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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/ACisco Secure Firewall Management Center (formerly Firepower Management Center) are a firewall policy and intrusion detection appliance management system, providing an administrative nerve center for managing critical Cisco network security solutions. It provides complete and unified management over firewalls, application control, intrusion prevention, URL filtering, and advanced malware protection. Easily go from managing a firewall to controlling applications to investigating and remediating…N/A

    Salt

    Score6.2 out of 10
    N/AVMware Salt is an Infrastructure Automation & Configuration Management platform that provisions, configures, deploys, and manages infrastructure components at scale. The solution utilizes an event-driven automation engine to enforce compliant software states across virtual machines, servers, containers, and network devices. The VMware Salt solution is comprised of software components from both VMware and the open-source Salt Project While the Salt Masters and Salt Minions are a part of the open…N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco Secure Firewall Management CenterSalt
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Secure Firewall Management CenterSalt
    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 Secure Firewall Management CenterSalt
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    Broadcom
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    96%
    Would buy again
    23 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    23 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    23 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    88%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    15 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    23 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    Cisco Secure Firewall Management CenterSalt
    Firewall Security Management
    Comparison of Firewall Security Management features of Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center and VMware Salt
    Feature
    Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center
    8.1
    21 Ratings
    2% above category average
    VMware Salt
    -
    Ratings
    Policy planning and rule management8.021 Ratings00 Ratings
    Automated Policy Orchestration7.019 Ratings00 Ratings
    Device Discovery8.019 Ratings00 Ratings
    Policy Compliance Auditing8.019 Ratings00 Ratings
    Attack Path Simulation Testing7.516 Ratings00 Ratings
    Anomalous Event or Behavior Deviation8.019 Ratings00 Ratings
    Vulnerability Scans8.516 Ratings00 Ratings
    Firewall Rule Cleanup9.518 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco Secure Firewall Management CenterSalt
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Palo Alto Panorama
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Perforce Puppet
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Palo Alto Panorama
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Ansible
    Score9.1 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco Secure Firewall Management CenterSalt
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.5
    (24 ratings)
    8.0
    (10 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Availability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.0
    (7 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Secure Firewall Management CenterSalt
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cisco
    FMC is feature-rich and user-friendly. Cisco firewalls can run on standalone mode (FDM) but fewer features are supported on FDM. FMC is a must when working with Cisco Firewall. Migration from Cisco ASA to Cisco FTD is easy. There is a tool (FMT) that converts and imports the cisco IOS configuration file to FMC. FMC runs in VM or can be purchased as a physical appliance. The downside is that FMC is not quite fast and has bugs, especially when running in the older version 5x. and 6x.
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    SaltStack is a very well architected toolset and framework for reliably managing distributed systems' complexity at varied scale. If the diversity of kind or number of assets is low, or the dependencies are bounded and simple, it might be overkill. Realization that you need SaltStack might come in the form of other tools, scripts, or jobs whose code has become difficult, unreliable, or unmaintainable. Rather than a native from-scratch SaltStack design, be aware that SaltStack can be added on to tools like Docker or Chef and optionally factor those tools out or other tools into the mix.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Cisco
    • Great protection and security against the multiple digital virus attacks.
    • Provides detailed logs to track any threat and helps to secure the network promptly.
    • VPN service for remote access of important organizational applications.
    • Best management tool for controlling data and bandwidth resources.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    • Targeting is easy and yet extremely granular - I can target machines by name, role, operating system, init system, distro, regex, or any combination of the above.
    • Abstraction of OS, package manager and package details is far advanced beyond any other CRM I have seen. The ability to set one configuration for a package across multiple distros, and have it apply correctly no matter the distrospecific naming convention or package installation procedure, is amazing.
    • Abstraction of environments is similarly valuable - I can set a firewall rule to allow ssh from "management", and have that be defined as a specific IP range per dev, test, and prod.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Cisco
    • Stability when managing firewalls, we're having issues with Firewall 01 and Firewall 02 remaining in sync
    • Reporting when it comes to access control policy rules - there is no way to export a report of the rules easily. Using a custom Python script on the Cisco forums is the only way to easily export a CSV.
    • Support for policy and route-based site-to-site VPN was not available until 6.6.0 and later. This forced us to purchase ASAs to bridge that gap.
    • Dashboard reporting - when clicking a link for more information, nothing displays. Currently working with Cisco on the support case, which has been escalated.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    • Managing network hardware should be more native and easy
    • SaltStack should buffer jobs and, when a client returns, make sure it is executed proberly
    • SaltStack should provide basic pillar and states structures to help get newbies started
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Cisco
    We are very satisfied with SecureX and it's adaptive, active nature in protecting or data and systems. It's easy to administer, update, review notifications and update when necessary. Cisco's security practice fits into our needs and continues to evolve as global cyber events change. SecureX is easy to migrate to new cisco gear as we upgrade to newer models when supports ends on older gear. Enabling fast ROI during these capital expenditure projects.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Cisco
    Overall usability is an eight for me because it is easy to manage the firewall policies and monitor the devices' health. The configurations are all done in the GUI which makes it more convenient and hassle free. You can also see the devices' health and the progress of the task thru its taskbar.
    Incentivized
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    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Reliability and Availability
    Cisco
    Since moving to Cisco secure management center from firepower management center we've had no application issues, outages or any other problems. It's always been there for us and always provides us the necessary protection and notification when we need it. Been very happy with all of our Cisco systems over our tenure to date.
    Incentivized
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    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Cisco
    We have the direct support of the manufacturer through its service channels, the attention is 24/7, and the response time is acceptable. The support for this tool is almost nil. It all depends on the level of implementation is carried out so that it can fail and request collaboration. Anyway, the manufacturer backs the entire Cisco Firepower Management Center (FMC series appliances) solution.
    Incentivized
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    Broadcom
    We haven't had to spend a lot of time talking to support, and we've only had one issue, which, when dealing with other vendors is actually not that bad of an experience.
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    Cisco secure firewall management center is easy to install, moderate to setup in conjunction with firewall hardware, and administration of policy changes afterwards is pretty straight forward. And flexible to add more advanced security configurations as needed. Cisco support website is pretty good for researching how to documentation too. Cisco secure firewall management center enables integration to SecureX - the cloud security protection service. And AMP which protects packet flow with real time analysis. Cisco secure fmc is the evolved name for cisco firepower management center so for those customers who have firepower this is a simple migration.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Cisco
    We are managing multiple customers having a large number of Cisco devices that need to be managed by a single platform. For that reason, we have selected the Cisco Firewall Management Center than checkpoint firewall management. It simplifies and automates newly bought cisco firewalls at remote branch offices to manage, configure and troubleshoot them.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    We moved to SaltStack from Puppet about 3 years ago. Puppet just has too much of a learning curve and we inherited it from an old IT regime. We wanted something we could start fresh with. Our team has never looked back. SaltStack is so much easier for us to use and maintain.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Cisco
    • It's a very straightforward and user-friendly tool that has enhanced the total detection of malware and other threats t from intrusion into our network.
    • Provides stable deep network scanning, security visibility, and protection from unauthorized access.
    • The platform modular allows us to deploy across multiple budget cycles.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    • We manage two complex highly available self-healing (all infrastructure and systems) environments using SaltStack. Only one person is needed to run SaltStack. That is a HUGE return on investment.
    • Building tooling on top of SaltStack has allowed us to share administrative abilities by role - e.g. employee X can deploy software Y. No need to call a sysadmin and etc.
    • Recovery from problems, or time to stand-up new systems is now counted in minutes (usually under eight) rather than hours. This is a strategic advantage for rolling out new services.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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