Cisco Secure Firewall Reviews

We use Cisco Secure Firewall for traditional firewall use cases, like VPN, segmenting of traffic, and creating PPSs.

We need reliable communication to do what we do, and that's very important. The solution does what we need to do and when we need to do it. It has a great reputation for the support that we need because if things don't work within the Department of Defense, people don't survive. Communication and keeping the adversary out are key components of our work. So we need a robust, reliable, and secure product, and that's what Cisco provides us.

Cisco Secure Firewall is robust and reliable.

The process of procuring modern-day technology within the DOD needs to improve.

I've spent quite a few years with Cisco Secure Firewall.

Cisco Secure Firewall is a very stable solution.

Cisco Secure Firewall is a very scalable solution.

Cisco Secure Firewall's technical support is great, reliable, and responsive.

Positive

We have seen a return on investment from using Cisco Secure Firewall. From the DOD's perspective, we need a reliable and robust solution that has to be reliable in real-time. Cisco Secure Firewall is a reliable solution that works when needed.

Cisco Secure Firewall is a great scalable, secure, and robust product.

There is a dedicated team designed to handle firewalls.

I have a good impression of Cisco Talos and its effects on our security operations. They have a great reputation for doing a lot of great things.

Cisco Secure Firewall has helped our organization improve its cybersecurity resilience.

Overall, I rate Cisco Secure Firewall nine out of ten.

We have all kinds of use cases. Our customers are large enterprises, and they need perimeter security. Zero trust, network access control, and network segmentation are quite important these days.

We are a partner and reseller. We implement, and we resell. As a Cisco Secure reseller, we have all the expertise. Our customers are usually overworked and have no time to learn how to implement these things and get some expertise. That's what we bring in. We help them select the right solution, select the proper design and architecture, and implement it. They basically lack the time and expertise, and we are a trusted advisor who helps them with their issues.

I'm working with security. It improves the security posture of our customers and protects them from threats. We recently saw a bunch of hacks in Germany and our customers are concerned. We help to protect our customers from that, and that's very important.

The analysis tools and encrypted traffic analysis save time. They help detect security threats and incidents that can cause outages for customers. It's a great improvement.

Application inspection, network segmentation, and encrypted traffic detection or encrypted traffic analysis (ETA) are valuable for our customers. I'm from Germany, and in Germany, people are very concerned about privacy. We have a bunch of public customers, and they have an issue with decrypting traffic, even if it's only for security analysis. They have some fears. So, they are quite interested in the capability to detect threats without decrypting traffic.

The usability of Cisco Firepower Threat Defense is an issue. The product is still under development, and the user interface is very difficult to deal with. That's one area where it should be improved. Another area for improvement, which is also related to the firewall, is stability. We are having stability issues, and we had some cases where customers had a network down situation for about one or two days, which is not great.

As a partner, I have been working here for about nine years, but we offered this solution all the time. The company has probably been doing that for at least 15 years.

Cisco Firepower Threat Defense has improved a lot over the last few years, but we sometimes still have really big issues.

Their support is pretty awesome. It doesn't really matter if you have a hardware issue or a software issue. If it's a hardware issue, you get a replacement quickly, and if you have a software issue, you get quick support. There are also some bad examples. I have one from wireless where after a problem was acknowledged, it needed about one year to get fixed. It depends a little bit on how complex the issue is, but in general, it's quite okay.

We are also selling Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Check Point. We sell all solutions, but I'm quite focused on Cisco. It's mostly because I have the most expertise and experience with it over the years. I've been working with Cisco security solutions for 15 to 20 years. That's where my expertise is, and with Cisco, you have a solution for everything. It's not always the best of breed, but in the overall solution frame, you have something for everything, and they interact nicely with each other, which is great.

The deployment model is totally customer dependent. The way we work, we look at the customer environment and develop a proper deployment model for them. Some of them are using enterprise agreements. It's becoming more and more common, so they can use several solutions at once or with some kind of added use price and other benefits.

I'm not always involved in the deployment. I work as an architect. I do not implement all the solutions I design, but I implement some of them. For me, it's important because, for one, I like it, and second thing is that I need to have some kind of hands-on experience to understand the solution so that I can make better designs.

If you do the initial setup for the first time, it's somewhat complex., but over time, you get the experience, and then it's more or less straightforward. 

Our clients rarely used the firewall migration tool. It gives you a starting point for the configuration, but usually, there are so many things you need to rework afterward. We use it sometimes, but it only does a part of the job.

It does require maintenance. The clients have maintenance contracts for that.

In our company in Germany, just for the security solutions, we have about 20 to 30 engineers. They are experienced in different areas. For the firewalls, we have 10 engineers.

Cisco was never a cheap solution. Compared to other vendors, it's more or less at the same level, except maybe Fortinet which is fairly cheap.

In terms of licensing, we still have issues with the subscription model. Many of our customers are used to buying a solution and owning it. It takes time to convince people to go for the subscription model. That's still an issue for us.

We have Cisco Firepower Threat Defense, email security, web security, and Cisco Umbrella. Most of the time, I am working with Identity Services Engine for identity-related things. That's the main product I work with all the time. I have almost no direct contact with Talos, but I know that below the hood, it just improves all their security solutions.

To those evaluating this solution, I would advise being a little bit careful with it. It interfaces well with other Cisco solutions, so it has value, but it's not always the best solution.

At the moment, I would rate it a six out of ten.

Our primary use case for Cisco Secure is through Cisco FMC, which we have automated using Cisco's Terraform provider for FMC. Our automation journey began with the Cisco ACI fabric, where we leveraged the Terraform provider for ACI. Eventually, we realized we could also automate firewalls and our HA clusters using the Terraform provider for FMC. This allowed us to create DMZ networks, specify IPS and IDS rules, and follow the infrastructure as a code concept. Our cross-common security team can review the repository in GitLab and approve it with a simple click of a button. This is the primary benefit we get from automation. Additionally, we can use the infrastructure as a code concept with the management center. Cisco FMC also has a great API, which makes it easy to integrate with our code, ACI, and other systems.

Cisco Security and Cisco Firewalls have been effective in protecting our organization from external threats, such as DDoS attacks.

We have several integrations. One of them is between Cisco ISE and FMC, which allows us to monitor and control our users. Additionally, we integrated Cisco ISE with FTDs to function as a remote VPN server and control the traffic and behavior in our VPN network. We also use ISE as a TACAC server and integrated it with Cisco ACI and all of our devices. Furthermore, we use NetBox as a source of truth for our ISE, which helps us track all of our devices from the network and ISE.

The primary benefits of using Cisco Secure solutions are time-saving, a robust API, and convenience for the security team. 

Cisco Secure Firewall could benefit from enhancements in its API, documentation, and automation tools. Additionally, we've noticed that the Terraform provider for FMC has only two stars, few contributors, and hasn't been updated in a year. It only has 15 to 20 resources, which limits our capabilities. We'd love to update it and add more resources. For example, we currently can't create sub-interfaces with the provider, so we have to add Python code to our Terraform provider and use local provisioners. Additionally, improvement in the API would be helpful so that we can create ACL on the GUI with a simple click, but at this time we cannot create requests via the API.

I have used Cisco Secure Firewall within the last 12 months.

Cisco TAC support is excellent. Having worked with other support companies in the past. Cisco TAC is much more helpful and friendly. They always seem eager to assist with any issues and are particularly responsive in urgent situations. For example, if there is a problem in my production zone, they are quick to reassure and assist. Overall, I have a great appreciation for their support.

I rate the support from Cisco Secure a ten out of ten.

Positive

In our business, we have implemented a number of Cisco Secure products in our network infrastructure, including Cisco ISE as a AAA server, Cisco FMC Management Center for our firewalls, and Cisco FTD for Firepower Threat Defenses. We also use a TACACS+ server for our hardware. Cisco products make up the entirety of our infrastructure, including Cisco Nexus Switches, Cisco ACI fabric for our data centers, Cisco ASR Routers, and Cisco Wireless Solutions, which include WLC controllers, access points, and other relevant hardware. In our organization, Cisco is strongly preferred.

There has been a positive return on investment observed with the implementation of Cisco Secure solutions. The use of these solutions as our primary security products has been beneficial in terms of cost and security measures.

In the past, I encountered several difficulties and misunderstandings with Cisco licensing, but now the situation has improved. The Cisco Smart Software portal is an excellent resource for keeping track of, upgrading, and researching information related to Smart Licensing and other relevant topics. It is extremely helpful. Unfortunately, since it is not my money and there is only one vendor, I am unable to provide any comments on the prices. Nevertheless, the system, along with its provision through the Cisco Smart Software portal, as well as the traditional license and subscription models, are excellent and highly beneficial.

I rate Cisco Secure a seven out of ten.

My rating of seven out of ten for the Cisco Secure is because it's not excellent, but not poor either. It was enjoyable and overall satisfactory.

Our primary use case for Cisco Secure Firewall is protection in our OT network. We have our OT network behind the commercial network and we do dual firewalls. The Cisco Secure Firewall is on the commercial network side and a different vendor and management group are on the OT network side.

Cisco Secure Firewall has not necessarily improved our organization as much as it has protected it against the impact of cyber threats. Our organization runs manufacturing plants that have hazardous material and we don't want that manufacturing process to be impacted by break-in exposure and cyber threats.

Cisco Secure Firewall is a good solution. In some ways, it is a reactive solution and we have it sitting in a whitelist mode rather than a blacklist mode. It seems to work fairly well for us.

It would be better if we could manage all of our firewalls as a set rather than individually. I would like to see a single pane of glass type of option. We also use another vendor's firewalls and they have a centralized management infrastructure that we have implemented. This infrastructure is a bit easier to manage.

We have used Cisco Secure Firewall for probably 10 years.

Cisco Secure Firewall has been a very stable solution for us. In general, if you keep it up to date and do sensible management on it, it will be a very stable solution.

Cisco Secure Firewall has met our scalability requirements as far as traffic and management goes.

We have an excellent account team and they go to bat for us inside of Cisco. We have access to TAC and Smart Net and that all seems to be working out very well. Cisco has a good team in place.

We did not previously use a different solution for this particular use case. 

I was not involved in the initial deployment of the solution. 

In this specific use case, the biggest return on investment is that we do not have incidents. This ultimately – in some of our factories – ends up being a health and human-safety use case.

We have all smart licensing and that works well. 

We ultimately chose Cisco Secure Firewall because it came with a strong recommendation from one of our strong partners.

My advice to those evaluating the solution right now is this: understand what you're trying to protect and what you're trying to protect it from. Also, understand how the solution is managed.

Cisco Secure Firewall has not necessarily freed up our staff's time as much as it has secured the infrastructure and the OT network behind it. Cisco Secure Firewall was not built as a time-saver. It is not a cost solution. It is a solution meant to isolate and control access to and from a specific set of infrastructure.

Cisco Secure Firewall has not helped us consolidate tools and applications. It allows us to get access. What we're seeing more and more of is business systems like SAP looking to get access to OT systems and this is how our systems get that way.

Cisco Secure Firewall requires the sort of maintenance that any software product would: updates, asset management, etc. Worldwide, we probably have 30 to 40 people managing the solution on the OT side on the various sites and then probably 10 to 15 people on our account team with our outside partner.

We have an offshore development center with around 1,400 users (in one location) where we have deployed this firewall.

The maturity of our organization’s security implementation is a four out of five (with five being high). We do have NOC and SOC environments along with in-built access to our systems. 

We use Acunetix as one of our major tools. We do have some open source. There are a couple of networks where we are using the Tenable tool. We have implemented an SIEM along with a Kaspersky at the cloud level. In the Cisco firewall, we installed Kaspersky in the firewall logs which upload to Kaspersky for us to review back.

Being able to determine our active users vs inactive users has led us to increased productivity through visibility. Also, if an issue was happening with our throughput, then we wouldn't know without research. Now, notifications are more proactively happening.

The advance malware protection (AMP) is valuable because we didn't previously have this when we had an enterprise gateway. Depending on the end user, they could have EDR or antivirus. Now, we have enabled Cisco AMP, which give us more protection at the gateway level. 

The application visibility is also valuable. Previously, with each application, we would prepare and develop a report based on our knowledge. E.g., there are a couple business units using the SAS application, but we lacked visibility into the application layer and usage. We use to have to configure the IP or URL to give us information about usage. Now, we have visibility into concurrent SAS/Oracle sessions. This solution gives us more visibility into the inbound/outbound traffic being managed. This application visibility is something new for us and very effective because we are using Office 365 predominantly as our productivity tool. Therefore, when users are accessing any of the Office 365 apps, this is directly identified and we can see the usage pattern. It gives us more visibility into our operations, as I can see information in real-time on the dashboards.

The solution has positively affected our organization’s security posture. I would rate the effects as an eight (out of 10). There is still concern about the engagement between Cisco Firepower and Cisco ASA, which we have in other offices. We are missing the visibility between these two products.

We would like more application visibility and an anti-malware protection system, because we don't have this at the enterprise level.

The central management tool is not comfortable to use. You need to have a specific skill set. This is an important improvement for management because I would like to log into Firepower, see the dashboard, and generate a real-time report, then I question my team.

Nearly a year.

So far, it has been stable.

We have around 32 people for maintenance. Our NOC team works 24/7. They are the team who manages the solution.

Scalability is one of our major business requirements. We are seeing 20 percent growth year-over-year. The plan is to keep this product for another four years.

We contacted Cisco directly when issues happened during the implementation, e.g., the management console was hacked.

We used Fortinet and that product was coming to end of life. We had been using it continuously for seven years, then we started to experience maintenance issues.

Also, we previously struggled to determine who were all our active users, especially since many were VPN users. We would have to manually determine who was an inactive user, where now the process is more automated. It also had difficult handling our load.

The initial setup was complex. We engaged NTT Dimension Data as there were a couple things that needed to be done for our requirements and validation. This took time to get signed off on by quality team. However, the configuration/implementation of the system did not take much time. It was a vanilla implementation.

We did face performance issues with the console during implementation. The console was hacked and we needed to reinstall the console in the virtual environment. 

We were engaged with a local vendor, NTT Dimension Data, who is a Cisco partner. They were more involved on the implementation and migration of the firewall. Some channels were reconfigured, along with some URL filtering and other policies that we used for configuration or migration to the new server.

Our experience with NTT Dimension Data has been good. We have been using them these past four to five years.

We have seen ROI. Our productivity has increased.

The change to Cisco Firepower has reduced the time it takes for our network guy to generate our monthly report. It use to take him many hours where he can now have it done in an hour.

Cisco pricing is premium. However, they gave us a 50 to 60 percent discount.

There are additional implementation and validation costs.

We also evaluated Check Point, Palo Alto, Sophos, and Cisco ASA. In the beginning, we thought about going for Cisco ASA but were told that Firepower was the newest solution. We met with Cisco and they told us that they were giving more attention going forward to Firepower than the ASA product.

We did a small POC running in parallel with Fortinet. We evaluated reports, capability, and the people involved. Palo Alto was one of the closest competitors because they have threat intelligence report in their dashboard. However, we decided not to go with Palo Alto because of the price and support.

We are using Cisco at a global level. We have internally integrated this solution with Cisco Unified Communications Manager in a master and slave type of environment that we built. It uses a country code for each extension. Also, there is Jabber, which our laptop users utilize when connecting from home. They call through Jabber to connect with customers. Another tool that we use is Cisco Meraki. This is our all time favorite product for the office WiFi environment. However, we are not currently integrating our entire stack because then we would have to change everything. We may integrate the Cisco stack in the future. It should not be difficult to integrate since everything is a Cisco product. The only issue may be compliance since we have offices in the US and Europe.

We are now using a NGFW which helps us deep dive versus using a normal firewall.

Overall, I would rate Cisco Firepower as an eight (out of 10).

We had implemented our Cisco API and Cisco Stealthwatch. We use the Cisco Secure Firewall for easy integration that can collaborate with all these Cisco solutions. My operations will also have less maintenance and the same existing team.

Cisco Secure Firewall's security solutions, advanced malware protection, and DDoS communication are very good. With Cisco Secure Firewall, the security is very much manageable because it protects all the incoming and outgoing traffic of our several telecom IT rooms.

The solution's deployment is time-consuming, which should be minimized and made more user-friendly for us.

The solution's graphical user interface could be made more user-friendly, and the configuration can be simple.

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for five years.

Cisco Secure Firewall is a stable solution.

I rate Cisco Secure Firewall ten out of ten for stability.

Cisco Secure Firewall is a scalable solution. Around 400 users are using the solution in our organization.

I rate Cisco Secure Firewall a nine out of ten for scalability.

The solution’s technical support is good.

Positive

The solution’s initial setup is complex and requires Cisco-certified people.

Two engineers were involved in the solution's deployment, which took one week.

We have seen a return on investment with Cisco Secure Firewall because it provides advanced malware protection and seamless integration with my existing solutions.

Cisco Secure Firewall is a moderately priced solution. We have to pay a yearly licensing fee for the solution.

The solution’s maintenance is very easy, and one person can do it.

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

Our primary use cases lie mainly with high availability and the security features available doing Layer 3 routing that we would need on our internal network.

It has simplified the internal network, so we don't have to worry about one device failing and losing connectivity. High availability is always there.

Our top three features are the high-availability features, the VPN and the IPSec.

It has fantastic visibility. It's a 10 out of 10. 

Cisco Secure Firewall is fantastic at securing our infrastructure from end to end so we can detect and remediate threats. We have already caught things that have tried to get in. 

Cisco Secure Firewall has improved resilience by a huge margin. It has been a great help.

Cisco Secure Firewall has freed staff because we don't have IT staff worrying about a lot of the threats. We trust the device that we are going to catch the threat. We are going to get a notification and be able to act upon that. Cisco Secure Firewall has saved at least 25 hours a week

The newer versions have made it so that we do not have to worry about other appliances with feature sets that are already built into the Cisco firewall.

The solution has had a huge effect, especially from physical density when it comes to securing our infrastructure. A lot of people don't think about power availability and cooling aspects. You have a limit to how much power you can push, and every little bit helps. 

We chose Cisco because of its understanding, customer service, warranties, and the quality of the product

We would like to see dual power supplies for some Cisco Firewall products. Having to get an ATS in the Data Center application because there's an A+B power feed on such a vital device with high availability may be something that I want to put in there.

We have been using Cisco Firewall for the last 20 years.

The solution is very stable.

The solution is scalable because Cisco keeps up with new technology, the security application, bandwidth, optics, and the kind of speed that one can use.

Customer support has been very responsive, whether it is a hardware failure or calling for any kind of technical support.

Positive

We have seen a return on investment in the total cost of ownership.

The pricing is fair compared to competitors. Cisco is the Cadillac in its field. You get what you pay for. 

Cisco is amazing at upgrading, so even if we did have to upgrade a device, it is plug-and-play because of that availability option.

Cisco is doing a great job with all the improvements that are coming; they are allowing for GUI setups where many people aren't so used to CLI. Many of the younger grads coming into our field are more used to APIs and automation, so having that GUI feel is a lot better than CLI.

I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Our customers for the most part use this solution in data centers. 

The feature my customers find the most valuable is the exportability. They also appreciate that the IPS features are easily migrated from Cisco SA to FTDs. 

We have seen some bugs come up with Cisco Secure Firewall in terms of high availability. The solution should be improved to avoid these bugs. 

We have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for almost a decade. 

Cisco's support is much better than other vendors' support. In my opinion, this is a big advantage for Cisco. The support Cisco offers is upper-level. 

Positive

We previously sold Fortinet devices. However, many of our clients switched over to Cisco because of the price as they are quite cheap. 

We are in the middle of a migration plan to Cisco right now in our company. I am not directly involved. We are working with a Cisco partner but I have been communicating our needs to them. However, I believe the migration process will be smooth for our company. It is crucial to have a solid migration plan in place because we are a core data center, so we have to be careful. 

We are deploying with the help of a partner. 

We do see a lot of ROI from Cisco Secure Firewall. We are in the process of migrating a lot of end-of-support devices with some new ones and the return on investment is there.

Price is a big selling point for Cisco Secure Firewall. They are quite affordable and many clients chose them precisely for this reason. 

This solution helped my clients save money and time. My clients save 50% on time thanks to automation and processing brought on by this solution. 

I have only good things to say about Cisco Talos. It has been quite helpful to our customers.