Secure Access

We use Cisco SD-WAN in our own company for our own needs, and we are also selling this to our customers while performing operations for customer networks. My personal customer scope is the large enterprise customer. We have integrated Cisco Identity Intelligence with Cisco Secure Access using Cisco ISE.

This integration has influenced our identity management and security measures significantly, as we use Cisco ISE to harmonize the access control, leading us towards a zero-trust network environment.

The advantages I see in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN compared to their competitors is the seamless service scope, where I can have from Cisco the LAN, Wi-Fi environment, the SD-WAN environment, and the security environment, and as now announced from Cisco, all the management is combined in one orchestrator, which is the most beneficial aspect for me, not looking for the best of breed but more looking for the best fit.

I have used the policy verification to help reduce policy misconfigurations.

The multi-organization management capability of Cisco Secure Access in terms of usability and efficiency is quite good, as there is an RBAC system, allowing me to granularly define the access roles. I would rate this an eight.

For SD-WAN, I do not see any room for improvement, but for Cisco Secure Access, I think there is a lot to do for Cisco to integrate that in the Telco enterprise environment for seamless operation.

I am not talking about the integration with third-party solutions; you need to control the SD-WAN security policies in the same hand with the cloud security, and currently, both are managed by two different management systems, so you need to integrate that seamlessly.

It could be better from Cisco. The API interfaces, for example, Terraform integration, could be quite useful because there are some customers looking for full automation, and therefore it would be good to have a Terraform integration.

Some other companies are better on the market currently when it comes to the AI Access feature of Cisco Secure Access for providing deep visibility and control over AI applications, tools, and LLMs. If you compare it with the AI capability of Juniper Mist, Cisco needs to do a little bit more.

IPsec is a very old protocol, and sometimes it is good to see if there are some alternatives for VPNs in Cisco Secure Access.

I would like to see flexible access to the cloud in the next release to make it better. Currently, you set up one IPsec tunnel and that is all, which I think is not sufficient. There could be a better way, and what is missing are some virtualization services and security services in Cisco Secure Access cloud environment, especially for dedicated customers, such as governance and so on.

I have been dealing with Cisco SD-WAN for ten to fifteen years.

Technical support is perfect, and I find it fine. I would rate their support an eight out of ten.

There is still room for improvement when it comes to response time, especially if you need some response from the US. If you need support from the US side, you can see the different countries, and sometimes it takes very long to get an approval from the US side, which is something that could be better.

The initial setup of Cisco Secure Access was not straightforward. There were a lot of discussions, especially with our customer about what the benefits are, particularly regarding the cost and the cost-benefits ratio, with discussions being more governance-driven or management-driven rather than technical, which meant it took a lot of time.

In my experience with the Experience Insights feature or Digital Experience Monitoring of Cisco Secure Access, ThousandEyes is a fine tool, but currently, my experience with our customer is that it is too expensive just to have it. It is nice to have, but it is not business-critical, and therefore it is too expensive.

The overall pricing of Cisco Secure Access has changed dramatically in the last half year, and I would say it is too high.

I think Cisco should consider their licensing model, as anything could be improved.

Currently, AI Supply Chain Risk Management is not really an issue for us today. I would rate Cisco Secure Access a seven out of ten overall.

My main use case for Cisco Secure Access is for one client, where I deployed DNS security. Previously, Cisco DNS security was part of Umbrella; now, it has been moved to Cisco Secure Access. I implemented DNS security, which provided the client with cloud-based DNS security and intelligent proxy features, so they are protected from day-zero attacks with policy management in place. That was one use case for Cisco Secure Access, and for another client, I have recently deployed ZTNA using Cisco Duo MFA.

For a specific example of how I used Cisco Secure Access for one of these clients, I will provide the example of one client where I deployed ZTNA through MFA. The client has around 1500 users working in a hybrid environment, so connecting every user on the VPN, whether hardware-hosted, VM-hosted, or anywhere else, causes unnecessary burden. SASE is the best use case of Cisco Secure Access in the hybrid environment, where if users want to access any of their private applications, they connect to Cisco Secure Cloud. From the cloud, the traffic is tunneled, providing zero-trust access and requiring MFA to access any internal application. This way, since it is cloud-based security, the routing and everything is taken care of in the cloud, avoiding dependency on hardware infrastructure or overusing the link in the data center itself.

The best feature that Cisco Secure Access offers is a single platform where DNS security, ZTNA, and everything are in one place, all managed through a single cloud dashboard.

Having everything in a single platform and dashboard has made things easier for me and my clients because everything is available for checking or troubleshooting.

Cisco Secure Access has positively impacted my organization because we are Cisco preferred partners. We deploy everything for our clients, so it is not just about deploying it in our organization. Since we are a preferred partner, many clients requiring Cisco Secure Access are routed to us from Cisco.

After deploying Cisco Secure Access, I received specific positive outcomes and feedback from my clients. For the use case concerning DNS security over the last three months, their AD integration with Cisco Secure Access allows them to create user-based policies for DNS security based on identity and username. They also receive a dashboard to monitor reports on threats and everything online in the cloud. The customer is very happy that they are able to overview their organization, seeing the number of users utilizing maximum applications, the top talkers, and everything.

Cisco Secure Access has greatly impacted protecting my organization and clients from threats such as phishing and ransomware. Because it has ZTNA and is cloud-based with VMs deployed inside the network, it creates best practice tunnels required for accessing applications from day one. Thus, we can deploy with peace of mind without juggling best practices or opening only specific ports.

Cisco Secure Access can be improved by providing information about the location of the PoPs where users are connected. The guidelines in KSA say it is mandatory for the PoPs to be regional, similar to how Fortinet SASE discloses its PoP locations.

In terms of needed improvements around documentation and support, the documentation has been good for me. Since I deployed for the first time, I went through Cisco documents, which helped me a lot, and their program on the T-Cloud labs also provided great support. Completing the lab gave me the confidence to deploy for the customer. The documentation and the labs provided by Cisco are very good.

I have been using Cisco Secure Access for the last six months.

For others looking into using Cisco Secure Access, my advice is that it is a good solution and they should experience it.

I chose eight out of ten primarily due to only the PoP presence. I would rate the ease of managing Cisco Secure Access through its single cloud-managed console an eight.

In my experience, it is easy to navigate and manage everything from the console, but compared to the FortiGate SASE platform, FortiGate has a unified platform for all their products, while Cisco has each platform operating differently.

I use the Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) feature of Cisco Secure Access, and it is a great feature. We do not need to worry about the security of accessing applications from outside the environment. With ZTNA, each application access requires authentication, which is a truly great feature.

This ZTNA approach has positively changed my client's security posture, and there are no significant challenges or surprises. I rate this product eight out of ten.

I am dealing with Cisco Secure Access products. As a consultant and reseller, I am using it myself with Cisco Secure Access.

You can have tenants with Cisco Secure Access. Tenancy is obviously part of it, so you can have multiple tenants on Secure Access. Especially if you're a managed service provider, you can have multiple tenants where you just have to flip the feature and specify which tenant you're working in. I've used that before to manage multiple infrastructures, and all you have to do is change the tenancy. That is quite useful. It used to be like that for Umbrella as well. Cisco basically just translated it back to Secure Access, so the same feature on Umbrella is on Secure Access as well. We have used it.

It's a best practice recommendation to have Cisco Secure Access integrated with Cisco ISE. With that integration, you can do your segmentation using security group tags and create a micro-segmentation setup with more security. We do that integration.

It's very useful because you can have visibility, especially in terms of logging and knowing who's doing what with Cisco Secure Access. If you have integration with Cisco ISE, then you have a name to traffic. You can have an identity that shows who is doing this, because it's integrated to your Azure network, your Google Cloud, or Active Directory. This makes investigation easier. Additionally, you can do your segmentation based on users and other criteria.

I think Zero Trust Access for application is the feature I find most valuable in Cisco Secure Access.

I only use Cisco Secure Access' AI Access feature for troubleshooting. It has a log feature, and there isn't really any AI element in that. The AI feature is more having an AI tool at the top where you can ask a question to get visibility. You can ask what a log means or ask a question that you want the AI to answer for you. There's an AI icon at the top of the bar, and then you can ask questions. That's basically where the AI feature is. There's no AI in terms of the telemetry unless you ask the AI feature to do it for you. If you want the AI element for that, there's another feature that Cisco has that you have to add as a feature add-on.

Cisco Secure Access has a VPN as a service feature. You have that Zero Trust as well because it's almost a VPN but just for applications. You access the application encrypted, but you don't need a VPN tool to connect. You can just access the application, which is what Zero Trust basically is. If you want VPN as a service, Secure Access has it. If you want to allow remote access for a certain application, then you do the Zero Trust setup, which is also a VPN but you don't need a VPN client to make it work.

Most of the time, I recommend my customers to use Cisco Secure Access' Experience Insights feature for Branch Access, which is basically when you want to tunnel all your traffic. You probably have a gateway in a branch and then you create a tunnel with Secure Access and then you send all clients through that tunnel to Secure Access. Everything including web traffic can be visible. You can also use it for VPN. You can use it to protect applications like I mentioned earlier about Zero Trust. You want to create an application that users can access remotely without using a VPN client, then you can do a Zero Trust setup. You can also do a proxy setup where you send all your internet traffic through Secure Access. These are the four features that I like about Secure Access.

I use Cisco Secure Access' Hybrid Private Access feature for varying the enforcement location for ZTNA private traffic. ZTNA is Zero Trust Networking, the private one.

The policy verification feature helps reduce policy misconfigurations in Cisco Secure Access where you can check to make sure that all your policies are intact. That is something we definitely use, especially if you have a lot of rules going on. You want to make sure that your rules are intact and you don't have any conflicts going on anywhere. That is a feature I always recommend.

I think the AI element of Cisco Secure Access is just asking logs, and I think the AI element can certainly be improved. The first question about how AI can enhance telemetry, that feature is not really there. You do have some kind of AI type element in it, but it's not advanced enough. That's where it's lacking. It's quite good because it's cloud-based. Pricing is also an area for improvement. It is really expensive.

I have been dealing with Cisco Secure Access for about two years.

If you log a ticket with Cisco, they usually come back really quick. I would say nine out of ten.

The pricing is not too bad because it's per headcount with Cisco Secure Access. You check how many clients you have. If you have 500 users, then you base your pricing on that. It's still expensive though. It's an expensive tool to have. I think they can do better in price. There are companies with better pricing options.

FortiGate cloud solution is what I usually recommend instead of Cisco Secure Access. They have something similar as well. If a customer says that Secure Access is too expensive for themselves, I recommend FortiGate because they're not too bad in pricing.

The AI element of Cisco Secure Access should have better guidance on the logs. To be honest, I can't think of anything else because it's quite a robust feature. My overall review rating for Cisco Secure Access is nine out of ten.

My main use case for Cisco Secure Access is providing secure remote access to internal applications while enforcing Zero Trust security policies. For example, in a lab environment, I used it to securely connect to internal web applications without exposing them directly to the internet. I also used its Secure Web Gateway to monitor and filter web traffic based on organizational policies. Day-to-day, it helps ensure that only authenticated and authorized users can access specific resources, improving security while maintaining a smooth user experience for remote users.

One thing I appreciated about my main use case and the authentication process with Cisco Secure Access was how it centralizes access management and security policies in a single platform. Once authentication and access rules were configured, day-to-day administration became much simpler. It also provided good visibility into user access and security events, making it easier to identify and investigate potential issues. Overall, it improved security without creating unnecessary friction for end-users, which was one of the biggest advantages.

The standout features of Cisco Secure Access are its Zero Trust Network Access, ZTNA, Secure Web Gateway, and multi-factor authentication, MFA, integration. I also appreciate its centralized policy management, which makes it easy to enforce consistent security rules across users and devices. The detailed visibility into user activity and security events helps with monitoring and troubleshooting. Additionally, its cloud-based architecture provides secure access for remote and hybrid users without relying on traditional VPNs, making it both scalable and easy to manage. Overall, these features significantly improve security while maintaining a smooth user experience.

Compared with similar secure access solutions, Cisco Secure Access stands out because of its tight integration with the Cisco security ecosystem and its unified cloud-native platform. Instead of managing multiple separate tools, administrators can enforce consistent security policies from a single console. I also found the Zero Trust approach and detailed visibility into user activity to be stronger than many traditional VPN solutions. These features make it easier to secure remote users while simplifying management, making the platform a good fit for organizations with hybrid or distributed workforces.

Cisco Secure Access is a strong platform, but there are a few areas that could be improved. The initial setup and policy configuration can be complex, especially for organizations new to Zero Trust architecture. The user interface could be more intuitive, making advanced features easier to locate and configure. Reporting and analytics could also provide more customizable dashboards and detailed insights. Providing broader integration and simpler troubleshooting guides would help administrators resolve issues more quickly and improve the overall management experience.

I think Cisco Secure Access could benefit from deeper integrations with a wider range of third-party identity providers, SIEM platforms, and endpoint security solutions to simplify deployment in mixed-vendor environments. I would also like to see more built-in troubleshooting tools and guided policy recommendations, which would reduce the learning curve for new administrators and make ongoing management more efficient.

The reporting tools and third-party integrations could be more flexible and user-friendly. These are areas for improvement, but they do not outweigh the platform's overall strengths and value.

I have been using Cisco Secure Access for approximately six months.

The authentication process for users in Cisco Secure Access was generally straightforward and easy to configure. Integrating it with an identity provider and enabling multi-factor authentication, MFA, was smooth, and the user onboarding experience was simple. The main challenge was configuring access policies correctly for different user groups during the initial setup, as it required careful planning and testing. Once those policies were in place, authentication became reliable and seamless. Overall, the setup was manageable, and the platform provided a secure, yet user-friendly login experience.

I would confidently recommend Cisco Secure Access to organizations looking to modernize secure remote access.

Cisco Secure Access has a strong approach to AI governance and security. I appreciate that its AI-driven capabilities are supported by Zero Trust principles, identity-based access controls, and continuous monitoring. The platform provides good visibility into user activity and helps detect suspicious behavior while maintaining strict security policies. From a governance perspective, centralized policy management and detailed audit logs support compliance.

I believe there is still room for improvement.

I find the AI capabilities of Cisco Secure Access to be accurate and reliable for most security-related tasks. The platform consistently identifies potential threats, provides relevant security insights, and helps prioritize alerts, which reduces manual effort for administrators. In my experience, the recommendations are generally actionable and aligned with security best practices. While no AI system is perfect and some alerts may require manual verification, the overall accuracy is high enough to improve operational efficiency and support faster decision-making. I would consider its AI output trustworthy for day-to-day security operations. I gave this review a rating of 9.