Bigleaf vs. Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software

Bigleaf is great for getting good performance out of two mediocre ISPs. Bigleaf is great for getting the combined bandwidth of two or more ISPs without having to subscribe to higher tiers with the ISP. I can't imagine Bigleaf would do much good for a business with only one ISP. Reporting with Bigleaf is helpful in documenting any issues with an ISP - I can show an ISP performance history if we experience a problem.

Incentivized

Cisco ASA's are great for internal network connected access between a firewall and the central management server. And, for complex networks where high security requirements with overly strict compliance are necessary. For networks with limited connectivity to the core or for poor network connectivity these are not the best solution. There are other more stand-alone firewall's that do this better. These firewall's are a little more complex to set up to start with so significant knowledge of these devices is required to set them up and ensure they are best practice installed.

Incentivized

• Does not add a security layer - We have our own security layer and did not want an additional one.
• Combines bandwidth from multiple ISPs to provide a bigger pipe.

Incentivized

• ASA is our VPN concentrator. The client and server are very stable and very easy to use
• ASA also offers Intrusion Prevention, to an extent. This is also very useful for an improved security posture for a small company
• ASA allowed us to scale very quickly. We could onboard clients, partners, and consultants and give them a great onboarding experience as well
• Administrative costs with ASA are low. It's very easy to administer.

Incentivized

• I can't think of anything to add here. It perfectly meets our needs!

Incentivized

• The ASDM software is at times a nightmare to install because of different java versions[.]
• [The firewall] could do with a power button, just to be able to do a hard reboot when needed[.]
• It would be nice to manage the firewall via the web on port 443[.]

Incentivized

To be honest there has been now great products out in the market compared to Cisco ASA. I beleieve Cisco has to do a lot of improvement in this area. The other defeiniete factors is the cost when it comes to renewals which is always a premium on Cisco products

Incentivized

I generally have not noticed the outages, however since it's a machine it can malfunction, we need to implement the firewall infrastructure in such a way that it is highly available with device failure, region failure etc. Else any solution will be having the issues if they are not build with resiliency.

Incentivized

Any time we've had a problem, Bigleaf support has been readily available in English. Support seems competent, and when one hardware device failed we were quickly provided with a replacement

Incentivized

The support is usually very good and gets back to you very quickly. However I had some instances of when two engineers will give me wildly different answers to what I thought was a simple question. Overall however I do rate the support highly and they are generally always very good.

Incentivized

It was quite a good one, how ever requires an expertise to deploy hence the SMB segment would be finding it difficult to implement this product. The one good reason is that there are lot of ASA certified engineers in compared to the other certified engineers. Hence this resembles positively on the deployment as you have quite a lot of experienced engineer on your deployment

Incentivized

Bigleaf doesn't add a security layer. Competitors we looked at all bundled in security from Cisco or Fortinet, and we didn't want to learn another product and have a competing security layer. With Bigleaf we are able to leverage our existing security solution.

Incentivized

We were using [pfSense] before in our environment but we regularly facing difficulties over it due to software bugs & downtime. After implementing Cisco ASA, it resolved our availability issue & provides us a reliable solution with the best security features & easy to understand GUI.

Incentivized

• Bigleaf has dramatically improved our internet uptime and provides metrics to track that.
• Bigleaf protects our internet performance by balancing ISPs so we don't experience poor performance when one ISP has a problem.

Incentivized

• Most network engineers have worked with ASA, so there is no need for re-training when adding or turning over staff
• Current configs from older devices plug in easily, and are operational on larger devices if an upgrade is required
• Many support options available

Incentivized