Cisco Secure Firewall Reviews

We use it for our data center. We have clusters of the solution to protect the equipment in our data center. We also use it for site-to-site VPN hubs.

Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall made our firewall response much faster when trying to respond to any services or networks that stand out. It makes us very responsive when any of the visualized logs are blocked in real-time.

The most valuable feature would be ASDM. The ability to go in, visualize and see the world base in a clear and consistent manner is very powerful.

The ability to better integrate with other tools would be an improvement.

I have been using this solution for six years.

It is highly stable.

It is highly scalable. It has some limitations, but for medium to large-sized deployments, it is excellent.

Technical support is outstanding. You can get same-day support.

We previously used Juniper SRX. We switched because we have a contract with Cisco. This was the cheaper option and was faster.

We have very much seen an ROI in terms of the saving on man time and the costs of standing up new equipment. Compared to what we had before, Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall is faster.

I would rate this solution a nine on a scale from one to ten.

In the new design, I put Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall as a LAN segment and as the data center firewall. In the old design, I just used FortiGate Firewall for configurations, and we are going to replace it. The complete solution will be replaced with a two-tiered data center.

I like that Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall is reliable. Support is also good. 

We only have an issue with time sync with Cisco ASA and NTP. If the time is out of sync, it will be a disaster for the failover.

I have been using Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall for about 11 years. 

Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall is a stable solution. 

Scalability is good, but just like the issue with Palo Alto and Fortigate, there is also an issue with Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall. I can configure it easily because of my Cisco background, but others in my team aren't comfortable with it.

Technical support is good. They were both fast and reliable and quick in making decisions. We faced specific issues, and tech support was efficient and provided an immediate solution. Other firewall vendors are slow to respond, and I'm not satisfied. It's also easy to Google and find solutions to our problems. We can't do that for other firewalls.

On a scale from one to five, I would give technical support a five.

Positive

We used FortiGate Firewall, but we are replacing it with Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall because we had issues with HP solutions. We also switched because I am Cisco certified, and my background and expertise are in Cisco.

The initial setup was straightforward. 

We have seen a return on our investment. 

I will tell potential users that the data center firewall is a good solution. But most of the companies are using other firewalls like Palo Alto and FortiGate. Most of the design architects prefer the parameters of the firewalls like we prefer the data center firewall.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall a ten.

We primarily use the solution for configuring the firewall.

It's an almost perfect solution.

The configuration is very easy.

The management aspect of the product is very straightforward.

The solution offers very good protection. 

The user interface itself is very nice and quite intuitive.

It would be ideal if the solution offered more integration capabilities with other vendors. For example, if you had a web security appliance, it would be great to be able to integrate everything in order to better report security events.

While I can't think of specific features I'd like improved, overall, they could do more to continue to refine the solution.

It would be nice if you didn't have to configure using a command-line interface. It's a bit technical that way.

We first started using the solution in 2015. It's been five years at this point.

The solution is very stable. We've found it to be extremely reliable. There are not bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

The solution can scale well. that's not a problem at all. If a company needs to expand it to fit their needs, they can do so.

We've been in contact with technical support on multiple occasions and each time we've had a good experience. We're satisfied with their level of support. They are fairly good.

I have nothing bad to say about the deployment. It went pretty well, and we can configure everything as we need to.

I don't really handle the billing, so I'm unsure of the pricing. I work more on the technical side. 

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

It's a very good solution. I'd recommend it to other users.

Overall, I'd rate it seven out of ten.

Although I can't speak to the pricing, I've found the solution works quite well for us. I'd rate it higher if it could integrate a bit better with other solutions.

I can't put Cisco on the firewall when the security landscape has changed so much in the past five to ten years. We are doing a lot more in the next generation of firewalls. We had a legacy classic firewall before we went to Firepower, and we spent a lot less time on that firewall, but we are spending more time on the Firepower because we are utilizing a lot of the features that are available in Firepower that were not available in the previous firewall that we had. I'm not going to say that we're spending less time, but we're gaining more value.

Another benefit has been user integration. We try to integrate our policies so that we can create policies based on active users. We can create policies based on who is accessing a resource instead of just IP addresses and ports.

If I were to have been asked a few weeks ago, I would have said threat prevention was the most valuable feature, but the world is changing a lot, so my favorite features a few years ago might not be my favorite features today.

The visibility the solution gives when doing deep packet inspection can be complex. I really like the visibility, but it's not always intuitive to use. I also help other customers. We are a contracting company that implements their solutions, and I've found that it's not always easy to get everyone to utilize some of the visibility features. But for me personally, I think they're very valuable. 

The ease of use when it comes to managing Cisco Firepower has a lot of room for improvement. When monitoring a large set of firewall policies, the user interface could be lighter. It's sometimes heavy in use, and there could be improvements there. I know they're trying to make improvements.

It's mainly the UI and the management parts that need improvement. The most impactful feature when you're using it is the user interface and the user experience.

We were an early adopter when Firepower first came out. I've been using Cisco firewalls for the last two decades.

For newer hardware models, the stability is good. We've tried to run Firepower on some of the legacy-supported hardware as well, but with the stability issues, they are not as good. If I were to judge based on the hardware that I have, I'd say it's good. I haven't had any issues with the stability on my platform.

We just recently enabled Snort 3 so I'm evaluating the functionality. That's what we've considered, but we haven't done any performance testing. Our company would qualify as a small to medium business company. The average office environment is about 100 to 200 people. Performance-wise, my company is about 120 people.

Scalability is really not relevant. I know there are features that address some of those parts, like clustering and stuff, but that's really not applicable in my use cases.

The support is eight to nine out of ten. You can't blame them for any faults of the prototypes, but the support has been really good and really helpful when we had any issues.

I have hands-on experience in both Fortinet and Palo Alto. So if I were to compare this to Palo Alto, for example, I would say that the user interface in Palo Alto is a lot better. But the reason that I'm working with Firepower is that we have a Cisco network as well, and Cisco ISE. We're trying to integrate different Cisco solutions. We're trying to utilize the ecosystem benefits where I can connect my Cisco Firepower to ISE and have it talk to the App Cloud. There's a benefit of utilizing Cisco Firepower in conjunction with our other Cisco solutions.

Ease of management is similar with Cisco and Fortinet, I would say similar, but it's easier in Palo Alto.

I recently deployed a similar solution at a customer's premises, and that setup was straightforward.

The steps are fairly documented and the documentation and guides on Cisco are straightforward. You know what you're expected to configure, and it's easy to get up, running, and started. It takes some more time to check everything and get everything as you want to have it, but getting started and getting connectivity and starting to create policies was easy to do and didn't take a very long time.

It took two to four hours, including some upgrades.

My main advice would be to utilize all the guides and documentation available from Cisco publicly and not trying to implement it using legacy thinking. Don't try to just replace something else you have. If you have a next-gen firewall, you want to try to utilize what you're getting, and getting the most out of a firewall. There are some great guides and documentation on Cisco that explains what you can do and how you can do it.

I would rate it a seven out of ten. 

I use Cisco ASA Firewall at my company for network security.

Cisco ASA Firewall could improve by adding more advanced features such as web filtering, which is available in the next-generation firewalls. However, the Cisco ASA Firewall I am using could be old and these features have been updated.

I have been using this solution for approximately two years.

The stability needs improvement.

I have found the Cisco ASA Firewall scalability could improve.

I have not contacted technical support. There is a lot of information on the internet for troubleshooting. All you need to do is use a search engine and you will find the information you are looking for easily.

They can improve by adding a public troubleshooting process.

I have previously used Fortinet firewalls that I have found to be better.

I would not recommend Cisco.

I rate Cisco ASA Firewall a six out of ten.

We use this solution for advanced IPS, IDS, advanced malware protection, and web filtering.

The most valuable features of this solution are advanced malware protection, IPS, and IDS.

web filtering needs to improve because cisco firepower sync with bright cloud website for the website category. sometimes your URL is falling in the wrong category because of the bright cloud. so if you want to change the category you will have to drop the mail to the bright cloud and they will take action and it's a very long procedure. 

more than 2 years

This is a very reliable solution.

I have extended my Cisco solution and did not have any trouble.

We have more than 400 users and we plan to increase usage.

The initial setup is very simple to deploy in the Egyptian network. It takes two to three days to deploy but if you are implementing AMP then it will take an extra one or two days.

I am happy with the product in general, including the pricing.

We evaluated a Sophos firewall but when I checked the reviews, I found that Sophos did not rate as well in terms of IPS, IDS, and malware protection.

Cisco utilizes BrightCloud for URL filtering. Web filtering is the main problem with this product.

My advice to anybody who is considering this product is that if they want good security, compared to other offerings such as those by Check Point and Palo Alto, then they should implement Cisco Firepower.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I am using the solution as a firewall.

I like the IPS feature, it is the most valuable.

I do not like the assembly of this solution. For example, they should combine FirePOWER into one solution.

I have used Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Check Point previously and I prefer the process of everything working together. We are in the process of moving on to Fortinet from this solution.

I rate Cisco ASA Firewall a six out of ten.

We are using it to manage our environment.

The whole firewall functionality, including firewall policies and IPS policies, is valuable. It has all kinds of functionalities. It has IPS, VPN, and other features. They are doing quite a lot of stuff with their devices.

It lacks management. For me, it still doesn't have a proper management tool or GUI for configuration, logging, and visualization. Its management is not that easy. It is also not very flexible and easy to configure. They used to have a product called CSM, but it is no longer being developed. FortiGate is better than this solution in terms of GUI, flexibility, and user-friendliness.

I have been using this solution for five to ten years.

It is rather stable. It can have some peculiarities, but most of the time, it is quite stable.

These are big devices. They have multiple models, but most of the models can be virtualized. You can create many virtual firewalls and add whatever you want.

We faced some issues, but I don't deal with these issues. My colleague interacts with them, and it seems it is not that easy. Cisco is a large company, and sometimes, it is not easy to get quick and very efficient support.

We have a firewall specialist who handles the installation.

It is affordable. The hardware is not that expensive anymore. It is a matter of licensing these days. 

It is a good solution for a big traffic load, but its management is not very easy. FortiGate is better in terms of management and user-friendliness.

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