Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) Reviews

We are a solution provider and I am an engineer who deploys solutions. This is one of the products that I have experience with it in this capacity. The version that we use depends on the client.

Some of our clients are ISPs and they are using the firewall features in this product to replace old firewalls. It is doing the regular firewall inspections, VPN concentration, and other such things. For other customers, who replaced Sourcefire, they use it primarily as an inline IPS and a passive IDS. These customers do not choose very many of the firewall features.

Some customers use it for both; they have a firewall, VPN concentration, and then they do IPS inspection. This is the next-generation of these technologies.

The most valuable feature is the IPS engine. It has been in the security branch for decades and is now integrated into the Cisco portfolio. The difference is that it has been scaled a thousandfold. It provides a base language for intruder inspection for all of the security engineers. Now, they have the same language everywhere in the corporate and the open-source firewalls and IPS.

The configuration of this product can be simplified. I am an expert in this area because few people can do it. It requires a lot of training and documentation.

I think that some initiation scripts might be helpful because they would make the configuration easier and more user-friendly for customers.

I have been working with NGIPS for about four years, since 2016 or 2017, shortly after Cisco bought it.

Stability is something that is tricky to judge because when you have a 600-person userbase, there are always going to be issues. As we fix them, it becomes stable again.

This is suitable for organizations of all sizes; small, medium, and large-sized companies. For example, one of our clients has 600 users.

The ease of scaling depends on the number of times you scale, or to which extent. I can start by saying that scaling is easy but if you want to scale a hundredfold, then it's not going to be so easy. It's impossible.

I like Cisco's technical support and find that they are efficient. In fact, I was a technical team leader for Cisco support, and I am now a client. There is amazing support team at TAC and they help Cisco be great. 

I have worked with similar products from different vendors in the past, although I am avoiding this type of task for the moment.

The main advantages to Cisco are the scale, the integration, the training, and the possibility of finding somebody to work with. Also, the reaction time that they have in case of failure is very fast, and it is easy to replace the setup.

The initial setup is complex. It requires that NGIPS be optimized such that it has the best results with the best performance. The deployment model, be it on-premises or cloud-based, depends on the client.

The length of time required for deployment also depends on the client. In a small office, I can do it in a few hours. For an enterprise, it could take half a year. I have worked on many different scales.

I am responsible for deploying this product to our customers. When it comes to maintenance, we cooperate. They know the environment, their tools, the change management, and the internal procedures. I take care of the technical parts, and we have full cooperation until it is complete.

This is an expensive product, with the biggest cost being the license that keeps the service going.

My advice for anybody who is implementing NGIPS is to get in touch with someone who can advise them because every network is different. Properly sizing the appliances is important. 

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We use this product for IPS detection and reporting purposes.

We have found the IPS detection to be a very valuable feature of this solution. It is easy to use to stop policy violations.

We would like an option to search through the logs to be added to this solution.

We have been working with this solution for three years.

The current version of this solution is proving to be very stable.

We believe this to be a scalable solution.

The technical support for this product is good. They respond to tickets quickly when they are raised, and they generally respond within 24 hours.

The initial setup and configuration of this solution was straightforward.

Licenses for this product are available for either one, or three year terms.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case is securing the network. It has a deep learning intelligence ability to filter packages and traffic coming to networks and to different workstations in networks. 

This solution is deployed on-premises. 

The most valuable feature is its IPS ability. You are able to balance security and connectivity. 

The CLI, the console line interface, of the FTD could be improved. It's very complex, so without a GUI, it doesn't work well. I would like it to be more simple. 

As far as additional features or next releases, I think the price could be cheaper. 

We have been using this solution for more than eight years. 

This product is stable. 

This product is very scalable. 

Cisco's technical support is very, very fast. 

Before implementing Cisco, we used Fortigate and Check Point. 

The installation is straightforward. You have to install the device, but if you want to actually manage it, you need a GUI for it. For deployment, you will need two engineers, maximum. 

We implemented this solution through an in-house team and deployed it ourselves. 

We pay for the IPS license to use this solution. 

I rate this product a nine out of ten, and would recommend this product to others who are considering using it. 

We use NGIPS for monitoring and firewall purposes. We have about 3,000 users. 

I like how NGIPS has everything in one console.  

The look and feel of the console could be updated. 

I have used NGIPS for about five years.

NGIPS is stable.

Setting up NGIPS was complex. We needed help from a Cisco specialist. 

I rate Cisco NGIPS eight out of 10 overall.

Our customers use it for VBN and network as well.

I've found the performance and stability to be the most valuable features of Cisco NGIPS. It is scalable as well.

The price could be improved.

I've been providing this solution for about five years.

It is a stable solution.

It is scalable.

My experience with technical support has been okay.

Installation is straightforward and took half a day.

The pricing could be improved. Our customers have a yearly license.

It is a good product, and I would recommend it. I would rate it at eight on a scale from one to ten.

I work for a system integrator and Cisco NGIPS is one of the products that we implement for our clients. This is a solution for enterprise networks and it has a lot of advanced features including security intelligence feeds and DNS security.

This product can be integrated with other solutions from the Cisco portfolio including Cisco ISE and SecureX. The integration with the Cisco portfolio is very helpful. Cisco ISE will give full control in any network and it can be used to isolate any infected or misbehaving users automatically.

Multi-internet line load balancing should be supported. It is available from other vendors and should be included with this product.

This is one of the most stable solutions in the firewall world. 

Cisco takes scalability into consideration. My clients vary in size from small and medium-sized businesses to enterprises.

The best support that I have ever dealt with is from Cisco. I am very satisfied with their service.

I have experience with a lot of network security products. These include solutions by Cisco, Palo Alto, Fortinet, and Forcepoint.

The initial setup is very simple and in one or two hours, it can be up and running.

The licensing can be billed annually or in multi-year contracts such as three, four, or five years.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We use the solution to secure our client's networks.

Overall, it lacks user-friendliness. It could be easier to manage. I can train any customer using FortiGate or Palo Alto in a few days, but with Cisco, it takes much more time because the systems aren't easy to use.

It would be very nice to get rid of FlexConfig. It's a very unhelpful element of the solution.

One feature that is lacking is full interoperability with CLI.

You can configure Palo Alto and FortiGate with a graphical interface, and you can configure it with the command line. This is not so in Cisco. For professionals, this is important because the command line allows us to configure a lot of things and copy configurations and it's much easier.

Technical support is quite good. With firewalls, the last cases I had with Cisco were professionally handled quite quickly and it was great. I can compare with some other manufacturers. FortiGate is awful, for example. I'm generally pleased with Cisco.

The solution has a moderate amount of difficulty. You need to go over and use the documentation.

Cisco has a device manager now but this device manager is not like all device managers from ASA. It lacks a lot of features, and some of these features are very important. It makes it a challenge to configure because of the graphical interface. You have to install the management center and that itself takes time and it's not so simple.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

Ten years ago, when you sold Cisco to clients, customers complained about the price but they knew they were buying the best product in the market. It is totally different now. If they want to buy the best product in the market, they buy Palo Alto or Check Point. Cisco is trying to catch up to the competition.

When we talk about just the IPS manufacturers, I would rate the solution around six or seven out of ten. If we're talking about Cisco as a whole, I would rate them eight out of ten.  

I've found the web filter and JPS the most valuable features.

There are some features not found in Firepower, like data loss prevention, and SSO, to have a connection between Cisco and Active Directory, which was introduced on other products.

In the future, I'd like the same solution in other UTM solutions. I know it has an application filter, but it's not really improving. Also, DLP needs to prevent data loss. Those two features are really important now for firewalls and for the security. The data loss prevention really is the most asked for feature from the customer. Often they ask about how we can prevent loss of emails, of data, files. It's really important.

The solution is stable. This is one of the good things about Firepower. Especially if we use ESE with it. That would make it the complete solution for Cisco for security. If it is the complete solution, it's stable and there are no issues with the product. If the user isn't connected all the time, for example, if we look at some sites or some users, sometimes the connection for the user gets disconnected with each session. Sometimes the filter doesn't work. 

The solution is good to scale.

The technical support is really good. Not only for this solution. The support of Cisco is always good. From the first call, the response is quick and there is no problem with the support.

The initial setup is not complex. There is a wizard so it's not complex. There is a difference in the complexity of the deployment. Depending on customers and infrastructure, sometimes it takes one day or two days if we're talking about a little infrastructure. Sometimes it can take eight days or more to couple the firewall with ASA, and to do some more complex architecture. If we have a complex architecture, we need 2 people to implement, but if we have an implementation that is not so complex, one person can do it.

I do the implementation myself.

Most of the time the ROI good. The customer, most of the time, is happy and is convinced of the usefulness of the solution.

If someone wants to use Cisco Firepower, the solution is easy. The complete solution is the best for having the full security of a Cisco infrastructure. If I could advise someone with the deployment, I would advise taking the complete solution, in order to have a really scalable and stable solution. Or, if you can't take the complete solution, I'd advise taking a cluster of Firepower to have the scalability and stability.

I would rate this solution a 7 or 8 out of 10. If they could add a few of the mentioned features or do something more with the application filter it would be a 9 or a 10 out of 10.