Cisco Firepower 2100 Series vs. Cisco Secure Firewall

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Firepower 2100 Series
Score 7.4 out of 10
N/A
Cisco offers the Firepower 2100 Series NGFW, designed to allow businesses to gain resiliency through superior security with sustained performance. The Firepower 2100 Series has a dual multicore CPU architecture that optimizes firewall, cryptographic, and threat inspection functions simultaneously, to achieve security doesn’t come at the expense of network performance.N/A
Cisco Secure Firewall
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Cisco 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 Firepower 2100 SeriesCisco Secure Firewall
Editions & Modules
Firepower 2100
3,000-20,000
per appliance
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Firepower 2100 SeriesCisco 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 Firepower 2100 SeriesCisco Secure Firewall
Features
Cisco Firepower 2100 SeriesCisco Secure Firewall
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Firepower 2100 Series
8.5
2 Ratings
2% below category average
Cisco Secure Firewall
8.0
141 Ratings
8% below category average
Identification Technologies9.02 Ratings8.2125 Ratings
Visualization Tools6.01 Ratings7.3127 Ratings
Content Inspection9.02 Ratings8.0124 Ratings
Policy-based Controls9.02 Ratings8.4132 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP9.02 Ratings8.3115 Ratings
Firewall Management Console8.02 Ratings7.6130 Ratings
Reporting and Logging9.02 Ratings7.7133 Ratings
VPN10.02 Ratings8.1118 Ratings
High Availability10.02 Ratings8.6127 Ratings
Stateful Inspection10.02 Ratings8.5123 Ratings
Proxy Server5.02 Ratings7.371 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cisco Firepower 2100 SeriesCisco Secure Firewall
Small Businesses
pfSense
pfSense
Score 8.8 out of 10
pfSense
pfSense
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.3 out of 10
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Score 9.2 out of 10
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco Firepower 2100 SeriesCisco Secure Firewall
Likelihood to Recommend
5.5
(2 ratings)
7.9
(148 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.5
(4 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(3 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(4 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(80 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.8
(4 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(3 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Firepower 2100 SeriesCisco Secure Firewall
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
The Cisco [Firepower] 2100 [Series] is an easy sell for anyone looking. You already know Cisco excels in the security department, but now that firepower lives right on the box and inline with the rest of the firewall data flow you can save yourself a lot of time and headaches. Unless you cant quite afford Cisco's 2100 line, there's not much reason to go with the competition.
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Cisco
The software offers advanced firewall solutions from Web threats management to behavioural analytics and comprehensive application security. Cisco Secure firewall software is incredibly easy to deploy and implement. Customer support services providers are concise and very responsive. Integration and customization of the software are exceptional. The product boasts impressive capabilities, enabling it to stop threats and manage all security flaws in real time.
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Pros
Cisco
  • Advanced threat protection
  • Secure VPN connectivity
  • Visibility and control (if connected to FMC)
  • Regulatory compliacnce with ISO 27001, NIS2, etc.
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Cisco
  • It's good at segregating networks and ensuring that you only give the access that you need to give. Especially with medical devices, you want to only give the access that they need and keep them in their own separate areas so that they can't just communicate with the rest of the network. It's also good at the border for keeping attackers out of the network.
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Cons
Cisco
  • Career-wise very familiar with the ASAs, you know, the previous gen firewalls, Pyxis, ASAs, the CHA. As far as being intuitive, those seem to be far more intuitive to learn and figure out what the features and changes and config management, all that stuff is. With Firepower, it's a learning curve and I feel like I have quite a bit of experience with it, and so does my team, but feels like it's not as intuitive, and trying to make changes just always seems harder for some reason. We've gone to some Cisco security training and all that, but even then it's just harder to work with. The other big thing is, and this is a big gripe of mine, I suppose, that on any other firewall, when we have various different manufacturers, if you make a change, you know, a simple change object, object name gets changed or object is deleted or whatever the simplest of change is, it gets implemented instantly.
  • With the Firepower system, you have to deploy the change and it'll take about six or seven minutes for the change to actually take, which is insanely different than any other platform where that change is instantaneous. So let's say if I'm making seven different changes for a troubleshooting job I don't know which one of the seven is gonna fix it, I do one by one by one. I'm like, oh, let me try one change, one second, change, third change, four changes. It's going to take seven deploys. And seven deploys mean it's gonna take an hour of just deploy time. So that is a big, big gripe
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Cisco
  • I wish that the deployment of the updates to the sensors from the FMC was faster.
  • Cisco ASA firewall did a great job of authentication and authorization on the local firewall. FTD does not authorize users well in terms that an AAA must be setup to provide the granular tools that the ASA did.
  • Cisco's method of licensing the firewall can be improved. The FMC and the FTD are licensed through the Cisco software manager and there are instances where the devices are licensed but the firewall still displays and error due to licensing.
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Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
No answers on this topic
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.
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Usability
Cisco
There are three main problems with this platform: - short EoL time - it is really missery because this platform was overrated from cisco sales and after shor time they accepted on EoL - sometimes problems with upgrades paths, because of strange behaviour between FXOS and ASA image on the top of it - not good performance when comparing to newer 1k platform
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Cisco
The platform is powerful and feature-rich, especially when paired with tools like Firepower Management Center (FMC) and SecureX. The policy structure is logical, and the visibility into traffic flows, threat activity, and rule hits is quite strong once you're familiar with the interface
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Reliability and Availability
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
As for the availability, in general we did not experience any issues with it, neither in situations where there's only one physical device implemented nor when there's and High Availability pair. Failover works like a charm, no complaints here, it works as it should and so far it has been highly reliable.
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Performance
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
no slowing down, vpn is working fast
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Support Rating
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
Firewall support is professional just like any other technology Cisco sells. From answering simple questions to bringing out outages affecting a large population of our workforce, Cisco support is always courteous, professional, and communicates with our team to keep our request on their radar. Some of the brightest people I've met are from Cisco support both in IQ and EQ which shows the talent Cisco is able to onboard to their team.
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In-Person Training
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
very good
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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)".
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Implementation Rating
Cisco
No answers on this topic
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.
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Alternatives Considered
Cisco
In the days of purchase of Cisco Firepower 2100 series it was new platform and Cisco aimed their sailsmains to force selling this platfrom. It was one of the first platform with FXOS with full support of ASA images. It was cheper then 4k series and would be better than ASA 5500-x series (but regarding all problems with upgrades and EoL , it is not).
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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.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
was not involved
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Scalability
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
you can choose up to 50 devices i think thats enough for our organization
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Professional Services
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
was not involved
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Return on Investment
Cisco
  • Simplifying our lives by reducing our time spent in a console
  • Being comfortable knowing the full might of Cisco is safeguarding your network
  • A good excuse to bump up the IT budget in the next fiscal year!
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Cisco
  • Positive impact. Cisco is a big player in IT environment. It is future stuff, everything, what you learn today, maybe something can be tomorrow. And yes, it's quite important to learn the new stuff every day. And yes, that's it. Yes, I'm happy with Cisco.
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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