What is most valuable?
Managing Cisco Secure Access through the single cloud management console will not be difficult if you experience it once. This means once you have hands-on experience, you know how to operate it. In the first time, you might have a challenge because you need to understand the system. However, once you understand it, it will not be difficult anymore.
I find the zero trust approach helpful and beneficial in securing standard applications, which means you are accessing the applications directly instead of giving privilege to access the network itself. This is very beneficial in the context of security and is very effective.
Regarding the threat detection and response capabilities, because it's integrated in the cloud, users don't have to configure it to integrate with Talos. The feed that it has is already there, detecting malware and blocking it by itself from the Cisco Secure Access. The Intel is there, and we do not need to manually integrate with Talos.
What needs improvement?
My personal thinking about Cisco Secure Access is that because I'm also catching up on this solutioning, I'm not really seeing any improvement because I'm still learning. So far, it's good; I do not have any comment on this.
Regarding features about the UI, the pricing, and the learning curve of Cisco Secure Access that can be improved, the AI is already embedded in the solution. Because I haven't explored much and am not an expert, the features might be there, but I haven't tested them out.
When it comes to thoughts on the pricing, setup cost, and licensing cost of Cisco Secure Access, I cannot comment as I only did SSE for Cisco and did not have experience with other products. In terms of price comparisons, I cannot provide much insight.
The more competitive the pricing for Cisco Secure Access becomes, the better it would be for customers.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Throughout my experience with Cisco Secure Access, I have had some stability and reliability issues, including lagging when accessing the portal. Sometimes the response is fast, and sometimes it's slow, with response information that can be either correct or wrong. However, I consider these minor issues because they recover in a few minutes afterwards, though there are still glitches present.
How are customer service and support?
In evaluating my experience with the technical support and customer service of Cisco Secure Access, during the POC, we did not leverage tech support at that particular moment; instead, we engaged directly with the SE team, the Cisco System Engineer teams.
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Cisco Secure Access
September 2026
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How was the initial setup?
Regarding the experience with the initial setup of Cisco Secure Access, it is important to communicate with the customers on the requirements, so they understand and prepare whatever we need to set up the POC. We need to communicate effectively with them and let them know what we need. Once our requirement is fulfilled, we can proceed. The key point is that communication with the customer must be maintained.
Once we have all of the requirements, the setup of the product itself is not that difficult. The first time requires understanding many things, but after the deployment and gaining experience, it becomes quite straightforward.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I give Cisco Secure Access a seven because I did study other products as well. While I haven't deployed any other SSE product, I went for the training. The way of deploying and the solution is quite seamless, but that's my current assessment without hands-on experience with the other products.
What other advice do I have?
As a partner with Cisco, this relationship is more related to the partners agreements, which is why we are selling Cisco Secure Access.
My impressions of Cisco Secure Access on protecting organizations from threats such as phishing or ransomware attacks are based on my recent POC. There aren't many use cases I have shown to the customer, but I can confirm that the solution is effective.
I would evaluate my experience with the Cisco team as an eight on a scale of one to 10, where 10 is the best.
My advice for other users who would like to start working with Cisco Secure Access is to find a good service integrator. As I come from the service integrator background, my advice to end users is to collaborate with a reliable SI that has the expected expertise on the solutions they are going to purchase and enroll.
The overall rating for Cisco Secure Access is 7 out of 10.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner