Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software vs. Darktrace

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
Score 8.9 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
Darktrace
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Darktrace AI interrupts in-progress cyber-attacks, including ransomware, email phishing, and threats to cloud environments. It's able to detect and establish baselines for your organization so it can make the distinction between what is and what isn't normal network activity for your organization. This allows it to tackle complex cyber-attacks as they happen and prevent future cyber-attacks from happening.N/A
Pricing
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) SoftwareDarktrace
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) SoftwareDarktrace
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) SoftwareDarktrace
Considered Both Products
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
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 …
Darktrace

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) SoftwareDarktrace
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
Darktrace
-
Ratings
Identification Technologies7.332 Ratings00 Ratings
Visualization Tools6.830 Ratings00 Ratings
Content Inspection8.032 Ratings00 Ratings
Policy-based Controls9.045 Ratings00 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP8.147 Ratings00 Ratings
Firewall Management Console8.047 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting and Logging5.648 Ratings00 Ratings
VPN9.248 Ratings00 Ratings
High Availability9.347 Ratings00 Ratings
Stateful Inspection8.746 Ratings00 Ratings
Proxy Server8.031 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) SoftwareDarktrace
Small Businesses
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.2 out of 10
Auvik
Auvik
Score 8.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.2 out of 10
InsightIDR
InsightIDR
Score 8.6 out of 10
Enterprises
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Score 9.4 out of 10
InsightIDR
InsightIDR
Score 8.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) SoftwareDarktrace
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(87 ratings)
8.5
(11 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.1
(4 ratings)
9.5
(2 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
7.5
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.7
(8 ratings)
9.4
(2 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) SoftwareDarktrace
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.
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Darktrace
Darktrace is a product well suited for the vast majority of infrastructures and helps monitoring and responding to threats based on the network in a very elastic way. This is a product based on on-premise infrastructures that hosts its machines locally, of course it can be technically difficult to monitor an entire On-Cloud infrastructure but even there there's room for sensors and monitoring, not to mention the SaaS and mail integration that completes the product.
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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.
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Darktrace
  • Uses it Al model UEBA to detect anomalies in the behaviour of not only the users in a corporate network but also the routers, servers, and endpoints in that network.
  • Provides a visualisation of both egress and outbound network traffics flowing in and out of the organisation.
  • Darktrace comes with it autonomous AI model detection and responses capabilities.
  • Darktrace as an AI next generation NDR solution, prevents ,contains and quarantines malicious traffics from and into the corporate network.
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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[.]
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Darktrace
  • There are few areas that I would say need to be improved; their customer support portal allows you to log tickets with any suggestions or things you feel the product is missing, and they will generally show you how to achieve what you want, or in some cases, introduce it as a feature in a later update.
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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
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Darktrace
It's a powerfull product that help administrators to provide email security to our organization.
Good metrics about received emails that help us to determine in doubt case if the email is a false positive or it's malware.
They're improving the product releasing continuous updates and have mobile phone app to manage it.
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Usability
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Darktrace
Darktrace comes with a simple usability interface with easy navigation and organisation.
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.
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Darktrace
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.
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Darktrace
Darktrace support is excellent in my experience. They send a competent engineer on-site to provide on-boarding training. They were also very responsive in responding to questions and concerns. Having an individual point of contact who is a competent network and security engineer is not a common experience, at least for me.
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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
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Darktrace
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.
Read full review
Darktrace
We did NOT select Darktrace. OSSIM/AlienVault is a more mature product and it provided better intelligence and reporting. The end user interface is much easier to use - and you can tell built form engineers who have had to do the work. My suggestion for anyone considering Darktrace, is to get the price upfront; do a 30/60 onsite trail; and do the same thing, at the same time, with AlienVault. AlientVault will win every time. I say that because that's exactly what I did.
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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
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Darktrace
  • One big positive is how it helps us with the security assessments that clients have done on us. They are looking to see if we know how we might have unusual/malicious traffic running on the network.
  • If you have a small network and only need 1 appliance, it can be a good ROI and peace of mind.
  • You could go down a hole in trying to spend time looking at all of your traffic with this software. You need to focus only on what it is showing as potential bad traffic.
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ScreenShots