Cisco Firepower 2100 Series vs RackFoundry Total Security Management

Likelihood to Recommend

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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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Government Administration Company, 501-1000 employees

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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

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Transportation/Trucking/Railroad Company, 10,001+ employees

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Feature Rating Comparison

Cisco Firepower 2100 Series

RackFoundry Total Security Management

Identification Technologies

Content Inspection

Policy-based Controls

Active Directory and LDAP

Firewall Management Console

Reporting and Logging

VPN

High Availability

Stateful Inspection

Proxy Server

Cisco Firepower 2100 Series

RackFoundry Total Security Management

Centralized event and log data collection

Correlation

Event and log normalization/management

Deployment flexibility

Integration with Identity and Access Management Tools

Custom dashboards and workspaces

Host and network-based intrusion detection

Pros

Nice HTML5 web interface instead of the old java client
Many added features over the ASA
Firepower built in and faster than before

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Government Administration Company, 501-1000 employees

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

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Verified User

Analyst in Information Technology

Hospital & Health Care Company, 51-200 employees

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Cons

Cisco patches bugs quickly but patches are slow to install and reboot
Smart licensing is getting better but still can be troublesome
Some weird visual interface glitches that require clicking the same options a few extra times

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Government Administration Company, 501-1000 employees

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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.

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Jonathan DiRusso

Senior Technical Administrator

PG CalcComputer Software, 11-50 employees

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Alternatives Considered

No answers on this topic

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.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Transportation/Trucking/Railroad Company, 10,001+ employees

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Return on Investment

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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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Government Administration Company, 501-1000 employees

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

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Verified User

Analyst in Information Technology

Hospital & Health Care Company, 51-200 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Cisco Firepower 2100 Series Editions & Modules

Edition

Firepower 2100	3,000-20,000¹

per appliance

Additional Pricing Details

—

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

Optional

RackFoundry Total Security Management Editions & Modules

—

Additional Pricing Details

—

Rating Summary

Cisco Firepower 2100 Series

RackFoundry Total Security Management