Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER Services vs. Cisco Umbrella

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 Umbrella
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Cisco now offers OpenDNS Umbrella Web Filtering. Cisco acquired OpenDNS in August 2015, and rebranded the product as Cisco Umbrella.N/A
Pricing
Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER ServicesCisco Umbrella
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER ServicesCisco Umbrella
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
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 Umbrella
Considered Both Products
Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER Services

No answer on this topic

Cisco Umbrella
Chose Cisco Umbrella
These products are used in conjunction with Umbrella to help cover the gaps in the product. Websense was the closest product we had in the past, however the cost and operating of the product became more and more difficult and costly.
Chose Cisco Umbrella
Umbrella is interoperable with our current technology stack where Zscaler isn't. Zscaler is more like a black box and your data is not yours anymore.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER ServicesCisco Umbrella
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER Services
9.0
30 Ratings
5% above category average
Cisco Umbrella
-
Ratings
Identification Technologies8.728 Ratings00 Ratings
Visualization Tools9.324 Ratings00 Ratings
Content Inspection8.729 Ratings00 Ratings
Policy-based Controls10.028 Ratings00 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP10.029 Ratings00 Ratings
Firewall Management Console9.630 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting and Logging8.129 Ratings00 Ratings
VPN10.030 Ratings00 Ratings
High Availability10.028 Ratings00 Ratings
Stateful Inspection8.14 Ratings00 Ratings
Proxy Server7.23 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER ServicesCisco Umbrella
Small Businesses
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.4 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.4 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Enterprises
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Score 9.3 out of 10
Zscaler Internet Access
Zscaler Internet Access
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER ServicesCisco Umbrella
Likelihood to Recommend
9.3
(30 ratings)
8.6
(105 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.7
(3 ratings)
8.0
(15 ratings)
Usability
7.2
(2 ratings)
7.7
(10 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.9
(11 ratings)
Performance
9.3
(26 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
9.8
(29 ratings)
7.8
(63 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(2 ratings)
9.3
(11 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.3
(10 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(3 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER ServicesCisco Umbrella
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
It is good for whole network protection, and individual PCs with the client. Provide good reporting on where your network is going on the net. One thing I would like is a longer history with the logs 14 and 30 days are too short some times.
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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
  • So for example, we had the problem in the past. We are connecting users to our own managed data centers. We had seven locations around the world, put them with Cisco, any connect to our on-prem data center and let them out to the internet. So that's causing some high latency bad experiences with teams and so on. And with Umbrella we can directly connect the user to the cloud and to the internet so the users have a good experience with speed with latency and it's much better than back hauling the traffic to their own company and then processing them there.
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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
  • The smart search feature in Cisco Umbrella is great addition for sure which helps us to identify malicious domain just by searching the URL and there is scoring system of Cisco Umbrella which mark the URL in low, medium and high risk. Sometimes Cisco Umbrella mark well known and good domain as malicious whether sometimes they mark malicious sites/domain as low risk. So, it's something that they should focus on, I think.
  • The live activity search is great for checking internet activities, but the filtering options could be improved. It would be helpful if we could filter by multiple parameters at once like combining username, destination IP and time range.
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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
First off I never give anything a "10" unless it's perfect. LOL - I grade on the curve. I think OpenDNS/Umbrella is a very good product. I think that fact that Cisco absorbed them is one of the proofs of that. I have used the product back when it was free for companies our size. I have not always appreciated the cost - but in the post pandemic cyber chaos, I believe the cost benefit ratio is still very high. I have honestly not looked at other products because Umbrella continues to work to my satisfaction. I consider Umbrella to be one of the key layers in my cyber security strategy.
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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
Better features and easy to manage system with great customer support and overall usability is great as it works for hybrid environment with ease as it is having features for on prem users as wells as cloud users with great customer support and great team of trained engineers to support our opeartions.
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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
Cisco umbrella services in the cloud are always available. However, the weakness is the VM installed in the data center that are the first resolvers. If the VMs become unavailable for any reason or the vSphere goes down, then all DNS is affected
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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
our experience with cisco products has always been awesome and same is the case with cisco umbrella .Under umbrella cisco provides flexible and scalable software solution to use across different dept and sites . These softwares are very user friendly ,pages load quickly as these applications are designed for minimum latency and reports are also provided quickely
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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
Whilst the support is good once you get through to them, it's email only and the response is slow. This is a issue, because its a core system that needs to work. We have had issues in the past where several of our companies have gone down due to Umbrella and support is nowhere to be seen. It is very difficult to know whether Umbrella is having service issues, since they do not regularly update customers on the status of their services, such as is seen by providers such as Microsoft (status.umbrella.com just seems to show up all of the time, I'm not sure it's even updated)
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Online Training
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
Quite easy to understand training modules prepared by knowledgeable trainers. Training modules have included all the desired features of these softwares and the content delivery is very good from the respective module trainers and it explains in details the features and apart from that further training material support is also provided if needed.
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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
At the time we were forced to move from Cloud Web Security to Cisco Umbrella, Cisco Umbrella was far from being a direct replacement. It was frustrating and difficult to migrate due to the lack of functionality. This has since been addressed, however we now have legacy rulesets that were built as bandaids that cannot be removed. Hopefully the migration to Secure Access will address this.
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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
Different products in different spaces. The Z3 was more of a VPN endpoint so that users didn't have to worry about a client. If they are at home, they are on their corporate network and able to access resources. Cisco Umbrella can be used then to serve corporate DNS across the VPN tunnel to the Z3 device and extend the capabilities of Cisco Umbrella.
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Scalability
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
Cisco umbrella provides fleaxible and scalable software solutions which are easy deploy across multiple departments and sites wherever needed and this softwares are very easy to use and provides the best interface along with cisco support for other devices apart from cisco infrastructure but still there is scope for improvement on the inclusion of latest features
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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
  • So it's always very hard to calculate return on investment, especially on security and especially in a physical product. So it's not like I'm going to be selling a lot more plastic or a lot more aviation fuel because I implemented Cisco Umbrella. What I know is that definitely, the return on investment is on the ability of the business to continue to run and give the assurance that our users are safe.
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