Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software vs. Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series

Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software	Score 9.1 out of 10	N/A	Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) software is the core OS for the ASA suite. It provides firewall functionality, as well as integration with context-specific Cisco security modules. It is scaled for enterprise-level traffic and connections.	N/A
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series	Score 9.4 out of 10	N/A	Palo Alto next-generation firewalls classify all traffic, including encrypted and internal traffic, based on application, application function, user and content. Users can create security policies to enable only authorized users to run sanctioned applications.	N/A

Pricing

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software

Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series

Editions & Modules

No answers on this topic

Offerings

Pricing Offerings
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software	Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Free Trial
No	No
Free/Freemium Version
No	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

Entry-level Setup Fee

No setup fee

Additional Details

—

More Pricing Information

Pricing Info

Community Pulse
	Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software	Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Considered Both Products	Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software Verified User Administrator Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software Cisco has made it easy to buy, set up, and manage all of our firewalls with the central FirePower Management Center. All licensing is done via one license portal too. Tech support is standardized for all ASA devices and like support engineers who know the different models to … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Engineer Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software Cisco ASA is doing well, has [a] lot of documents available, [and easy] implementation, however, other vendors are also very easy to deploy. Cisco ASA has [a] great support team. Cisco ASA is truly [a] next-generation product. Now it is cloud-managed, along with zero-touch … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Engineer Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software I am a CCNP and will always go with Cisco because they are more affordable than Palo Altos and yet they do the same job and easy to deploy. Incentivized Helpful? Mst Rahima Khatun Marketing Product Management Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software Configuration and management of Cisco's ASA are straightforward. We chose Cisco ASA for many reasons, as well as Cisco's threat response reports. We previously had issues with Sophos UTM due to its poor performance. We no longer have to be concerned about performance issues … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Supervisor Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software We have been using and deploying different vendor-based firewalls. Our main considerations for selection; use case, functionalities, and the price of the product. When there’s a Vpn or detailed routing scenarios Cisco ASA is the Incentivized Helpful? Rajesh Singh CEO & MD Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software [Cisco] ASA is far better than pfSense[.] pfSense is a very complicated firewall and if you need any help documentation is not easily available. Cisco ASA configuration via CLI is [the] very best and fast for configuration[.] Incentivized Helpful? Jeffrey Thoenen Senior Network Engineer Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software The Palo Alto firewalls do a decent job of packet forwarding, but the GUI is slow and cumbersome. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Professional Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software Our Palo Altos and Cisco ASAs are pretty comparable. They both seem to work well when used in an HA pair. They can both do IP/Port based ACLs. But the Palos also have APP-ID which helps to make sure that the traffic passing through your firewall is the type of traffic … Incentivized Helpful? Steven Van Jaarsveld Security Engineer L3 Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software When comparing Cisco ASA to other vendors' products we needed to bear in mind that most other security vendors offer a next-gen Firewall solution while the ASA is still a legacy firewall. Based on this, Cisco ASA is by no means a loser here. Cisco ASA is an extremely capable … Helpful? Verified User Engineer Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software Cisco tried to build a new platform by bolting acquired and rebranded SourceFire as a next generation platform but really missed the boat. Cisco should be considered a networking company not security. Firewall technology is changing and Cisco needs to reevaluate their place in … Incentivized Helpful? Larry Chisholm Network Engineer Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software Cisco made sense from the standpoint that my engineers already knew it and there was little learning curve. Personally, I prefer a purpose-built hardware solution. Untangle is not ready for the enterprise as a whole but works great to do web/application filtering . … Incentivized Helpful? RO Richard Oberle Convergence Engineer Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software We sell both PAN and Cisco products. We feel a certain bias toward ASA as overall they are easier to deploy, easier to troubleshoot, last years beyond their supported lifetime and have extremely sturdy reliable hardware. Helpful? Verified User Engineer Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software I've used older Cisco PIX and we have a third party that uses Palo Alto firewalls that is more suited for our enterprise but the ASA works seamlessly with our communication manager server. Incentivized Helpful? Brandon Holbrook IT Security Analyst Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software We selected Cisco ASA because most of the other networking equipment is also Cisco devices. With this we are able to be confident that we will not have any issues with incompatibility. The ability to integrate with other Cisco solutions that we already had in place was also a … Incentivized Helpful? Brian Munn Network Services Manager Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software We currently have both products running in our environment. The ASA has a more mature product line and we have had create success with implementing and administering the ASA for the years. Solid product with great features. Incentivized Helpful? Eric Krueger Infrastructure Manager Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software The Cisco back end support is what made the difference for us. The ability to configure the device to our specific needs was a plus as well. VPN was easy to set up and we have had few issues with end users connectivity. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Administrator Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software The PAN does great with application based filtering, but the ASA dominates the port based Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Engineer Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software We actually went with the Palo Alto firewalls in most sites, and are using the Palo Alto to replace the classic ASAs; however, there was one location where cost was a major issue so we decided to go with the X-series ASA. We spent a few thousand dollars (though only the L4 … Incentivized Helpful? George McElhoe Network Engineer Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software Shortly before my departure, my previous company had me involved with a 3 month proof-of-concept and vendor selection process for SCADA environments in an oil and gas environment. The products tested were the Cisco ASA 5516 w/SourceFire, Palo Alto, and CheckPoint. Of them, … Incentivized Helpful?	Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series Verified User Analyst Chose Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series The Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series are much easier to configure than both Checkpoint and Cisco, in my opinion. From Security policy management and traffic inspection standpoints, there is no comparison. Incentivized Helpful? Vinit Sharma Network Administrator Chose Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series We are using Cisco ASA before in our environment but when it comes to deep scanning & layer 7 security it doesn't have that capability. After using Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall we are using sandboxing & advance malware protection that provides high-level end-user … Incentivized Helpful? Basant Gupta Executive System Admin Chose Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series No one can say any other companies in this time is better than Palo Alto Networks Next-Generatoin Firewalls. Palo Alto offers very advanced features which protect you[r] organization. Advanced malware protection, anti spam, lots of other threats. Incentivized Helpful? Chandan Singh Rathore Senior Technical Consultant Chose Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series Palo Alto has a user-friendly GUI and it comes with a single console from where you can manage all the policies and routing. It has advanced capabilities to prevent APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) attacks. Cisco Firepower lacks in capabilities with Palo Alto if we compare it. Incentivized Helpful? Adam Morrison Director of IT Engineering Chose Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series I did not originally choose Palo Alto as our core firewall appliance. It has already been purchased when I came on board. However, I did recently choose to purchase new Palo Alto firewalls to replaced our older models. I have had experience working with Cisco ASAs and … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Professional Chose Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series The main competitor I can compare Palo Alto to is the FortiGate series of devices by Fortinet. FortiGates are capable UMTs and also less expensive than Palo Altos. That being said, category filtering on FortiGates is less effective, and they are not as feature-rich as Palo … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Administrator Chose Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series We previously used Cisco 5585 ASAs with firepower. We wanted a more holistic solution than what the Cisco ASA was providing for us. In this situation, we needed to have consistency in how rules were applied across multiple types of traffic, while also knowing what kind of … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Engineer Chose Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series In my opinion, Palo Alto provides the most easily managed firewall on the market, with the most options for device management. Compared to other vendors it's very obvious that Palo Alto focuses on their firewall technologies and supporting them. The monitoring and visibility … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Administrator Chose Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series 1.Good Technical support with strong expertise 2.Easy to deploy 3.Good features like APP ID and CONTENT ID. Helpful? Irteza Rana Network Engineer Chose Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series Palo Alto has the ability to secure public cloud which none of the vendors have currently. With Palo Alto VM series you can deploy firewall VM in minutes and secure your public cloud. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Professional Chose Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series I've been really happy with our Palo Alto [solutions] and we're replacing a good chunk of our ASAs with Palo Alto. As far as firewalls go the Palo Alto firewalls are significantly better in my opinion, but we still use ASAs as VPN devices in a few scenarios and they work just … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Professional Chose Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series Why did we choose PAN? The number of exploits written for PAN devices are much smaller than ASA. It's much simpler to manage than the checkpoint. It includes web filtering module with the product. Quite simply, it was just the best bang for the buck. Our management consistently … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Engineer Chose Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series Palo Alto beats all other current UTM/NGFW at this point in time. Palo Alto has a complete vision and is less buggy/requires less management overhead than other NGFW/UTMs on the market. They are currently developing a lot of products and I can see in the next 5 years, other … Incentivized Helpful? John Orleans, CISSP Manager of Information Security and Networking Chose Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series All the other products varied from just okay to very good at their individual tasks, but none had the complete vision package provided by Palo Alto. Some were easier to use and setup, with very friendly interfaces. Palo Alto have come a looong way with their Web interface, … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Engineer Chose Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series The GUI on the Palo Alto firewalls is excellent, compared to the ASA. Also, the Panorama management GUI is very good. At the time when we were evaluating vendors, Cisco had just acquired Sourcefire, so the ASA just didn't have the features that the Palo Alto did in terms of … Incentivized Helpful? Jennifer Greulich, GSED, GSEC Manager, IT Security & Compliance Chose Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series Cisco ASA doesn't even compare to the Palo Alto firewalls. When using a Cisco ASA at another company, we were constantly dealing with malware that got past the firewalls because it didn't provide any layer 7 protection. The PA's provide next level protection against application … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User C-Level Executive Chose Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series I have used Cisco & Sonicwall primarily in most of my 23+ years of network security experience. Over the years all of these platforms have matured, but Palo Alto beats them all in terms of user interface. The ability to run reports, get access to data immediately, and have … Incentivized Helpful? Gary Halbedel Network Administrator Chose Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series I have used the Cisco ASA 5520 but it is a traditional packet filtering firewall. We chose the Palo Alto because it is a next-gen application aware device which the Cisco is not. I also evaluated the Cisco next-gen device but I felt they were late to the game and Palo Alto was … Incentivized Helpful?
Top Pros	Pro Site to site Pro Site vpn Pro Remote vpn	Pro Url filtering Pro Malware protection Pro Application control
Top Cons	Minus Layer 7 Minus User friendly Minus Security features	Minus Difficult to configure Minus Less documentation Minus Web interface

Features

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software

Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series

Firewall

Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
	Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software 8.0 49 Ratings 6% below category average	Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series 9.4 22 Ratings 10% above category average
Identification Technologies	7.032 Ratings	10.022 Ratings
Visualization Tools	6.830 Ratings	8.022 Ratings
Content Inspection	8.232 Ratings	10.022 Ratings
Policy-based Controls	9.045 Ratings	10.022 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP	8.047 Ratings	9.021 Ratings
Firewall Management Console	7.847 Ratings	9.022 Ratings
Reporting and Logging	5.748 Ratings	10.022 Ratings
VPN	9.148 Ratings	9.022 Ratings
High Availability	9.147 Ratings	10.021 Ratings
Stateful Inspection	9.046 Ratings	10.021 Ratings
Proxy Server	8.031 Ratings	8.810 Ratings

Best Alternatives
	Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software	Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Small Businesses	pfSense Score 9.6 out of 10	pfSense Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies	pfSense Score 9.6 out of 10	pfSense Score 9.6 out of 10
Enterprises	Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series Score 9.4 out of 10	Cisco Meraki MX Score 9.1 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software	Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Likelihood to Recommend	9.1 (87 ratings)	10.0 (38 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	7.1 (4 ratings)	10.0 (1 ratings)
Usability	- (0 ratings)	9.0 (3 ratings)
Availability	7.5 (2 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Support Rating	8.7 (8 ratings)	8.4 (9 ratings)
Implementation Rating	8.0 (2 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Ease of integration	6.5 (2 ratings)	- (0 ratings)

User Testimonials
	Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software	Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Likelihood to Recommend	Cisco 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 Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Palo Alto Networks Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series are extremely versatile. Whether it be a one office location or multiple sites, the Panorama interface allows centralized management. I've found Palo Alto does a great job with their updates and supporting customers. As a cybersecurity professional, I like that Palo Alto's products offer a wide range of controls to support defense in depth. It is easy for security and network infrastructure teams to use the same consoles to deliver performance with security built in. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Pros	Cisco 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 Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Palo Alto Networks The PA handles VPN connectivity without missing a beat. We have multiple VPN tunnels in use for redundancy to cloud-based services. The PA has great functionality in supporting failover internet connections, again with the ability to have multiple paths out to our cloud-based services. The PA is updated on the regular with various security updates, we are not concerned with the firewall's ability to see what packets are really flowing across the network. Being able to see beyond just IP and port requests lets you know things are locked down better than traditional firewalls. It is a great overall kit, with URL filtering and other services that fill in the gaps between other solutions without breaking the bank. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Cons	Cisco 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 Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Palo Alto Networks Our specific model is a bit slow and outdated and takes up to 10 minutes to commit a configuration change. Nested security rules would be helpful instead of a linear approach. But rule creation in general is very simple. Documentation gives a very straight forward answer to some items but is very vague in others. Support could be a little better. An issue we had a tech was insistent it was the "other guy" and it ended up being the very latest PAN OS upgrade. Incentivized Christopher St.Amand Senior Network Security Engineer Read full review
Likelihood to Renew	Cisco 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 Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Palo Alto Networks The PA5220s have far exceeded what we have expected out of them. It was a bit of a learning curve coming from another vendor, but everything falls into place now with ease. The capabilities of the solution still surprise us, allowing us to remove other costly hardware and providing a single point of management needed Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Usability	Cisco No answers on this topic	Palo Alto Networks In my opinion, the Palo Alto Firewall is the simplest firewall in terms of management interfaces; though it has more advanced options that apply to more advanced use cases. Configuring basic features on the firewall is nearly self-explanatory; configuring more advanced features can be met with very thorough vendor documentation. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Reliability and Availability	Cisco 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 Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Palo Alto Networks No answers on this topic
Support Rating	Cisco 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 Fraser Clark Network Engineer Read full review	Palo Alto Networks We've run into a couple undocumented bugs, but that seems to happen with every brand and technology. Any time we've had to engage Palo Alto support they've always been professional, knowledgeable and prompt. In almost all cases we've been able to resolve our issues without having to escalate our tickets. Incentivized PL Paul Luchini Network Engineer Read full review
Implementation Rating	Cisco 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 Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Palo Alto Networks No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered	Cisco 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 Chirag Deol Chief Marketing Officer Read full review	Palo Alto Networks We are using Cisco ASA before in our environment but when it comes to deep scanning & layer 7 security it doesn't have that capability. After using Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall we are using sandboxing & advance malware protection that provides high-level end-user security. Also after implementing it we can easily monitor user-level traffic. Incentivized Vinit Sharma Network Administrator Read full review
Return on Investment	Cisco 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 Larry Chisholm Network Engineer Read full review	Palo Alto Networks Overall, even though the device is very expensive (both hardware and licensing), the product does produce a decent ROI, given that one (or HA pair) of devices can do so many things, such as anti-virus, anti-malware, URL filtering, SSL decryption, SSL VPN, routing, etc. There will definitely be sticker shock when you're renewal comes up annually (or after 3 years), so be sure to look very carefully at the recurring costs of this product, with respect to licensing and hardware/software maintenance. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
ScreenShots