Cisco Secure Firewall Reviews

We use them for VPNs and as firewalls, of course. We wanted to protect the network and have secure communication with our peers.

They secure the network and ensure our network is always available.

They are easy to maintain.

I would like to see them add more next-generation features so that you don't need a lot of appliances to do just one task. It should be a single solution.

I have been using Cisco ASA Firewalls for nine years.

In terms of stability, it is a really good product and platform. Overall, it's great.

It's not really cost-effective when it comes to scalability. It is a really expensive product if you go to the modular firewalls. You need to get new appliances to get new features.

Tech support is good but it could be improved on some points.

I have used Fortinet, Check Point, and Palo Alto firewalls. Most of those solutions have everything integrated into them so you don't need multiple appliances. You get a single solution for your network. It would be better to have a centralized firewall, from Cisco, that can do everything.

The initial deployment was straightforward. The last implementation of an ASA took us about one to two weeks.

Our implementation strategy was to have good architecture and to have all the requirements for the project beforehand. Everything went really smoothly because of that.

We needed four or five people for deployment, including field techs and network engineers.

For clean and easy protection of an enterprise, it is a really good product. It can be also deployed as a virtualized solution in data centers.

We use it for our data center. We have clusters of the solution to protect the equipment in our data center. We also use it for site-to-site VPN hubs.

Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall made our firewall response much faster when trying to respond to any services or networks that stand out. It makes us very responsive when any of the visualized logs are blocked in real-time.

The most valuable feature would be ASDM. The ability to go in, visualize and see the world base in a clear and consistent manner is very powerful.

The ability to better integrate with other tools would be an improvement.

I have been using this solution for six years.

It is highly stable.

It is highly scalable. It has some limitations, but for medium to large-sized deployments, it is excellent.

Technical support is outstanding. You can get same-day support.

We previously used Juniper SRX. We switched because we have a contract with Cisco. This was the cheaper option and was faster.

We have very much seen an ROI in terms of the saving on man time and the costs of standing up new equipment. Compared to what we had before, Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall is faster.

I would rate this solution a nine on a scale from one to ten.

In the new design, I put Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall as a LAN segment and as the data center firewall. In the old design, I just used FortiGate Firewall for configurations, and we are going to replace it. The complete solution will be replaced with a two-tiered data center.

I like that Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall is reliable. Support is also good. 

We only have an issue with time sync with Cisco ASA and NTP. If the time is out of sync, it will be a disaster for the failover.

I have been using Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall for about 11 years. 

Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall is a stable solution. 

Scalability is good, but just like the issue with Palo Alto and Fortigate, there is also an issue with Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall. I can configure it easily because of my Cisco background, but others in my team aren't comfortable with it.

Technical support is good. They were both fast and reliable and quick in making decisions. We faced specific issues, and tech support was efficient and provided an immediate solution. Other firewall vendors are slow to respond, and I'm not satisfied. It's also easy to Google and find solutions to our problems. We can't do that for other firewalls.

On a scale from one to five, I would give technical support a five.

Positive

We used FortiGate Firewall, but we are replacing it with Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall because we had issues with HP solutions. We also switched because I am Cisco certified, and my background and expertise are in Cisco.

The initial setup was straightforward. 

We have seen a return on our investment. 

I will tell potential users that the data center firewall is a good solution. But most of the companies are using other firewalls like Palo Alto and FortiGate. Most of the design architects prefer the parameters of the firewalls like we prefer the data center firewall.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall a ten.

We primarily use the solution for configuring the firewall.

It's an almost perfect solution.

The configuration is very easy.

The management aspect of the product is very straightforward.

The solution offers very good protection. 

The user interface itself is very nice and quite intuitive.

It would be ideal if the solution offered more integration capabilities with other vendors. For example, if you had a web security appliance, it would be great to be able to integrate everything in order to better report security events.

While I can't think of specific features I'd like improved, overall, they could do more to continue to refine the solution.

It would be nice if you didn't have to configure using a command-line interface. It's a bit technical that way.

We first started using the solution in 2015. It's been five years at this point.

The solution is very stable. We've found it to be extremely reliable. There are not bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

The solution can scale well. that's not a problem at all. If a company needs to expand it to fit their needs, they can do so.

We've been in contact with technical support on multiple occasions and each time we've had a good experience. We're satisfied with their level of support. They are fairly good.

I have nothing bad to say about the deployment. It went pretty well, and we can configure everything as we need to.

I don't really handle the billing, so I'm unsure of the pricing. I work more on the technical side. 

We're just customers. We don't have a business relationship with Cisco.

It's a very good solution. I'd recommend it to other users.

Overall, I'd rate it seven out of ten.

Although I can't speak to the pricing, I've found the solution works quite well for us. I'd rate it higher if it could integrate a bit better with other solutions.

I can't put Cisco on the firewall when the security landscape has changed so much in the past five to ten years. We are doing a lot more in the next generation of firewalls. We had a legacy classic firewall before we went to Firepower, and we spent a lot less time on that firewall, but we are spending more time on the Firepower because we are utilizing a lot of the features that are available in Firepower that were not available in the previous firewall that we had. I'm not going to say that we're spending less time, but we're gaining more value.

Another benefit has been user integration. We try to integrate our policies so that we can create policies based on active users. We can create policies based on who is accessing a resource instead of just IP addresses and ports.

If I were to have been asked a few weeks ago, I would have said threat prevention was the most valuable feature, but the world is changing a lot, so my favorite features a few years ago might not be my favorite features today.

The visibility the solution gives when doing deep packet inspection can be complex. I really like the visibility, but it's not always intuitive to use. I also help other customers. We are a contracting company that implements their solutions, and I've found that it's not always easy to get everyone to utilize some of the visibility features. But for me personally, I think they're very valuable. 

The ease of use when it comes to managing Cisco Firepower has a lot of room for improvement. When monitoring a large set of firewall policies, the user interface could be lighter. It's sometimes heavy in use, and there could be improvements there. I know they're trying to make improvements.

It's mainly the UI and the management parts that need improvement. The most impactful feature when you're using it is the user interface and the user experience.

We were an early adopter when Firepower first came out. I've been using Cisco firewalls for the last two decades.

For newer hardware models, the stability is good. We've tried to run Firepower on some of the legacy-supported hardware as well, but with the stability issues, they are not as good. If I were to judge based on the hardware that I have, I'd say it's good. I haven't had any issues with the stability on my platform.

We just recently enabled Snort 3 so I'm evaluating the functionality. That's what we've considered, but we haven't done any performance testing. Our company would qualify as a small to medium business company. The average office environment is about 100 to 200 people. Performance-wise, my company is about 120 people.

Scalability is really not relevant. I know there are features that address some of those parts, like clustering and stuff, but that's really not applicable in my use cases.

The support is eight to nine out of ten. You can't blame them for any faults of the prototypes, but the support has been really good and really helpful when we had any issues.

I have hands-on experience in both Fortinet and Palo Alto. So if I were to compare this to Palo Alto, for example, I would say that the user interface in Palo Alto is a lot better. But the reason that I'm working with Firepower is that we have a Cisco network as well, and Cisco ISE. We're trying to integrate different Cisco solutions. We're trying to utilize the ecosystem benefits where I can connect my Cisco Firepower to ISE and have it talk to the App Cloud. There's a benefit of utilizing Cisco Firepower in conjunction with our other Cisco solutions.

Ease of management is similar with Cisco and Fortinet, I would say similar, but it's easier in Palo Alto.

I recently deployed a similar solution at a customer's premises, and that setup was straightforward.

The steps are fairly documented and the documentation and guides on Cisco are straightforward. You know what you're expected to configure, and it's easy to get up, running, and started. It takes some more time to check everything and get everything as you want to have it, but getting started and getting connectivity and starting to create policies was easy to do and didn't take a very long time.

It took two to four hours, including some upgrades.

My main advice would be to utilize all the guides and documentation available from Cisco publicly and not trying to implement it using legacy thinking. Don't try to just replace something else you have. If you have a next-gen firewall, you want to try to utilize what you're getting, and getting the most out of a firewall. There are some great guides and documentation on Cisco that explains what you can do and how you can do it.

I would rate it a seven out of ten. 

I use Cisco ASA Firewall at my company for network security.

Cisco ASA Firewall could improve by adding more advanced features such as web filtering, which is available in the next-generation firewalls. However, the Cisco ASA Firewall I am using could be old and these features have been updated.

I have been using this solution for approximately two years.

The stability needs improvement.

I have found the Cisco ASA Firewall scalability could improve.

I have not contacted technical support. There is a lot of information on the internet for troubleshooting. All you need to do is use a search engine and you will find the information you are looking for easily.

They can improve by adding a public troubleshooting process.

I have previously used Fortinet firewalls that I have found to be better.

I would not recommend Cisco.

I rate Cisco ASA Firewall a six out of ten.

We are using Cisco ASA Firewall 5525 for network security. We needed a network security solution that can take care of the network security and URL filtering. We also wanted to create site-to-site VPNs and have remote VPNs. For all these use cases, we got Cisco ASA, and we are pretty happy with it.

The remote VPN and IPsec VPN or site-to-site VPN features are valuable. The clustering feature is also valuable. We have two ISP links. Whenever there is a failover, users don't even get to know. The transition is very smooth, and the users don't notice any latency. So, remote VPN, site-to-site VPN, and failover are three very powerful features of Cisco ASA.

Cisco has the best documentation. You can easily find multiple documents by searching the web. Even a child can go online and find the required information.

There is huge scope for improvement in URL filtering. The database that they have is not accurate. Their content awareness and categorization for URL filtering are not that great. We faced many challenges with their categorization and content awareness. They should improve these categorization issues.

It is very reliable.

It is scalable. Cisco is pretty popular with organizations, and many customers are using it. It is suitable for all kinds of customers. It can cater to small, medium, and large organizations.

I have interacted with them many times. I have been on a call with their technical support continuously for 48 hours. They were very prompt. In terms of technical support and documentation for switching, firewall, and routing solutions, no one can match Cisco.

Its initial setup was very straightforward. Its documentation is very easily available on the web, which is very useful.

Their pricing is very aggressive and good. Even a small company can afford it. I am happy with its pricing. Its licensing is on a yearly basis.

I would recommend this solution to others if they are not specifically looking for URL filtering and want to use it for their infrastructure. It is a perfect and very reliable solution, but it lacks when it comes to URL filtering. 

I would rate Cisco ASA Firewall a nine out of ten.

We use this solution for advanced IPS, IDS, advanced malware protection, and web filtering.

The most valuable features of this solution are advanced malware protection, IPS, and IDS.

web filtering needs to improve because cisco firepower sync with bright cloud website for the website category. sometimes your URL is falling in the wrong category because of the bright cloud. so if you want to change the category you will have to drop the mail to the bright cloud and they will take action and it's a very long procedure. 

more than 2 years

This is a very reliable solution.

I have extended my Cisco solution and did not have any trouble.

We have more than 400 users and we plan to increase usage.

The initial setup is very simple to deploy in the Egyptian network. It takes two to three days to deploy but if you are implementing AMP then it will take an extra one or two days.

I am happy with the product in general, including the pricing.

We evaluated a Sophos firewall but when I checked the reviews, I found that Sophos did not rate as well in terms of IPS, IDS, and malware protection.

Cisco utilizes BrightCloud for URL filtering. Web filtering is the main problem with this product.

My advice to anybody who is considering this product is that if they want good security, compared to other offerings such as those by Check Point and Palo Alto, then they should implement Cisco Firepower.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution to operate that LAN environment over the internet and use the public and private networks separately. It's a very good firewall in terms of security, in terms of certain scenarios, and also from an ethical hacking point of view. Both are available in our environment. Both are doing great.

Cisco, obviously, gives you a great amount of reliability which comes in handy. The brand is recognized as being strong. 

Even in very big environments, Cisco comes in handy with configuration and offers reliability when it comes to managing multiple items on one platform. You are able to integrate Firepower and all AMP. With so many items to configure, I haven't yet done them all, however, I hope to.

It's great for securing the network. You learn a lot.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The solution is very stable.

The scalability of the solution is very good.

Most of the firewalls almost 90%, 95% of the firewalls will move to GUI. This is the area which needs to be improved. The graphical interface and the monitoring level of the firewall need to be worked on. 

Most of us are using the monitoring software where we get the alarm, then details of the servers, et cetera. This aspect needs to be much updated. 

From just the security point of view, in the security, it needs to be updated every day and every week. It is getting better day by day, however, from a monitoring point of view is not the same view as we have on the different monitoring servers or monitoring software, such as PRTG and Solarwinds. It needs to be changed and improved.

Cisco has launched its multiple products separately. Where there's a new version of the hardware, there is Firepower in it. However, there must be a solution for an integrated version that includes everything in your network and your firewall as well so that you can manage and integrate from the same web portal without going to every device and just configuring it and just doing everything separately. 

It would be ideal if a solution can be configured separately and then managed centrally on one end.

We have more than one Cisco firewall and it is difficult for me to integrate both on the single UI. If I have three firewalls and one is a normal firewall, I need to configure everything separately. I can't have it on the same port or integrated on the same single IP or bind it something like it.

We've mostly used Cisco solutions for two or three years at this point. Our old Cisco devices were due to be changed, and we moved over to ASA.

The firewall is stable, however, every two, three, or four years, you have to change the hardware and therefore get an updated version of the firewall.

This is something which companies have been doing for the sake of a new product and launching a new device. Yet, the stability needs to be considered where you have to upgrade for every two, three, four years and change the product and go for the new updated version. What I mean is that there is stability, however, obviously, it's not long-term.

The firewall is very scalable. Most contact versions are available depending upon the organization you have. It works for very large organizations. They are scalable for many scenarios. The scalability obviously is there for sure.

Cisco technical support is one of the best around. They have the most advanced and most experienced level of tech support I've been in contact with. Whether it is a hardware or software issue, the tech team can support you and help. They are very helpful and knowledgeable. We are quite satisfied with the level of support on offer. 

We also have experience using FortiGate.

The Cisco firewall is straightforward. It isn't a complex implementation. Obviously, you have to bind your IP on the port and then you must go on to configure for security and something like that. It's easy for me to configure a firewall at such a level.

If you pay for the hardware, you get the Firepower and if you don't, then you get the Cisco Firewall. 

We are just a customer and an end-user.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

Obviously, you need to have one tech person on your online when you are configuring it, or just implementing when you are integrating with your live environment and organization. My advice is that the configuration is easy when a network engineer like myself handles it. A trained person is more than capable of the task. Other than configuring, a less technical person can manage the solution.  

I am using the solution as a firewall.

I like the IPS feature, it is the most valuable.

I do not like the assembly of this solution. For example, they should combine FirePOWER into one solution.

I have used Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Check Point previously and I prefer the process of everything working together. We are in the process of moving on to Fortinet from this solution.

I rate Cisco ASA Firewall a six out of ten.