking at the Next-Generation Firewall.

I have been using this solution since they developed it.

I've had a couple of issues. Way back, they had a power supply that had to be changed out. They also had some issues with the 5500 series. Other than that, they're pretty rock-solid.

Within their limitations, yes, they're scalable. You don't want to put a 5506 in when you need a 5525 — you'll never get it there. If properly sized, they're scalable, but you can't make a 5506 a 5525 — there're different processors and everything. You have to know where you're going. You have to know your customer first.

The tech support is good. The documentation is verbose almost to the point of being confusing if you don't know what it is you're looking for.

It's only confusing if you have somebody who is not familiar with it. They give you every option in great detail, so you can spend time searching through a manual that you might not otherwise. Here's an example: take Sophos or SonicWall — let's say the manual for SonicWall is 25 to 30 pages; that same Cisco documentation is going to be three times that size or more.

It's not that it needs to be simplified, the people using it need to be knowledgeable. It is not a novice box, we'll put it that way.

We've been with Cisco for a long time. We've used their routers and gadgets for years and years.

The initial setup is quite straightforward.

I would guess that the market value of Cisco is going to be towards the higher-end. I don't know that it's the highest, but feature for feature, I'd say it's probably well-priced.

Cisco ASA Firewall Is not as much of a plug and play solution as some of the others. You just need to make sure that you do your research.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Cisco ASA Firewall a rating of nine.