Cisco Secure Firewall ASA Virtual - PAYG

I have been using a firewall for more than eight years throughout my career overall.

I am working as a network architect in my current field for a long time. I need to evaluate the solution based on the RFP and size the right solution for the right project based on the client's specification, client requirement, and the requirement of the consultant.

We are using Cisco Secure Firewall on the network parameters to secure the WAN traffic, enabling all the features of the next-generation firewall, which includes the IPS, IDS, web filtering, URL filtering, and we are enabling the SD-WAN feature for the multi-WAN links for high availability of the WAN. Based on the RFP and client demand, we are also using it as a data center firewall to protect the data center traffic. In some use cases, we are using separate firewalls on the WAN, such as a WAN firewall, then an internet firewall, and the DMZ firewall based on the different use cases. We are using Cisco firewall on almost all the zones to secure our network.

For some RFP and projects, we are using the perimeter firewall from Cisco and data center firewall from competitor vendors. It can be FortiNet, Palo Alto, or Sophos, depending on the use cases. Sometimes, the data center firewall is Cisco and the perimeter firewall is from another vendor. It is the customer's choice to keep different firewalls on different zones and from different vendors.

There is a lot to appreciate about Cisco Secure Firewall and its next-generation features. One firewall can, if it's a mid-scale project, serve as a perimeter firewall that is more than enough to protect you from all of the outsourced bad actors, which includes the web filtering, URL filtering, and also the VPN, which includes the antivirus, IPS, and IDS. All of the features of the next-generation firewall in one box are more than enough to protect you from all of the bad actors from outside your organization.

One thing I dislike about Cisco Secure Firewall is that most customers do not want to go with one vendor. Cisco also provides the network devices, which includes the core switch and switches, and other equipment, so customers dislike going with the same vendor for the firewall. They prefer that the firewall vendor should be different from their network backbone. If one side is exploited, such as there is a vulnerability on the switch ISO, there is a possibility your firewall can also be disrupted by the same vulnerability. Customers do not want to go with the same vendor across all their network. They want to change the firewall vendor to another, such as FortiNet and Palo Alto to keep some modularity in the network.

Another thing I do not appreciate in Cisco Secure Firewall specifically is that the configuration aspect is a bit difficult compared to other vendors such as FortiNet and Palo Alto. You need a good hands-on engineer who can configure Cisco Secure Firewall as compared to the other vendors. The learning curve is more complex in Cisco compared to other market vendors. Additionally, the cost difference is almost fifteen to twenty percent more than other vendors.

The deployment process is a bit difficult, especially on Cisco, because first you need to deploy Cisco Secure Firewall and if you have multiple firewalls from Cisco, you need FMC. Without FMC, you cannot deploy most of the Cisco Secure Firewall features; you need FMC as mandatory. In the case of other vendors, you do not need their central management, and if you want to manage the firewall from a central location, it is acceptable, but you can configure the full features of the firewall from the firewall interface. Cisco does not provide this ease. You have to have FMC to enable a certain set of features on Cisco Secure Firewall. Additionally, the learning curve is a bit difficult; you should have good hands-on experience with their solution to make all the configuration required as per the customer requirement.

I have not faced any crashing of Cisco Secure Firewall in any of my clients. I have deployments around twenty plus customers in Saudi Arabia and different countries and cities, in different use cases. I have Cisco Secure Firewall in hospitals, hotels, airports, and shopping malls, and I have never faced complaints of a Cisco Secure Firewall crash or anything similar. They are very stable.

When you are selecting the firewall and choosing one with a future perspective for growth, taking into consideration fifty percent or more than fifty percent, Cisco Secure Firewall is scalable. However, when selecting a firewall without considering future growth due to budget constraints, you may encounter bottlenecks later. In some cases, customers specifically ask to size Cisco Secure Firewall based on fifty percent occupancy and fifty percent for future growth. Cisco Secure Firewall is scalable. Cisco's new models allow you to upgrade their network card from ten gigabit to twenty-five gigabit and from twenty-five gigabit to forty gigabit and forty gigabit to one hundred gigabit based on different models. Their new models are highly scalable, but it ultimately depends on how much the customer wants to pay.

I have contacted Cisco's technical support regarding the firewall when needed. On most of the clients, especially when we need to upgrade Cisco Secure Firewall to the latest firmware, we have the project Airport and we have the operation and maintenance at the ICAD Group company. Whenever we need to upgrade Cisco Secure Firewall to the latest stable release, we first open the TAC case with Cisco. We take a Cisco engineer on board with us, and he is involved until the end of the update cycle. Once Cisco Secure Firewall is fully upgraded, we confirm that all the policies and firewall rules are running efficiently without any issues before we close the TAC case with Cisco.

For support, I would give ten out of ten, but I have faced issues over the past two or three years. When we open the TAC case and the TAC case goes to America or a European country, the support engineer is very good, and he guides us and is with us, solving all issues effectively. However, when the TAC case goes to an Indian engineer, I am really surprised. There is a big gap in the learning curve. The engineers assigned from the European or American side and the engineers assigned from India to the TAC case are completely different experiences. This is my personal experience. When I have received TAC cases from India, I have been totally disappointed. In contrast, the engineers assigned from America or European countries are very good; they solve issues smartly and quickly. The engineers assigned from India typically keep asking for logs and other details, then escalate the case to a further level, and finally someone will be assigned from America or North America who will solve the issue.

For the support case, I would give nine out of ten to Cisco TAC support. They are very good and efficient, but over the past two or three years, I would deduct one mark for the TAC support due to the engineers assigned from India.

I am the one configuring CCW on the Cisco portal. I am customizing Cisco Secure Firewall based on the customer requirement and also other vendors, which include FortiNet, Palo Alto, and Sophos, while I configure the firewall on the portal. Cisco Secure Firewall price is a bit higher, and the subscription cost is also a bit higher compared to other vendors. The interface, number of availability of ten gigabit, one gigabit, or twenty-five, forty gigabit interface, if I compare to other vendors for the same series of model, if I compare Cisco 3105 with the FortiNet 401F, they almost have the same features and throughput, but the number of interfaces is more on the other vendor firewall compared to Cisco Secure Firewall. Cisco Secure Firewall is nearly ten to fifteen percent more than other market vendors.

Maintenance is required, of course. You can say that almost every year and based on the customer requirement. For example, in one site, we are using a firewall that has a ten gigabit interface, and the customer demanded that we upgrade the throughput to twenty-five gigabit or forty gigabit, but the firewall supports twenty-five gigabit. We removed the ten gigabit card and we added the available twenty-five gigabit card from Cisco Secure Firewall. In terms of hardware maintenance, I do not see any hardware maintenance needed due to a firewall failure; it is a very stable firewall with good build quality. Also, if you have Cisco Smart Net and if there is any chance of firewall failure, they will replace it on the next business day. If you have twenty-four seven support, they will replace it in four hours, which varies based on the use cases and which Smart Net service you have on the client side.

In some projects, we faced a small use case with Cisco during the tendering stage. When we need to size the correct solution, especially for hybrid deployment on some projects, we did not have a well-trained or good engineer from Cisco who could guide us and size the solution based on the customer need. On some projects, time is very limited; we have a small window of one week or ten days to submit our proposal to the customer. We need to size the solution based on the customer need, but sometimes the representative provided by a Cisco account manager does not understand the solution or size it correctly, particularly for hybrid deployments, causing us to lose the RFP. Overall, I have given this review a rating of ten out of ten.

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.