Cisco Secure Firewall Reviews

Our primary use case for this solution is to use it as a firewall. This product secures the internet from internal and public users.

Cisco Secure Firewall helped add to my organization's value. It is a selling product for us here. They have great support and documentation, which makes the solution easy to sell to customers. The Cisco name has a lot of value and high brand awareness.

We are selected partners now but are looking to grow to become a primary partner for Egypt. 

Cisco Secure Firewall definitely saved us time. However, security is never 100% with any product, even Cisco. So, you will have to spend some time securing your IT regardless of which solution you use.

I would say that it helped my company cut time by 50%.

The solution cautions us against threats via email notifications and internally in the web interface of the product itself on the dashboard.

What I found the most valuable about Cisco Secure Firewall is that if a client is educated about the solution, it can help him or her avoid many problems and mistakes. 

I think Cisco would benefit from comparing its solutions to other products. There is a lot to learn from solutions like Palo Alto or FortiGate. These are top security products. For example, Palo Alto has better inspection visibility than Cisco. When we ask customers about Palo Alto, they say "I like Palo Alto. It helps me see problems on time. I can audit everything through it." Cisco could improve in this regard. Cisco's inspection visibility could be better. 

I have been using this solution for a long time; since the PIX version in 2003. This adds up to almost 20 years now. I have had a plethora of experiences with this solution as both just an employee using it and also as the owner of a company. We also have a range of customers using the solution. 

We did not use any other solutions. Our strategy from the beginning has been to grow with Cisco. However, our customers have the final say in which solutions they choose and sometimes that's not Cisco. That has much to do with their previous beliefs and brand loyalty and trust. The customer's opinion matters and if the customer is loyal to Palo Alto, we are going to have a hard time getting them to make the switch. 

I am not involved in the deployment of the product. I have a sub that deploys Cisco Secure Firewall. I'm involved in guiding the deployment on the management side and making sure it's done in line with the customer's wishes. 

I did evaluate other options but ultimately went with Cisco because of the support they offer. You can reach their tech support engineers at any time. That's important. Their documentation is great as well. Their site is wonderful. 

I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Cisco Secure Firewall should be consolidated with routers, switches, or VOIP.

The Cisco Secure Firewall is placed between the separate VLANs. It's a common and effective method of protecting VLANs against internal risks such as Checkpoints and external parameters.

It certainly saves time. You can detect anything if you have nothing. This is why, in the end, it saves time.

Collaboration with other Cisco products such as ISE and others is the most valuable feature.

it is difficult to say what it needs in terms of what needs to be improved. I don't work with it on a daily basis.

I haven't heard anything negative about it.

While this applies to all vendors, pricing can be always lower. In my opinion, Cisco is the most expensive. 

The pricing can be reduced.

Our organization has been working with Cisco Secure Firewall for three to five years.

There are no complaints about performance or stability.

There are no issues with the scalability. It works fine.

It is simple to upgrade.

We only need one person to maintain the product.

My colleague has experience with technical support. I'm not sure if it was with Cisco's technical support directly or through Conscia in between.

This was the first solution we were using.

We are primarily Cisco housed, and I believe that practically everything is Cisco. 

It might be part of the contract for a small fee. I don't think there's any particular reason.

I am familiar with CheckPoint, as well as Microsoft ISA.

We have an implementation partner.

It's a hands-on job with a colleague of mine.

I don't know if it is particularly easy or not.

There was also some learning involved, such as knowing the traffic. This took some time. It took six months to deploy.

With the implementation partner, everything was written out. It was the best-case scenario for us.

We did not use the Cisco Firewall Migration tool.

Conscia assisted us with implementation.

They are one of the best in the Netherlands.

I am not aware of the pricing. 

It's an all-in-one contract.

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

We use it as a firewall or for UTM at the data center.

We like the standard firewall features. It's quite a capable box for UTM.

Sometimes my customers say that Cisco firewalls are a bit more difficult compared to Fortigate or Palo Alto. There is complexity in the configuration and the GUI could be improved.

I have been using Cisco ASA Firewalls for as long as I have been working here, which is seven years.

Once installed, it's quite stable. We don't have many issues after it's deployed. Both the hardware and software are quite stable.

As a firewall, it's in use all the time. Whether there will be increased usage depends on how security risks increase. But at the moment, there's no expectation for an increase in use.

Cisco's technical support is usually quite satisfactory, and we get a reasonable response in a reasonable time to any inquiry we make.

Positive

The initial setup is not that simple. I don't do the installation myself, but from what I hear it's more complicated than some of the other firewall products.

We usually do our installation in two or three hours. Our customers usually have between 10 and 50 users and they are generally IT admins.

We have three people who work in the field and manage deployments, and another five to 10 to manage the solution.

If you use the full functionality of Cisco ASA, it's worth the cost. But I don't think our company product is using the full capacity of the Cisco ASA.

Licensing, recently, has been getting more complicated. In particular, the Smart Licensing that came out is quite complicated. I don't know what's going on. Our sales team asks us questions about Smart accounts, but I don't know what it is and Cisco is making it so complicated. They call it Smart, but it's complicated. I prefer the traditional license where you buy it once.

When talking with our customers, I would not recommend our company's Cisco products for their security. It depends on their requirements, but if they want full security, I wouldn't say that Cisco ASA is the one choice.

My advice would be to do a PoC first.

We use this solution to provide firewall solutions for clients. We have been transitioning from ASA to FTD, since FTD has come out with new versions or upgrades.

This solution is very flexible and offers different functionality including firewalls and VPN connectivity. It checks a lot of boxes. It is an easy solution to learn how to use and the positive impact on our organization was apparent as soon as we implemented it. 

The CLI is the most valuable feature. We are moving towards FTD, which is more GUI based. The value of this solution lies in the fact that it is a standard platform that's been around for years and is always improving. This is important to us due to the necessity of ensuring cyber security. 

We are replacing ASA with FTD which offers many new features. 

We have been using this solution since 2009. 

This is a stable solution. 

This is a very scalable solution as long as you get the right hardware. 

Over the last two years, getting a response from the support engineers has been challenging. This could be due to the impact of COVID. 

We sell a lot of different firewall varieties including SonicWall, Cisco ASA, and FTD. 

When setting up the solution for our clients, we ensure they have the bandwidth they need and consider what their throughput needs are. The solution does require maintenance in terms of patching. This requires approximately six team members depending on how many moving parts there are for clients. 

We have seen a return on investment using this solution based on the fact that we are spending less money overall. 

The pricing for this solution is pretty fair. 

If it is possible, I would advise others to try out a demo with Cisco to test their firewalls. The biggest lesson I learned from using this solution is that there are many ways to achieve the same outcome. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

Our primary use case includes basic firewalls, VPNs, NAT, and our connections to customers.

It's used in our data centers to protect the network and customer circuits.

Cisco ASA Firewall has improved our organization by allowing connectivity to the outside world and into different places.

Cybersecurity resilience is very important to our organization. There are always threats from the outside, and the firewall is the first line of defense in protecting the network.

Cisco ASA Firewall is a well-known product. They're always updating it, and you know what they're doing and that it works.

It would be good if Cisco made sure that the solution supports all routing protocols. Sometimes it doesn't.

I've been using it for probably 10 to 15 years.

For the most part, it's stable.

It's a very scalable solution.

The technical support is very good, and I would give them a nine out of ten.

Positive

The pricing and licensing are getting more complicated, and I'd like that to be simpler.

We evaluated some Palo Alto and Juniper solutions, but Cisco ASA Firewall is better in terms of ease of use. You could get certified in it.

To leaders who want to build more resilience within their organization, I would say that the ASA, along with its features, is a good product to have as one of the lines of defense.

The solution does require maintenance. We have four network engineers who
are responsible for upgrading code and firewall rules, and for new implementations.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Cisco ASA Firewall a nine. Also, it's a very good product, and it compares well to others.

We use it for VPN access for our two-factor authentication. We were looking to get access through AnyConnect, to gain access to devices behind boundaries and firewalls.

It has improved things greatly by giving us easier and better access, easier configuration, and allowing users to gain the access they need. We have also had less downtime using these firewalls.

AnyConnect has been very helpful, along with the ability to use LDAP for authentication. It's very robust and we are able to do many different things that we were looking to do.

The ASAs are being replaced with the new Firepowers and they have a different type of structure in the configuration to be able to migrate from one to the other.

I have been using Cisco ASA Firewalls for 20 years.

The stability is very good. It has been a very stable environment. Since the new AnyConnect came out, it's been very easy to use and very much self-sufficient.

You can vary scalability from very few users to thousands of users.

Technical support has been very helpful at times, helping us to know what bugs and what things are getting fixed in the next releases.

Positive

As an architecture team, we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it, so it was pretty straightforward and easy. We have each one across many different avenues and many different boundaries, so each one took about a day to deploy.

We needed two to three people to deploy them and another one to go over some things to make sure everything was good to go.

There is routine maintenance, keeping it up to date and making sure the licensing versions are all good to go. We have a four-man team for maintenance and they work a regular shift of eight hours.

We used a reseller, FedData. Our experience with them was good.

It took us about six months to see benefits from our ASA Firewalls. We've seen return on our investment in terms of the timeframe of downtime, and the ability to get users connected faster and more easily has been a big benefit.

The pricing of the products isn't terrible. They're not too expensive. They're a little more expensive than other products, but you are getting the name, the company, and the support.

It's also nice that you can buy different avenues of licensing, depending on how you want to go about using them.

We buy a support license to get support if we have any issues or problems or need help on how we want to implement things.

We evaluated other options, but that was a long time ago. We went with Cisco because it is so robust as well as because they have been able to integrate their solutions into many different architectures. That makes their products easier to use.

Each use case is different and things depend upon your cost analysis and how much you need. We have these firewalls in different avenues over about 30 different sites.

The biggest lesson from using the solution is being agile which has included learning to understand how to use the ASDM and figuring out how to configure everything—the little nuances—and what can and can't be done on the CLI.

These firewalls, along with the upcoming Firepower that they're being replaced by, are going to be very good assets for two-factor authentication and VPN access.

It is for our VPNs and filters out websites. 

It helped us a lot with our VPNs for the home office during COVID. There has been more security and flexibility for VPNs and other applications.

Its security is easy to use.

I would like more features in conjunction with other solutions, like Fortinet.

I have been using it for five years.

It has very good stability.

It has really good scalability.

The customer service and technical support are good. I would rate them as nine out of 10.

Positive

We were previously using Fortinet. We switched to ASA and Firepower when our contract with Fortinet ended. Now, we are only using ASA.

The deployment was simple.

The ROI is good. Using ASA, we have saved 10% to 20% on our costs.

The pricing is fine. It is not too bad.

We had it integrated with the Umbrella solution a few years ago.

I would rate this solution as nine out of 10.

We use it for basic firewalling, building VPN tunnels, and for some remote VPN connections.

We have two ASAs servicing external remote connectivity sessions for about 300 users.

It has definitely improved our organization. It gives us remote connectivity, helps workers connect remotely, and also gives us good connectivity to our other branches.

It would be nice if it had the client to actually access the firewall. Though, web-based access over HTTPS is actually a lot nicer than having to put on a client just to access the device.

For Firepower Threat Defense and ASAs, I would like it if there was a centralized way to manage policies, then sticking with the network functions on the actual devices. That is probably the thing that frustrates me the most. I want a way that you can manage multiple policies at several different locations, all at one site. You then don't have to worry about the connectivity piece, in case you are troubleshooting because connectivity is down.

I have been using ASA for about three years.

It is stable.

We just run updates on them. I don't know if we have had to do any hardware maintenance, which is good.

We have been just using ASAs for a smaller environment.

I don't know if I have ever worked with ASA in a highly scalable environment.

I haven't really gotten involved with the technical support for ASAs.

I work with a lot of different companies and a number of different firewalls. A lot of times it is really about the price point and their specific needs. 

This solution was present when I showed up.

The pricing is pretty standard. 

I wish there was an easier way to license the product in closed environments. I have worked in a number of closed environments, then it is a lot of head scratching. I know that we could put servers in these networks and that would help with the licensing. I have never been in a situation where we connected multiple networks, i.e., having an external network as well as an internal network, as those kinds of solutions are not always the best. I think licensing is always a headache for everyone, and I don't know if there is a simple solution.

We can build GRE tunnels. Whereas, Firepower can't route traffic nor do a bit more traffic engineering within the VPN tunnels. This is what I like about using ASAs over Firepower.

Firepower Threat Defense has a mode where you can manage multiple firewalls through a single device. 

I really like how Palo Alto does a much better job separating the network functions from the firewalling functions.

I would consider if there is a need to centralize all the configurations. If you have many locations and want to centrally manage it, I would use the ASA to connect to a small number of occasions. As that grew, I would look for a solution where I could centrally manage the policies, then have a little more autonomous control over the networking piece of it.

Know specifically what you want out of the firewall. If you are looking for something that will build the GRE tunnel so you can route between different sites, I would go with ASA over Firepower Threat Defense.

I like the ASA. I would probably rate it as eight or nine out of 10, as far as the firewalls that I have worked with.