Cisco Secure Access Reviews

Our main use cases for Cisco Secure Access would be to allow secure access to our corporate users and to securely authenticate to the network.

My favorite AI Access feature would be to assist in troubleshooting. That would be the main use case for most AI on most of the Cisco platforms. It comes in handy as far as helping get visibility and to help speed up the resolution time.

Right now we do not leverage VPN as a Service. We are leveraging SASE, which is Secure Access Service Edge. That is what we are mainly using in our environment.

The feature that I like the most about Cisco Secure Access is the ability to use various different endpoints for the end users to have the same type of connectivity wherever they are.

The feature is great because it allows us to travel, work remotely or work from the office and have the same level of security and connectivity as if we were at the office, but from our home or from elsewhere.

For Cisco Secure Access, we would leverage the AI Assistant just to see what it can provide for us. But for the most part, we are still leveraging it manually, doing manual debugging and troubleshooting.

I do see it as a promising feature because it has a lot to offer since the AI model inside of Cisco Secure Access has visibility into our network and our Secure Access network. Once we get everything rolled into it, we will be able to optimize it and utilize it a lot more than what we are right now.

For policy misconfiguration, it is a great step and another great troubleshooting tool aside from the AI. With the policy configuration, it will allow us to see if someone is trying to join the network and how come they are not able to join the network. It will give us the exact configuration that we would need to go back and look at to allow this network connectivity to take place instead of looking at it from square one, doing packet traces and troubleshooting the logs.

Most of the Cisco AI offerings are relatively new and do not have all the bells and whistles. It is not a full ChatGPT, so it is kind of in its baby form still. For the most part, we are still not leveraging it fully because it is not exactly fully mature yet.

For right now, that is the case. But in three to four years, it will be a lot better and will be able to integrate with most of the other products. Because right now, it is still in its baby form.

A good feature that Cisco Secure Access could improve would be to automate the deployment further, even more than what it already has. For example, on our platform SD-WAN, if we can get a full automation to where we are not building templates anymore and are just letting AI do it, leveraging that AI Assistant, if it ever gets there or once it gets there, that will just help the migration with just a few clicks instead of having to do all the templating and the whole workflow.

I have been using Cisco Secure Access since this company, so for about six months.

My thoughts on the stability and usability of Cisco Secure Access would be I would give it a ten out of ten. It is essentially the same as Umbrella and the workflows are very similar. Personally, I have not noticed any bugs or anything like that, which is a huge plus.

Right now we are still leveraging the multi-organizational feature in Cisco Secure Access. We mainly just have our organization since we are a healthcare organization. Whenever we look into wanting to expand our reach into other organizations, we have not gotten there yet. We still have to look at the documentation to see how that would affect our network and our data. We have to be mindful of the customer's data, so that is something that we are going to have to pay attention to closely before we just roll out.

We are able to expand Cisco Secure Access using the templated workflows that we have in Cisco Secure Access. We are using it for SD-WAN. We would essentially just reuse the same template to various devices, and it is just as seamless as integrating the router itself on the network. It happens together, which also increases its use case and integration in our network. It makes it a lot easier to do.

My experience with the customer support with Cisco Secure Access would be great. We are only working with our account manager who has a specialized person that comes in and helps us out. So far, I have no need to open a TAC case with Cisco Secure Access. That goes back to my previous statement that there have not been any bugs or anything. Everything is pretty much working according to the plan.

I would rate the technical support ten out of ten. Hands down.

We did upgrade from Umbrella to Cisco Secure Access. That is correct.

The move from Umbrella to Cisco Secure Access has been great. Cisco Secure Access has more features available to it and it is a nice and easy migration from Umbrella to Cisco Secure Access.

We leverage the SD-WAN platform. We will just build a tunnel to Cisco Secure Access, build our policy there, and then just shift the customer's data to the tunnel pointing towards Cisco Secure Access rather than Umbrella. The migration is very seamless, which I appreciate.

What worked in our deployment with Cisco Secure Access would be that it is a very similar deployment to Umbrella. It is essentially the same workflow, but we would just point the tunnel and create it on Cisco Secure Access rather than Umbrella. The workflow is essentially the same, which also helps with its integration in our network.

At the company where I am now, we are using Cisco Umbrella and we have always been using it. That is all that we have ever known at this company, which is still pretty good.

There are other products out there such as Zscaler and Netscope which offer a similar service. But we prefer Umbrella and Cisco Secure Access because it will integrate seamlessly with our existing Cisco products and it will make our automation much more seamless. It will integrate a lot easier with Umbrella and Cisco Secure Access.

We did not use any other solutions due to the fact that we are a Cisco shop. Personally, I used to work for Cisco, so I am very familiar with onboarding networking environments to both Umbrella and Cisco Secure Access.

With using ThousandEyes with Cisco Secure Access, we have not gotten there yet. As I mentioned, we are still kind of rolling it out. We are still integrating most of our networking components into it in phases. We are not there just yet.

I would recommend that other companies use Cisco Secure Access if they are a largely Cisco network. If they are using Meraki or routers, Palo Alto firewalls or any other vendor, or if they are vendor agnostic, then I could see them using Zscaler or whichever. Companies that would best fit for Cisco Secure Access would be a Cisco-centric company that uses Cisco routers, switches, and Meraki. Those companies would be the best fit for Cisco Secure Access.

The biggest point of investment for Cisco Secure Access would be that it is more efficient or I would say it offers a bit more for our network than Umbrella. There are more features available to it. Right now we are still getting used to Cisco Secure Access. We have not gone through all the bells and whistles yet. Right now we are just building the basic firewall policies and data loss prevention policies, and then once we get our baseline done, then we are going to hit the extra bells and whistles that Cisco Secure Access has to offer.

Honestly, given that it is still so new and I am at my company where we are still rolling out SD-WAN and still doing a lot of these things, Cisco Secure Access has been good. It is mostly pretty much empty and we are still just filling it in. It is working pretty well right now. We have not seen any issues. I am pretty satisfied with the product. It has not crashed and it is still highly available. I give Cisco Secure Access a rating of ten out of ten.

Hybrid Cloud

The two typical use cases of Cisco Secure Access are how remote workers securely access both private applications, public applications, and SaaS applications from anywhere.

In my opinion, Cisco Secure Access is a complete SSE solution. The second good thing about it is that it has very deep end integration with other products which are required to improve security, such as multi-factor authentication and NAC products, all coming from Cisco. Whatever the customer use case may be, not only Cisco Secure Access but other applications coming from the Cisco security product line are available without needing to look outside of that ecosystem. Typically, I can just take it from Cisco and complete the entire solution.

From my perspective, it is quite easy to manage Cisco Secure Access.

The Talos integration for threat detection and response capability is a must for any product, whether running a SIEM or XDR. The Talos threat intelligence, which is possibly one of the largest organizations that gathers all this data and sends updates, comes free with every Cisco security product. That is really important because security is not static; it is dynamic. New viruses and malware are emerging constantly. Talos ensures that I get updates of everything being seen across the globe so that I am not left behind.

When it comes to protecting against phishing and ransomware, it is pretty good because all identified signatures and non-signature-based protections get updated through threat intelligence. However, as I said, it all depends upon what your attack surface is. If the attack surface is mail, for example, where the bulk of threats get percolated, then it has to be augmented by additional security layers such as email security. Based on the threat attack surface, you have to protect those also with an additional set of software.

The only negative side of Cisco Secure Access is the mindshare. From my perspective, the greatest positive side of Cisco is that it has a very complete story on the entire overall security requirements of a customer, whether it is end user security, network security, or workload security. It covers it all. Having said that, the customer mindshare of looking at Cisco as a security OEM is pretty low. That is one thing which in my mind, Cisco has to really improve.

The second thing is, of course, multiple panes of glass to manage multiple products. That has been a long-standing demand from customers that they should simplify that, and Cisco is working towards it. The third thing is AI integration. Cisco is also aggressively working on AI integration with their products. Mindshare is one of the biggest challenges of Cisco security products, and they have to increase customer awareness sessions to increase the customer mindshare about their security products.

One big challenge which I see with Cisco is their MDR capabilities. They do not provide it as a service, which Palo Alto does provide. Cisco's policy and strategy is to enable partners so that it becomes partner-enabled services using Cisco products. Whereas Palo Alto provides MDR as a service and Sophos provides MDR as a service, Cisco enables partners such as us to provide equivalent services. However, there are multiple enterprise customers who would prefer to go to the OEM for that service. There are multiple big wins which Palo Alto had in India because of their own MDR capability. If I were to fight as a partner with my capability and Cisco products, I surely cannot fight the might of Palo Alto. That is one area where possibly Cisco has to relook.

With regards to my experience with Cisco Secure Access, I have been working with it for at least two years now.

Regarding Cisco Secure Access, I would agree that it is a 99.9% stable and reliable product.

My impression of scalability for Cisco Secure Access is good. Being a cloud solution, it has unlimited scalability. Scalability is not an issue. You can scale based on the number of users and licenses. You have SIA, SPA, and all licenses. Scalability is not an issue since it is a cloud-based solution.

I believe customer service from Cisco is good and not a problem in India.

Regarding the deployment procedure and installation of Cisco Secure Access, it is straightforward and not much of a challenge.

We usually deploy Cisco Secure Access in our Center of Excellence, and we keep demonstrating that to the customers. It is fine and not much of a hassle.

Quantifying the return on investment depends upon what the use case is and the automation we can build up. We just did some study where, with automation and all of that, we can get almost 30% ROI.

In comparing Cisco Secure Access to its competitors in the market, I think the leader is definitely Palo Alto.

Comparing Cisco Secure Access pricing with its peer group, I think they are still comparable in terms of pricing. It also depends upon how desperate Cisco is to win the deal; they can also go better. When I say peer group, I am talking of Palo Altos of the world, and so forth. They are a little bit on the higher side, but still, when it comes to closure of the deal, they get aggressive and they can meet up with the competitive price points.

I have to study more about Cisco Secure Access's ability to provide secure access via HTTP/2 and optionally QUIC, so I am not aware of this, and I will not comment on that.

Summarizing all that I have told you about Cisco Secure Access, mindshare, multiple panes of glass, AI integration, and MDR are all aspects that could be slightly better. Those are the areas for improvement. Overall, I would give Cisco Secure Access a rating of eight out of ten.

Public Cloud

Other

Cisco Secure Access is used primarily for remote access into on-premises servers. We are currently in a hybrid ZTNA and VPN solution, and with ZTNA, we have more flexibility about what traffic goes over VPN and what traffic stays through the internet.

We still have the VPN aspect, and with ZTNA we also have the ability to make those on-premises servers accessible securely anywhere in the world.

Cisco Secure Access has affected our transition to zero trust and least privilege principles by enabling us to run an RDP session through a web browser and tie it in with our Azure AD SSO, so users do not even need a client and can still log into these servers securely.

I am happy with the performance and security levels it provides. I feel it is a robust and high-performing product, and it has both the clientless and the client aspects, which I really appreciate.

The features of Cisco Secure Access that I like the most include its ease of use.

Cisco Secure Access is both client-based and clientless.

The multi-organization management capability of Cisco Secure Access is very usable and very user-friendly, and the end users are happy with it. I try to make the product and the process as painless as possible for all our end users, so it runs well.

Cisco Secure Access has affected our transition to zero trust and least privilege principles by enabling us to run an RDP session through a web browser and tie it in with our Azure AD SSO, so users do not even need a client and can still log into these servers securely.

I am happy with the performance and security levels it provides. I feel it is a robust and high-performing product with both the clientless and the client aspects.

We have not explored much of the Experience Insights feature powered by ThousandEyes of Cisco Secure Access, as it is part of our Meraki package, but we have not really done much with it yet.

We have been using Cisco Secure Access for about five years now.

I would assess the stability and reliability of Cisco Secure Access as very good. Nothing comes to mind regarding downtime, crashes, or performance issues.

My experience with customer service and tech support is great, and I am very happy. Every time I run into an issue, I can get a hold of someone at Cisco to get it fixed.

They are responsive and quick on their feet.

To address the same issues, my organization did not have any solution put in place.

I have not used the policy verification to help reduce policy misconfigurations.

Policy configurations have not caused slowdowns or blocked access for users in the past.

My experience with deploying Cisco Secure Access is that it is very easy to integrate with the Meraki products.

We implemented Cisco Secure Access about five years ago.

The pricing setup cost and licensing was not complicated; it was painless.

When selecting Cisco Secure Access, we were not looking at different options in comparison. We knew we were going to move all of our hardware over to Cisco, and so it made sense.

Comparing Cisco Secure Access to something like Cloudflare One, in the future the cost can come down. I have also looked at Zscaler for ZTNA, but overall, it is a robust product. Obviously, we always look at cost. I think Cloudflare may not have as robust of a product, but the cost is very minimal.

I would give Cisco Secure Access a rating of eight.

I would give customer service and tech support a rating of nine.

My overall review rating for Cisco Secure Access is eight.

Hybrid Cloud

Microsoft Azure

Our company's use case is exclusively for VPN, specifically for remote users at this time. We are exploring what other possibilities or functions are available, such as ZTNA and other features, but we have not reached that point yet. The only business case that stacks up currently is the replacement of a legacy VPN with Cisco Secure Access. We are looking to explore further functionalities that come with it.

Using Cisco Secure Access for VPN as a service is key, especially with hybrid working where many users are home-based or traveling around the world. It is crucial that we get the VPN up and running consistently, especially if people need access to secure resources. Based on our use case, I think it has been really good to see the statistics and the number of users connecting daily, and we receive great data from it. There are many more things we can do, such as integration with ThousandEyes and Cisco ISE, but we have not done that yet. For now, we only use the basic functionality, which is a VPN as a SaaS service, but we are looking to expand to zero trust network access and various other features available.

The most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Access is the VPN, which I find very easy to use. It has a great GUI, and it is easily explainable to people. When we have remote users, it is quite easy for them to understand how they can log on, and even setting up the solution, we probably accomplished it in a record 24 hours. We worked with your expert and the product was up and running in 24 hours. We had a few more things to sort out, but it was fully functional in 36 hours with users able to log on. It is a great product.

I do not think there is anything I would improve about the product other than the support issue. I know there are various integration things when it comes to SASE, and Cisco Secure Access is one of the products that will help us in that journey. We have many Cisco routers and there is more we can do with the product, but we have not been able to use it to its full capacity yet, which is one of the plans we are working towards for this year.

I have been using Cisco Secure Access for 14 months.

I find the solution stable. Other than when you do work in your data center, I think that is where we need to improve a bit. When you have planned works in your data center, I think you need to carry out some post-checks to ensure we are not affected as users.

I think it is scalable. You can run much more, and as I mentioned, there are so many things you can do with it. It is just that we need to find a proper business case and get everybody on board; it is going to be a journey.

My experience with Cisco support has been brilliant. We had a couple of issues recently, but I think the team has been very helpful. We had some planned upgrades in Cisco's data center, and after that, we had some posture issues. We escalated to Cisco, and once the issue was identified, we received really good support. I am pleased with the support we have from Cisco.

I would rate Cisco support an eight out of ten. I would have given them a ten if we did not have those issues last week. Based on that, I would probably say eight. The recovery was alright, but I think there is quite a bit of work to do around making us aware of the works taking place and what we need to be aware of. Other than that, I think it is brilliant support from Cisco. I quite appreciate your experts; specifically Luke Abditch has been a brilliant resource. He helped us set up the entire platform.

Positive

The issue from last week was that during planned maintenance, you specifically performed posture checks and updates that had compatibility issues with Cortex. We were not really notified about what it was going to affect. In the morning, when users tried to log on, nobody was able to log in, and we had to get the right people from Cisco on the call to diagnose the faults. I think that is probably an improvement area, so people know what sort of works took place and where we need to concentrate to investigate the issue. After it was identified, I think it was spot on, and we were back up and running.

To make it a ten, I think it is both ways. I have not explored the product to its full extent, so once we make use of it more, then maybe we will face a few more challenges with integration. Other than that, for now, it is an eight for us.

What would help me explore it more is really about getting everybody on board from our side; it is not to say it is a Cisco issue. It is more us trying to inform people about what else we can do with this product. We do not want to rock the boat, but we want to do it in a phased manner.

Cisco could help me with onboarding more users and features. My overall review rating for Cisco Secure Access is eight out of ten.

Hybrid Cloud

Other

My main use case for Cisco Secure Access is providing access to private resources. For example, we have outstaff or any external partners, and we don't want to provide them wide access to our network. Cisco Secure Access provides us the opportunity to give access granularly, exactly for the resources that are needed for our partners, outstaff, and so on. It's one of the scenarios, and of course, besides ZTNA, we use internet access, which provides us the opportunity to control users through a web proxy and apply some policies to control them.

Regarding whether the deployment of Cisco Secure Access has impacted the help desk ticket volume and the end-user experience, I believe it has improved significantly. For example, we have two separate infrastructures; it is a hybrid one. In Ukraine, we have infrastructure in local data centers, and in Europe, we have it in the cloud with Google. To have access to private resources, we needed two different profiles of VPN. Using Cisco Secure Access and building IPsec tunnels between Cisco ASA and Cisco Secure Access, we can combine these two separate infrastructures and use only one account to access resources in Ukraine, in local data centers, and in Europe.

The feature I like the most about Cisco Secure Access is the whole concept of zero trust. It is exactly what we need, and I believe that Cisco Secure Access is the future of cybersecurity. For this year, one of the challenges for our team is to provide secure access instead of VPN.

An example of how Cisco Secure Access benefits the organization is that it can be maintained from one console, so we don't need a lot of staff to maintain it. With our current architecture with VPN, we need a lot of technical staff. We have a lot of processes like installing certifications, creating accounts in Active Directory, and so on. At that moment, we have Azure as an identity provider. We're connected with Cisco Secure Access, and we can do all of this from one space. And of course, if we're talking about security, it's the observability. We can control it from one admin panel.

In general, I think features can be improved. We have some issues regarding the routing, regarding some configurations, and so on. But we communicate with local Cisco partners, managers, and engineers, and they always help us to solve these issues. They are trying to push Cisco engineers to improve and develop more features that would be relevant for clients. So in general, I don't have any bad experience.

In my current field, I have been using Cisco Secure Access for more than seven years, and I believe this is the second year of implementing Cisco Secure Access.

Regarding customer support, I did not use it at some point, and we did not have any crashes or downtime during this period.

Cisco Secure Access is scalable to the growth of the organization.

Regarding customer support, I did not use it at some point, and we did not have any crashes or downtime during this period.

At the moment we decided to use Cisco Secure Access, I didn't think of having another solution. In the production environment, we use Secure Client. Of course, we had experience with another solution, with your competitors. We tried, for example, ZTNA from Cloudflare, but for our needs, we use exactly Cisco Secure Access.

The experience of deploying Cisco Secure Access depends on internal collaboration. If internally you have a nice collaboration with another team, it is easy. Because to deploy it, you need to collaborate with the DevOps team, with network engineers, and cybersecurity. If every one of these teams understands the reason why we would like to use it, it is quite easy and fast.

I cannot answer whether I have seen a return on investment from having Cisco Secure Access.

Regarding costing and licensing for Cisco Secure Access, we use a lot of services from the Cisco security bundle. Cisco Secure Access is part of this bundle.

I decided to use Cisco for a specific reason because historically we have used a lot of solutions by Cisco. At that moment, according to the functionality of Cisco Secure Access, it was one of the best solutions on the market.

Cisco Secure Access definitely utilizes the hybrid private access feature, with the configuration of conditional access and so on. Regarding the integration of Cisco Identity Intelligence with Cisco Secure Access, I am not sure.

The usability and efficiency of multi-organization management in Cisco Secure Access is quite high-level. Overall, I evaluate the AI applications in Cisco Secure Access positively as I don't have any bad experience. The AI Assistant in Cisco Secure Access is helpful sometimes, especially if it is something simple. I use the AI Assistant feature of Cisco Secure Access just during the configuration of the policy.

Cisco Secure Access is both a client-based and client-less solution. It depends on the case and situation. For some resources, for example, that store some sensitive information, I prefer agent-based.

The influence of Cisco Secure Access on the transition from VPN to ZTNA regarding users is that we just want to simplify the process of accessing private resources, and it only improves the user experience. The deployment of Cisco Secure Access has improved the help desk ticket volume and end-user experience by allowing us to combine hybrid infrastructure and reducing complexity with a simpler, unified access solution. Overall, I believe Cisco Secure Access deserves a rating of eight out of ten. It is a fast-growing solution, and I understand that it is in the process of developing, but your team is so responsible, and they are ready to help at any moment.

Hybrid Cloud

Google

The use case depends upon the vertical, such as manufacturing or enterprise. Mostly customers are looking for secure remote access to their applications. They may have a vendor ecosystem where they do not want to install any client. If they are looking for a clientless VPN like ZTNA, Zero Trust Network Access, that is where it fits. Mostly they want to move away from the centralized filtering point of view, even if it is a proxy. They want to facilitate access wherever they are geographically distributed. Because Cisco Secure Access PoP is there everywhere in major regions, this helps.

If they have a use case of a user sitting in an office and a user sitting remote, and a vendor accessing their applications from outside their network, you cannot expect anything installed in the vendor laptop, which is a non-domain laptop. That time, you need to have a solution that supports secure access of that application for that vendor who is sitting outside the network and is not a domain user.

Private application access is definitely there with the resource connectors. The concept of resource connectors is there to ensure the backend traffic from the application to the user. I have use cases, but I mainly worked on SaaS web traffic where I position SSE. Internal traffic is there, but not much discussion. It is hybrid only. There are customers who are adopting data center and coming out from cloud to data center, and vice versa. Definitely it will be Hybrid Remote Access.

The price and license for Cisco Secure Access are fine. Cisco documentation is always good. As a product, in terms of Cisco SSE, I appreciate the feature set. It is simple. The product is giving whatever you need from a customer point of view. Suppose point A to point B if you have to send data, you need not worry about anything such as your data might get compromised or somebody can do a middleman attack because everything is secure. They are sending the traffic encrypted and categorizing the traffic based on the type, whether web traffic or internet traffic, and doing the security mechanism that is needed for the traffic type. You can tick mark that flexibility is there.

Cisco SSE has an AI model, so you can write the policies if you just write it in plain English, it can do that. It can also drill down to AI Canvas, which is the new product that Cisco has launched.

I sold ThousandEyes and had done proof of concepts. ThousandEyes is a good product. However, the major flaw for ThousandEyes is the way they are calculating and giving the costing to the customer. The way the units consumption pricing is structured is not that great. That is the biggest flaw, and that is where people are not adopting it. The success rate of ThousandEyes when going with a digital monitoring concept is that it will address from endpoint to the application level and cover all domains. However, the way you are structuring your pricing with respect to the consumption of the units is a major issue. The pricing structure is not good in ThousandEyes. Apart from this, it is a good product. It can identify the issues related to an endpoint, if it is a remote user, if it is an internet issue, or if it is an application issue. The HTTP response time and latencies, everything it is giving. However, when a customer is trying to adopt it, the pricing structure is not good.

I have been using the solution for one and a half to two years.

Performance is addressed in a different way. Suppose I have a user in a branch in Europe, or if I have a branch in Australia or if I have a branch in India, they are sending to the nearest PoP, SSE PoP. You can form a tunnel from your branch. In that case, the connectivity reaching out to Cisco Secure Access PoP is being addressed. They are having redundancy also because it will have two tunnels. If this tunnel fails, still you can reach out to Cisco Secure Access cloud.

There are no scalability issues because SASE is scalable.

Cisco TAC support is better compared to any OEM. That is what I feel. However, what happens with the TAC engineers is once their shift timing ends, they will just exit the call. Again, we need to explain to the other engineer. Even they will not refer much to the notes captured by the previous TAC engineer, and we are starting again. When their shift is done, they close the call. That is not proper support.

Positive

There are some customers who are using VPN still and maybe they are very slow in terms of technology adoption. The flaw of VPN, everyone knows now, and everyone is realizing the flaw because the moment I just enter into the network, I can go and have a lateral movement across the complete IT infrastructure. It is giving the whole access of the particular network. Whereas ZTNA will predominantly give you access as per your role, allowing you to access only that particular subnet or particular URL or particular application. In that way, you are segregating and you are not allowing certain lateral movement. That means they cannot enter into your holistic complete network. That is the basic difference and the basic flaw, and people are realizing it, but few people are not adopting ZTNA in terms of technology.

The setup is an eight out of ten.

We work with Palo Alto and we work with Zscaler, the same kind of thing. Zscaler is the one that started the proxies, the cloud proxies. We are very much aligned with Cisco.

We have done one major project with almost 350 outlets of one of the customers. It is fine.

I am not sure about Cisco Secure Access setup costs as I did not feel any issues. ThousandEyes I can address, but for Cisco SSE, I think the licensing structure is fine and easy to set up, quick, and documentation is good. Everything is fine.

I prefer Zscaler is good. After Zscaler, Cisco is good.

Ask for references and friends feedback. We work with Palo Alto and we work with Zscaler. Zscaler started the proxies, the cloud proxies. We are very much aligned with Cisco. It's a good product, but the major flaw is the way they are calculating and giving the costing to the customer. The units consumption pricing is not that great. My overall review rating for this product is an eight out of ten.

Hybrid Cloud

Other

The major use cases for clients regarding Cisco Secure Access involve ZTNA, for when you require cloud services, like ZTNA, Secure Web Gateway, CASB, and Firewall as a Service. When you want to secure your on-premises equipment, on-premises data center, or services center, we provide the connectivity through the cloud, and at that moment, we use Cisco Secure Access.

The ZTNA part in Cisco is very important because it helps my customers to secure applications. When you configure your application or deploy your application on the on-premises data center and you want to access it where there is no trust on the inbound—whether you are an enterprise user, a remote user, or any other user coming through the cloud—then you will provide only the split tunnel or the tunnel between the cloud and your data center, which provides Cisco Secure Access.

CASB is also relevant when your services are deployed in many different cloud services, as you can use CASB in those scenarios.

The biggest benefit of Cisco Secure Access, compared to Fortinet or other solutions from Palo Alto or Prisma, is its adaptability to different network environments.

Customers appreciate the good features of Cisco Secure Access because it is a hybrid network solution. When there is a hybrid network, customers require Cisco Secure Access so they can access both cloud services and on-premises data center services.

I would say it is easy to manage Cisco Secure Access through this console. It is similar to managing a firewall, such as the FTD, and the console is straightforward.

I have seen that if the on-premises devices are Cisco devices, then we use Cisco SSE. However, when there are Fortinet devices, then we use FortiSSE, which indicates a potential area for improvement.

Cisco could add new features in the future, such as enhanced automation capabilities. They are providing automation in their technology, which is an improvement area. If you use automation tools like Red Hat, you can perform automation more effectively. Regarding AI, I think Cisco is doing well, though there is still room for improvement in AI capabilities.

I started working with Cisco Secure Access relatively recently, but I understand how it works and how we submit proposals for Cisco Secure Access and Fortinet security solutions. When we require cloud security, then we provide Cisco Secure Access and SSE.

Cisco is stable and reliable.

Scalability mostly depends on the architecture, not on the hardware or OEM. How you architect and define the network design determines scalability. If you do not have a good architecture, you cannot achieve scalability.

I think Cisco's technical support is good. I believe that both Cisco technical support and Juniper technical support are very good.

If the requirement is for Cisco equipment, then we propose Cisco Secure Access. If the requirement is for Fortinet, then we provide FortiSafety.

As a system implementer, I think the biggest advantage of the product is its usability in various scenarios.

I am not certain who is the leader when comparing Cisco with Fortinet and Palo Alto. Both are good at what they do, and sometimes we cannot use all the features of any product. We use specialized or customized features for our data center according to customer requirements, and all follow standard features and protocols, which are good.

The HTTP protocol is important for connecting through the cloud or establishing a tunnel. A VPN service and another tunnel between the cloud SSE and your on-premises data center are essential.

Cisco Secure Client provides the resource connector. There is a connector on the on-premises data center, so we establish a secure connection, mostly VPN or IPsec VPN, between the cloud and the data center.

I would say that Cisco Secure Access is effective in protection from ransomware and phishing attacks. It is a standard they are using, and when you are using Cisco devices, then you can rely on Cisco cloud.

Both deployment parts are not very difficult. It is straightforward.

I did not deploy Cisco Secure Access myself, but I understand from my team that it is not a big challenge.

Cisco could add new features in the future, such as enhanced automation capabilities. They are providing automation in their technology, which is an improvement area.

My experience is primarily with clients using a hybrid model.

We mostly integrate with Azure and AWS through the cloud.

I cannot say who is the leader when comparing Cisco with Fortinet and Palo Alto. Both are good at what they do, and sometimes we cannot use all the features of any product. We use specialized or customized features for our data center according to customer requirements, and all follow standard features and protocols, which are good.

I would rate Cisco support at an eight out of ten. The overall review rating for this product is nine out of ten.

Hybrid Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

My role is to enable partners and customers in Cisco Secure Access and help them understand and design their architecture. When a client comes to me to understand the use case they have with Cisco Secure Access, I suggest how they could use it, such as securely accessing their AWS server via VPN.

Cisco Secure Access is distributed by distributors of Cisco, Palo Alto, and Checkpoint, along with other tech companies. All the basic features, including ZTNA, are part of Cisco Secure Access, which can be considered an upgraded version of Umbrella with advanced features of ZTNA and ThousandEyes integrated for Digital Experience Monitoring.

When comparing Cisco Secure Access with other vendors, Cisco approaches it differently because it allows the use of the QUIC protocol rather than blocking it. Cisco Secure Access has a Hybrid Mesh Firewall concept, giving the advantage of managing all firewall capabilities on a single portal. The manageability of Cisco Secure Access is on a single dashboard.

In comparison to Zscaler, with Cisco Secure Access, I can create a Private Access Tunnel with any vendor or routing device. For ZTNA in Cisco Secure Access, Cisco does it differently by allowing ZTNA on both client basis and browser level for contractor access. The integration with CASB is positive for Cisco Secure Access, and multiple applications such as Office 365 and Google Suite are being integrated.

The importance of Cisco Secure Access providing secure access via standard HTTP/2 and QUIC protocols is significant due to QUIC being faster than TCP. Cisco Talos is integrated with every other security product in Cisco, including Cisco Secure Access. For threat detection and response, that integration with Cisco Secure Access is important. Cisco is working on DLP with Cisco Secure Access, which they are continuously upgrading.

I have used Cisco Secure Access for three years now.

Cisco Secure Access is more stable and reliable than Checkpoint.

With Cisco Secure Access, I can scale it anytime, and licensing is quite easy.

The customer service is good and great because Cisco has a large team of engineers providing support. I would rate the customer service support from Cisco at eight or nine.

I started with Fortinet and Checkpoint, and then moved to Cisco regarding security products.

Configuring Cisco Secure Access is straightforward; the dashboard clearly shows the steps needed.

ROI with Cisco Secure Access is quite good because it reduces hardware dependencies and offers many features.

Checkpoint has much data latency when connecting to cloud compared to Cisco Secure Access, which has no such issues. Currently, Cisco is giving a very good discount to partners for Cisco Secure Access and providing feasibility in user size. Cisco Secure Access decreases the dependency on hardware while simplifying licensing. It is a cloud-based product. At the back end, Cisco is deploying Cisco Secure Access on AWS or some tenant, but we only see a subscription-based model. I have interacted with AWS Marketplace when deploying ISE, but Cisco SSE service is not available there. I would rate this product nine out of ten overall.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

My use case for Cisco Secure Access is to replace our on-premises, not site-to-site, remote access SSL VPN as we are going from on-premises to cloud service.

The second use case is to replace our Umbrella service, as we currently use Umbrella and will migrate to Cisco Secure Access as well, along with all the policies.

I consider the most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Access to be that it merged everything into one dashboard, the Cisco Secure Access dashboard. Previously, we had web access in one location and remote access in another, and we could not link them to each other. Now everything is in one place, and we can base the access control on usernames because we have the Azure Active Directory integration. We can also build policies based on that and can see or identify the impacted users.

Cisco Secure Access benefits our organization by offering Points of Presence close to our employees because we are spread across the world. Until now, we had only European gateways, so traffic had to go from India, for example, over to Europe and then sometimes back, which was delaying a lot. With Cisco Secure Access, we have a presence close to the user.

What we really find challenging is that we do not have granular role-based access control models. The only options we have are full admin or read-only. We have different departments in the company that have different responsibilities. While we as a networking team are full admins, we do not want to manage the policies regarding which websites are allowed and what is not allowed. That should be managed by our compliance team.

The granular access issue is coming from the product limitation at the moment, as it does not offer us the option to tell it that a particular role can only manage websites, allowed sites, and blocked sites. Categories or something similar are not possible.

If I had to improve the product, that would definitely be role-based access control. Though from another point of view, this limitation may also be a benefit because it forces us to implement our own front-end to use API calls. Using API, you can limit the access to that particular key.

I would rate Cisco Secure Access as very stable until now. We have not seen any service degradation during the maintenance activities that Cisco performs, which seems to happen frequently because we receive notification messages. However, we do not experience any service degradation, so that feels stable at the moment.

I find the scalability of Cisco Secure Access is working well at the moment. The main benefit is that we do not need to care for hardware anymore in the future, such as lifecycle management. However, the migration is a little challenging because the technical background that we had, such as the routing and what happens there, is not really visible to us in the cloud service. Those are the challenges, but we are working with TAC and onboarding people that are assigned to us at the moment from Cisco.

My experience with Cisco's technical support is good because the person assigned to us is guiding us. He understands what our use case is and he is guiding us on what we should configure and what we should not configure.

Before, we were using Cisco Firepower as SSL gateways.

I would describe my experience deploying Cisco Secure Access as working well, though we are hitting bugs. I have the feeling that whenever we explore a new product from Cisco, we hit a bug. At the moment, we are dealing with challenges because a new feature that was implemented is to support multi-tenancy. When we originally started, that feature was not available, so we had only one organization. Now we have a multi-organization feature, so we were migrated to it. However, we feel that with this migration, something was left behind that is not working properly. In our original organization, we have issues applying permissions for users, and we always have to raise TAC cases with the people who help us resolve it. They are currently working on that.

I have not seen a return on investment yet, as we are still building. We are in an extended pilot phase at the moment, where one country, India, is migrated to this solution, and we are deploying one by one, starting with less critical sites first, and then we will see.

We did not evaluate any other solutions before. It was basically a move recommendation by Cisco since we stuck with Cisco, as we had a subscription before. With the contract renewal, Cisco pushed us in a direction where we could keep using the old environment for free as part of the renewal, but we decided to go straight to the new product and migrate.

We use VPN as a Service for our users to remote access our company, and web browsing is going through Cisco Secure Access as well. I am not using the AI Assist feature in Cisco Secure Access yet. I am not aware of VPNaaS in Cisco Secure Access. We are not using Zero Trust yet, as that will be a stage three. First, we want to get rid of the on-premises VPN gateways and then start developing Zero Trust, so it is not in use at the moment. I am not sure what Hybrid Private Access means, but what we have is an integration from Cisco Secure Access to our SD-WAN, where the Cisco Secure Access Points of Presence are directly connected with our SD-WAN cloud, optimizing the communication. I am not sure if that is what is meant by Hybrid Private Access. I would rate this product overall a six out of ten.

Hybrid Cloud

Microsoft Azure

We installed Cisco Secure Access for customers rather than our company since we're a reseller.

Cisco Secure Access is not installed for VPN as a service; the customer using the VPN side is using it for access into the core network, so it functions as a landing point and an on-ramp into the core.

The most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Access is the secure web gateway, which provides the secure edge.

The reason for this is centralized firewall control for people going out to the internet, so you can manage it. The essential ROI we are looking for with Cisco Secure Access is secure access to the internet, and in reality, this is the key factor where we can control access based upon various aspects such as AD group, plus we have a single portal where we can see what is going on and easy management.

If I could improve Cisco Secure Access in any way, it would be with Meraki integration; we do a lot with Meraki SD-WAN, and while the functionality is coming, currently it is not an Auto VPN integration, but I know it is now in public preview, and we have started to have a look at it in the lab. That is key for us because we have had a lot of problems with the VPN from Meraki into Cisco Secure Access, especially since local breakout does not work if you are running BGP over the VPN. Auto VPN functionality would be a big improvement.

The other issues we are having are around Talos and content filtering functionality; the Talos database is insufficient because Cisco Secure Access web gateway database is not big enough to hold every URL, leading to numerous problems with URLs not being categorized correctly and a slow turnaround for recategorization requests. Therefore, improvements with content filtering and Talos integration are significant for us, and we are speaking regularly to the Cisco teams about this.

Another significant issue involves a parent-child problem we have with the URLs; if they match multiple URL categories, then the rule base only looks at the first category, so it does not match multiple categories, resulting in a lot of problems around the Talos content filtering integration.

I have been using Cisco Secure Access for three months.

Cisco Secure Access is stable, as we have had issues with the factors I have mentioned, but we can see that it is being developed all the time, which is key; new features are being released and integrated. It is stable, but since we are new to it, it is about getting an understanding and a better feel for it.

So far, the scalability of Cisco Secure Access looks good; we are going to test that more as we have a project now to roll out to quite a lot of sites. Based on our discussions with the Cisco team, we should be good, but I cannot fully answer that until we have pushed it out to the hundreds of sites that we are looking to do.

I have worked with the support team, and they are really good; I am actually about to meet one of the guys now to have a chat and catch up, so we have had some good exposure to the support teams.

The support team assigned to us is very good, so I would rate them an eight or a nine, but if you are raising a TAC case, it can be hit or miss regarding the knowledge of the TAC engineer that picks it up; on the whole, it is quite good, probably a six or a seven. However, there have been times when it has been lower due to the confusion between Cisco Secure Access and Secure Connect, especially when integrating Meraki support cases. Many of the Meraki engineers did not recognize Cisco Secure Access and only knew about Secure Connect, leading to some communication problems between Meraki and Cisco.

Positive

Deployment of Cisco Secure Access now takes around half an hour to add a new site now that we have the baseline in place.

Adding a new site is easy now that the framework is in place.

Regarding licensing, the Essentials license, being the entry-level option, is somewhat lacking in my opinion; you lose a lot of the Layer 7 functionality that customers are looking for today. When talking about secure access, you typically expect next-gen firewall type features, and Layer 7 is quite key for that, which you do not get much of with the Essentials, but the Advantage license has a lot more and seems a lot more robust. We would definitely be looking to push the Advantage license in the future rather than Essentials.

I rate Cisco Secure Access a six at the moment; it is developing, and we can see that progress is happening. Its potential is there, but if I am being perfectly honest, I think it is a little immature at the moment and needs some work to develop some features.