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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/ACisco Catalyst SD-WAN is a software-defined wide area network solution designed to simplify and optimize enterprise network connectivity in complex digital landscapes. It enables organizations to connect any user to any application, whether on-premises, in data centers, or across multiple clouds, with integrated capabilities for multicloud support, security, predictive automation, and enhanced network visibility—all built on a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)-enabled…N/A

    Cisco Secure Firewall

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/ACisco Secure Firewall delivers comprehensive threat protection for modern, distributed networks. Built to support hybrid workforces and multicloud environments, it enables Zero Trust access, application visibility, and secure remote connectivity. With integration across the Cisco Secure portfolio, including SecureX and Talos threat intelligence, the firewall powers organizations to detect and stop more sophisticated threats. Centralized management simplifies policy enforcement, orchestration,…N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco Catalyst SD-WANCisco Secure Firewall
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Catalyst SD-WANCisco Secure Firewall
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    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 Catalyst SD-WANCisco Secure Firewall
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN
    Costs/functionallity
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN
    Cisco Firepower
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN
    Much more stable and technical support is top notch.
    Incentivized
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco Secure Firewall
    Well FWs are branch security things and major things so really not much similar device at Cisco portfolio.
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Secure Firewall
    We use it because it's the best firewall on the market now. And are the best protection and hardware.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    96%
    Would buy again
    133 Answers
    93%
    Would buy again
    193 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    116 Answers
    90%
    Delivers good value for the price
    160 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    135 Answers
    92%
    Happy with the feature set
    191 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    91%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    93 Answers
    86%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    140 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    87%
    Implementation went as expected
    109 Answers
    86%
    Implementation went as expected
    164 Answers
    Features
    Cisco Catalyst SD-WANCisco Secure Firewall
    Firewall
    Comparison of Firewall features of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN and Cisco Secure Firewall
    Feature
    Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN
    -
    Ratings
    Cisco Secure Firewall
    8.2
    196 Ratings
    5% below category average
    Identification Technologies00 Ratings8.1177 Ratings
    Visualization Tools00 Ratings7.8175 Ratings
    Content Inspection00 Ratings8.3175 Ratings
    Policy-based Controls00 Ratings8.5183 Ratings
    Active Directory and LDAP00 Ratings7.9156 Ratings
    Firewall Management Console00 Ratings8.0182 Ratings
    Reporting and Logging00 Ratings7.7184 Ratings
    VPN00 Ratings8.8164 Ratings
    High Availability00 Ratings8.9177 Ratings
    Stateful Inspection00 Ratings8.8171 Ratings
    Proxy Server00 Ratings7.793 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco Catalyst SD-WANCisco Secure Firewall
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    SonicWall NSA Series
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Cisco Meraki SD-WAN
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    VMware SD-WAN
    Score7.9 out of 10
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco Catalyst SD-WANCisco Secure Firewall
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.7
    (150 ratings)
    8.3
    (203 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.9
    (4 ratings)
    9.5
    (6 ratings)
    Usability
    8.7
    (67 ratings)
    7.3
    (6 ratings)
    Availability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.5
    (6 ratings)
    Performance
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.3
    (15 ratings)
    7.7
    (131 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.7
    (6 ratings)
    Configurability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.4
    (5 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.5
    (3 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Catalyst SD-WANCisco Secure Firewall
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cisco
    It's great for connectivity. I think if you're looking at. There's a lot of players out there that do SD- WAN, you can do hosted solutions, you can do your own. If you're looking to do it yourself, I think this product works out well. I do know it's hosted elsewhere by some other companies, but for us, we want the control and we don't have a huge amount of sites, so being able to control that's important and the data that we can get out of the product, we can see just seeing the application experience through Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN, really gives us good information.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    I can't think of scenarios where it is less appropriate, unless we are talking about real tiny businesses. More businesses will find Cisco Secure Firewall an outstanding tool to use, love, and trust from a reputable Network giant vendor. It is a must for businesses that want to focus on what they are doing, and leaving the network security for the pros.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Cisco
    • We are able to use a multiple different circuits to go into the cloud, so we are not relying on just one particular private wireless. We're relying on wine circuits, ethernet, ethernet out. So it provides us that flexibility where we didn't have that before. Provides security that is very robust and flexible and scalable and it provides us with, the biggest thing is redundancy, where we have backup. For example, we have a Starlink for nuclear power plants. If our main circuits go down, we have that. And without Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN it would be very hard to actually achieve, to accomplish true redundancy. So we're happy with Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN in that regard.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • Cisco's firewall actually does its job of blocking what it is supposed to block. We had an old Firewall that led to slippages. Cisco catches 97% of malware and vulnerabilities during testing. For Coitiar, that means an engineer who clicks a link with malware is handled quickly.
    • We actually tested if failovers would affect running sessions. We pulled our primary unit during a certification submission period. The firewall just switched, and the connection kept running.
    • The AI assistant in policy management is excellent, and for our lean team, it makes the whole process easy and efficient. I don't have to audit 200 policies manually; the AI steps in and does its thing.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Cisco
    • I will say the way we use it now, and I think what happened was the way it was deployed, it was fine, but unfortunately over the course of the years we've gotten a little out of hand with our device templates and feature templates. I think if there's any form of feedback that I would give to Cisco is how do we find ways to improve the environment as it stands so we get to a certain point with the environment and then we don't know how to undo it or fix it or optimize the environment. Because right now we're in a position where we're playing a lot of catch up and clean up and if there was a way or some tool or feature that we can take advantage of that would allow us to optimize that environment where we will kind of corner ourselves into a lot of problems in the future. There's some feature or something that we could take advantage of that will allow us to optimize that environment and not let it get out of control pretty easily. That would be my suggestion.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • I mean I think a lot of the technology with managing them is getting better. There's a few cons to the new firewall management console. You can't sort through routes or I think you can with interfaces now, but there's a few caveats that they haven't really worked out yet, but they're implementing AI into it, so it's getting to be a lot easier to use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Cisco
    I would rate SD-WAN highly because it has significantly improved network performance, reliability, and cost-efficiency for my organization. Its ability to optimize traffic dynamically, enhance security, and simplify management across multiple locations has been invaluable. With SD-WAN, we’ve reduced dependency on costly MPLS, improved cloud application performance, and gained greater control over our network infrastructure.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Cisco
    The niche configurations are given equal focus as the standard use cases, which can make onboarding difficult in the beginning (ie why am I not using an entire tab of the portal), but aside from that part, the dashboard is relatively easy to navigate and apply the configuration. The metrics and analytics available are also nice to have in a single pane.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    i think overall after ALOT of tac cases it works allright now. But still have alot of issues if you use cloud based mangement. fx, if you open 2 windows of access policys, both of the pages, rules starte to jump form side to side. if you then open one more list, its start to jump even faster. if you close the 2 of them, its back to normal. ALSO the extended access lists for VPN, SUCKS. Its the tiniest window when opening the editor, and you are not able to give the rules names, Which means finding and editing rules SUCKS, its a horrible experience, and eveytime we have to we want to yell :P
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Cisco
    I think if we could afford, we could have HA inplace but we planned out outage and workaround to avoid any outages.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Rationale:


    Strengths:


    High availability (HA) and failover configurations ensure continuous operation during hardware or network issues.


    Minimal unplanned outages reported; system remains responsive under full inspection load.


    Centralized monitoring and proactive alerts help prevent downtime.




    Minor Considerations:


    Occasional maintenance windows or updates may require brief service interruptions.


    Complex integrations with other systems may sometimes require extra attention to maintain uptime.




    Overall, Cisco Secure Firewall is highly available and dependable, supporting business continuity and operational resilience.
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Cisco
    It does slow down over the period but it's same with other product. you need to clear/reboot services.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    We have not had any performance issues with Cisco Secure Firewall, even with DPI and IPS enabled, we have not seen a performance hit. Emoployes have not complained about any slow network speeds that could have been attributed to the secure firewall it has always been something else within the office network.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Cisco
    Al ser soluciones integradas del portafolio de soluciones de Cisco, el soporte es transversal a cada uno de los componentes implementados, teniendo el cliente la capacidad de resolver sus inconvenientes bajo una misma infraestructura que está totalmente homologada, satisfacciendo de esta manera, las necesidades del cliente asi como permitiendo, que este se concentre en su negocio. Since the Cisco SD-WAN tools are a part of Cisco’s broader portfolio of solutions, support cross-cuts to each of our deployed components, with our company as the customer having the ability to solve our problems through the same, approved infrastructure. Their support team easily satisfies the customer’s needs so that they continue to focus on business functions.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    I rarely get the support I need in the time I need it. Often, while they are "looking at packet captures and going to get back to me" I fix the problem on my own. If you were to look at my TAC cases over the past year, you would see some very lengthy cases that usually ended with me contacting the TAC person and telling them to just close the case
    Incentivized
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    In-Person Training
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco
    very good
    Incentivized
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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)".
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    I was late to participate but my team was very happy with the outcome.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    Our initial implementation was aided by Cisco's professional services and was excellent. The engineer was very knowledgeable and helped us work through issues while building out our new internet security edge Part of this involved tools to migrate the firewall configuration from old to new.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Cisco
    We've used the old Cisco SD-WAN, which no longer exists. It was a lot more complex to configure what is now called Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN. So they've definitely come a long way in that it is a lot less complicated to set up and template based.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Cisco Secure Firewall works better with the Cisco ecosystem when we can utilize it and feels beefy enough when we utilize it in the data center. The Fortinet we have found are great, small cost boxes for remote offices with a better UI then Cisco Secure Firewalls. The feature set included with the firewalls feels similar from a security point of view.
    Incentivized
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    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Cisco
    I didn't take part of this decision but it always multiyear contract get best discount.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    A solid, realistic rating most people give for Cisco Secure Firewall pricing is 7 or 8 out of 10 (because the product is strong but licensing can be a bit complex)
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Cisco
    Really strength in scalability. Only thigs it's depends on some prototype Cisco product which you can't work with other Cisco products.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    Cisco Secure Firewall has never given us any trouble, it has stayed up at all times, upgrading the appliance has also become much simpler. We operate the appliance in a HA pair, so 0% downtime within our organisation. During switchover while upgrading, not a single packet seems to get lost, so this has been a very valuable asset to our company.
    Incentivized
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    Professional Services
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco
    was not involved
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Cisco
    • Our branch offices can connect to our enterprise network and the internet quickly and securely, which has helped to increase productivity and reduce downtime.
    • We have been able to reduce our dependence on expensive MPLS connections, and instead utilize a combination of broadband and LTE connections, which are more cost-effective
    • The centralized location improves network visibility and troubleshooting process
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • Cisco Secure Firewalls help with our segmentation policies and protect our company assets
    • Cisco Secure Firewalls help identify when our policies have changed on or network and troubleshoot network outages
    • Cisco Secure Firewalls help identify threats through Cisco Talos and other threat feeds that they ingest
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Cisco Secure Firewall Screenshots

    Screenshot of Cisco Secure 1200 Series Firewall FamilyScreenshot of Cisco Secure 4200 SeriesScreenshot of Cisco Secure 4200 SeriesScreenshot of Cisco Secure Firewall 1200 Stack FamilyScreenshot of Cisco Secure Firewall 200 SeriesScreenshot of Cisco Secure Firewall 200 Series