Cisco Secure Access Reviews

Cisco Secure Access serves as a major replacement for traditional VPNs with a VPN-as-a-Service offering. This is particularly useful for clients with aging VPN architectures who face challenges in scaling out.

The product also optimizes firewall capabilities for geographically distributed operators and enhances proxy-based architectures with Secure Web Gateways and CASB for cloud or SaaS applications. By integrating with identity providers like Azure Entra ID or Okta, Cisco Secure Access facilitates the transition from VPN to ZTNA while ensuring compliance with principles like least privilege access.

Additionally, it incorporates identity and device risk scores for dynamic access policies to respond to varying risk thresholds. The service is particularly useful for managing old VPN infrastructure replacements, firewall optimizations, and bridging the gaps between old and new secure access technologies.

The product also addresses unique geographical challenges, such as ensuring secure internet access for oil rigs in remote locations. Furthermore, Cisco Secure Access's multi-tenancy and Policy Verification features are crucial for managing multi-organization environments and ensuring policy accuracy, respectively.

Hybrid Private Access is particularly useful in regions where replacing existing gear isn't feasible due to cost concerns. Lastly, the product's AI-driven features like AI Access and AI Assistant ease policy management and triage, reducing the time and efforts needed in these processes.

Cisco Secure Access offers numerous valuable features. The VPN-as-a-Service replaces traditional VPNs, providing global secure access without installing solutions at each location, allowing geographically distributed operators to benefit from scalability and optimization.

The integration with identity providers facilitates this transition and aligns with Zero Trust Network Access principles. The platform offers capabilities like Secure Web Gateways, Firewall-as-a-Service, and CASB for enhanced cloud-based functionality. Its Policy Verification runs checks to prevent policy misconfigurations, a necessary feature for managing multi-organization environments.

Moreover, the product's AI-driven capabilities streamline policy management and triage, enhancing operational efficiency. Hybrid Private Access and multi-tenancy capabilities make it resource-efficient and particularly useful for unique geographical challenges. The product is scalable, adjusting to new requirements easily, and is backed by robust technical support.

Despite being a value-for-money product, there are a few areas for improvement. Transitioning for customers from Palo Alto to Cisco Secure Access has its challenges, primarily due to previous infrastructure setups and migration paths. Cisco Secure Access may not seamlessly integrate into such settings, although it performs well in a Cisco-based environment.

Furthermore, while the AI capabilities of Cisco Secure Access are useful, they are not seen as major differentiators compared to competitors such as Palo Alto.

Additionally, though the existing threat intelligence is sufficient for most use cases, extending the integration scope with other tools, especially concerning AI supply chain risk management, could enhance its functionality.

The first time I came across Cisco Secure Access, it used to be called a different solution. It was a combination of multiple solutions. First they started with Cisco Duo, and then they expanded into Cisco Secure Firewalls over close to three years. They conducted a lot of branding changes and naming convention changes after that.

While the product offers strong overall stability, there were occasional issues, particularly involving Linux devices. However, these hiccups were more related to endpoint-client interactions rather than being vendor-specific problems. Overall, the solution is stable, but improvements could further enhance reliability.

The scalability of Cisco Secure Access is a strong feature. Initially driven by the need for improved scalability over traditional VPNs, it has proven to scale seamlessly alongside infrastructural growth. Effective collaboration with account teams ensures a robust and flexible solution designed to meet future scaling requirements without significant issues.

The technical support from Cisco is exceptional. They provide geographically distributed, responsive support with strict SLAs. The purchase of premium support ensures rapid response times, upholding high-quality service delivery across the board. The commitment to excellent service reflects positively on client experiences.

I used to work for Deloitte until six months ago. Currently, this is about managing our own internal infrastructure and then managing that of a couple of our operators and partners. Reselling is not something I am doing currently. I used to do that until June of this year.

Installation and deployment of Cisco Secure Access are straightforward. Comprehensive and publicly available documentation supports this, backed by assigned account managers and optional professional services. Despite anticipating complexities by procuring external services, they were unnecessary due to the clear and simplified setup process offered by the existing resources.

We had an account manager who was assigned to us and then we also purchased some professional services for day zero and day one, in case we got stuck.

The integrated capabilities of Cisco Secure Access deliver significant ROI through reduced mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR). The resource efficiency is notably improved as fewer personnel are needed for triage and system management. The AI features further contribute by expediting threat detection and incident response, ensuring tangible returns through operational savings.

Cisco Secure Access offers good value for money. Existing product relationships provide cost advantages, ensuring reasonable pricing without overcharging. Although the solution is cheaper than premium options such as Palo Alto, existing Cisco licenses facilitate replacing previous solutions with Cisco Secure Access smoothly and affordably.

If you were a Cisco house in the past, I would certainly use that. If you are coming from something with a Palo Alto firewall infrastructure, I would prefer going with Palo Alto. It is more about the widespread adoption. When ten different people are doing the same thing, then I guess the other five people would do the same thing.

While client-based solutions serve corporate employees, clientless options cater to third-party contractors and onboarding procedures without equipment. These options ensure seamless transitions to full client-based systems for long-term corporate users.

Regarding the multi-organization management capability, it is akin to multi-tenancy, helpful for service provider infrastructures with multiple clients or single customers with diverse business units. It brings intuitive infrastructure management without providing unique features compared to competitors.

AI supply chain risk management, while theoretically beneficial, may not give an edge unless thorough integrations with additional tools are pursued. Furthermore, the choice of not implementing low-cost workflows was based on a need for higher security enhancements.

I would rate this review overall at a seven out of ten.

Hybrid Cloud

My main use case is Zero Trust because we're moving to a full SASE platform and Cisco Secure Access was our first step.

Cisco Secure Access has helped my organization significantly, especially when we went through a cyber event and lost all our previous remote access. We were able to get Cisco Secure Access up within seven days and roll it out to all our people to get everybody back online. It was a very fast rollout to 30,000 users and we regained full functionality within those seven days.

I appreciate all the features of Cisco Secure Access, but I find the Secure Web Gateway is probably the best feature, followed by the Malware and IPS in the cloud.

The Secure Web Gateway is probably the best feature of Cisco Secure Access because it simplifies access and allows me to lock down my entire environment. My access network only allows 443 to Cisco Cloud, with no other traffic, reducing the chance of anybody getting in and cross-connecting to anything else.

One area that needs improvement with Cisco Secure Access is the ZTA policy itself, which is lacking because it is limited to one policy for one target. If I have multiple policies I want to apply to a multiple group for the same target, I cannot do it, which is very limiting.

I have been using Cisco Secure Access for 14 months.

I did not face any major challenges or have bugs, crashes, or downtime during the deployment of Cisco Secure Access. However, we experienced one downtime when all of Cisco Secure Access went down, but it was not specific to our organization.

My experience deploying Cisco Secure Access was positive. We had CX services and got it in within seven days, so it was pretty easy.

I can definitely say I have seen a return on investment from having Cisco Secure Access, as it has cut down our admin cost. I have eliminated three sets of firewalls that I did not need to have. I would say we probably save about 30% in hardware and about 20% in administration right now.

My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cisco Secure Access is that it is part of our security EA, so it is included in our program, which is part of a much bigger portfolio.

Before adopting Cisco Secure Access, I used Zscaler, which is along the same line, but I am not a fan. I am happy because I find with Cisco it ties well with the rest of the ecosystem, unlike Zscaler, which does not. We did look at Zscaler.

The attack we faced had a big impact.

I am not using the AI assistant feature in Cisco Secure Access yet, as we have started looking at it, but it has to go through risk assessment first.

I am not using any other AI tools in Cisco Secure Access. We were deploying AI endpoint but that has been paused.

I do use VPNaaS in Cisco Secure Access.

The transition from VPN to ZTNA with Cisco Secure Access has just been more secure for me. It is more secure because VPNs are easy. If somebody compromises a VPN, you get traditional full access to things, whereas ZTNA allows isolating access to an individual system, providing limited access.

I am not using the location enforcement by location features of Cisco Secure Access yet, but it is on the roadmap to deploy.

My experience with the Experience Insight feature, called DEM, is not good. I find the integration between Cisco Secure Access and ThousandEyes does not work well and does not deliver what it is supposed to. In fact, we have not been able to get it to work, making it pretty useless right now.

I have integrated Cisco Identity Intelligence in Cisco Secure Access, which is influenced by security. It is all tied to the identity, the root trust. That is where we are using it for.

My experience with the multi-organization management capability of Cisco Secure Access in terms of usability and efficiency seems okay for the limited usage we have for the multi-tenant. I cannot really comment if it is good or bad.

I would rate this review a 10 overall.

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.

Our main use cases for Cisco Secure Access focus on information security direction in companies like banks, and we are implementing it in on-premise or cloud systems while integrating it into third-party vendors, particularly with information security teams.

I appreciate the posturing feature of Cisco Secure Access because it is very useful, especially when our company needs a hybrid system combining on-premise and cloud systems to work together with security; there are many features, and while I cannot tell you specific ones because it is part of the business, I basically value all of them.

I can provide that these features of Cisco Secure Access benefit not only our company but also the business that implements this approach, as our company is a professional team who knows how it works, and we are implementing what they need; our benefit is that we know it very well, and Cisco also supports us in this direction while we develop our IT and security knowledge.

When we started to use features such as AI assistance in Cisco Secure Access, it became very helpful for the IT and infosec staff because they have more visibility, and as an operational team, it saves them time.

I evaluate the AI Access feature of Cisco Secure Access as very new at this moment since we are just starting in a testing regime; we are now working on trusting everything about how it works, but I can say that deep dive visibility is more available now than it was before with these AI assistance features.

We are integrating Cisco Identity Intelligence with Cisco Secure Access, and it is the engine of everything.

This integration influences our identity management and security measures to be 100% better than they were before.

Cisco Secure Access could be improved with fewer bugs; we need to address less software bugs, as there are technical issues and errors in the software, which we are trying to resolve to achieve a more stable version that companies can use without issues, but it is a working process, and we understand this.

We started to use Cisco Secure Access about two years ago, especially in the government and financial sector, so we have two years of experience.

Technical support from Cisco is very helpful.

I would rate technical support a nine and customer service a 7.5.

The ratings reflect our region; it is not a global assessment, but in our region, it is this way.

Positive

Prior to adopting Cisco Secure Access, we were using another solution to address similar needs.

My experience deploying Cisco Secure Access is that it is very intuitive for a technical team, though the challenge lies in understanding the underlying processes; once that knowledge is acquired, deploying Cisco Secure Access becomes much easier, and if the team does not understand how the underlay routes work, that presents complexity.

I have not seen a return on investment with Cisco Secure Access.

Setup costs and pricing for Cisco Secure Access are not our case since we are doing it ourselves, and I think the pricing and licensing are acceptable and comparable to other solutions.

We are using Cloudflare, and I believe the factors that led us to consider a change involve the different approaches of Cloudflare compared to Cisco Secure Access, which depend on business requirements.

Before choosing Cisco Secure Access, we considered using Palo Alto Prisma, and compared to Cisco, Palo Alto is a more expensive option for business, which is one of the most differentiated reasons why we are using Cisco Secure Access at this moment.

The help desk ticket volume and end-user experience have been impacted by Cisco Secure Access deployment such that it may take two to three months, with a reduction of two times.

We are just starting to use the AI assistant feature in Cisco Secure Access.

At this moment, I cannot answer how effective AI supply chain risk management is specifically for the pre-enforcement controls for developers downloading AI models because I have no experience.

I use ZTNA in Cisco Secure Access every day.

Cisco Secure Access is client-based or clientless, depending on business requirements.

It is always difficult to transition the mindset of the company to Zero Trust and least privilege principles, but after deep dive work, it works.

After integrating identity management and ISE in the company, everybody starts to use all policies and begins understanding the security policies; it is a unified solution for all business segments, not just IT, which has greatly benefited the entire company and influenced its development.

We do not use the Experience Insights feature, Digital Experience Monitoring, or DEM powered by ThousandEyes of Cisco Secure Access at this moment in our company.

In comparison to past years, Cisco Secure Access has improved very well at this moment.

It is very flexible, a very competitive solution, very helpful, and very secure; it includes everything a business needs, and the pricing is also available.

I advise other companies considering Cisco Secure Access to first evaluate their business requirements, then make a demo to compare with other solutions, and subsequently try to step-by-step migrate all their services and policies, ensuring they achieve the best solution for their IT and security teams. I would rate this review a nine overall.

Cisco Secure Access is used primarily for VPN, implementing Zero Trust, and ThousandEyes at my company. Nearly all of our end-users use the VPN, which allows them to access the network outside of the building. Implementing Zero Trust requires some industry certifications.

Cisco Secure Access being a complete platform makes sense when you have all Cisco switches and routers, as it allows for an easy setup. We previously used AnyConnect VPN, so upgrading to Cisco Secure Access was a natural decision to help people be secure.

We do use VPN as a Service in Cisco Secure Access.

We are currently going through a significant project where everyone is still using Cisco Secure Access VPN. We are trying to transition slowly to get people into profiles so that we can leverage Zero Trust. This is an ongoing effort we are working through.

We have the feature called ThousandEyes in Cisco Secure Access, but I do not know what it does.

The multi-organization management capability of Cisco Secure Access is really easy to use and straightforward. It definitely helps if you have used Cisco platforms in the past. Training somebody to leverage the tools would be pretty easy, especially with that background.

Cisco Secure Access being a complete platform makes sense when you have all Cisco switches and routers, as it allows for an easy setup. We previously used AnyConnect VPN, so upgrading to Cisco Secure Access was a natural decision to help people be secure.

The multi-organization management capability of Cisco Secure Access is really easy to use and straightforward. It definitely helps if you have used Cisco platforms in the past. Training somebody to leverage the tools would be pretty easy, especially with that background.

I cannot answer yet how Cisco Secure Access can be improved because we are still onboarding and I do not know what it all does yet.

One critique I have about the onboarding process is that for a lot of Cisco apps, you do have to sign back into everything. If you want to access your switches and then go into Cisco Secure Access, it is two separate logins, but they are both Cisco platforms. I feel that maybe an integration into one to have more of one cohesive overall platform for all Cisco apps would be beneficial.

We recently started onboarding Cisco Secure Access to try and implement Zero Trust about six months ago. We are in the early phases with a full running deployment. It is still an uphill battle.

I cannot blame any downtime, crashes, or performance issues on Cisco Secure Access because I did have one thing, but it is not because of Cisco Secure Access.

Cisco Secure Access so far has been pretty easy, and I do not think we have noticed any real drops because of the platform.

We have experienced customer service and technical support where we have opened a few TAC cases. We have had problems in the past, but we have gotten everything smoothed over and taken care of relatively quickly. All high-priority tickets on those TAC cases got taken care of within the day. So there are no real issues with support.

I would give technical support probably an eight for customer service and technical support. I cannot think of a time where we have been without support, so the reliability is probably a nine or ten.

I did upgrade from Umbrella.

We made the move from Cisco Umbrella to Cisco Secure Access to keep up with industry standards, since things are ever-changing in the tech world.

We made the decision to move to stay up-to-date, and we have been happy with the platform. Umbrella was great. Cisco Secure Access allows us to get a little deeper into some of the things, and having everything on one platform definitely helps, so I do not have to log into fifteen different things to access our switches.

The experience with the deployment of Cisco Secure Access is pretty smooth, honestly. We redeployed the VPN and then Zero Trust and ThousandEyes. Once we got everything set up and running, it was not difficult at all.

The biggest return on investment when using Cisco Secure Access is definitely an investment into security. That is my specialty, cybersecurity, so any tool that will allow us to have more visibility into our networking and securing our end-users is priceless.

We have been using Cisco devices for years, since before I started working there, so it was a natural move for us to choose Cisco security.

I would rate Cisco Secure Access overall an eight point five out of ten. It is a nice platform. It does what we need it to do. For organizations and users trying to implement Cisco Secure Access, I would say get familiar with the Cisco platform before trying to deploy it. It is harder trying to set the policies when you have end-users already actively on the platform. Do your testing, get what you need to get done, and then deploy it.

I do not have anything else that I did not ask correctly or that I missed that I would like to add about my experience overall. I would rate Cisco Secure Access overall an eight point five out of ten.

Our main use case is application security and user security.

The feature I like the most about Cisco Secure Access is the rate at which you can secure your application in-depth, similar to DPI on the security side of it.

Using the VPN SaaS in Cisco has influenced us greatly because it gives you a seamless transition from your legacy systems to this new system that is available, so the transition has been seamless.

So far, I have not had any issue with Cisco Secure Access, so in terms of areas to improve, we are satisfied.

I have been using Cisco Secure Access for the past four years.

So far, we have not experienced any issue with the stability and reliability of Cisco Secure Access. In terms of reliability, it has been doing what we wanted it to do, and we are hoping that it stays that way.

On this product, I would rate customer service and tech support an eight. I have other products with Cisco, but for this specific product, I would rate it about an eight.

I think we were using Zscaler before Cisco Secure Access.

I do not remember what prompted the change, but moving to Cisco Secure Access has been good.

I was more involved in the pilot phase when we were setting up Cisco Secure Access, but I'm not involved in the pricing for that; the architect team handles that.

We had help from Cisco deploying Cisco Secure Access, so we did not have that many challenges because the support was there.

When we were picking Cisco Secure Access, I did not consider other options. I started getting involved when it was down to two products, one being something that comes with Palo Alto. Since we are a Cisco shop, it makes things easy to get the Cisco product and then integrate everything together.

I have had experience with the Experience Insights feature, but not as much as my security team because I'm more on the networking side. However, sometimes I work with the security team, and from what I have heard from them so far, they have not had any issues since we made the transition.

We have not evaluated the AI Access feature of Cisco Secure Access for providing deep visibility and control over AI applications, tools, and large models because I have not actually used the AI side of things. However, we use many Cisco products that come with the AI feature.

I do not know if they are still using the hybrid private access feature for varying the enforcement location.

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

I am satisfied so far with the product. My overall review rating for Cisco Secure Access is 8.5 out of 10.

Hybrid Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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.

Public Cloud

Other

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)

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.

On-premises

Other

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.

Hybrid Cloud

Microsoft Azure