Cisco Firepower 1000 Series vs. RackFoundry Total Security Management (discontinued)

I think it is well suited for smaller companies or (as in our case) extension to a central system with higher performance. My personal guess is, that it can be quite annoying with those delays in bigger environments, when 20 or more devices needed to be managed. From the point of security, support and updates it works quite good and seem to have no downsides.

Incentivized

RackFoundry Total Security Management (TSM) is suited for most companies that have the same challenge as my team had. If you are looking to purchase one security tool and spend most of your allocated budget then I would not recommend this for you. However, if you are looking for something close to a single pane of glass, (granted there is no such thing) this solution does come close as they have the main components built in such as their FW/IPS/IDS/SIEM. Before selecting RackFoundry we had two options which were: 1) Upgrade our current solution and spend an overbearing amount 2) Search for new vendors and maybe procure 1-3 devices and then manually integrate them. Because this was a unified console and integration between devices was simple, we were able to obtain 4-6 security functions and we even had some sense of security visibility via the SIEM. It's not as powerful as Splunk or LogRhythm, but it definitely does the job

• My organization is all Cisco and wants to stay in the Cisco life cycle, Firepower 1000 series is great for small to medium-size office.
• Very robust enterprise-grade security solution with updated threat features to handle any current and upcoming threats. The solution is backed by Cisco to ensure constant security updates. Integrated AnyConnect remote client VPN is a big plus to allow for secure remote workers access. Easier to set up a site to site VPN due to the large user base and case studies published on integrating to other manufacturer solutions.

Incentivized

• Making promises about a service and product.
• Advertising a good price and offering great services.
• Supposedly offer 24/7 365 level 1 threat triaging.

• ACLS in gui are PIA cant see object details
• Objects in ACLs dont show IP addresses
• Have to renames every object to name+ip to make acl GUI useable
• Speed to data can use improvement.
• Health warnings should allow you to resolve you have to dig n search in some cases.

• It has been my first year with Rack Foundry and at this point I have to say everything has been smooth, from implementation to support.

It is quite good, robust and reliable but not always so easy to manage and configure. The tools could be improved and the price is not low for an entry level firewall

Incentivized

Firepowers are secure, reliable, central management and configuration is easy and they fit in well with our existing Cisco infrastructure. Good feature set and support. Good management and control with chassis manager and central control with additional Firepower Management Centre.

Incentivized

Has not let me down yet.

Incentivized

Great performance even on the lower end model of the series. You can push a lot of traffic through these devices without much performance impact. If you decide you want to inspect encrypted traffic however, you may take a big hit on the cpu and memory of the box, but they still manage to keep up even with all the bells and whistles turned on.

Incentivized

I have had troubles with Firepower Management Center and the FTD's in the past. Sticking to a Gold Star image and upgrading when the "bugs" are fixed is great. That still doesn't mean you are left vulnerable though. The extra features are just not enabled yet. Great product and calling support is readily available for any issue.

Incentivized

Utilize the new FMC cloud which is available in Cisco Defense Orchestrator.

Incentivized

Cisco Meraki MX is much more simple to configure it if you compare to Cisco Firepower 1000, but it is more limited to pur some complex configurations. The Cisco Firepower 1000 Series is typically deployed as a physical appliance, while the Meraki MX can be deployed as a physical or virtual appliance.The Firepower 1000 Series has a more complex user interface, with a steeper learning curve, but offers more customization and configuration options. The Meraki MX has a simpler, more intuitive interface,

Incentivized

Well I have experience with the big names: SecureWorks, IBM and Splunk. Individually their logging tools are much better than RackFoundry's Total Security Management. This is great for large corporations and urban cities, however not so great for municipalities, mid size businesses and companies who fluctuate between 1-7 members on their IT staff. Why? Because it takes too much of their resources and integration with other products gets a little rough as you will need to configure your preferences to theirs. When a company has stability it is great to have a name brand product, however renewals and upgrade costs can be taxing to an organization.

• We have seen improved throughput on our internet.
• It took several attempts with Cisco engineers to configure the device; it requires a deep set of knowledge to set up in a more complicated environment.
• This will allow us to move forward with a more stable and configurable environment with security available we didn't have before.

Incentivized

• Overall the product has had a negative impact. Not necessarily on our environment but in the amount of time it has taken to deploy.