The product also optimizes firewall capabilities for geographically distributed operators and enhances proxy-based architectures with Secure Web Gateways and CASB for cloud or SaaS applications. By integrating with identity providers like Azure Entra ID or Okta, Cisco Secure Access facilitates the transition from VPN to ZTNA while ensuring compliance with principles like least privilege access.

Additionally, it incorporates identity and device risk scores for dynamic access policies to respond to varying risk thresholds. The service is particularly useful for managing old VPN infrastructure replacements, firewall optimizations, and bridging the gaps between old and new secure access technologies.

The product also addresses unique geographical challenges, such as ensuring secure internet access for oil rigs in remote locations. Furthermore, Cisco Secure Access's multi-tenancy and Policy Verification features are crucial for managing multi-organization environments and ensuring policy accuracy, respectively.

Hybrid Private Access is particularly useful in regions where replacing existing gear isn't feasible due to cost concerns. Lastly, the product's AI-driven features like AI Access and AI Assistant ease policy management and triage, reducing the time and efforts needed in these processes.

The integration with identity providers facilitates this transition and aligns with Zero Trust Network Access principles. The platform offers capabilities like Secure Web Gateways, Firewall-as-a-Service, and CASB for enhanced cloud-based functionality. Its Policy Verification runs checks to prevent policy misconfigurations, a necessary feature for managing multi-organization environments.

Moreover, the product's AI-driven capabilities streamline policy management and triage, enhancing operational efficiency. Hybrid Private Access and multi-tenancy capabilities make it resource-efficient and particularly useful for unique geographical challenges. The product is scalable, adjusting to new requirements easily, and is backed by robust technical support.

Furthermore, while the AI capabilities of Cisco Secure Access are useful, they are not seen as major differentiators compared to competitors such as Palo Alto.

Additionally, though the existing threat intelligence is sufficient for most use cases, extending the integration scope with other tools, especially concerning AI supply chain risk management, could enhance its functionality.

Regarding the multi-organization management capability, it is akin to multi-tenancy, helpful for service provider infrastructures with multiple clients or single customers with diverse business units. It brings intuitive infrastructure management without providing unique features compared to competitors.

AI supply chain risk management, while theoretically beneficial, may not give an edge unless thorough integrations with additional tools are pursued. Furthermore, the choice of not implementing low-cost workflows was based on a need for higher security enhancements.

I would rate this review overall at a seven out of ten.

Cisco Secure Access provides application-level access. Usually, it's full network access, but with this tool, application-level access can be given. It removes the dependency of VPN, and then user authentications are continuously based on identity, device, and risk, which is an add-on there.

The Zero Trust Network Access feature is being used.

The integration of CASB functionality for exposing shadow IT within the company is smooth. Technical skill and knowledge are needed to evaluate, analyze, and deep dive on those things. From the tool's response, it is very good, and there is visibility on everything that is needed or necessary.

The integration of Cisco Talos influences threat detection and response capabilities. The integration of Cisco Talos is similar to every Cisco Umbrella, and the experience has been smooth. The knowledge, their KB, and FAQs are very good, and their support is very good. When in trouble, readily available documents or information are accessible.

I support the US government. From a customer perspective, the use cases tend to be where we are guarding edge devices that we don't have necessarily 100% positive command and control. The devices have data transport that traverses in some cases ISPs, so we can't really control who's adjacent to those networks. We often deploy in those types of environments. Where we can use dark fiber, we prefer to, but that's not always an option.

I'm probably pretty agnostic with respect to that. We have a federal mandate to reach these next-generation firewall requirements. Stateful packet inspection and things of that nature are the things that we're interested in. We have some programs adjacent to us that definitely do that, but my programs don't require that.

We get a significant discount with Cisco, and their support is definitely top-rate.

Cisco does a decent job with logging. Sometimes you may need to tweak a few settings, but with their more recent products that support Python and Java among others, you now have more programmatic control in the latest versions of IOS.

If the FTD devices themselves, the Firepower Threat Detection system, those are the firewalls themselves, the individual appliances, weren't so tightly coupled to FMC, I'd probably appreciate them as a product more. The learning curve was a little higher just because it's a large departure from their original ASA devices. If they could be managed individually as easily as they can be managed through FMC, I'd probably be a bigger fan.

I have used Cisco products for decades at this point. With respect to ASAs and FTDs, FTDs are fairly new, but I have used ASAs for the better part of a decade.

It is definitely top-rate. In fact, I know that my particular group didn't even have a service agreement in place for the better part of a year and those guys were still very responsive to emails and communications.

We've been using them so long, it's hard to remember being a newbie, but I don't find their products particularly hard to set up. They have great documentation.

In our deployments, all of our web-based access to any of those devices is actually cut off. We do everything through a secure socket. The only situation where we are compelled to use a web interface is for the FMC, specifically for configuration; however, our management is primarily conducted at the console level whenever possible.

We don't find them hard to manage, especially as a group. The bigger challenge was managing them outside of their FMC product. They prefer to be federated to some extent, and they really weren't designed to be individually managed. They prefer to be managed from a central location. But if you have an environment that lends itself to central management, for the most part, it's not an issue.

We acquire through an organization, and we are the ones that implement.

Price-wise, we get a significant discount with Cisco. I actually prefer Juniper products. From a professional perspective, I prefer Palo Alto and Juniper probably more than I do anybody else. But I can't make the argument when we get 50% and 60% discounts, which we don't get from Juniper or Palo Alto.

Because we operate with what could only be called a skeleton crew, a monitoring solution to the extent possible is dependent heavily on logging, which these applications allow. We do a heavy amount of logging and we do a great deal of log parsing through ELK stack and SolarWinds and Splunk. Any tool that provides telemetry through logging is a particularly good fit for us because we have to really automate our monitoring. We don't have the manpower to sit there and look at multiple applications and things on a regular basis. It all has to come to a central location and has to be pretty automated, red light, green light type stuff.

If you have the budget, make sure to get a solid understanding of what's out there. There might be some other products that you might prefer, but if your budget is constrained, you can make it work with Cisco products for sure.

I would rate the solution a 10 out of 10.

Managing Cisco Secure Access through the single cloud management console will not be difficult if you experience it once. This means once you have hands-on experience, you know how to operate it. In the first time, you might have a challenge because you need to understand the system. However, once you understand it, it will not be difficult anymore.

I find the zero trust approach helpful and beneficial in securing standard applications, which means you are accessing the applications directly instead of giving privilege to access the network itself. This is very beneficial in the context of security and is very effective.

Regarding the threat detection and response capabilities, because it's integrated in the cloud, users don't have to configure it to integrate with Talos. The feed that it has is already there, detecting malware and blocking it by itself from the Cisco Secure Access. The Intel is there, and we do not need to manually integrate with Talos.

My personal thinking about Cisco Secure Access is that because I'm also catching up on this solutioning, I'm not really seeing any improvement because I'm still learning. So far, it's good; I do not have any comment on this.

Regarding features about the UI, the pricing, and the learning curve of Cisco Secure Access that can be improved, the AI is already embedded in the solution. Because I haven't explored much and am not an expert, the features might be there, but I haven't tested them out.

When it comes to thoughts on the pricing, setup cost, and licensing cost of Cisco Secure Access, I cannot comment as I only did SSE for Cisco and did not have experience with other products. In terms of price comparisons, I cannot provide much insight.

The more competitive the pricing for Cisco Secure Access becomes, the better it would be for customers.

Throughout my experience with Cisco Secure Access, I have had some stability and reliability issues, including lagging when accessing the portal. Sometimes the response is fast, and sometimes it's slow, with response information that can be either correct or wrong. However, I consider these minor issues because they recover in a few minutes afterwards, though there are still glitches present.

In evaluating my experience with the technical support and customer service of Cisco Secure Access, during the POC, we did not leverage tech support at that particular moment; instead, we engaged directly with the SE team, the Cisco System Engineer teams.

Regarding the experience with the initial setup of Cisco Secure Access, it is important to communicate with the customers on the requirements, so they understand and prepare whatever we need to set up the POC. We need to communicate effectively with them and let them know what we need. Once our requirement is fulfilled, we can proceed. The key point is that communication with the customer must be maintained.

Once we have all of the requirements, the setup of the product itself is not that difficult. The first time requires understanding many things, but after the deployment and gaining experience, it becomes quite straightforward.

I give Cisco Secure Access a seven because I did study other products as well. While I haven't deployed any other SSE product, I went for the training. The way of deploying and the solution is quite seamless, but that's my current assessment without hands-on experience with the other products.

As a partner with Cisco, this relationship is more related to the partners agreements, which is why we are selling Cisco Secure Access.

My impressions of Cisco Secure Access on protecting organizations from threats such as phishing or ransomware attacks are based on my recent POC. There aren't many use cases I have shown to the customer, but I can confirm that the solution is effective.

I would evaluate my experience with the Cisco team as an eight on a scale of one to 10, where 10 is the best.

My advice for other users who would like to start working with Cisco Secure Access is to find a good service integrator. As I come from the service integrator background, my advice to end users is to collaborate with a reliable SI that has the expected expertise on the solutions they are going to purchase and enroll.

The overall rating for Cisco Secure Access is 7 out of 10.

My main use case for Cisco Secure Access is remote access.

As an aerospace company, security is highly important for us, and we have various security schemas across the company. We try not to treat everybody as the highest schema, so Cisco Secure Access gives us the ability to detect and put users where they need to go and not just shove everybody into the whole secure area.

I find the posture checking feature of Cisco Secure Access the most valuable, and I also appreciate the ability to tag clients to place them into the right segment.

We're just getting started with Zero Trust Network Access, and we have a long way to go in that aspect. We haven't expanded any usage; more of the posture and things we've done more with technology.

They've protected us from threats like phishing and ransomware.

The only improvement I see for Cisco Secure Access is the way that we're using it; we're not fully integrating it into our client consoles, which affects the user experience. That's more of an internal issue than a Cisco issue.

I struggle with the integration of CASB functionality for exposing Shadow IT within our organization. As a company of engineers, they tend to do smart things and just go around you, so it's always a challenge for us.

Regarding the integration with Cisco Talos, it's something that we're not utilizing as best as we can. We should leverage Talos more.

From a licensing perspective, Cisco can improve. It gets very complicated about what's included and what's not included. The way that we're using Cisco Secure Access today, it doesn't scale with the growing needs of our organization, however, if we leveraged more of the cloud services, it would fit better.

I have been using Cisco Secure Access for seven years.

Cisco Secure Access has been pretty stable. I can't really speak to downtime or performance issues much; I know we've had a few. I don't have the details to say whether it was a Cisco problem or an internal issue.

The way that we're using Cisco Secure Access today, it doesn't scale with the growing needs of our organization, however, if we leveraged more of the cloud services, it would fit better.

I don't really get involved with customer service and technical support. From a cloud team perspective, I'm aware of generally how we approach it. On a scale of one to ten, I would give customer service and technical support an eight.

Prior to adopting Cisco Secure Access, I have used another solution.

I wasn't involved in the deployment of Cisco Secure Access. That said, I'm not aware of major issues.

I don't see ROI with Cisco Secure Access right now; it's more of an internal issue. We have too many access platforms, and we need to consolidate. If we could solidify our access platform and eliminate non-duplication, the ROI would look much better than it does right now. That's our problem, not a Cisco issue.

I don't get involved in pricing scenarios; however, from a licensing perspective, Cisco can improve. It gets very complicated about what's included and what's not included.

We're definitely looking at more SaaS-based solutions such as Zscaler and Palo Alto before selecting Cisco Secure Access, dabbling in them yet never fully committing.

We did not purchase the solution via AWS Marketplace.

We consider a change since we're trying to achieve a user experience that's lighter weight.

I'm not an administrator, so I can't really speak to the ease or difficulty of managing Cisco Secure Access through a single cloud-managed console.

I would advise other potential customers or organizations considering Cisco Secure Access to take a closer look. They've added some features in the last year or so that have advanced significantly. They've caught up from the market where other people were ahead of them. I rate Cisco Secure Access seven out of ten.

Our main use cases for Cisco Secure Access are security and managing access.

Zero Trust Network Access has helped my organization in securing standard applications because it's mandated to have it. It provides peace of mind knowing that we have that deployed in our network.

Cisco Secure Access's ability to provide secure access via standard HTTP2, and optionally, QUIC protocol is good. It complies with the new standards.

The impact of Cisco Secure Access on protecting my organization from phishing and ransomware threats has been good so far. We've been doing well with no threats.

The features of Cisco Secure Access that I most prefer are easy management or manageability, and overall security. Cisco Secure Access has benefited my organization by allowing people to connect 24/7, ensuring reliability. Managing Cisco Secure Access through its single cloud-managed console is easy.

Cisco Secure Access can be improved with more integration; the more integrations, the better. There are always third-party products that you might have, such as Carbon Black.

I've been using Cisco Secure Access for a few years now. They changed the name, though I'm not certain when the name change occurred. I would estimate at least a few years of usage.

I would assess the stability and reliability of Cisco Secure Access as overall good. I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues.

Cisco Secure Access scales with the growing needs of my organization. It adapts each year as more people and devices are getting connected. The process of increasing usage is smooth.

I would rate them an eight out of ten because it's always hard to get very good resources immediately. It always takes escalations to get someone who really knows how to help out. I feel good about the customer service.

We switched from Palo Alto.

I was not a part of the deployment.

We have seen ROI with Cisco Secure Access. We had to switch from a different product, and there was a significant cost reduction. We're able to get many of the licenses down compared to the previous product that we used. We had many more licenses before moving to Cisco Secure Access.

For what you get, it's a fair price in comparison to other products.

We are, in general, a Cisco shop. We went for it because it integrates with the rest of the Cisco products that we have. We didn't consider other solutions.

My advice to other organizations considering Cisco Secure Access is that they should definitely give it a try. It's overall a good product. If you have other Cisco products, it integrates efficiently, and if you need any visibility or easy manageability, it's a very good product.

Cisco Secure Access overall is a great product. I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Our main use cases for Cisco Secure Access include everything, such as all of our switching and wireless.

I mostly work on the level one switching side. I deal with all the Catalyst 9300 switches and 9280 wireless routers.

It's pretty streamlined. Everything you need to find is in the GUI interface, and if you have any trouble, it's easy to navigate and get around.

Cisco Secure Access has had a positive impact on protecting our organization from threats such as phishing and ransomware. It provides security and adds additional layers.

I perceive Cisco Secure Access's ability to provide secure access via standard HTTP2, and optionally QUIC protocol, as great and secure.

The licensing is confusing.

I have been using Cisco Secure Access for only a year since joining the company last year. However, the company has been using it for almost ten years.

We have not had any downtime.

Cisco Secure Access scales with the growing needs of my organization. It works effectively for our needs.

I would rate their technical support a nine out of ten. They are quick to respond and generally quick to find a resolution and figure out what's wrong.

I have not used another solution to address similar needs in another role.

It was already in place when I got here.

It is confusing. When you look at the prices, you have different licensing and years of licensing that you have to purchase. Additionally, it's unclear what service you get from those licenses regarding end-user support. We have a representative who has to walk me through it every time.

The advice I would give to other organizations considering Cisco Secure Access is to implement it as it's pretty straightforward.

I would rate Cisco Secure Access a nine out of ten.

The main use cases for Cisco Secure Access involve secure access to the network, as they've had some history with malware, ransomware, and things like that. They are focused on better control for remote users and access to the network.

The ease of use for end users is always a big deal. We don't want to make it too hard for them. We're currently working on an end-to-end secure access solution. We are invested in Cisco, but there are other vendors involved as well, and trying to develop a holistic strategy has been a challenge for us. We have to avoid over-securing to the point where it becomes problematic, as too many hoops for users to jump through is always a challenge. It has to be easy because if it's not easy to use, they won't use it or will find back doors to it, which is a problem. That's where we're at with it.

It works well. It hasn't broken. While I don't know enough about all the features yet, it hasn't caused us any problems.

This is my first time in healthcare after being in commercial space for a long time. It's always a challenge because we can't just turn stuff off as we could in the commercial space, since it may interfere with patient care. It takes longer to understand what's going on, so anything that could help give us a faster understanding of what's happening, why it's there, and if it's a risk to us would be helpful. We don't have any good tools right now, which is a problem.

I have been using Cisco Secure Access for two months or so.

Cisco Secure Access has been good for stability and reliability; it hasn't crashed in the two months I've been using it.

We have a dedicated account team, so we've got all the people we need to engage with if there's an issue. It makes deploying in a larger enterprise a very easy choice. Having that backing is a comfort because, for more point-specific products or vendors, if you don't know who's going to stand behind them after you turn the lights on, that can be a concern. Cisco ensures support for the technology you use.

You have to have a good ROI and a compelling story with finance; I've definitely seen that. I came from Amazon, so it was a complete 180-degree turn. Not to say that there were unlimited funds at Amazon, but you didn't have to tell the story as richly. I was on the fulfillment side. Even if it didn't seem fully vetted, but appeared to make sense or had potential to improve speed and delivery, they bid on it pretty early.

It's different here. They want it thoroughly vetted with a deeper ROI. We need to understand the cost of an hour of outage at a hospital, which, at least here, they don't know. However, at Amazon, we knew exactly how much it would cost if a fulfillment center was down for an hour. We have to do a better job of that in our organization, and once we can clarify those points, we will achieve some of the wins needed to get things done.

Cisco is a rock-solid company and a leader in the network space, and I believe they will always provide the right level of support.

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