Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER Services vs. pfSense vs. Sophos Firewall

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

I believe PFSense is well suited for both home lab environments as well as up to small to mid-size business environments on a tight budget. However, I would implore that anything in production requires the use of the authorized hardware that PFSense sells to receive support. However, in my experience, PFSense is a solid set-and-forget firewall solution.

It is well-suited for small, medium, and large organizations looking for comprehensive cybersecurity protection. It will not only safeguard their network from cyberattacks but also provide them with many advanced features like deep packet inspection, centralized management, web filtering, application control, etc. in one place. It will help them optimize bandwidth and ensure continued connectivity.

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

• Easy to use. Good user interface design! Easy to understand and easy to set up.
• Lower hardware requirement. 3 years ago, we used an old PC to run it. Now, we have changed to a router device with Celeron CPU and 8GB RAM. It runs smoothly with a 1000G commercial broadband.

Incentivized

• Web filtering. This allows us to monitor web usage and block certain categories from being access at the perimeter.
• Application Control. With application control we can block certain applications that get categorized from working accessing the Internet.
• Synchronized Security. When utilizing the Sophos Endpoint product you can use Synchronized Security to minimize Lateral Movement in a network. If a machine is shows a Red status you can auto-isolate it and it is unable to communicate with anything else on the network.

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

• I did kind of mention a Con in the Pro section with OpenVPN.
• When I create a config for an employee other employees are able to login to that config.
• I could be doing something wrong when I am making it - I am not afraid to admit that as I am pretty new to all of this, but it seems like it builds a key and I would think the key would be unique in some way to each employee, but I could be wrong.
• I actually do not have a lot of Con's for this software - I did not get to set this up on our work network so I am not sure of any downfalls when installing.
• I installed this on my personal machine in a Hyper-V environment to get a feel for it before I started working on it at work and it seemed pretty smooth. I didn't run into any issues.

Incentivized

• If using Endpoint security and the Firewall it would be nice to have an easier back and forth between the portals rather than have two separate tabs open. Especially if using more than one in multiple locations.
• If dealing with different revisions options are moved around and sometimes in places that doesn't normally seem like they should be there.

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

The pfSense UI is easy to navigate and pretty go look at. It is much better than some high dollar firewalls that just throw menus you you. The pfSense UI is quick and responsive and makes sense 99% of the time. Changes are committed quickly and the hardware rarely requires a reboot. It just runs.

Incentivized

Because this is a user-friendly interface, and anyone can use it there are multiple articles and guidelines available, it has advanced-level security features. they provide VPN solutions all the features are very practical, SSID MAC-based authentications web control, Firewall rules segregation of the rules and policies, On-premises Active directory single sign-on feature is also available.

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

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

pfSense+ basic provides "As Available" email support. pfSense+ Pro offers 24 hr turn around email support. pfSense+ Enterprise offers 24/7 phone support.

Incentivized

As we are all addicted to graphics-oriented interfaces for all our life products. Easy to manage and access as a good way of using anything

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

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

Meraki has a unified management login for all devices, which is nice. It also has decent content filtering, both areas where pfSense is weaker. Where pfSense far ouclasses Meraki is in the ease of use and the other width of features. These include features such as better VPN interoperability, non-subscription based pricing, auditability, not relying on the infrastructure of a third party, more transparency of what's actually going on, easier to deploy replacements if hardware fails. Additionally, the NAT management for pfSense seems to be a bit better, as you can NAT between any network segment and not just the LAN segments out the WAN interfaces.

I was a big fan of Cisco ASA products, but when I saw all of the security feature differences between both firewalls, I moved to Sophos devices. Its sandbox, IPS, and many more features are really advanced. Cisco does not provide features like this.

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

• pfSense can be installed on commodity hardware with no licensing fees. With a simple less than 10 minute restore time, on most hardware, it's an extremely inexpensive way to achieve the same results that some of the more expensive vendors provide.
• The easy to use interface has allowed configuration management to be preformed by lower level technicians with quick and easy training.

Incentivized

• True UTM device.
• Very Active customer help for any help.
• Easy license and cost effective.
• Should [do] more work on logging and reporting.