Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software vs. Cisco Routers vs. Palo Alto Networks Prisma SD-WAN

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

Cisco Routers, particularly ASRs, are well suited at the edge or perimeter of your network topology since they're capable of aggregating large data and performing fast packet processing. To be even more specific, they are great at handling full internet BGP route tables and aggregating multiple WAN connections. Some scenarios where they may be less appropriate might be for much smaller sites running less critical services that may not need "state of the art" enterprise routers.

Incentivized

CloudGenix would be suited for any company that has an internet connection if you have multiple sites you could use this to help with network traffic and what should take precedence over other applications. If you didn't have various sites, you could go with another type of internet connection.CloudGenix may not be suited for that scenario.

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

• Helps to separate routing information for different networks for different customers.
• Helps peers with service providers and Customer Networks and starts the exchange of information between them.
• Helps facilitate internet connectivity for enterprise networks.
• Helps transferring Internet or Private Data from one place to another.

Incentivized

• The ability to see all traffic and pinpoint issues.
• Ability to prioritize applications and their traffic.

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

• It will be helpful if configuration can be done using a http GUI
• Graphical Visualizing provisioned VPN services will helps in troubleshooting
• Software upgrade process should have an automated way, that helps in managing large no of devices in the network

Incentivized

• Some warning messages are hard to pinpoint the actual issue.
• Support was faster at first, seems to not be as quick as in the beginning.

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

We are extremely likely to renew, as we have been very happy with our Cisco Routers for over 10 years. Their uptime as well as stable nature makes them ideal for us, as we are an industry that cannot afford downtime. We trust our partner to recommend our next model Cisco, when the time comes.

Incentivized

The best thing about Cisco products is their presence in community. When you have a problem you can do quick search and find whoever else had the same question and expert answer for that question. Other thing is there are Cisco certified people we can find very easily if want some help with comissioning these 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

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

Cisco support is very good. Of course, sometime you will run into support guy that isn't up to the task. Buf overall, the support system is well structure. You know if this support isn't able to help, you can esclate the situation to find another help. Also, their documentation is well developed and can be very useful.

Incentivized

The support was super fast in the beginning. Sometimes it seems now that the support does not get back to you as quickly. When we do get in contact with the support, they are usually knowledgeable and can help find the problem. The support has also been easy to work with.

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 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

Other vendors definitely bring some great features. We've gone from Fortinet to HPE, to Ruckus. Each product has benefits to consider. For us, Cisco is a trusted brand that's used about thousands of customers and many fortune companies. While some of the newer or smaller players have great features, Cisco has most of the same plus time in the trenches.

Incentivized

CloudGenix is the first product with SDWAN that we have used. There are others out there, but I cannot speak to those as I do not have any experience with them.

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

• Network management has become easy and fast with cloud based portal.
• Network policies could be rolled out quickly across the devices.
• Improvement in Network security.
• Stable internet connection has lead to less downtime and more productivity.
• Stable internet connection in each location within the organization.

Incentivized

• It has saved us a lot of money moving from an MPLS connection.
• It has given better video quality with international calls.

Incentivized