Cisco Firepower 2100 Series vs. Stonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Firepower 2100 Series
Score 8.2 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
Stonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Stonesoft firewalls were acquired and rebranded as McAfee Firewall Enterprise (MFE), then divested by McAfee and acquired by Forcepoint in 2016, and have reached end of life (EOL).N/A
Pricing
Cisco Firepower 2100 SeriesStonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
Editions & Modules
Firepower 2100
3,000-20,000
per appliance
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Firepower 2100 SeriesStonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
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 Firepower 2100 SeriesStonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Cisco Firepower 2100 SeriesStonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Firepower 2100 Series
8.4
1 Ratings
1% below category average
Stonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
-
Ratings
Identification Technologies7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Content Inspection9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Policy-based Controls9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP6.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Firewall Management Console10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting and Logging9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
VPN10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
High Availability10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Stateful Inspection8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Proxy Server6.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cisco Firepower 2100 SeriesStonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
Small Businesses
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.2 out of 10
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Score 9.3 out of 10
Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Score 9.3 out of 10
Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco Firepower 2100 SeriesStonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
5.5
(2 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Firepower 2100 SeriesStonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
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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Discontinued Products
Any scenario where a dedicated firewall administrator is on staff and a secure firewall solution that requires high availability is needed will be a good solution for the McAfee Firewall Enterprise product. The McAfee Firewall Enterprise however comes with some of its own parlance that is different from other vendors and does require some comfort on the administrators side when it comes to working in the command line. Added knowledge of protocols and how they interact is a must for any firewall admin but particularly for the McAfee Firewall Enterprise product due to its flexible nature. If the environment is to be mostly hands off where a very limited rule set is to be configured and not likely to change often, I would defer to a different product
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Pros
Cisco
  • For us, to power the whole system does scaling quite a bit. So we can definitely have a lot of room to grow if needed. The device can support a lot of way more than we need right now, but in the future, if we need more it seems to be a big pro of that. Also the support of Cisco, knowing that it's backed by Cisco definitely is good. You guys are the largest players in the market
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Discontinued Products
  • Based on the SecureComputing Sidewinder firewalls, the McAfee Firewall Enterprise does similar backend containerization of each service which provides for added security in the unlikely event of failures or breeches.
  • Tie in reporting services (if used by the admin) provide very granular details on rules accessed and the firewalls response to the requests.
  • Configurable options are plentiful. Unbound DNS can be configured on each "burb" (SecureComputing/McAfee parlance for interface), similar options for sendmail while rulesets can be configured at the application level down to simple IP-filter making options for enhancing security as well as troubleshooting equally as useful.
  • Full control over shell for scripting and/or scheduling (cron) purposes.
  • Solid HA and patching architecture.
  • Support was always helpful, knowledgeable and insightful (especially the staff that migrated from SecureComputing).
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Cons
Cisco
  • 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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Discontinued Products
  • For an application-layer firewall the applications supported (at the time I managed them) were too few and would need to be expanded and the application ruleset needed to be expanded as well.
  • The remote access VPN client configuration was overly complex for the average user and would need to be supplemented with a configuration file that had already been generated. Other solutions from CheckPoint or Cisco ASA are not as complex for end user remote access.
  • Enhancing the GUI with a builtin "packet capture" feature would be useful for administrators not familiar with tcpdump.
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Alternatives Considered
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
Compared to other firewalls I've managed (Palo Alto, Cisco ASA & CheckPoint) I would say that McAfee Firewall Enterprise was probably at the time not the leader in its field however it is a product that proved its reliability and flexibility over the other vendors. The addition of many new features usually comes as a detriment to some other area (restricted CLI, decreased logging etc.). In my experience this product gave the flexibility and options that the organization needed.
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Return on Investment
Cisco
  • It's keeping threats out like a firewall should. Definitely cost wise it is at a higher cost center than other alternatives. Especially when it comes to licensing. Cisco is generally the higher, for perhaps, definitely for good reason, right? I mean, definitely positive impact as far as working as it should that's at cost.
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Discontinued Products
  • In its highly available configuration the impact on any business objective has been positive given the fact that any downtime of the firewall would negatively impact all business objectives.
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ScreenShots