Cisco Secure Firewall Reviews

Our use cases include inbound access, outbound access, as well as VPN solutions, both site-to-site and for an incoming client. We wanted something that would do all those things at one time, as opposed to having separate boxes.

Our deployment is on-premises. We're looking at going into cloud-based with some of it. Meraki is the cloud-based version of the ASAs.

If we have a power failure at one building, traffic can be routed to our other building. We also have backup data stores. I live in the Northeast, so in the event of ice storms that cause power outages, it really enables us to keep functioning as a company rather than going dark for the amount of time it takes to get the power back.

The GUI makes configuring it much simpler than the command line.

They should work on making it a little more intuitive for users and not quite as complex. Still, it's a good product.

I've been using Cisco ASA Firewalls for 15 years.

It's very stable. We've had no hardware issues at all and only very infrequent software configuration issues.

It's very scalable. You can go to different models of the ASAs and they scale up to as big as you want to go.

The technical support is very good. Whenever we call up Cisco, we get a rapid response. They help us in troubleshooting issues we have and we implement the solutions and go on.

For me, there wasn't a previous solution here. I inherited the solution when I came in.

From a security standpoint, the return on investment is hard to quantify. You've stopped something that was going to cost you money, but how do you quantify that? How many times did it stop something from coming in that would have cost you a bunch of money? You don't know.

We've compared it to other solutions, like WatchGuard and other types of firewalls in that same realm. Cisco ASAs are fairly priced and very competitive with them.

Some of the solutions we looked at had different GUI interfaces that might be a little bit easier to get around in, but they might not have had as many features. Cisco had the feature edge.

Look at the features and consider what your migration path may be. Some other vendors offer firewalls with great bells and whistles, but when you look beneath the surface, they don't do exactly what they say. Do your due diligence and make sure you see everything.

In terms of resilience, in general, if we have any box failure, being able to fail over to another box or to fail over to another site helps measurably. Cyber security resilience is important for all organizations. The number of attacks going on just increases every day. There's a cost-benefit to building cyber security resilience. You have to get past that and build as much resiliency as you can. If you worry more about cost than you do about your product or your productivity, something else is going to fail.

Maintenance of the ASA is just the security updates that we watch for and updating the client software.

We started using this solution due to challenges with throughput. We needed devices with more quantity of throughput and bandwidth. We use this solution in different locations and different departments and we have around 2000 internal customers.

Cyber security resilience is really important for our organization. It is necessary for all the points for interconnections between LAN networks and WAN networks as we receive daily attacks.

The IP filter configuration for specific political and Static NAT has been most valuable.

The access layer of this solution could be improved in terms of the way the devices interconnect with our network. We need to be able to analyze the traffic between the different interconnections in these areas.

In a future release, we would like to have an IP analyzer to try to identify the specific comportment of the customers.

I have been using this solution for seven years. 

This is a very stable solution. 

This solution would need an adjustment to be scalable. 

Our engineers usually fix the issues we have, depending on the issue. When we reached out to the technical support team, they were attentive and helped us. 

We previously used Palo Alto, Fortinet, and Cisco Firepower. We switched because Cisco is more stable and offers easy deployment for the platform.

This solution requires regular maintenance and I have 10 engineers that manage it.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten because it is a good product that is more stable than others on the market. 

We were looking to consolidate some of our equipment and technology. When we switched over, ASA was a little bit more versatile as firewalls or VPN concentrators. So, we were able to use the same technology to solve multiple use cases.

We have data centers across the United States as well as AWS and Azure. 

We use it at multiple locations. We have sites in Dallas and Nashville. So, we have them at all our locations as either a VPN concentrator or an actual firewall.

Cybersecurity resilience is very much important for our organization. We are in the healthcare insurance industry, so we have a lot of customer data that goes through our data center for multiple government contracts. Making sure that data is secure is good for the company and beneficial to the customer.

It provides the overall management of my entire enterprise with an ease of transitioning. We have always been a Cisco environment. So, it was easy to transition from what we had to the latest version without a lot of new training.

• Speed
• Its capabilities
• Versatility

When we first got it, we were doing individual configuring. Now, there is a way to manage from one location. We can control all our policies and upgrades with a push instead of having to touch every single piece.

We have been using ASAs for quite a number of years now. 

We have other things around it going down, but we really don't have an issue with our ASAs going down. They are excellent for what we have.

There is rarely maintenance. We have our pushes for updates and vulnerabilities, but we have never really had an issue. 

It is very scalable with the ability to virtualize, which is really easy. We do it during our maintenance window. Now, if we plan it, we know what we are doing. We can spin up another virtual machine and keep moving. 

The technical support is excellent. I would rate it as 10 out of 10. When there has been an issue, we have had a good response from them.

Positive

We were previously using a Cisco product. We replaced them awhile back when I first started, and we have been working with ASAs ever since.

We did have Junipers in our environment, then we transitioned. We still have a mix because some of our contracts have to be split between vendors and different tiers. Now, we mostly have Apollos and ASAs in our environment.

I was involved with the upgrades. Our main firewall was a Cisco module, so we integrated from that because of ASA limitations. This gave us a better benefit.

The deployment was a little complex at first because we were so used to the one-to-one. Being able to consolidate into a single piece of hardware was a little difficult at first, but once we got past the first part, we were good.

We have seen ROI. When I first started, everything was physical and one-to-one. Now, with virtualization, we are able to leverage a piece of hardware and use it in multiple environments. That was definitely a return on investment right out of the gate.

The licensing has definitely improved and got a lot easier. It is customizable depending on what the customer needs, which is a good benefit, instead of just a broad license that everybody has to pay.

It is a good product. I would rate it as 10 out of 10.

Resilience is a definite must. You need to have it because, as we say, "The bad guys are getting worse every day. They are attacking, and they don't care." Therefore, we need to make sure that our customers' data and our data is secure.

It depends on what you need. If there is not a need for multiple vendors or pieces of equipment per contract, you should definitely look at what ASAs could be used for. If you are splitting, you can consolidate using this product.

We use it for perimeter and internal firewalls. We wanted a firewall with traffic inspection, packet analysis, and decryption.

Our deployment is on-prem and hybrid. We don't use it in the cloud as we use other vendors for that.

I'm not sure the firewall has improved our organization because a firewall is a must. It's something that you pick up and then trust. It just works for us.

Cisco is still catching up with its Firepower Next-Generation firewalls. It's naturally growing and getting better.

I've been using Cisco ASA Firewalls for 15 years.

It's stable.

It's used around the world. We have 20 data centers and each data center handles six offices. We have Cisco in every single location. If something new comes up, we'll increase our usage of the product.

Cisco's technical support is good.

Positive

We're a multi-vendor shop when it comes to firewalls, and we use Check Point and Palo Alto in addition to Cisco. We used to have Fortinet but that amounted to too many vendors.

When the Cisco product changed from legacy traffic inspection to the new Firepower it became a next-generation firewall. It was just a new product. That's why we decided to try it and stay with Cisco. It's like two different products: the legacy product and the new one. The legacy product was much simpler and the new one is, obviously, more complex.

I'm a designer, so I don't do racking and stacking, but I'm hands-on when it comes to configuration. I have used this product for years, so for me, it's not like adding a brand new product. It is just a matter of adding features, a hardware refresh. I wouldn't call it a challenge.

For maintenance, we have two to three network engineers involved.

The pricing of Cisco firewalls, in the security market, is fair. Their pricing of other products is questionable, but for firewalls, it's fine.

Compare Cisco ASA with other vendors' products and compare the features one-on-one. Pay special attention to the security portion, such as traffic inspection. That's probably the most important aspect. And then look at performance.

We use it to control the traffic between our inside and outside networks. 

We use the same firewall for the vendor by creating an IPv6 HyperSec VPN between the company and the vendor. 

It is a security solution. We needed to protect our traffic from the outside to inside. That is why we are using this firewall.

Cisco ASA is pretty good. We use it for Layer 3 and as our main firewall, protecting the entire organization. All our Internet traffic goes through it.

Their CLI is pretty good. 

In order to do an upgrade, we need to upload the software to the firewall, then upgrade the secondary and do a failover. Uploading this software into the firewall is old technology. For example, if you look at the Cisco Meraki firewall, you can schedule the software upgrade. Whereas, here we can't.

Recently, we have been having an issue with the ASA firewall. We haven't found the root cause yet and are still working on it. We failed over the firewall from active to passive and suddenly that resolved the issue. We are now working to find the root cause.

I have been using the Cisco ASA firewall for the last four years.

It is pretty stable. I haven't seen many issues during the past four years.

It has the scalability to replace the firewall with a higher model number.

The scalability meets our needs and future needs.

The technical support is really good. If we open up a case, they are pretty good. As soon as we open up a case, they assign a case manager. Also, they have an engineer on call. I would rate them as nine out of 10.

Positive

They had this firewall when I joined the company.

We also have Palo Alto that we use as a firewall for Layer 2.

I haven't really used the GUI features that much.

We have not integrated with any other Cisco solutions yet, but we have been thinking about integrating with Cisco Umbrella.

I would rate the solution as eight out of 10.

A lot of them are used for campuses. Basically, it is HA pairs so it is just used to firewall off different networks from the internal network, i.e., security. 

We also use them for DMZs, where there are untrusted networks coming into trusted networks, managing traffic between the two zones.

Currently, we have almost 100 firewalls spread out all across our county. Our ASAs could be anywhere in any building, wherever there is a purpose. So, if we need to firewall off a network that we don't want touching our internal network, where we want it controlled, then it would be there. All our campuses have some form of that.

It is easier to protect our internal network and identify unknown networks. We can put descriptions on what they are, thus we are able to see different traffic coming from different networks. So, there is better visibility.

The user interface is very easy to manage and find rules. You can do object searches, which are very easy. Also, the logging is very simple to use. So, it is a lot easier to troubleshoot and find items inside the firewall.

The one thing that the ASAs don't have is a central management point. We have a lot of our environments on FTD right now. So, we are using a Firewall Management Center (FMC) to manage all those. The ASAs don't really have that, but they are easy to use if you physically go into them and manage them. 

I would like ASAs to be easier to centrally manage. Currently, in our central management, we have almost 100 firewalls in our environment, and it is almost impossible to manage them all. ASAs are now about 20% of them. We have been slowly migrating them out, but we still have some. Normally, what we would do with ASAs is physically go into those devices and do what we need from there, whether it is find rules, troubleshoot, or upgrade.

We have had ASAs in our environment for 10 years.

The ASAs are solid. They have been around a long time, so there is a lot of documentation out there. They are easy to manage and make it easy to look at logs.

They have been in the environment for 10 years. They are still running and doing their job. 

The only time that we really touch them is if we need to do a rule or code upgrade. We check vulnerabilities a lot to make sure that nothing major has come out. If something has, then we go ahead and patch the firewalls. This is done by network groups, e.g., network engineers or analysts. We usually look at security. We are alerted to any new security advisories that come out from Cisco. For anything that is critical or high, we definitely will address it if we need to. Sometimes, we go three months or months without an upgrade. Other times, we could upgrade in a month. It just depends on what comes out.

We use them for smaller campuses. Though, if we need to upgrade a model, then we go ahead and do that. For example, with our bigger campuses, we need to have a bigger model. They have specs out there that you can kind of line up with what you need.

Cisco tech support is spotty. Sometimes, we get good support. Other times, it is not so good. It is very up and down.

It seems like they have been short staffed recently. We have been waiting a long time for some of our tickets now, though they aren't critical tickets. However, that is one of the big issues which Cisco has going on right now - their staff shortage. We can open a ticket and keep following up, following up, and following up, but it might take weeks to resolve an issue. These aren't critical issues. For critical issues, we escalate and they are able to help us right away.

They handle it appropriately. Though, it depends on the time and on what they need. Sometimes, in one session, issues are resolved. Other times, you need to do multiple sessions for them to resolve it. However, for anything critical, those are resolved pretty fast.

I would rate the technical support as seven out of 10.

Neutral

Before I started, they also had Juniper SRXs. The big issue with them was the logging. It wasn't as good. We switched to ASAs for better stability, better management, and easier logging.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. It was very simple to deploy and replace. We did a lot of replacing, which was just copying the rules over from the old one, then deploying it in kind of the same manner.

The pricing was pretty comparable to other solutions when we purchased it.

We looked at what we had and saw that Cisco was much better.

I would rate them as nine out of 10.

We use the Firepower as a perimeter firewall to protect from the outside network.

We are using Firepower to protect a number of services.

We are using it in a dynamic environment. This is important for our company's policies. The dynamic policy capabilities enable tight integration with Secure Workload at the application workload level.

The most valuable feature is the IPS. We also like the AnyConnect feature.

We monitor daily the final inspection activities and intelligence on Firepower. We also send logs from Firepower to our monitoring server, which is a nice feature.

The reporting and other features are nice, but there is an issue with applying the configuration. That part needs some improvement.

Services from the outside, like financial services that are critical, should be protected by the NGFW. There are cyber attacks on these services. Therefore, adding this NGFW in front of those services will reduce our costs for cyber crime.

We started using this next-generation firewall two years ago.

It is stable, but there are issues with the hybrid when you do the activation.

It is scalable. All our users utilize this firewall. We have more than 30,000 users who are end users, admins, and developers.

Cisco technical support team is perfect in their specific area, but they could improve their support for Cisco integration issues between products. I would rate them as eight out of 10.

Positive

We were previously using Cisco ASA for eight years. Now, we are using Firepower NGFW. We hope to continue using this product in the future, as long as there are no discouraging issues.

We are also using Check Point in conjunction with Cisco. We use Checkpoint for our internal networks and Secure Firewall for our outside network.

Installation wasn't that difficult, but there were some challenges on the integration. Sometimes, we face issues from the integration between another Cisco product's API and Firepower NGFW. We just integrated with our existing networks.

The firewall takes no more than two weeks to install. The integration with the API takes about six months.

We implemented ourselves. 

Two technical guys deployed it and now maintain it.

If we didn't use this NGFW, our company might have been charged by a number of attackers. Therefore, the firewall reduces our costs and operational expenses by around 40%.

Since the product is stable, we do not have to spend additional money to buy other firewalls. Once deployed, we can use the product for a long time. Thus, it is cost effective.

Pricing for Cisco is expensive. There are additional costs for the licensing part, support, and even the hardware part. The device cost is very high. I would be very happy with an improvement on the price.

From the user perspective, the reporting and other features are easy to use and user-friendly, but the Control feature of Firepower needs improvement, especially when comparing Firepower to Check Point NGFW.

For digital banking, this solution's firewalls have greatly improved our economy. Most enterprises in our country are using Cisco products because Cisco has worldwide support and cable devices.

I would rate this solution as eight out of 10.

We primarily use it as a corporate, perimeter firewall for traffic to the internet and back, for surfing. We also have some site-to-site connections with customers.

So far, there hasn't been any breach, so we are very happy.

It has also helped to reduce the operational costs of our firewall. There is a report that is automatically generated. You don't have to search for and prepare everything by yourself. You don't need staff to prepare the information because it is automated. We only go through this report once a week and if there are some special events, we can take care of them.

The next-generation features, like IPS, among others, are the most valuable. IPS is mandatory in modern networks for protection against malicious attacks and network anomalies.

Also, it gives you great visibility when doing deep packet inspection, but you have to do HTTP inspection. If you don't do HTTP inspection, the visibility is not complete. That is the case for every firewall vendor.

The ease of use, when it comes to managing Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewalls, is getting better because the UI is improving. It was a bit cumbersome in previous versions. Checkpoint, for example, has one of the most intuitive user interfaces, and now Cisco is really improving.

The only drawback of the user interface is when it comes to policies. When you open it and click on the policies, you have to move manually left and right if you want to see the whole field within the cell. Checkpoint has a very detailed user interface. Cisco is getting better and becoming more and more user-friendly.

Cisco needs a more intuitive user interface. When you know what to do, it's easy. Otherwise, you need training. You can install it and do the initial configuration, but if you don't have the proper training it's also possible to configure it the wrong way. If that happens, some things might pass through that you don't know about.

We have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for about five years, from the beginning of the Cisco Firepower 2100 Series.

We were on version 6.2.2 but now we're up to version 7.7.0, and it has really improved. It was not hard to implement but there were many bugs in the earlier version and some were serious, but now it's stable. There are no more bugs. It's really getting better. I would recommend Firepower to every customer now because it's stable. It's a really nice firewall.

The model we have is okay for our environment, so it's scalable. We haven't seen any problems in that regard. There are 50 or 60 devices behind it and about 500 clients. It is used in a very specific environment for a large Slovenian system.

The device has achieved its purpose. We won't implement any other features.

Cisco support is the best, especially if you compare it to other vendors. Cisco may be a bit expensive compared to other vendors, but the support is really good. When you open a case they're really responsive and they resolve every case. This is my personal experience, not only when it comes to Firepower but for the whole Cisco portfolio, which I have been working with since 2005.

Positive

The initial configuration was done within a few hours, but getting all the policies in place took about a month. That was not related to the firewall, it was related to all the requirements from management and from other people as well. But the configuration to get it set up initially was straightforward, nothing special.

My colleagues and I did the deployment. We are an internal team. We are integrators, so we were able to do it by ourselves.

When it comes to XDR, the cost-effectiveness of this firewall depends on the use case because you don't always need XDR functionality. SecureX is included free of charge, so from that point of view, maybe Cisco is not that expensive compared to other vendors.  Other vendors' XDR products are not free of charge. 

But if you just look at just the firewall functionality, Checkpoint is expensive but Cisco is not the cheapest. Fortinet is cheaper.

Where we have seen ROI is due to the support, time savings, ease of management, and the reporting.

Aside from the user interface, which is getting better, Cisco is at the top for functionality and in all other respects. We work with Fortinet, Checkpoint, and we used to work with Juniper, in addition to Cisco.

With Cisco, there are a lot of features such as the network map. Cisco builds the whole network map of the machines you have behind your firewall and gives you insight into the vulnerabilities and attributes that the host has. Checkpoint and Fortinet don't have that functionality directly on the firewall. They don't give you that direct visibility into the host, such as which operating the host has.

We don't work with Juniper anymore because its user interface is really not okay. You only have the CLI or you have to use Security Director for management, which is very complex and not user-friendly. That is why we abandoned Juniper as a product.

I would rate Cisco at eight out of 10 overall, and Check Point would be a seven. Check Point fields a great solution in this space, but they have very bad support, and support is one of the most important things. Having great blogs doesn't help if support doesn't come through when you need it.

We are using Firepower for outbound/inbound traffic control and management as well as for our internal security. We are using it for LAN security and VMware network security. It is a hardware device, and it is deployed on-prem.

Our target is to make our network 100% secure from the outside and inside traffic. For that, we are using the latest versions, updates, patches, and licenses. We have security policies to enable ports only based on the requirements. Any unnecessary ports are disabled, which is as per the recommendation from Cisco. For day-to-day activity monitoring and day-to-day traffic vulnerabilities, we have monitoring tools and devices. If there is any vulnerability, we can catch it. We are constantly monitoring and checking our outside and inside traffic. These are the things that we are doing to meet our target of 100% security.

We have a number of security tools. We have the perimeter firewalls and core firewalls. For monitoring, we have many tools such as Tenable, Splunk, etc. We have Cisco Prime for monitoring internal traffic. For malware protection and IPS, we have endpoint security and firewalls. The outside to inside traffic is filtered by the perimeter firewall. After that, it goes to the core firewall, where it gets filtered. It is checked at port-level, website-level, and host-level security.

We have the endpoint security updated on all devices, and this security is managed by our antivirus server. For vulnerabilities, we have a Tenable server that is monitoring all devices. In case of any vulnerability or attacks, we get updated. We are also using Splunk as SIEM. From there, we can check the logs. If any device is attacked, we get to know the hostname or IP address. We can then check our monitoring tool and our database list. We can see how this attack happened. We have configured our network into security zones. We have zone-based security.

It integrates with other Cisco products. We use Cisco ASA and Cisco FTD, and we also use Cisco FMC for monitoring and creating policies. For internal network monitoring purposes, we use Cisco Prime. We also use Cisco ISE. For troubleshooting and monitoring, we can do a deep inspection in Cisco FMC. We can reach the host and website. We can also do web filtering and check at what time an activity happened or browsing was done. We can get information about the host, subnet, timing, source, and destination. We can easily identify these things about a threat and do reporting. We can also troubleshoot site-to-site VPN and client VPN. So, we can easily manage and troubleshoot these things.

Cisco FMC is the management tool that we use to manage our firewalls. It makes it easy to deploy the policies, identify issues, and troubleshoot them. We create policies in Cisco FMC and then deploy them to the firewall. If anything is wrong with the primary FMC, the control is switched to a secondary FMC. It is also disconnected from the firewall, and we can manage the firewall individually for the time being. There is no effect on the firewall and network traffic.

Cisco FMC saves our time in terms of management and troubleshooting. Instead of individually deploying a policy on each firewall, we can easily push a policy to as many firewalls as we want by using Cisco FMC. We just create a policy and then select the firewalls to which we want to push it. Similarly, if we want to upgrade our firewalls, instead of individually logging in to each firewall and taking a backup, we can use Cisco FMC to take a backup of all firewalls. After that, we can do the upgrade. If Cisco FMC or the firewall goes down, we can just upload the backup, and everything in the configuration will just come back. 

We can also see the health status of our network by using Cisco FMC. On one screen, we can see the whole firewall activity. We can see policies, backups, and reports. If our management asks for information about how many rules are there, how many ports are open, how many matching policies are there, and which public IP is there, we can log in to Cisco FMC to see the complete configuration. We can also generate reports.

With Cisco FMC, we can create reports on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. We can also get information about the high utilization of our internet bandwidth by email. In Cisco FMC, we can configure the option to alert us through email or SMS. It is very easy.

It has a good security level. It is a next-generation firewall. It can protect from different types of attacks. We have enabled IPS and IDS. To make out network fully secure, we have zone-based security and subnets.

It is user-friendly with a lot of features. It has a CLI, which is helpful for troubleshooting. It also has a GUI. It is easy to work with this firewall if you have worked with any Cisco firewall.

With Cisco FMC, we can see the network's health and status. We can create a dashboard to view the network configuration, security policies, and network interfaces that are running or are up or down. We can also see network utilization and bandwidth utilization. We can see if there are any attacks from the outside network to the inside network. We can arrange the icons in the dashboard. For troubleshooting, we can also log in to the FMC CLI, and based on the source and destination, we can ping the firewall and the source. 

I have been using this solution for three to four years.

It is stable, but it also depends on whether it is properly configured or maintained. If you don't apply the proper patches recommended by Cisco, you could face a lot of issues. If the firewall is up to date in terms of patches, it works smoothly and is stable.

There are no issues in terms of the number of users. This is the main firewall for the organization. All users are behind this firewall. So, all departments and teams, such as HR, finance, application team, hardware teams, are behind this firewall. All users have to cross the firewall while accessing applications and websites. They cannot bypass the firewall. 

Their support is good. If we have an issue, we first try to resolve it at our level. If we are not able to resolve an issue, we call customer care or raise a ticket. They investigate and give us the solution. If there is a hardware issue or the device is defective, we will get that part as soon as possible. They replace that immediately. If it is not a hardware issue, they check the logs that we have submitted. Based on the investigation, they give a new patch in case of a bug. They arrange for a technical engineer to come online to guide us and provide instructions remotely. They provide immediate support. I would rate their support a nine out of 10.

We have HA/standby devices. We have almost 70 to 80 access switches, and we have 30 to 40 routers, hubs, and other monitoring tools and devices. We keep one or two devices as a standby. We have a standby for each Cisco tool. We have a standby for the core and distribution switches and firewalls. We have a standby firewall. When there is any hardware issue or other issue, the secondary firewall is used, and the workload moves to the secondary firewall. Meanwhile, we work with Cisco's support to resolve the issue.

For the past four to five years, we have only had Cisco firewalls. However, for some of the branches, we are using Palo Alto firewalls. It depends on a client's requirements, applications, security, etc.

I didn't do the implementation. We have, however, upgraded to a higher version. From the Cisco side, we get the updates or patches using which we upgrade a device and do the configuration. We register the product model and serial number, and after that, we can download a patch. We also can get help from Cisco. It is easy to migrate or upgrade for us.

We have vendor support. They are a partner of Cisco. When we buy the hardware devices, the vendor has the responsibility to do the implementation and configurations. We do coordinate with them in terms of providing the space and network details such as IP addresses, network type, subnets, etc. We also provide logical diagrams. We monitor the configuration, and after the configuration is done, we check how the network is working and performing.

We have an IT department that includes an applications group, a hardware group, and a security group. There are also Network Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 teams. The Level 1 team only takes care of the network side. The Level 2 and Level 3 teams do almost similar work, but the Level 3 team is a bit at a higher level in IT security. The Level 2 and Level 3 teams take care of firewalls-level and security-level configuration, policy upgrade, etc. They manage all network devices. Overall, we have around 20 members in our department.

For the maintenance of Firepower, two guys are there. A Level 2 engineer takes care of policy creation and deployment for new networks. A Level 3 engineer takes care of a new firewall, upgrades, and network design and architecture.

When we purchased the firewall, we had to take the security license for IPS, malware protection, and VPN. If we are using high availability, we have to take a license for that. We also have to pay for hardware support and technical support. Its licensing is on a yearly basis.

It is a good product. It is easy to manage, but you need to have good experience and good knowledge, and you need to configure it properly.

Cisco FMC only supports Cisco products. If you have a large network with Cisco firewalls and other vendors' firewalls, such as Palo Alto, you can only manage Cisco products through Cisco FMC. Other vendors have their own management tools.

Most of the organizations nowadays are using the Cisco Firepower and Cisco ASA because of the high level of security. Cisco is known for its security. Cisco provides a lot of high-security firewalls such as Cisco ASA, Cisco FTD, Cisco Firepower. Cisco ASA 8500 came out first, and after that, new models such as Cisco FTD came. 

I would rate Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall a nine out of 10. It is excellent in terms of features, ability, and security. Whoever gets to work on Cisco Firepower, as well as Cisco ASA, will get good experience and understanding of security and will be able to work on other firewalls.

We are using it as a firewall for our data center and headquarter. We are also using it for DR. We are using Cisco ASA 5500 Series.

It is a security device, and it is useful for securing our environment. It provides role-based access and other features and helps us in easily securing our environment.

It provides visibility. It has been helpful for packet inspection and logging activities for all kinds of packets, such as routing packets, denied packets, and permitted packets. All these activities are visible on Cisco ASA. There are different commands for logging and visibility.

We use Cisco ASA for the integration of the network. Our company is a financial company, and we are integrating different organizations and banks by using Cisco ASA. We are using role-based access. Any integration, any access, or any configuration is role-based. 

The remote access, VPN, and ACL features are valuable. We are using role-based access for individuals.

IPS is also valuable for intrusion detection and prevention. It is a paid module that can be added. I'm using it for security, VLAN management, segregation management, and so on.

It is easy to use. In our region and our country, Cisco is well known, and most of the companies are using Cisco products. We have been using Cisco devices for a while, and our company primarily has Cisco devices. So, we are familiar with it, which makes it very easy to use for us. Even when we compare it with other products, it is easier to use.

It is easy for us to manage it because it is a familiar product, and it has been a part of our environment. Now, other products are providing free training, free access, and free license, because of which things are changing. So, you can easily become familiar with other products.

Its licensing cost and payment model can be improved. Cisco doesn't provide training and certification for engineers without payments. Other companies, such as Huawei, provide the training for free. Their subscription and licenses are also free and flexible. Other products are breaking the market by providing such features. 

It doesn't support all standard interfaces. It is also not suitable for big companies with high bandwidth traffic. Its capacity should be improved.

Other products are becoming easier to access and configure. They are providing UI interfaces to configure, take backup, synchronize redundant machines, and so on. It is very easy to take backup and upgrade the images in those products. Cisco ASA should have such features. If one redundant machine is getting upgraded, the technology and support should be there to upgrade other redundant machines. In a single window, we should be able to do more in terms of backups, restores, and upgrades.

We have been using this solution for almost eight years.

It is stable. It needs to be configured based on the standards and functionality. We have one device that has been working for more than 10 years, which indicates it is stable, but it requires licenses to upgrade features.

It doesn't have an expansion card. So, it may not scalable for huge buildings. It also lacks a lot of standard interfaces. Other products are providing capacity for a data center. Other technologies are expanding their interface bandwidth from 10 gigs. In my opinion, Cisco ASA doesn't have this capability.

Their support is very good. We have a support license, so their support is very good. They are tracing us and following up with us to solve the problem on time.

Its setup is easy. We are familiar with Cisco ASA and other Cisco products, and they are easy to configure. A lot of resources are available on the internet, so it is easy to set up for anyone with basic training. It is easy in different types of environments, such as universities and colleges.

It generally doesn't take more than a day, but it also depends on the size of the organization. If an organization is very big and if you need a line-by-line configuration for access role and VPN, it can take a bit more time.

Cisco is constantly upgrading and providing features based on current requests. We usually plan deployments at the end of the year and at the beginning of the year. Everyone plans for new products, new configurations, and new expansions based on that.

Any security product provides a return on investment. Any gap in security may cost an organization more.

It is expensive. There is a cost for everything. There is per year license cost and support cost. There is also a cost for any training, any application, and any resource. Things are very costly to do with Cisco.

Other brands are cheaper. They are also more flexible in terms of training, subscription, and licensing. They give lots and lots of years free. They provide more than Cisco.

I would advise understanding its features, advantages, and disadvantages as compared to other solutions. It is simple, but its cost is a negative point. 

I would rate Cisco ASA Firewall an eight out of 10.