Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER Services vs Stonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)

• Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER Services are very well suited for most environments.
• Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER Services have a variety of networking features including NextGen, web content filtering, data analysis, high availability failover, packet inspection, context-based ACL, and other features to protect your networks.
• It's easy to deploy and manage.

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• Based on the SecureComputing Sidewinder firewalls, the McAfee Firewall Enterprise does similar backend containerization of each service which provides for added security in the unlikely event of failures or breeches.
• Tie in reporting services (if used by the admin) provide very granular details on rules accessed and the firewalls response to the requests.
• Configurable options are plentiful. Unbound DNS can be configured on each "burb" (SecureComputing/McAfee parlance for interface), similar options for sendmail while rulesets can be configured at the application level down to simple IP-filter making options for enhancing security as well as troubleshooting equally as useful.
• Full control over shell for scripting and/or scheduling (cron) purposes.
• Solid HA and patching architecture.
• Support was always helpful, knowledgeable and insightful (especially the staff that migrated from SecureComputing).

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• Performance when using FirePower services make the unit slow
• Capacity of what the FirePower services need
• The interface is better than ASDM but these still need ASDM and that can be a challenge to get the correct Java version loaded
• Certain 5500-X models are different than previous versions with no switchport options

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• For an application-layer firewall the applications supported (at the time I managed them) were too few and would need to be expanded and the application ruleset needed to be expanded as well.
• The remote access VPN client configuration was overly complex for the average user and would need to be supplemented with a configuration file that had already been generated. Other solutions from CheckPoint or Cisco ASA are not as complex for end user remote access.
• Enhancing the GUI with a builtin "packet capture" feature would be useful for administrators not familiar with tcpdump.

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• As an integrated appliance, we saved costs on getting other security technologies.
• It provided secure access to our remote users, saving costs and time as our users could get access to the network anywhere and anytime.
• Since we have other Cisco devices, integration was seamless.
• Integration with Active Directory meant we did not need to create addition user accounts.

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• In its highly available configuration the impact on any business objective has been positive given the fact that any downtime of the firewall would negatively impact all business objectives.

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