Cisco Secure Firewall Reviews

My use case for Cisco Secure Firewall is because the old solution for the VPN access for the employees and also for the external contractors was already out of date, and there was no possibility of somehow prolonging it. So we did the search for a new solution and from the auction and bidding, Cisco Secure Firewall came.

I consider the most valuable aspect of Cisco Secure Firewall to be that we are basically using it only for termination of the VPN, so that's basically the most valuable thing for us.

If I could improve Cisco Secure Firewall in any way, I have no clue, to be honest. I really don't know what to improve. It's working as it should be. Maybe it would be nice to have a better overview regarding the logging, regarding the issues a client can have with the VPN. But I can understand that because the primary feature for the firewall is not the VPN; it's the firewall, but we are not using the firewall.

There is still room to improve. There can be some things that can be better, such as some of the menu and some of the visibility. It's not chaotic, but it's not that user-friendly.

The GUI of Cisco Secure Firewall could improve, as there are better solutions in terms of how they look and how they can be navigated.

I find the solution reliable and stable, and I can say that there is no downtime. As I am used to Cisco products, they are stable and reliable.

I think that what we bought is overkill, but whatever. Basically, it can serve up to 1,000 clients on VPN, so for us it's basically unlimited. The largest number I have seen on the dashboard was 300 users connected on the VPN.

My experience with Cisco customer support has been nice all the time. Sometimes they can take their time, but if they are properly motivated, they can be fast.

If I had to rate their support from one to ten, with ten being best and one being worst, I would give it an eight.

I evaluated basically the new solution from Pulse Secure, which is now called Ivanti.

The reason we chose Cisco Secure Firewall was more or less politics because Ivanti didn't have the hardware, and they will not have the hardware in the foreseeable future. So we went with the only one who was able to provide it to us.

The deployment of Cisco Secure Firewall was kind of straightforward and was not problematic.

It took us two months, together with the migration, but the thing is that we needed to change the groups and rules and everything in the background. It was more or less up to us, not up to the platform. We needed to change things on our side.

It was internal, not the product's fault. The migration was lengthy.

Regarding the pricing and licensing of Cisco Secure Firewall, it's not up to me.

I know that it was purchased from our partner, from the local distributor.

On a scale of one to ten, with ten being best and one being worst, I would rate Cisco Secure Firewall overall with my past experience as nice. Because I cannot say it was good, from the point of view when I was able to look through Cisco Secure Firewall, it was nice. The FTD, the Firepower Threat Detection, is really mature, but the former ASA was a pain in the ass.

The former ASA was a pain in the ass because when someone is used to the Cisco way, the ASA was a strange thing. My overall rating for this product is 8 out of 10.

My main use cases for Cisco Secure Firewall include revamping old networks, security, content filtering, amp protection, et cetera.

Cisco Secure Firewall is easy to configure, and you can do it all in one pane of glass. It is really simple to configure. The solution allows my junior admins to go into the dashboard and look at any issues or reconfigure any features that need to be tweaked without me physically having to be there.

I have been using the assurance feature in Cisco Secure Firewall recently, and I am starting to see that it is a lot more beneficial for me, with all the analytics and reporting that it provides. 

Cisco Secure Firewall allows us to pinpoint exactly where the packets are being delivered or dropped, and we are able to identify issues quicker than with other models or other vendors.

I assess Cisco Secure Firewall's ability to unify policies across my environment as having ease of building. We need to be able to scale and deploy without running a bunch of commands, especially when managing multiple locations acting as separate entities. It is important to my organization since our team is really small. As an engineer, it is just myself and a few juniors. I can verbally tell them to look at specific things or deploy certain features. It gives them the confidence to touch a firewall without being insecure.

The impact of the cloud-delivered firewall on my organization's security posture is very important. It allows us to place certain policies compared to the old infrastructure that is currently in there, with outdated hardware. It allows us to control the firmware and deploy the firmware. In evaluating Cisco Secure Firewall, I find that it helps us implement a zero-trust security model by allowing us to create one policy and deploy it across all of our networks versus multiple agents. Cisco Secure Firewall is very helpful and convenient for me.

I faced challenges moving away from the MS switches to the CS switches, as it is a little different. I am experiencing some small issues with IP reservations, however, I am working with the Meraki engineers to work around or configure it the next day. 

Regarding stability and reliability, I have experienced false negative alerts with the CS models, which indicate that my switch has gone down when in reality, it has not. That is a fix that is needed.

I would say I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for the past two months.

Regarding stability and reliability, I have experienced false negative alerts with the CS models, which indicate that my switch has gone down, but in reality, it has not. That is a fix that is needed.

Cisco Secure Firewall scales tremendously with the growing needs of my organization. I know in the future we are going to start deploying SD-WAN and other applications that will require all of our clinics to connect to our HQ, and deploying Meraki will make their IPsec tunnels very seamless.

I evaluate customer service and technical support based on productivity. If I can reduce ticketing by 10% to 20% by deploying these solutions, I consider or job done. 

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the customer service and technical support of Cisco a ten. There is always someone on call. They are very thorough; they know the product and work with you to resolve issues. That is important for me.

Positive

Prior to adopting Cisco Secure Firewall, I was using different solutions at various locations. As we transition and take on these clinics, we have anywhere from home networks, where someone's uncle installed something, to very outdated firewalls. When we come in and present Meraki and what it can do, it becomes a done deal.

My experience with the deployment of Cisco Secure Firewall has been awesome.

I come in when they have the old network and deploy it. I install a cabinet and new drops. I configure the Meraki gear onto their old network side by side. 

Especially during downtime, I can plug the firewall into that rack to get the external IP configured. Once my ISP comes in, I apply those IP addresses to the firewall.

I have seen a return on investment with Cisco Secure Firewall.

I handle pricing, setup costs, and licensing with our vendors. I contact our vendors, we go over the pricing and the licensing. I make sure they get all the proper codes. As I purchase and license these firewalls, it is all in one place and easy to read and do.

Before selecting Cisco Secure Firewall, I considered Fortinet, which was probably one of the bigger competitors, and SonicWall. We thrive in the Meraki policy. What stood out to me in the evaluation process, compared to other options, was the ease of deployment, the dashboard, being able to manage everything in one place, and Meraki support.

I did not purchase the product on AWS Marketplace.

My advice to other organizations considering Cisco Secure Firewall is to make sure they plan for their organization. Plan for your growth, a three-year growth, and then scale your solutions accordingly. 

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Cisco Secure Firewall overall a solid ten.

We bundle Cisco Secure Firewall with our telco offerings as a service provider. We bundle it basically with Meraki.

We have received good feedback from our engineers. It helps them with their day-to-day operations. I need to get some more input on specific items they need to gather more information about, but so far, there are no issues.

Regarding Cisco Secure Firewall's ability to unify policies across our environment, I haven't heard any particular issues from our engineers.

The feature of Cisco Secure Firewall that I appreciate the most is its ability to be used via the cloud, so we don't have to deploy service engineers on-site at any time. 

Since telcos just provide basic connectivity, bundling Cisco Secure Firewall has actually allowed us to gain more value for our customers and level up versus our competitors. It helps our customers even more because they don't have to worry about cybersecurity issues, as we put it out of the box.

We found something that prevented us from using it and integrating it a few years back, so they should really have a discussion about improving those aspects. More specifically, it's related to cybersecurity technical details. Implementing a zero-trust security model is what we need help with. We're making progress. We have different types of security for our native applications, but we're slowly looking into what Cisco can deliver. We tried to look into Z3 models before, but our cybersecurity team found some issues where it was lacking. They found some bugs or loopholes, so we wanted Cisco to address these before we fully roll out the solution. We're trying again, and hopefully, with Cisco's updates, it will be acceptable to us in the near future.

We've been using Cisco Secure Firewall since 2016.

Cisco Secure Firewall covers roughly our 2,000 employees really effectively. It's just a matter of expanding the requirements and infrastructure requirements with AWS, and I believe Cisco has some integrations that allow us to use that scale to our advantage.

My opinion is somewhat biased because we have access to Cisco's TAC, and we are very much managed by our Cisco Philippines company team. I'd give them a nine out of ten.

Positive

The biggest return on investment when using Cisco Secure Firewall is that there's no waste in any infrastructure cost and licensing costs for us. If we have to repurpose a specific box per year, we could save on cost by just transferring it to another person or project rather than pay another one-year license for it.

The pricing is very good for us, especially since we have a partnership with Cisco. The challenge is the licensing. There are competitors that offer more flexible licensing, such as daily licensing, some offer hourly, but Cisco is locked in for one, three, and five years. We don't have much flexibility, especially if we want to shift applications or shift users at any time. Hopefully, licensing becomes more flexible.

There were solutions from Fortinet. The main difference between Cisco and Fortinet is that Cisco will have more flexibility. It's just a matter of being able to put together the flexibility that we require versus what Cisco can provide at this time.

The impact of the cloud-delivered Cisco Secure Firewall on my company's security posture involves some hesitation because it's on the cloud, but we're slowly adopting certain parts of it for our cybersecurity team. We're undergoing that transition and don't have full visibility yet on how they see that as a future mode of operations versus what other companies are doing globally. 

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

My main use case for Cisco Secure Firewall is as a security program, and I am using it to establish VPN connections. We are logging into this system to protect all information.

For a quick specific example of how I use Cisco Secure Firewall in my daily work, we log into this program every day using a specific network. I use my company email and a password to access this program, allowing us to use all the systems and programs in the credit and collections area.

Cisco Secure Firewall serves as the main security tool I use nowadays, primarily to protect information, the systems, and all the facts about the company.

In my opinion, the best features Cisco Secure Firewall offers are its speed, as it is one of the quickest and most secure systems I have used during the pandemic period. I have had the opportunity to try different systems to protect or log in at work, and this is one of the quickest and greatest systems available.

Cisco Secure Firewall has positively impacted my organization by providing a quick and easy program to log into the VPN, which is very effective. I do not have troubles or issues with the connection, and I believe that is the most important aspect of this program.

I think the system is quick with two steps to log into the security program. I am satisfied with how it works right now, and I have not noticed things that I want to be different with Cisco Secure Firewall.

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for one full year.

I think Cisco Secure Firewall is very stable. I have experienced one or two issues during my usage this year.

Cisco Secure Firewall's scalability is good for my organization right now. We have a hybrid mode to work, and it is a very efficient program for the company.

I have not needed to reach out for help regarding Cisco Secure Firewall. I believe the issues are more about the network or internet connections than Cisco Secure Firewall itself.

I did not evaluate other options before choosing Cisco Secure Firewall.

I do not have a clear idea about the pricing, setup cost, or licensing for Cisco Secure Firewall, as I am not an IT employee and do not have information about licensing. I am only a user.

I think the end-to-end visibility from Cisco optimizes the experience in a hybrid setup.

I face specific challenges with hybrid and distributed enterprise networks, particularly feeling a little insecure when working from home. Cisco Secure Firewall is a great option because it provides a quick and secure program, allowing me to confidently access the company's systems.

My advice for others looking into using Cisco Secure Firewall is that it is a quick security program, helping you connect from various places, such as the office, coffee shops, or home. You could try other methods to access the security system, like voice approval or other specific options.

I would rate this product a 9 out of 10.

My main use cases for Cisco Secure Firewall include certain requirements from the energy sector, NERC CIP compliance, acting as a perimeter security device, doing layer three routing for us, and VLAN segmentation, as well as creating DMZs.

These features benefit my company by reducing my troubleshooting time, and in the energy sector, time is money, so it does help. The time reduction depends on how quickly someone gets used to it.

The feature of Cisco Secure Firewall I prefer most is troubleshooting, packet capture, and packet tracer; I love those features.  

You can quickly run certain commands on CLI or on FMC CLI to find out what could be the root cause, and it varies from person to person, but it's very useful.

I prefer Cisco since it has been here for a very long time, we have a good relationship with the sales team and Cisco representatives, and the support is pretty good, providing us with 24/7 support, which makes me pretty happy.

Cisco Secure Firewall in helping my company implement a zero-trust security model. I've yet to try it, however, I'm very excited to work on it. My impression of the visibility and control capabilities of Cisco Secure Firewall in managing encrypted traffic is pretty good. We can build site-to-site tunnels and various ways of site-to-route based or policy-based, allowing us to see the packets and cap decaps, and Cisco CLI provides a way to see the packets inside, which is very helpful.

Cisco Secure Firewall's licensing model can be improved, as I struggle with it in an air-gapped environment. To make it a ten, a couple of challenges need to be addressed, particularly with the licensing model, as I'm looking for a permanent license solution for air-gapped environments. 

The second issue is the ROMmon mode, where during power outages the firewalls go into ROMmon mode, causing outages and financial loss until we can send someone on-site.

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for almost six years.

The stability and reliability of the platform are pretty stable. 

The only challenge I see is with the substation, where when it loses power and there's no manual reboot, it ends up in ROMmon mode and requires a physical reboot, which means we have to send somebody on-site. It does not pick it up when the power goes out and comes back up, going into ROMmon mode, so I need better answers from Cisco about that.

I'm not sure how Cisco Secure Firewall scales with the growing needs of my company.

My experience with customer service and technical support has been good. If I were to rate customer service and technical support on a scale of one to ten, I would give them an eight.

Positive

In the past, we have used other solutions such as Palo Alto and other vendors. I am more of a Cisco person and prefer Cisco.

My experience with the deployment of Cisco Secure Firewall is that it's pretty straightforward.

The biggest return on investment for me when using Cisco Secure Firewall is reliability and robust network design.

Regarding pricing and setup costs, apart from the licensing issue, Cisco products are on the pricier side. That said, they're worth it. We have over 500 substations plus our data center just on OT, and everything is Cisco, so we are a core Cisco customer, and as long as the product is reliable, it's worth every penny.

We did consider other solutions before choosing Cisco Secure Firewall.

I'm not sure how Cisco Secure Firewall's ability to unify policies across my environment is, as I haven't tried that. 

I am not using Cisco SecureX with Secure Firewall; I'm using FMC for centralized management for the firewalls.

The impact of the cloud-delivered firewall on my company's security posture is tricky. For compliance, we are not supposed to have anything cloud-based, so it must be on-prem. We're a big company and we can use it in some other parts of the network, just not for my team.

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

Our company's use case involves integration with Cisco Secure Firewall for our clients, typically for remote access VPN. The purpose of our remote access VPN integration is to connect with Duo. We also perform integration with Cisco ICE and integration directly with the firewall.

The most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Firewall for me relates to the remote access VPN, because companies need multi-factor authentication. The selling point of the product revolves around multi-factor authentication for VPNs. I have implemented this with Cisco firewall, Cisco ICE, and Palo Alto integration with Duo.

If I could improve the product in any way to make it better for my clients, that would be beneficial. For now, everything is fine from my perspective, although there may be room for improvement that I have not yet identified.

I have been using Duo for two years.

I find Cisco Secure Firewall to be stable and scalable. It is reliable. The solution has experienced downtime.

I have worked with Cisco support. My experience with Cisco support is fine. When I need to open a case, I have done so. I did not contact Duo support, but I did contact support for Cisco firewall and Cisco ICE. I did not work with an engineer for Duo.

They are responsive. In general, it takes them two to three hours to get back to me. When they need to search for something, it may take a day.

Negative

Deploying Duo is quite simple because Duo has very good documentation for all integrations. It typically takes a couple of days to deploy because we need to schedule meetings with our clients. When we gather all the information, we can integrate it, then test it and put it in production.

I have experience with the implementation.

The benefit of using this integration for our company is that clients want solutions from us. Our clients need to find a solution for multi-factor authentication, and we recommend them to use Cisco Secure Firewall with Duo. We integrate that with their firewalls or AAA servers. Cisco Secure Firewall integrates well. I am not involved with pricing and licensing concerns, as our company has a sales team who handles that. My company is a partner. I rate this product ten out of ten.

One of the biggest use cases for Cisco Secure Firewall is Public Bank; they use it in Malaysia, but we implemented it in the Sri Lankan branches.

When a global company is using Cisco Secure Firewall, they would prefer to go with the same product with the same switching and firewall, making it an umbrella solution.

I think the UTM is the best feature of Cisco Secure Firewall.

The UTM features are indeed the best.

The reason why the UTM feature of Cisco Secure Firewall is the best is because the customer is more concerned with security; for a worldwide company, they need the most security, and I think it's very suitable for the most secure companies.

The centralized management console in Cisco Secure Firewall is effective and helpful.

Most of the partners are looking for AI-driven solutions now, so if Cisco improves more on the AI part than other products, it will be very good when they are trying to capture the market.

Cisco Secure Firewall has to enhance its AI part.

Customers using Cisco Secure Firewall are looking for UTM features, and some enhancements have to be done, such as when you block applications, more applications have to be able to be blocked and categorized.

I've been working with Cisco Secure Firewall for around 15 years as a partner.

Cisco Secure Firewall is stable, and there are no issues or challenges that my customers have faced with it.

Customers use Cisco Secure Firewall both on the cloud and on-premises, and it is a scalable solution and easy to scale.

My experience with Cisco support is good. I would rate the technical support of Cisco Secure Firewall eight out of ten.

Positive

The deployment of Cisco Secure Firewall takes one day.

Customers see a return on investment with Cisco Secure Firewall, and it is workable in terms of value for money.

Competitively, Checkpoint is the best, but considering pricing and everything else, Cisco Secure Firewall is also the best product.

Cisco Firewall is better in terms of cost and is cheaper; unlike other products, if the license expires, no features work, but Cisco isn't that way. Most of the time, they have perpetual licenses, so that's the best solution customers are looking for.

The threat intelligence functionalities in Cisco Secure Firewall are also good, but when considering Checkpoint and others, they have some enhanced features; there is some differentiation, but it's also good.

They need a global, one single vendor, which is why they see value for money with Cisco Secure Firewall.

I recommend Cisco Secure Firewall because it's a global vendor.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate Cisco Secure Firewall an 8.

My main use cases for Cisco Secure Firewall are mainly user access to the internet and blocking firewall sites.

With the centralized management of Cisco Secure Firewall, it's good in unifying policies across my environment. The simplicity and supportability are important to my organization as it's much easier if everything's the same as much as possible.

I appreciate that the central management of Cisco Secure Firewall is from one location, which saves a lot of time. 

The IPS protection is good for us for security reasons. 

The central management feature of Cisco Secure Firewall saves one location instead of having to log on to multiple locations, which speeds up deployment of any changes or requirements for monitoring.

The upgrading process of Cisco Secure Firewall is a long process on a per-firewall basis, and it would be nice if that could be improved. One firewall can take two to two and a half hours to upgrade, so we end up having to watch it. It becomes a problem; in the old firewall days, it would be about a ten-minute job. I know it's more complicated with the newer firewalls. It's just a long-winded process even if they have sorted it out a little bit with automation.

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for probably about eight years.

I have not had one Cisco Secure Firewall fail so far, which shows it is stable and reliable. Right now, I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues with Cisco Secure Firewall.

Cisco Secure Firewall scales with the growing needs of my organization, as we have different models and sizes, and our central boxes are powerful enough to cover whatever we want whenever we want.

My evaluation of customer service and technical support for Cisco Secure Firewall is that I have generally hardly ever had to use them. We did two weeks ago, and it was a very quick response that identified exactly where the issue in our configuration was. 

Two weeks ago, I received a very quick response from customer service, which identified exactly where the issue on our configuration was, and it went very smoothly, so out of ten, I would give it a nine.

Positive

Prior to adopting Cisco Secure Firewall, I was also using previous Cisco firewalls, and before that, we had Fortinet and Juniper.

The factors that led me to consider the change to Cisco Secure Firewall were actually price, as Cisco's was a very competitive price, and we received a very good deal.

My experience with the deployment of Cisco Secure Firewall has been generally okay.

I have seen a return on investment with Cisco Secure Firewall since we run them for a long time. 

Our current Cisco Secure Firewall units have been in place for probably over three years now, and at the moment, we're not looking to replace them, indicating a good return on investment since they last and are supported quite a long time after they're released.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Cisco Secure Firewall shows it can be expensive, especially the bigger boxes, since they do a lot more and handle a lot more, with a big jump from the smaller firewalls to the big firewalls.

The other solutions I considered before selecting Cisco Secure Firewall include Fortinet, Juniper, and Palo Alto. We're generally a Cisco house and have been for quite a few times with the old Cisco firewalls, so it was a natural progression. 

We did not purchase the product on AWS Marketplace.

We actually don't do that much encrypted inspecting traffic at the moment with Cisco Secure Firewall, which is something we want to look at. We just want to make sure we don't max out the CPU with the many jobs it does. Cisco Secure Firewall will be a building block part of our zero-trust security model, however, there will be a few other parts needed, such as Cisco Secure Access. 

I have not really expanded the usage of Cisco Secure Firewall. My advice to other organizations considering Cisco Secure Firewall is that it does what it says on the tin; it works, it's reliable, and I have never had one fail, so I think it's good. 

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Cisco Secure Firewall a nine.

We have two deployment models for the use case: one is a perimeter firewall and one is a data center firewall. If you have a perimeter, you will position Cisco Secure Firewall as a perimeter firewall; it fits more in data as a data center firewall because in a data center firewall, you are inspecting incoming traffic and you need a very good IPS, so Cisco Secure Firewall is very effective as a data center firewall.

The best feature in Cisco Secure Firewall is the stability; we have a stable product with no lagging or crashing, unlike others. Additionally, the IPS is the next-generation IPS from Cisco, which has many features and many signatures with updated signatures for my IPS.

I switched to Cisco Secure Firewall to get very good IPS signatures and next-generation IPS; that is a market leader from Cisco.

The stability is very good. I do not experience any downtime, crashes, or performance issues; that is the best feature from Cisco Secure Firewall.

Most of the time, Cisco provides features on some versions and the updated versions will move them; for example, we can do firewall policies based on users, which is from Active Directory. It should be from Cisco ISE, so it is a very bad drawback from Cisco Secure Firewall. Not all customers have Cisco ISE, and we need to integrate to make a policy on users, not just by IP, but with users also. We had integration before with LDAP and Active Directory, but on some versions, Cisco requires us to do it through Cisco ISE.

I have five years of experience with Cisco Secure Firewall overall.

The stability is very good. I do not experience any downtime, crashes, or performance issues; that is the best feature from Cisco Secure Firewall.

Cisco Secure Firewall is providing scalability. I rate the scalability as a number 10.

Positive

I rate the technical support a number 10.

Positive

Compared to Fortinet, we have a complex configuration, but we still have a stable product rather than Fortinet's product.

Cisco Secure Firewall requires maintenance. Maintaining it is slightly complex; it is not easy or very easy.

I am a customer. It was purchased through a partner. I was satisfied with my experience with the partner.

I have seen a return on investment of 50.

The pricing for Cisco Secure Firewall is very good, and we got many discounts from them.

Cisco Secure Firewall is deployed on-premises. We have a team of four users using the solution. I rate this review a 10.

My main use case for Cisco Secure Firewall is to protect corporate internet access from malicious people.

I can provide a specific example of how I use Cisco Secure Firewall to protect my corporate internet system from malicious activity: I block malicious sites and create rules to detect them.

I also use it to provide remote access for vendors and IT support people.

The best features Cisco Secure Firewall offers in my experience are its GUI, clear definition, and process to create rules.

The GUI is clear and I am able to follow the description of processes such as backup, creation of rules, and other management processes.

This has helped my team feel more confident that we are protected from malicious intruders, and I have noticed specific positive outcomes and changes since using Cisco Secure Firewall.

I believe Cisco Secure Firewall can be improved, particularly regarding the specifications such as the memory that is used on entry-level firewalls, because sometimes when doing an upgrade or changing configuration, issues arise.

On the performance side, I notice that the upgrade to a different version is slow, so hopefully improved CPU and RAM will help performance.

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for three years.

Cisco Secure Firewall is stable in my experience.

The hardware is working and we have not encountered the firewall failing because of a firmware upgrade.

We have not needed the scalability feature of Cisco Secure Firewall as of now.

I have not needed to reach out to Cisco support for any issues.

I have not switched from another vendor or used another firewall vendor prior to Cisco.

Before choosing Cisco Secure Firewall, we did not evaluate other options.

I would advise others looking into using Cisco Secure Firewall that it is easy to use and manage, easy to create rules, and upgrade the firmware, and it is reliable; I have not encountered any failure on my Cisco firewall so far. I rate this product an 8 out of 10.