Cisco Secure Firewall ASA Virtual - PAYG

I have been working with firewalls for more than eight years throughout my career, with extensive experience in network architecture and security design.

In my current role as a network architect, I evaluate firewall solutions based on the project RFP, client requirements, technical specifications, and consultant recommendations. My responsibility is to select and size the appropriate solution based on the specific requirements and use case of each project.

We use Cisco Secure Firewall in various network environments to secure WAN and perimeter traffic and to provide next-generation firewall capabilities, including IPS, IDS, URL and web filtering, application control, and SD-WAN for environments with multiple WAN links and high-availability requirements. Depending on the RFP and security architecture, Cisco Secure Firewall can also be deployed as a data center firewall to secure and control data center traffic.

For larger or more complex environments, we may implement a segmented firewall architecture, using dedicated firewalls for different security zones—for example, a WAN firewall, Internet/perimeter firewall, and DMZ firewall. The design depends on the traffic flows, security requirements, performance requirements, and overall architecture of the project.

Although Cisco is one of the firewall platforms we frequently deploy, we also work with other vendors depending on the project requirements. For example, some projects use Cisco for the perimeter firewall and Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks, or Sophos for the data center, while other projects may use Cisco for the data center and another vendor for the perimeter.

Ultimately, the firewall selection is driven by the customer's requirements, RFP specifications, technical use cases, performance and security needs, and the consultant's design. Using different firewall vendors across different security zones is sometimes a deliberate customer requirement or architectural decision.

One of the biggest strengths of Cisco Secure Firewall is the integration of multiple next-generation security capabilities into a single platform. For mid-sized deployments, a single firewall appliance can provide comprehensive perimeter security without requiring multiple standalone security solutions.

Key features include next-generation firewall capabilities, IPS/IDS, application control, URL and web filtering, VPN, malware and threat protection, and SD-WAN capabilities. Having these functions integrated into one platform provides centralized policy enforcement and better visibility into network traffic.

I particularly value the combination of firewall and threat-prevention capabilities because it allows organizations to inspect and control traffic at multiple levels rather than relying only on traditional stateful firewall policies. IPS and threat intelligence help identify and block malicious activity, while URL and web filtering provide additional protection against malicious or inappropriate destinations.

Another advantage is the scalability of the platform. Depending on the project requirements, Cisco Secure Firewall can be deployed for Internet and WAN security, perimeter protection, data center segmentation, or other security zones.

Overall, I would say its strongest feature is the ability to combine firewalling, threat prevention, traffic inspection, and secure connectivity into a unified security platform. This can simplify the architecture and operations while providing the security controls required for many enterprise environments.

One challenge is that many customers prefer a multi-vendor strategy. Since Cisco is already used for their core and access network, they often prefer Fortinet or Palo Alto Networks for the firewall to reduce vendor dependency and maintain architectural diversity.

The area for improvement is the configuration and deployment experience. Compared with other market vendors, Cisco Secure Firewall has a steeper learning curve and requires more hands-on expertise. FMC provides powerful centralized management, but it can also add complexity, particularly in multi-firewall deployments.

Cost is another consideration. In many projects, Cisco can be around 15 more expensive than competing solutions, depending on the model and licensing.

I would like to see Cisco simplify the management and deployment experience, improve automation, and provide more flexible and cost-effective licensing while maintaining its strong security capabilities.

Yes, based on my experience, Cisco Secure Firewall is very stable and reliable. I have deployed it for more than 20 customers across the Middle East and other locations, including hospitals, hotels, airports, and shopping malls.

I have not experienced any major firewall crashes or recurring stability issues in these deployments. The platform has been reliable across different environments and use cases, including high-availability and enterprise deployments.

From my experience, stability and reliability are among the strongest points of Cisco Secure Firewall. With proper sizing, configuration, and maintenance, I have found it to be a dependable platform for critical network environments.

Cisco Secure Firewall is highly scalable when it is properly sized with future growth in mind. In many projects, we recommend sizing the firewall with around 50% capacity reserved for future growth, depending on the customer's requirements and budget.

Cisco's newer firewall models also provide flexibility to upgrade interface and connectivity capabilities, such as moving from 10G to 25G, 40G, or 100G, depending on the specific model and available options.

However, scalability ultimately depends on selecting the right model and configuration from the beginning. If a customer selects a firewall based only on current requirements due to budget constraints, they may face performance or interface limitations as the network grows.

Overall, Cisco Secure Firewall provides good scalability, but proper initial sizing and planning for future capacity are critical.

I would rate Cisco TAC support 9 out of 10 based on my experience.

I regularly work with Cisco TAC, particularly when upgrading Cisco Secure Firewall to a latest stable release. For example, during our airport operations and maintenance projects, we open a TAC case before the upgrade and work with a Cisco engineer throughout the process. After the upgrade, we validate the firewall policies, rules, and overall functionality before closing the case.

Overall, Cisco TAC engineers are knowledgeable and effective, especially when dealing with complex issues. However, my experience over the last two to three years has been that the quality and speed of support can vary depending on the engineer assigned to the case. Sometimes the initial engineer requires multiple rounds of log collection and escalation before the issue reaches a senior engineer who can resolve it quickly.

For this reason, I would give Cisco TAC 9/10. The technical capability is strong, but faster access to experienced engineers and more consistent support quality would make the service even better.

I would rate Cisco Secure Firewall 10 out of 10 overall. I have hands-on experience sizing and configuring Cisco Secure Firewall through CCW based on customer requirements, and I also compare it with solutions from other vendors.

Cisco Secure Firewall is a stable and reliable platform with strong build quality and good hardware support. With the appropriate Smart Net service, hardware replacement can also be very fast when required.

From a sizing perspective, Cisco provides a good range of throughput and interface options, although comparable firewalls from other vendors may offer more interfaces at a similar price point..

My advice to organizations is to consider Cisco Secure Firewall when reliability, enterprise integration, security capabilities, and long-term support are priorities. However, customers should carefully evaluate sizing, licensing, interface requirements, and total cost against competing solutions before making the final decision.

I have been working with Cisco Secure Firewall for almost nine years, and I want to share my experience with this solution.

I have been working with both the on-premises and cloud versions of Cisco Secure Firewall.

The choice between deployment models depends on the use cases. For on-premises use cases, I deploy an on-premises firewall, but for workloads that are based on the cloud, I use the cloud-based firewall.

Cisco Secure Firewall has very good IDS and IPS capabilities, as well as excellent threat intelligence features, which are some of the best aspects of the product that I appreciate.

It actually helps with integration by allowing me to integrate different solutions within one platform.

I am not currently experiencing many drawbacks with Cisco Secure Firewall. However, since things are migrating to the cloud, the product needs to be more optimized for cloud environments.

Recently, AI-initiated threats have emerged, so Cisco Secure Firewall should have enhanced capabilities to counter AI threats.

I have 22 years of overall experience working in the software field.

The deployment for the product was not quite simple, but it was acceptable. I received support from Cisco during the process, so the overall experience was good.

I would rate the technical support from Cisco at an eight out of ten, with ten being the best.

I was assisted by a third party with the deployment.

I handle both the deployment and operations, so I personally participated in the deployment process.

The price for Cisco Secure Firewall is a bit high compared to other vendors.

Cisco Secure Firewall helps with a Zero Trust security model, and I am implementing a ZTNA access model. I have already implemented Zero Trust. Other vendors besides Cisco also provide ZTNA solutions. Fortinet and Palo Alto are all working with ZTNA and have moved into the ZTNA platform.

I would assess Cisco Secure Firewall's ability to unify different policies across my environment.

As a bank, I serve as the Chief Technology Officer at one of the largest banks in Pakistan, UBL, United Bank Limited, and we have Cisco Secure Firewall deployed at the bank in the data center. We apply unified policies across the environment because we have two data center core firewalls running at the production as well as DR site.

Cisco Secure Firewall, especially the next generation FTD firewalls, offers application visibility, the intrusion prevention system, advanced malware protection, Snort rules, and threat intelligence feed from Cisco's Talos cloud, which I find very useful.

Cisco Secure Firewall has provided us the ability to go a long way towards zero-trust architecture, which is useful in implementing because zero-trust architecture has many more features such as multi-factor authentication, encryption, and segmentation. We have integrated Cisco's ACI, the Application Centric Infrastructure, the software-defined networks with Cisco Secure Firewall to achieve micro-segmentation and a good, fair bit of zero-trust architecture.

We are using Cisco's XDR platform, which was previously labeled as Cisco SecureX. We have been using the Cisco XDR, Extended Detection and Response platform for the last two years, integrating Cisco Secure Firewall, Cisco Stealthwatch, Cisco Umbrella service for secure DNS, as well as Cisco endpoints with the XDR platform. We have onboarded Cisco's MDR service, Managed Detection and Response service onto the XDR platform.

It has a very useful impact on productivity because when we integrate our ecosystem with the XDR platform, it operates on the AI algorithm, correlating and analyzing incidents for severity level by the AI algorithm, which gives the severity of the incident as well as eliminates false positives and provides it to the SOC level two analyst to contain or remediate the incident. This is a good feature and has automated somewhat the first level of incident response.

I am looking forward to Cisco for providing AI detection capability so that we have defenses against AI-assisted cyber attacks.

As I mentioned, I am looking forward to Cisco for providing AI-assisted defenses because nowadays there is a lot of AI-assisted attacks. Traditional or even next-generation firewalls would not go a long way as far as defense is concerned, and I think every other vendor such as Palo Alto, Fortinet, and Sophos are working on improving the firewall with respect to AI-assisted attacks, which is what I expect from Cisco as well.

Presently, I am looking for AI features. I do not see any other feature because we are already using advanced malware protection and IPS and application visibility, threat intelligence feeds, and AI would probably be a good addition to the portfolio.

I have been dealing with Cisco Secure Firewall for quite some time.

I am satisfied with Cisco Secure Firewall in our organization.

As the organization grows year by year, I believe it is scaling very well concerning the growth of the organization, the number of branches, the number of users increasing, and the applications scaling out. It is scaling out as per the requirement.

I would rate the technical support by Cisco as eight or nine.

I included Palo Alto and Fortinet firewalls in our RFP process before opting for Cisco, but I believe for data center firewalling, Cisco is best suited amongst its competitors.

The deployment was very seamless because we have our own team in the bank for deployment, and we also took professional services when we deployed Cisco Secure Firewall. I do not think that we faced any challenges or hiccups during the deployment.

We have a team of ten to twelve people, but they are not only looking after Cisco Secure Firewall; they are looking at the security posture of the bank, including endpoints and file integrity manager, and MDR. I think two people would be the right, appropriate number looking after Cisco Secure Firewall.

The price is reasonable and it is competitive and affordable. It is from Cisco's authorized partners in Pakistan.

The deployment was very seamless because we have our own team in the bank for deployment, and we also took professional services when we deployed Cisco Secure Firewall. I do not think that we faced any challenges or hiccups during the deployment.

Whenever the traffic comes to the server farm and whenever a user accesses the application, we have one hundred twenty-five applications behind Cisco Secure Firewall, and it is almost all the bank which is using Cisco Secure Firewall. If I can give an exact number, probably we have thirty-one thousand employees in the bank, and all their applications are hosted behind Cisco Secure Firewall. I rate this product nine out of ten.

Regarding the implementation of Cisco Secure Firewall, I imagine that my colleagues from the security department and networking have a lot of complex configurations based on the requirements that we need.

We have an EVID ecosystem, and this implies very different kinds of configurations and rules.

There are general rules, and then there are some specific rules based, for example, on users that are in different geographies, accessing different applications, and with different needs and requirements in terms of security.

There are the back-end applications that must communicate between them and with external partners. There is also another integration complexity that my colleagues must face.

Currently, I am working with some multivendors, for example, with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, EVM DataPower, OpenAI, and Anthropic. I think I could miss other providers, but basically, these are the ones.

My organization benefits from utilizing Cisco Secure Firewall. I do not know the details of everything, but I hope my colleagues do a great job and Cisco Systems could help us to identify any of these constraints that could exist.

I cannot tell you about any drawbacks, downsides, or weak points of Cisco Secure Firewall which I would eliminate because I cannot respond with clarity.

I know there are known vulnerabilities in every system that we know, but I do not know in particular one that I could specify. If I worked with it on a daily basis, I could be more clear. Right now, I do not know.

I have been working in my organization with Cisco Secure Firewall for a long time; I started on this project ten years ago, then I returned in two thousand and twenty-one. It has been Cisco since then.

I have not tried or used the solution within the last twelve months period because I use Apache but I'm not using it now.

I have used it for a long time, three or four years, but now I am not using it. Since, I think, three years, four years approximately.

I believe I am not familiar with the product Secure Cloud Protection for Salesforce. I don't know because I am working with the integration and also with the Salesforce component integrations between Salesforce and billing and invoicing platforms.

In terms of security, I must comply with the guidance of the corporation that I am in.

In terms of security, it is another area. We need to only comply and be compliant with the guidance and requirements that they demand.

I would rate this review an eight out of ten.

I work with both the on-premises and cloud versions of the solution, as well as the SaaS version, for clients.

What makes Cisco Secure Firewall appealing to customers is that all the features are the same across all firewalls, but customers appreciate that it is a stable solution and more secure. There are not as many security breaches as with Fortinet, and that is the reason why they often choose Cisco firewalls because of the stability of enterprise-level cybersecurity protection and overall position in the market.

I have used new features recently in Cisco Secure Firewall, including AI support and AI central management, which is the latest feature from Cisco central management that allows me to manage all those appliances and firewalls centrally, also with some AI agents and chats and some additional regression features.

The integration of the SecureX feature has helped my productivity and response time, but I need to ask colleagues about this since they are more involved in this.

I assess the product's ability to unify and consolidate policies across my environment as quite straightforward and easy to do with this central management console.

In Cisco Secure Firewall, I have come across some drawbacks, downsides, or weak points, specifically that for some of the solutions or services, the user interface is not as great or lately updated as it should be; it looks old-school.

I have known Cisco Secure Firewall for more than five years, but it is not my top product. I am partially working with it.

Regarding Cisco technical support, I have communicated with them, and they are helpful and responsive. I rate them eight out of ten. It is a standard procedure, and I do not have any problems with it.

The implementation of Cisco Secure Firewall is more or less straightforward. I have not encountered any problems lately or at all.

It takes a couple of days, I would estimate, usually to deploy the product. However, this depends on the configuration.

I need more or less one or two people involved in the implementation process, depending on some additional services. When I am talking about the firewalls only, I could do it with one person, but if there are some additional cybersecurity services connected, then I could add some additional specialists.

I am using Cisco SecureX with Cisco Secure Firewall in some cases.

My evaluation of Cisco Secure Firewall in helping my organization implement a Zero Trust security model is that it functions more or less as a marketing abbreviation, but Cisco has all the features and configuration possibilities to implement Zero Trust out of the box. We have seen some cases when we combine it with Cisco Duo to achieve the highest level of Zero Trust access to devices and also to firewalls.

In terms of price, Cisco Secure Firewall is appealing for many in the enterprise segment, though for many customers it is too expensive. However, for customers in enterprises or at large corporations, the price is acceptable, depending on whether the customer is a small-medium business or enterprise. It is positioned more for enterprise customers.

I rate this product eight out of ten overall.