Cisco Secure Firewall Reviews

It is the primary data firewall for our organization and our data centers.

We have faced multiple issues regarding bugs with Cisco Firepower products. A running product is hit with bugs most of the time, and we had a lot of challenges in using the Cisco Firepower product, actually. In the future, we are planning to replace it, or at least use it instead as a secondary firewall.

The content filtering is good. 

The maturity needs to be better. The product is not yet mature. A running product is hit with the software bugs most of the time, and whenever we then log a case with the tech team, they're sometimes helpless with that. They have to involve the software development team to fix that bug in the next release. It's not ideal. Being an enterprise product, it should be mature enough to handle these types of issues.

I've been using the solution for the last three years. 

The performance is okay, however, the product is not stable. It is all hit with CVL software bugs routinely. That portion requires attention from Cisco and the tech support in this area is somewhat delayed. An open ticket can sometimes take more than two to three months to resolve. For the production setup, it is tough to rely on the tech team alone for the closure of the case.

The solution is very scalable. 

Cisco support is always available. However, multiple times, it has been tough for them to fix the software bugs in the product. They have to then deploy their development team for the same ticket.

Earlier we used the Cisco ASA Firewall. Now, it has been phased out. Firepower is categorized as the next-generation firewall, however, we haven't found the utility of that level in this product. It lacks maturity at many levels.

We have two data centers at two geographical locations. We have two firewalls - one in one data center, at the perimeter, and another at a different location.

The initial setup was okay. We had more of an in-between partner doing the installation part since the product was also new to us. The product was part of my overall product solution. We procured a firewall and another ACL fabric portion for the data center. Overall, the solution installation took over seven to eight months.

We had two people assist with the deployment process. 

We used an integrator for deployment. Overall, the experience was positive. 

There is no ROI. It is functioning as a normal firewall, as a data center perimeter, however, we expected much more than that. At times, there has been downtime with the firewall, and our custom modifications have won at a very high level. The product has to be mature when it is being used at the enterprise level.

The solution offers mid-range pricing. We can get a cheaper product like Fortinet, and we can get a costlier product like Palo Alto, and these are all in the same category.

There's only one license based on the support. Cisco Firepower is priced on the support of the product that we require: with SSL and without SSL. Currently, we are not doing any SSL inspection. We have an ATP report firewall.

When we were looking for a product, we put it through tender and we put out specifications of the product that we required. Cisco had the lowest price. We evaluated the L1 after it was technically qualifying. That is how we acquired it.

We looked at Palo Alto, however, it was far too costly.

We are a customer and an end-user. 

It was earlier named Sourcefire. Cisco acquired that company and rebranded it as Firepower.

We are actually a public cloud provider. We offer data center services to clients.

I'd advise others considering the solution that, for implementation, the product needs some stability and maturity to be offered as a next-generation firewall at an enterprise level. If a company is in need of an enterprise-level solution, they need to be aware of this.

I'd rate the solution a five out of ten. 

The product needs maturity in terms of running without hitting a bug. We have used other products also. A running product is never hit with a bug. It is normally some vulnerability or something that needs to be attended to, however, a running product is seldom hit with a bug and the operation gets stalled. We rarely find this kind of thing in an enterprise scenario. That is what we ask from Cisco, to build a stable product before offering it to customers.

We primarily use the solution as a firewall for our data centers. We have a medium-sized data center right now. It's about six or seven servers. We actually store the data for students and schools and need to protect it.

Overall, the solution works very well.

The solution is quite fast. We found that the speed was good and the throughput was good.

The stability has been very good.

The solution can scale as necessary.

The product is quite robust and durable. 

The solution lacks the abilities of an FTD type which are the abilities we need, and they are not in the firewall. We're looking for a next-generation firewall instead.

The graphical interface could be improved. From what I have seen, Fortinet, for example, has a nicer GUI.

The solution needs to be easier to use. Right now, it's overly complicated. 

The initial setup is a bit complex. 

The cost of the solution is very high.

The product should add free URL filtering. It's another product, or part of another product, however, it should be available as part of this offering as well.

I've been using this solution for about seven or eight years at this point. It's been a while. 

The stability is excellent and the performance is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

The product can scale nicely. If a company would like to expand it, it can do so. 

We have about 10,000 schools use the solution in general, and 1,000 to 2,000 that use it simultaneously daily. 

I don't directly deal with technical support. Typically, that's something that others on the team deal with. We have our own team within the company that, if I run into issues, I would reach out to first. I can't speak to how helpful or responsive they are. I've never had a chance to contact them. 

I have not used other firewalls.

The initial setup is not easy or straightforward. It's a bit complex and a little difficult.

We have three engineers on staff. They are capable of handling any maintenance.  

The solution is quite expensive. Fortinet and other competitors are about half the price. Cisco is very expensive in comparison. They need to work to be more competitive.

We're currently looking into a new firewall - something that is Next Generation. We don't know what it will be yet, however, we are considering Cisco, Fortinet, or Palo Alto.

It's my understanding that Fortinet is better in graphics and has a better user experience than Cisco, however, I haven't had a chance to test anything out.

We're just a customer and an end-user. 

We no longer have an SLA for this solution. We're potentially looking for something new.

I'd recommend the solution to others. It works well. It's durable and fast and you don't have to check up on it daily as it is rather reliable. That said, it is pricey.

In general, I would rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

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.

Our use for Cisco Secure is for the firewall. 

Network segmentation is the most valuable feature.

The dashboard can be improved. 

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for seven years. 

It is stable.

It is scalable. A thousand-plus users are using the solution in my company. 

The initial setup is straightforward. 

Pricing is high.

Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten. 

My company uses Cisco Secure Firewall for its protection and security features.

I won't be able to speak about the strong points of the product. I will need the input from my team to be able to speak about the advantages of the product. The solution's dashboard is fine, and in terms of support, Cisco is better than other OEMs in the market.

The solution's price can be lowered because, currently, it is pricier than the tool its competitors offer in the market. If the product's prices are lowered, it may help Cisco to expand its market base.

If Cisco reduces the price of its product, then it can gain more advantage and become much more competitive in a market where there are solution providers like Fortinet FortiGate.

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for five years.

I don't remember the version of the solution since there is a support team in my company to manage it. My company has a partnership with Cisco.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Around 2,500 people use the solution in my company.

Most of the time, the solution's technical support is helpful and responsive. There have been a few cases where a few black spots have been noticed, which I think is because Cisco opted for localization of support because, during holidays, nighttime, or weekends, it becomes difficult for users to reach the support team, though the rest of the time the support is good.

If you have already scheduled a call with the support team of Cisco, then it is good. If you need to reschedule a call with the support team when you face a new issue with the product, then it may get a bit of a problem to get a hold of someone from the support team of Cisco. Earlier, there were no problems with Cisco's support team. Recently, there have been a few issues cropping up related to the technical team of Cisco. Technically speaking, the support team is good, but the availability offered by the technical team has deteriorated.

I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

I work with Palo Alto, Fortinet, and Check Point for different parts of our IT environment.

The product's initial setup phase was taken care of by another team in my company before I joined my current company.

On our company's core payroll, we have a very small support team, but we do have a support team in my company for the product. The support team in my company consists of around 20 to 25 engineers who work around the clock.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

I rate the product's price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is expensive, and ten is cheap. If we compare Cisco with other OEMs available in the market, Cisco needs to work on price improvement. Nowadays, there is a lot of competition in the market with newer solutions, like Fortinet, gaining popularity, amongst a few other names like Cyberoam, a product from a local Indian vendor. Palo Alto has also gained a lot of market share in recent years.

From a security perspective, generally, there are only three solutions that our company looks at, which include Check Point in the last four or five years, among other options like Palo Alto and Cisco.

I recommend the solution for SMB businesses.

I rate the overall tool a seven out of ten.

I'm in network security, so I care more about security than the network architecture. I mostly just pull all the data out and throw it into Splunk. I use threat intelligence and some of the integrations like Talos. My company uses the product for east-west traffic, data center, and Edge.

The product is easy to manage and simple. It works with the rest of our Cisco products. You can drop in new ones if you need more performance. The training and documentation provided are good.

There's a little bit of a disconnect between Firepower’s management and the rest of the products, like DNA and Prime. The solution should have fewer admin portals for network, security, and firewalls.

I have been using the solution for a year and a half. My company has been using it for at least five years.

I haven’t had a product die. The products failover really fast, and we can cluster them. The product is definitely many nines of reliability.

I have contacted support in my previous jobs for things beyond firewalls, like servers, switches, and call centers. It's always been pretty good. They know their stuff. Sometimes we have to have a few calls to get really deep down into the issue. Eventually, we’ll get an engineer who's a senior and knows how to fix it. They do a pretty good job finding a resource that can be helpful.

In my previous jobs, I used Palo Alto and Fortinet. My current organization chose Cisco Secure Firewall because we use Cisco for the rest of our network, and it just made sense.

We have definitely seen a return on investment. It works pretty well. It is important to have everything work together. Our time is probably more valuable than our money. We're not going to go out and grab ten other network engineers to set up another complicated platform when we can just save the hassle.

The solution has improved our organization. I think my company was using Check Point back in the day. My company has 12 Cisco products. We used Palo Alto in my old organization. It’s what I'm most familiar with.

The application visibility and control with Secure Firewall are not bad. The product’s alerting is pretty good. There were a couple of things that surprised me about the solution. It works really well because we use it with Secure Client and Secure Endpoint. Sometimes the solutions can cross-enrich each other, which we wouldn’t get with a dedicated, standalone firewall.

The solution has helped free up our IT staff for other projects. We don't even have a dedicated firewall person. I sometimes do some stuff. Mostly the dedicated network admins run it, and they have time to do the rest of their job. Our whole network infrastructure team's only five to six people, and they can manage multiple sites across all different firewalls. It's not unreasonable to demand at all.

The product has helped us consolidate tools and applications. If we were using another solution, we would have had their firewall, management plane, and other appliances to back that up. Having a product in the Cisco universe definitely does help. It's all right there when we're using Secure Client and Umbrella. I want more of what Cisco Identity Services Engine and DNA do. I don't like switching tabs in my browser.

We use a relatively basic subset of Cisco Talos for general threat intel. It's definitely helpful. It's mostly about just getting the Talos definitions into the firewall so it can do all the heavy lifting so we don't have to. Now that Cisco has the XDR product, it will probably make it even more useful because then we can combine the network side, the security operations, and the threat intelligence into one thing to work harder for us.

Cisco Secure Firewall has definitely helped our organization improve its cybersecurity resilience. I like the IDS a lot. The definitions work really well. Making custom ones is pretty trivial. We don't have to do complicated packet captures or anything of that kind.

My advice would be to lean really hard on your sales engineer to explain the stack to you. There's definitely a learning curve to it. Cisco does things in a very particular way that's maybe a little bit different than other firewall vendors. Generally, it's pretty helpful talking to post-sales about what you need because you're probably not going to be able to figure it out. It's definitely a pretty top-shelf tool. If an organization already uses Cisco, they probably want to invest in the solution.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We are mainly using it as a VPN gateway and edge firewall.

It helped us with the transition to working from home and hybrid working. Because of its VPN capabilities, it enabled us to keep working while everyone had to stay home because of COVID.

It integrates well with other systems within our environment. 

I like its integration with the AnyConnect client. I also like how modular it is. For example, I can easily integrate the Umbrella add-on into it. We are planning on adding Umbrella. We haven't added it yet, but we have researched it.

One big pain point I have is the ASDM interface because it's Java, and sometimes, it's a bit buggy and has low performance. That's something that probably won't be improved because of backward compatibility. 

The CLI is not always clear. It's not always intuitive.

Some of the things, such as site-to-site VPN, are complicated to set up. The settings you have are all hidden away in crypto maps, and you can't have a setting per tunnel. When you want to change one particular tunnel, you automatically change them all. That's a drawback.

We've been using the Cisco ASA firewall for about two years.

It's reliable.

I haven't had much contact with their tech support. We have a partner called Fundamentals for support. They're good. I'd recommend them.

We have a Palo Alto core firewall, and we handle threat detection and intrusion prevention on that device. We don't use Cisco ASA for detecting or remediating threats.

Compared to other systems that I have used in the past, Cisco ASA is reliable, and it's not a very big hassle to set up. It's very good, and it just does its job. 

It's not a very big hassle to set up. It's a bit complex when you go into different topics that aren't the basic capabilities, such as when you go above VPN and basic ACL configuration, but all in all, it does the job.

I'd rate it a seven out of ten because of the ASDM, non-intuitive CLI, and complication of setting some of the things.

We use them for firewall purposes. We use the small ones with the partners for the services they need, such as VPN and security.

Their performance is most valuable.

The stability could be better because we have a lot of issues with the stability of Cisco Firepower.

I've been using Cisco firewalls for 20 years.

We have a lot of issues with the stability of Cisco Firepower.

It depends on the model. We are hitting some issues with scalability. It's getting very expensive to scale out.

They sometimes take too long and don't fix the issue quickly, but eventually, it is fixed. I'd rate their support a nine out of ten.

Positive

We have been using different Cisco firewalls for a long time. We are currently using Cisco Firepower and Cisco ASA. Cisco Firepower is better than Cisco ASA, but stability is an issue.

It's now easier than before. You can have virtual appliances.

We mostly have it on-prem, but some customers want on-prem virtual.

We considered using a different solution such as Check Point or Huawei. We chose to stay with Cisco because we're experienced with Cisco and because of the support.

The old versions or models saved us time, but the newer ones take our time. Overall, I'd rate Cisco Secure Firewall an eight out of ten.