Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER Services vs. Cisco Secure Firewall

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER Services
Score 7.4 out of 10
N/A
Cisco offers a threat-focused next-generation firewall (NGFW), the ASA 5500-X Series. The ASA 5500 Series platforms can run either the Cisco ASA Firewall or Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD). The series features appliances in a variety of form factors, including standalone options for small and midsize businesses, ruggedized appliances for extreme environments, midsize appliances for security at the Internet edge, and high-performance appliances for enterprise data centers.N/A
Cisco Secure Firewall
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Secure Firewall (formerly Cisco Firepower NGFW) is a firewall product that integrates with other Cisco security offerings. It provides Advanced Malware protection, including sandboxing environments and DDoS mitigation. Cisco also offers a Next Generation Intrusion Prevention System, which provides security across cloud environments using techniques like internal network segmentation. The firewall can be managed locally, remotely, and via the cloud. The product is scalable to the scope of…N/A
Pricing
Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER ServicesCisco Secure Firewall
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER ServicesCisco Secure Firewall
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsCisco ASA 5500-X pricing starts at ~$400 and scales up to $20,000 for higher capacity appliances.—
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER ServicesCisco Secure Firewall
Considered Both Products
Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER Services

No answer on this topic

Cisco Secure Firewall
Chose Cisco Secure Firewall
I really like Cisco FTD with FMC. It is one of the best products out there. Nevertheless, when compared to PaloAlot it has some room for improvements. The PaloAlto firewalls in general are faster easier to use and have better features. Easier to TS and faster to operate. I …
Chose Cisco Secure Firewall
The single pane of glass and straightforward interface make[s] Cisco Secure Firewall an upgrade in regards to usability over the ASA in my book. Configuring, auditing and upgrading are all easily doable and learnable, and the systems seem are very reliable. The inspection …
Chose Cisco Secure Firewall
CheckPoint has a far superior user interface for configuration and troubleshooting. Cisco ASA had a great CLI interface.
Chose Cisco Secure Firewall
Cisco FTD ofers GUI management and overall if feature richer
Features
Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER ServicesCisco Secure Firewall
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER Services
9.0
30 Ratings
4% above category average
Cisco Secure Firewall
7.7
81 Ratings
12% below category average
Identification Technologies8.628 Ratings7.968 Ratings
Visualization Tools9.324 Ratings7.073 Ratings
Content Inspection8.629 Ratings7.872 Ratings
Policy-based Controls10.028 Ratings8.478 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP10.029 Ratings8.065 Ratings
Firewall Management Console9.730 Ratings7.576 Ratings
Reporting and Logging7.929 Ratings7.477 Ratings
VPN10.030 Ratings7.966 Ratings
High Availability10.028 Ratings8.373 Ratings
Stateful Inspection8.14 Ratings8.372 Ratings
Proxy Server7.23 Ratings6.942 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER ServicesCisco Secure Firewall
Small Businesses
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.4 out of 10
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.6 out of 10
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.6 out of 10
Enterprises
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.6 out of 10
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER ServicesCisco Secure Firewall
Likelihood to Recommend
9.3
(30 ratings)
7.8
(88 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.7
(3 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
Usability
7.2
(2 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.2
(2 ratings)
Performance
9.3
(26 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.8
(29 ratings)
7.3
(37 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(2 ratings)
8.9
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER ServicesCisco Secure Firewall
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
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.
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Cisco
Well suited any edge kind of protection, which is obviously, again, what firewalls really used for. Less suited if you need more detailed protection, more granular, shall I say it's a better word, more granular protection. The ability to filter not just on IPS and ports, but a much deeper look at the packets and do that.
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Pros
Cisco
  • 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.
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Cisco
  • It's been a big change for us because like I said, we've been using it about a year, I think. And we went from ASAs to this, so it was a big changeover from being able to do everything in CLI honestly, it's a bit clunky and more time consuming to have to configure things through the Gooey, which has been a pain point for us. But we've tried to automate as much as we can. What it does well is the analysis. The event, not event viewer, but unified event, that's what it is. Handy tool. Also the tunnel troubleshooting the site to site tunnel monitoring or troubleshooting, I can't remember what it's called. It's pretty good too. It's nice how it has some predefined commands in there. I'd say those are probably the things we like about it the most.
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Cons
Cisco
  • 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
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Cisco
  • I have one argument, failover scenario. It's not quite easy. Failover scenario of firewalls. It's sometimes not quite easy to know the issue. But if we open a tech case, a technical case to Cisco, Cisco will help us, it's a little bit con, but we are happy with this product.
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Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
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
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Cisco
It works really well. We can do most anything we want or need to with it, and you don’t have to have a doctorate or multiple certs to necessarily figure it out. The thing that would probably have to happen to make us switch would be if we just got priced out - Cisco’s more powerful and higher bandwidth models cost a pretty penny.
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Usability
Cisco
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.
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Cisco
Solution is highly effective, offers a lot of features with constant improvements and additions of new features over time. It's relatively easy to get familiar with the system, especially if transitioning from adaptive security appliances. If this is not the case, as for learnability there's a learning curve but once learned it is relatively easy to remember the details about the system even after a period of non-use
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Reliability and Availability
Cisco
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
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Cisco
We have had really good success with Cisco Secure Firewall when it comes to availability. Even when we’ve had temporary issues with one appliance or the other, or with the Firewall Management Center, it has stayed up and defended our network diligently. We even had an issue where the licensing got disabled for multiple days, and it kept spinning like a top
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Performance
Cisco
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.
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Cisco
no slowing down, vpn is working fast
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Support Rating
Cisco
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.
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Cisco
Cisco support is not at all suitable for this product, at least. It takes a long for them to help us with our server issues. A lot of the time, the customer support person keeps on redirecting calls to another person. They need to be well versed with the terminologies of the product they are supporting us with. Support needs a lot of improvement. Cisco Fire Linux OS, the operating system behind Cisco Firepower NGFW (formerly Sourcefire), also doesn't receive regular patches. In short, average customer service.
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In-Person Training
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
very good
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Online Training
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
was a good training but questions was answered not so good. Training was "Fundamentals of Cisco Firewall Threat Defense and Intrusion Prevention (SFWIPF)".
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Implementation Rating
Cisco
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
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Cisco
In the beginning transition from Adaptive Security Appliance to Cisco Secure Firewall did not look like the best choice. Solution was new, there were a lot of bugs and unsupported features and the actual execution in the form of configuration via Firepower Management Center was extremely slow. Compare configuring a feature via CLI on ASA in a manner of seconds (copy/paste) to deployment via FMC to Secure Firewall which took approx. 10 mins (no exaggeration). Today, situation is a bit different, overall solution looks much more stable and faster then it was but there's still room for improvement.
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Alternatives Considered
Cisco
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.
Read full review
Cisco
I think the Cisco product is probably pretty much equal now. I would love to say that Cisco is way more advanced or whatever, but Palo Alto, they just focus solely really on firewalls. And before Cisco came out with the FTD, the ASAs would only do layer four. So that's one of the reasons why that we purchased the Palo Alto is because they would do layer seven. And when we went to the FTDs, since they do layer seven as well, we just wanted to have different layers of security with our firewalls. So we just put the Palo Altos behind the Ciscos in case that there was anything that the Ciscos didn't catch, the Palo Altos would.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
was not involved
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Scalability
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
you can choose up to 50 devices i think thats enough for our organization
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Professional Services
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
was not involved
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Return on Investment
Cisco
  • 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)
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Cisco
  • Some patching for zero day exploits have resulted in bugs causing downtime, meaning decision between vuln patching or risk of downtime needs to be discussed.
  • Peace of mind that the device will receive continued upgrades and with a quick turnaround.
  • Ability to use TAC for issues.
  • Ease of hiring candidates with experience in product line.
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