Cisco Secure Access Reviews

The main use cases for Cisco Secure Access involve secure access to the network, as they've had some history with malware, ransomware, and things like that. They are focused on better control for remote users and access to the network.

The ease of use for end users is always a big deal. We don't want to make it too hard for them. We're currently working on an end-to-end secure access solution. We are invested in Cisco, but there are other vendors involved as well, and trying to develop a holistic strategy has been a challenge for us. We have to avoid over-securing to the point where it becomes problematic, as too many hoops for users to jump through is always a challenge. It has to be easy because if it's not easy to use, they won't use it or will find back doors to it, which is a problem. That's where we're at with it.

It works well. It hasn't broken. While I don't know enough about all the features yet, it hasn't caused us any problems.

This is my first time in healthcare after being in commercial space for a long time. It's always a challenge because we can't just turn stuff off as we could in the commercial space, since it may interfere with patient care. It takes longer to understand what's going on, so anything that could help give us a faster understanding of what's happening, why it's there, and if it's a risk to us would be helpful. We don't have any good tools right now, which is a problem.

I have been using Cisco Secure Access for two months or so.

Cisco Secure Access has been good for stability and reliability; it hasn't crashed in the two months I've been using it.

We have a dedicated account team, so we've got all the people we need to engage with if there's an issue. It makes deploying in a larger enterprise a very easy choice. Having that backing is a comfort because, for more point-specific products or vendors, if you don't know who's going to stand behind them after you turn the lights on, that can be a concern. Cisco ensures support for the technology you use.

You have to have a good ROI and a compelling story with finance; I've definitely seen that. I came from Amazon, so it was a complete 180-degree turn. Not to say that there were unlimited funds at Amazon, but you didn't have to tell the story as richly. I was on the fulfillment side. Even if it didn't seem fully vetted, but appeared to make sense or had potential to improve speed and delivery, they bid on it pretty early.

It's different here. They want it thoroughly vetted with a deeper ROI. We need to understand the cost of an hour of outage at a hospital, which, at least here, they don't know. However, at Amazon, we knew exactly how much it would cost if a fulfillment center was down for an hour. We have to do a better job of that in our organization, and once we can clarify those points, we will achieve some of the wins needed to get things done.

Cisco is a rock-solid company and a leader in the network space, and I believe they will always provide the right level of support. 

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

Cisco Secure Access serves as a replacement for customers' old VPN solutions while increasing security through Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA). We had a chicken production client that identified their current VPN as the lowest hanging fruit for increasing security. Since the customer already had Secure Client or AnyConnect previously, introducing the ZTNA module into Cisco Secure Client felt quite straightforward. We implemented it step-by-step, side-by-side, and rolled it out for that customer, which improved secure access for both on-premises and cloud solutions and turned out to be very effective.

Cisco Secure Access offers seamless access and replacement for VPN; VPN can be quite clunky when you need to access cloud solutions. With Secure Access, you create tunnels to everything basically in the solution, simplifying things while improving security for our customers. I particularly appreciate the ZTNA story and accessing SaaS, on-premises, and cloud resources all at once.

Usability is one of the key factors in selling the product; it has to be easy to use. I think Cisco has done a good job there with Secure Client, and since many of our customers and a lot of the market are familiar with AnyConnect, showing them Secure Client, which is basically the same thing but with a new coat of paint, and telling them that it improves security while not being more difficult to handle is great.

Customers spend much less time troubleshooting VPNs because ZTNA works more stably, and therefore it has become a pretty good point of sales for us as a reseller to increase our revenue at the customer level, because it's an extra layer of security that you can add to an already existing networking solution. On the customer side, it increases performance and helps ease of use, and from the reseller side, it's a great product to add on to existing network solutions.

The customer's experience has gone from "Our VPN doesn't work and we need to troubleshoot it all the time" to "Our ZTNA does work and we don't need to troubleshoot it all the time." Cisco Secure Access has been very stable.

Cisco Secure Access's scalability is great; from a technical point of view, it's quite simple. However, from a licensing and cost point of view, there could be improvements in ease of licensing and better pricing.

The multi-organization management capability of Cisco Secure Access is excellent; it's a great feature that you can do with the multi-tenancy mode, and I think it's great that you can roll it out to separate organizations.

A more granular license approach would be beneficial, allowing customers to grow with half a module or one module at a time and add on the CASB, the DNS security, or the ZTNA. If they can do it granularly and grow slowly, I think that would be really advantageous for the sales process.

The license model can be simplified; it is a bit tricky to understand exactly which licenses you need. The cost was pretty expensive but also pretty reasonable, and if the cost could be brought down a bit, that would make it a much more attractive product for the Swedish market.

Customer support is decent; it is slowly getting better now with the new NIS2 and cybersecurity laws that are being implemented.

I have been using and reselling Cisco Secure Access for the past two years.

Customer support is decent; it is slowly getting better now with the new NIS2 and cybersecurity laws that are being implemented. I would give customer support a rating of five.

Neutral

We previously used Cisco AnyConnect VPN, so it was more of an upgrade rather than a switch; we switched from AnyConnect to Secure Client to SSE.

I do not have concrete numbers that I can share because I do not currently have them, but the customer's experience is that they are spending pretty much no time troubleshooting ZTNA, down from spending a lot of time troubleshooting VPNs. I would estimate it is probably in the 60 to 70% range of time saved when it comes to VPN troubleshooting.

We looked at FortiSassy, Cisco Secure Access, and the customer also looked at Cloudflare.

The AI access feature of Cisco Secure Access is really interesting. I do not think it is really there yet; the product has to mature a bit more for us to give it an honest evaluation. However, from what I have seen in the upcoming feature releases, I think it is a really interesting way to go for the AI agents in the solution.

We do not use VPNaaS in Cisco Secure Access.

I do not know how it has impacted incident resolution time because we have only used the Experience Insights feature in a proof of concept stage, and I have not yet done it in a full rollout.

The AI assistant feature in Cisco Secure Access has helped with the documentation and with administrative duties.

We have not integrated Cisco Identity Intelligence with Secure Access.

Everybody has a need for a VPN; VPN is not as secure as it once was because the market is moving fast. Cisco Secure Access and ZTNA is the way forward to ensure easy access and secure access to your preferred on-premises or cloud instances. I would suggest to customers that they allow us to help them by choosing ZTNA rather than VPN. I rate Cisco Secure Access an eight because an easier license structure, easier pricing structure, and better pricing structure would bring it to a ten.

I use Cisco Secure Access as a VPN service. Cisco Secure Access provides not just securing and filtering capability on the traffic, but also a cloud VPN capability. This basically relieves the company from using the traditional perimeter firewall to connect via VPN. VPN connectivity through the cloud is incredibly flexible and is not constrained by the power of the firewall the company has, because the VPN is through the cloud. This allows companies to provide VPN capability to any remote user on a very short notice and not be limited by their firewall.

I use ZTNA with Cisco Secure Access, which is another very clever capability that Cisco Secure Access has grouped along with several other interesting capabilities in one product. I always recommend and suggest to customers to try a proof of value or proof of concept of the product, which is very easy to do. Cisco allows any customer, literally for free, to test the product by themselves and test, for example, ZTNA capability. Customers can see for themselves with a proof of value how easy it is to install the product and how quickly it can be delivered in production.

I use it with my clients both client-based and clientless with Cisco Secure Access. There are requirements for customers to allow connectivity to subcontractors who cannot install a client on the endpoints. Cisco Secure Access is a crucial solution in these situations because it can protect both employees and subcontractors, or any situation where a client is not feasible to install on the endpoint, while still allowing the same kind of level of protection.

Cisco Secure Access has helped my clients transition from Zero Trust and least privilege principles. It provides protection even with technology such as MFA installed. It provides that seamless, transparent experience for a user that can use an agent installed. Cisco Secure Access covers a different spectrum of situations where the customer needs to protect remote access. There is also a flavor of Cisco Secure Access specific for IoT, which allows recording of the session. This is crucial for contractors when they need to access facilities offshore. This is a classic example of remote access where we cannot install any agent for the subcontractor, but we can record the session for whatever they do.

There are a couple of features that are currently the most valuable in Cisco Secure Access. First of all, the solution deploys very fast, and the other one is the performance. Cisco Secure Access adopted the QUIC protocol, which allows anyone, even when working from a plane with a very bad connection, to perform very well because it is basically a protocol that is adopted now by the industry. Cisco used it in Cisco Secure Access well before other vendors. It is a brilliant solution that allows branches, for example, to connect to cloud resources much easier than using the traditional way of communicating through a firewall.

I have worked with the Experience Insights feature, experience monitoring, and DEM powered by ThousandEyes with Cisco Secure Access. This is another acquisition that Cisco did some years ago, and it has been really instrumental for lots of companies to find out where the communication problem sits. One of the problems the customer faces is identifying where the communication problem is. If we start from the endpoint, we know the endpoint reached the access point, then the network, and then the provider and the internet. However, identifying where the problem is in the communication was difficult. Until ThousandEyes was adopted, it was pretty much a blame game between the provider and the customer, saying who was at fault or where the problem in the communication was. ThousandEyes allows us to say definitively, "This is the provider issue because we can see our network is working very fine until that point," or identify if the problem is in the network. It worked very well in several situations. Cisco in-built ThousandEyes in products such as Meraki and Cisco Secure Access, and you can see it basically now in-built in any product because that visibility is crucial.

Cisco is expanding Cisco Secure Access by protecting AI, especially the AI agent. This has been announced in the keynote this week. I am looking forward to knowing what Cisco is doing about protecting agentic AI. Cisco Secure Access is one of the best products to provide these kinds of capabilities because of the flexibility of the deployment and the ease of installation. It is quite pervasive because it reaches and protects the user wherever they are. For the agent, this is quite a crucial requirement.

For AI, I believe this capability is still in the roadmap for Cisco Secure Access. It should be announced possibly in the second quarter. This is something that, if asked how Cisco Secure Access can be improved, I would say the capability to protect agentic AI is a key improvement area.

I have been working with Cisco Secure Access for six years.

Some years ago, I worked with the technical support for Cisco Secure Access. However, I am now more of a consultant, so I am happy to advise our customers on the best technology available.

The setup generally depends on the scale of complexity, but if you go for a standard deployment of Cisco Secure Access, a couple of hours is all that is needed to have the system going. Depending on the complexity of the policy you want to configure, that could be longer. However, it is amazing that the same day you install the product, you can really use it.

Cisco Secure Access is more than a mature product at this point. Cisco capitalized on the experience with Umbrella, which was basically the previous product, and expanded with capabilities to provide a very effective connection for remote workers wherever they are and using technology such as QUIC, which is adopted by Google. It provides not just security, but also very effective communication wherever the user is working from. I would rate Cisco Secure Access as a nine out of ten because I believe there is always room for improvement, and I am really looking forward to what is coming regarding agentic AI, as I think Cisco Secure Access will play a lead role for that.

The first use case is access to the private application on the data center. The second use case is access to the cloud application on the cloud, plus the branches connected to the branches.

When discussing how easy or difficult it is to manage Cisco Secure Access through the single cloud managed console, I find it very easy. Cisco Secure Access is similar to Umbrella and Meraki; it requires just a few clicks to configure what I need or what use case I have.

The features I have found most valuable in Cisco Secure Access include Data Loss Prevention, Web Security Gateway, Cloud-delivered Firewall, and CASB. All of these features are amazing on Cisco Secure Access.

Regarding the integration of Secure Access with CASB functionality for exposing shadow IT within my organization, it gives me powerful capabilities to control shadow IT and its integration and features for Data Loss Prevention.

For sales, it is easy to tell the client about the benefits because it is simple, with only one or two lines for pricing. For pre-sales, it is very good as I can configure it in two clicks on CCW. The use cases can be summarized in just two or three slides of presentation. The user experience is very easy because the security is invisible to end users, meaning they do not suffer from strict security preventing them from doing their job. I find it an amazing product, and as it is an upgrade for Umbrella, it has all the good sides of Umbrella while removing some bad sides.

Based on my experience, the main point for improvement is the full integration on the Meraki dashboard. Cisco Secure Access with Meraki MX forms what we call a SASE solution. However, currently, Cisco Secure Access does not appear on the Meraki dashboard; they are still using Umbrella, which does not fully unify with Cisco Meraki.

Regarding functionality, I do not find things that need to be improved, except that Cisco should make the security web gateway, URL filtering, IPS, and fire-walling more robust for large businesses. These features are suitable for small and medium businesses but may need enhancements for larger enterprises.

For large businesses, it does need some improvement, but if it improved, I think it will not be enough as it is targeting small and medium businesses. This is not a drawback, just correct sizing.

I have been working with Cisco Secure Access since its launch, which is about two years ago.

For stability, I would rate Cisco Secure Access a nine. It is a new product, and although two years is not long enough to fully judge stability, I have not found anyone who complains about Cisco Secure Access or even its predecessor, Cisco Umbrella.

Positive

Regarding scalability, cloud solutions inherently allow for scaling up and down without issues, but as I mentioned before, it is primarily for small and medium businesses. I cannot judge its applicability for enterprise use at this stage, but for certain, I would give it a nine.

Positive

For technical support from Cisco for Secure Access, I rate them ten out of ten. Cisco is known for its exceptional support, with a lot of team resources available.

Positive

Regarding the initial setup for Cisco Secure Access, I find it very simple, and it is a native cloud solution; it is not on-premises at all. If Cisco decided to create an on-premises version as a unique delivery option, it would be an outstanding out-of-the-box solution.

For pricing, I consider this one of the few drawbacks of Cisco. Cisco is known for its high pricing, so I would give them a six.

Positive

In my opinion, the main competitors in the market for Cisco Secure Access are vendors delivering SASE solutions such as Palo Alto, Fortinet, and maybe Huawei, but I do not have a real branding name for these. I have not done in-depth comparisons with these products, but we can compare features such as DLP on Cisco versus Forcepoint.

Cisco Secure Access operates on the Cisco native cloud and not AWS or Azure; it operates in Cisco data centers.

I can recommend Cisco Secure Access to other users, especially if their country approves cloud solutions for their people. I am 100% confident in recommending this solution. I rate this review an eight out of ten.

We are about to start up with Cisco Secure Access now. We started this last year, but we have a lot of Umbrella that we are moving over to Cisco Secure Access. The main use cases for Cisco Secure Access are mostly the internet, but we are also looking for the client part, including ZTNA and so on, to move over that part from the traditional SSL VPNs.

The feature of Cisco Secure Access that I appreciate the most is the visibility and the ability to have one rule set for all the traffic. You can see the LAN connections and get them with SGT tags. This means you have all the things, not just your managed clients streaming through the policy set.

The features I have mentioned benefit our company overall by giving us one single pane of glass. We can see all the rule sets. We are partners, so we are building for our end customers and they appreciate having one single control point of the network. This is the most important aspect.

I am not using the AI assistant feature of Cisco Secure Access much yet. I think it is a little bit limited right now. This is something that can be improved, and I think it will be.

I hope there will be a good way to transform Umbrella installations over to Cisco Secure Access to improve the transition. I have not looked much into that part yet, but I hope there will be a smooth transition. Otherwise, that is an improvement that needs to be made.

We are about to start up with Cisco Secure Access right now, with the migration beginning last year.

Before using Cisco Secure Access, we were using Umbrella, which is also Cisco. We used Umbrella and also have a lot of traditional VPN as a service, SSL VPN and so on. We are coming from that part and moving to ZTNA. We are in a transition.

From my point of view, the biggest return on investment when using Cisco Secure Access is that we have not reached that point yet. As we have end customers, it is more up to them to say, but we think that it would be a better improvement and a better experience for the users, and probably fewer tickets and easier troubleshooting. I think it will provide a return on investment in the big picture.

My experience with the pricing, the setup costs, and the licensing of Cisco Secure Access is that it is not cheap, but I do not have exact numbers on what it costs. Comparing to Umbrella, I think we are getting a more future-proof solution, and I hope it is worth the money.

We did not consider other solutions before choosing Cisco Secure Access because we are almost 100% into Cisco with our services. We are using Cisco SD-WAN and Catalyst, for example, and we are looking forward to integrating that with Cisco Secure Access also. We are also using ICE and so on. We are quite integrated into the ecosystem with the services we are delivering, so we will use Cisco Secure Access for that part.

The impact of Cisco Secure Access on our help desk ticket volume and the end-user experience has been evolving. I do not have numbers for the help desk, but I think it is going in the right direction.

The deployment of Cisco Secure Access requires that if you do the internet part, you have to get the customer involved. They have to know which applications work well with a proxy and so on. For the ZTNA part and the client part, it is the same. You have to know your traffic patterns and so on, and you may have to start with a bigger, more allowing rule set and turn it down afterwards.

My advice to other companies considering Cisco Secure Access is to look over their needs and see what great opportunities it can bring to the company. The single pane of glass could be beneficial. You will also get your services together in one appliance, and not so spread out. I would rate this solution an 8 out of 10.

For Cisco Secure Access, my main use cases are the DNS functionality. Previously, we used Umbrella in the DNS stack functionality, and currently, we are using Cisco Secure Access.

Cisco Secure Access benefits my company by being a platform that integrates more than one solution, making it possible for us to have other solutions in the same platform, allowing us to manage SWG, the DNS part, and firewall.

The feature of Cisco Secure Access I appreciate the most is the DNS functionality. It's the main function that we are using currently. 

The impact Cisco Secure Access has on protecting my company from threats such as phishing and ransomware is significant. 

We utilize it extensively, especially the DNS part, which is very important. Even when we educate our users, the attackers become more advanced each day. They sometimes can use emails and other methods to attempt to attack our company, and Cisco Secure Access can help us protect our users, especially with the incredible DNS part.

The best part of managing Cisco Secure Access through its single cloud management console is that we can purchase as needed and add more products to this platform as necessary, within our budget. 

My perception of Cisco Secure Access's ability to provide secure access via standard HTTP2, and optionally the QUIC protocol, is that the platform is very complete, and the objective is to deliver a full stack of resources regarding security. We are offering this solution to our clients, and the adoption rate is incredibly high. They are very satisfied.

I have noticed that in recent years, particularly over the last year, Cisco has significantly improved the platform by consolidating more solutions within the Cisco Secure Access ecosystem. It is important for Cisco to bring more products. For us and our clients, it is easier to have a single pane of glass to manage all the solutions when discussing security. The platform being in the cloud also makes it easier as we don't have to have something on-premise in our environment for the solution.

We have numerous integrations, including Splunk and other solutions that can be integrated into the same platform. This is particularly beneficial when discussing the solution's benefits.

The worst part was the migration from Umbrella to Cisco Secure Access; we experienced some difficulties during that process.

Improving Cisco Secure Access is difficult for me to discuss in detail as I'm not the administrator of the platform. 

I have been using Cisco Secure Access for more than two years, since it was launched.

Regarding the stability and reliability of Cisco Secure Access, at least in Brazil, we don't hear about availability or stability problems. If a client has issues with the internet connection, it might not be the best way to deliver the solutions, however, this is a worldwide situation. We don't have problems with internet connections, especially in the offices, so it is not a problem.

Cisco Secure Access scales effectively with the growing needs of my company because we are talking about a cloud solution. It is easy to scale as necessary, especially when we discuss the DNS functionalities. 

We turn the traffic to the Cisco Secure Access cloud, and we can manage and apply the policies that are necessary, making it very easy to scale the solution.

I don't have direct experience with customer service and technical support, as I don't work in the administration of the solution. TAC is a worldwide service recognized as fantastic. We also have experience with other hardware and software, and my understanding of it is good. It provides good service.

Positive

My company did not consider other solutions before choosing Cisco Secure Access. We are a Cisco partner. 

However, our clients always evaluate other solutions. We work extensively to show the value of the solution since we have competitors, however, Cisco Secure Access has the advantage of delivering multiple solutions in the same single pane of glass.

We had a migration from Cisco Umbrella. There were some problems. However, the process now is easier as the solution is in the cloud and we can add more solutions and activate them in the portal. It's easy now. 

The biggest return on investment when using Cisco Secure Access is consolidating multiple solutions into a single pane of glass. We have competitors offering alternative solutions; however, they don't deliver the same level of integration as Cisco, which consolidates all solutions simultaneously through a single console.

Regarding pricing, the setup cost, and the licensing of Cisco Secure Access, being from Brazil, the cost for us is a very important point. Sometimes we show the solution for our clients, but the price can be problematic. 

We try to overcome this challenge by presenting the value and importance, especially for today's infrastructure to have more security, avoiding downtime, loss of data, and similar issues. The Cisco products are amazing, but especially in Brazil, when discussing the price, it remains a challenge.

We're a Cisco partner.

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

Our main use cases for Cisco Secure Access include everything, such as all of our switching and wireless.

I mostly work on the level one switching side. I deal with all the Catalyst 9300 switches and 9280 wireless routers.

It's pretty streamlined. Everything you need to find is in the GUI interface, and if you have any trouble, it's easy to navigate and get around. 

Cisco Secure Access has had a positive impact on protecting our organization from threats such as phishing and ransomware. It provides security and adds additional layers.

I perceive Cisco Secure Access's ability to provide secure access via standard HTTP2, and optionally QUIC protocol, as great and secure.

The licensing is confusing.

I have been using Cisco Secure Access for only a year since joining the company last year. However, the company has been using it for almost ten years.

We have not had any downtime.

Cisco Secure Access scales with the growing needs of my organization. It works effectively for our needs.

I would rate their technical support a nine out of ten. They are quick to respond and generally quick to find a resolution and figure out what's wrong.

Positive

I have not used another solution to address similar needs in another role.

It was already in place when I got here.

It is confusing. When you look at the prices, you have different licensing and years of licensing that you have to purchase. Additionally, it's unclear what service you get from those licenses regarding end-user support. We have a representative who has to walk me through it every time.

The advice I would give to other organizations considering Cisco Secure Access is to implement it as it's pretty straightforward. 

I would rate Cisco Secure Access a nine out of ten.

The main use cases for Cisco Secure Access are placing the product and attempting to place the product for the customer. People who do not have an SSE solution and do not know what it is need to be educated about it. I have to explain what it is and what the advantages are. There are two situations: people who do not know that they need it already and people who really need it and do not know which product to choose. Therefore, I guide them to a Cisco product.

The first targets for Cisco Secure Access are organizations with remote customers who are working from different places. They have many on-premises apps and many SaaS apps. The benefits are that people just need to connect and they have their whole environment available for everybody. It feels the same as if they were in the office, plus they are safe against malware.

A feature of Cisco Secure Access that I appreciate the most is its remote browser isolation. When I show them remote browser isolation, they see nothing different initially. Then, you have to look down right where there is a small Cisco blue square with text stating this page has been isolated, and suddenly the customers think that is wonderful. It is one of my favorite features because it puts a browser in the background. Many customers already have something similar to browser in a box, but it is local. When I explain to them that they can have the same feature in the cloud, which is safer, they appreciate it.

The good thing about Cisco Secure Access in terms of multi-organization management capability is that if you have multiple organizations, they were working with different softwares. Now they just work with one software, which is beneficial. It is pretty easy to manage. That is why I prefer to use it. Since you have one software, you do not need different teams. There is just one team working on the software. You can have two teams as a backup, but ultimately it is just one team for one software, which is good.

I am not using the AI assistant feature for Cisco Secure Access because it is not working properly. Sometimes if you write something very basic such as where can I find the connectors, it responds to go there. However, as soon as I target a specific case, it responds that it is unavailable at the moment.

Regarding the AI Access feature, I would say it has room for improvement. It is not bad; it is good, but it could be better.

In general, I think Cisco Secure Access can be improved. I have worked a lot with Cisco Secure Connect, which is very intuitive and easy. With Cisco Secure Access, things are very complicated. Everybody who has experience with Cisco Secure Connect and touches Cisco Secure Access responds with surprise and confusion about why this is needed and where to find things. I believe there is room for improvement. You have workflows, which is already good, but you can push the workflows even more. It is just the basics, and workflows with really specific problems and specific instances would be good.

I have been using Cisco Secure Access for two years.

Regarding crashes, bugs, or downtime, I do not think we faced any related to Cisco Secure Access as far as I remember. We saw downtime because customers were doing their own things, but not because of the software.

I do not know about the help desk ticket volume since in most cases, we are in direct contact with the customer. It could be, but I do not think so.

My experience with deploying Cisco Secure Access involves starting a proof of concept when the customer is almost ready to buy. I have a flyer that I set up to explain how it is going to work. Before starting the proof of concept, I create a questionnaire, asking how many private apps they have and how many remote workers they have, and I gather all the information. We usually conduct a proof of concept with the customers, meeting their requirements in a short amount of time. As soon as the customer is satisfied, they can test in real time how it is going to function. You also have to educate the customer on what is new, explaining how the traffic apps work, including blocking pages, warnings, and all features. It is fundamental during the proof of concept, as the customer has many questions about why certain things are done a particular way. That is pretty much how the deployment works. We do the proof of concept, present the software, take the formula to meet the requirements, put them in place, and as soon as it is ready to go, we make the switch and it runs.

I believe it is too soon to say that I have seen a return on investment from having Cisco Secure Access. The good thing with it is that you can also place other products, such as Cisco Duo for example. Today, I saw Neil present something at the convention, and now you can combine Cisco Duo directory with Cisco Secure Access. So, there will be a return on investment, but it is too soon.

My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Cisco Secure Access is positive. It is good because you want to push Cisco Secure Access, and regarding the price, it is very much below other products. So for the price, it is good now. I recommend keeping it that way.

Since I am working for the Cisco competence center, I did not consider another solution before choosing Cisco Secure Access. We just sell Cisco, so no Palo Alto, no FortiGate, no Zscaler.

I definitely use VPNs in Cisco Secure Access.

The transition from VPN to ZTNA with Cisco Secure Access has not really influenced users. People use the VPN to connect so they can directly access their on-premises apps. ZTNA is more for contractors and everything for the browser, but we do not really use it.

I use it in a client-based manner.

I am not really using the hybrid private access feature for varying the enforcement location for ZTNA private traffic right now.

My experience with the Insight feature, particularly digital experience and monitoring, is positive since ThousandEyes is already included in Cisco Secure Access. Customers can see a lot of details and monitoring, and they appreciate it. They do not usually use it, but they can see everything. So this is good.

It has impacted the incident resolution time since we have not had an incident regarding our customers. So, I would say it has potentially helped.

I have not integrated Cisco Identity Intelligence at this time.

For everything overall regarding Cisco Secure Access, I would rate it an eight. It is not a bad product, but for certain things, there is definitely room for improvement.