Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software vs. Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER Services

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

This firewall is best suited for the network edge/perimeter deployment. The next gen features works very well and the remote access VPN is also very much suitable for the organizations which have a huge user base working remotely. The Remote Access VPN is very much customizable and the authentication integration option like LDAP and RADIUS provides and addon.

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

• The Cisco ASA with FirePOWER Services model works perfectly for network edge protection scenarios.
• It allows for the creation and connection of sites through site-to-site VPN configuration.
• It enables remote connection and home office with remote SSL or IPSEC VPN.
• It has layer 7 traffic protection and visibility.
• It has anti-malware protection from start to finish.
• The configuration is easy to perform.

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

• URL Filtering feature could be easier to utilize for beginners
• I'd like to see a visual of VPN networks setup and show the functioning or malfunctioning status to assist in making troubleshooting easier
• Recommendations on ACLs for beginners based on their account creation date

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

Ever since we installed Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER Services we have never had to deal with an attack. We can see in the logs almost every day hackers attempting to break into our networks and failing. We also have the ability to blacklist every IP address that attempts to break into our firewalls

Incentivized

Cisco firepower provides automatation for an organisations security operations to detect and stop the most advanced threats fast. It also assists in preventing attacks in using intelligence and innovative solutions.

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

We have never had an outage caused by firewall failure. We have had a few outages caused by the internet failing or cloud applications going offline but never a firewall breaking down. When making changes we have a very strong change control, major software updates are always carried out out of working hours. At places where we have two firewalls in HA, we are able to do upgrades in working ours and the users will never know that an upgrade is taking place, that how great these firewalls are

Incentivized

The Cisco ASA 5500X with Firepower performance needs consideration before deploying. Although the solution is Pay as you grow, adding additional features to the system has a negative impact on overall throughput. I would more like now only to deploy the Cisco FPR units as they have better performance and will last the test of time.

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

I would recommend the purchase of the Smartnet 24x7 service in the case of a unit and the Smartnet 8x5NBD in the case of only one appliance installed on site. This service is important to always have the latest firmware updates, corrective updates and especially the hardware warranty and maintenance service in case of problems. The service is done by phone or on the official Cisco website and I can say that it is very good and efficient.

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

We implemented a centralized management of all our Cisco ASA 5500-x with FirePOWER Services so that we can have a holistic view of all our sites in London and other European countries. This also helps when making changes, instead of login on to each firewall we can use Firepower Management Center (FMC) to central deploy changes across all devices

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

Previous],] I was using the [pfSense] in my organization but when i switched to [Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER Services] I realized there are lots of issue and missing security features in [pfSense]. The deployment and configuration is very easy as compare to [pfSense]. I highly recommend this product to everyone.

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

• Working of remote workforce made easy
• Security was enhanced on the data traffic shared with the vendors due to the use of VPNs
• Inbound attacks were mostly blocked on the edge and saved a lot of resources (which could had been used in case of attacks getting successful on the application servers)

Incentivized