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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco Secure Firewall

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/ACisco 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

    Datadog

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/ADatadog is a monitoring service for IT, Dev and Ops teams who write and run applications at scale, and want to turn the massive amounts of data produced by their apps, tools and services into actionable insight.

    $18

    per month per host

    Pricing
    Cisco Secure FirewallDatadog
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Log Management
    $1.27
    per month (billed annually) per host
    Infrastructure
    $15.00
    per month (billed annually) per host
    Standard
    $18
    per month per host
    Enterprise
    $27
    per month per host
    DevSecOps Pro
    $27
    per month per host
    APM
    $31.00
    per month (billed annually) per host
    DevSecOps Enterprise
    $41
    per month per host
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Secure FirewallDatadog
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details—Discount available for annual pricing. Multi-Year/Volume discounts available (500+ hosts/mo).
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco Secure FirewallDatadog
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    Datadog
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    93%
    Would buy again
    193 Answers
    94%
    Would buy again
    50 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    90%
    Delivers good value for the price
    160 Answers
    93%
    Delivers good value for the price
    41 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    92%
    Happy with the feature set
    191 Answers
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    52 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    86%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    140 Answers
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    32 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    86%
    Implementation went as expected
    164 Answers
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    36 Answers
    Features
    Cisco Secure FirewallDatadog
    Firewall
    Comparison of Firewall features of Cisco Secure Firewall and Datadog
    Feature
    Cisco Secure Firewall
    8.2
    196 Ratings
    5% below category average
    Datadog
    -
    Ratings
    Identification Technologies8.1177 Ratings00 Ratings
    Visualization Tools7.8175 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content Inspection8.3175 Ratings00 Ratings
    Policy-based Controls8.5183 Ratings00 Ratings
    Active Directory and LDAP7.9156 Ratings00 Ratings
    Firewall Management Console8.0182 Ratings00 Ratings
    Reporting and Logging7.7184 Ratings00 Ratings
    VPN8.8164 Ratings00 Ratings
    High Availability8.9177 Ratings00 Ratings
    Stateful Inspection8.8171 Ratings00 Ratings
    Proxy Server7.793 Ratings00 Ratings
    Monitoring Tasks
    Comparison of Monitoring Tasks features of Cisco Secure Firewall and Datadog
    Feature
    Cisco Secure Firewall
    -
    Ratings
    Datadog
    7.9
    2 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Remote monitoring00 Ratings8.22 Ratings
    Network device monitoring00 Ratings7.72 Ratings
    Multiple Server Monitoring00 Ratings7.72 Ratings
    Multi-device monitoring00 Ratings7.72 Ratings
    Automated alerts and notifications00 Ratings8.22 Ratings
    Management Tasks
    Comparison of Management Tasks features of Cisco Secure Firewall and Datadog
    Feature
    Cisco Secure Firewall
    -
    Ratings
    Datadog
    6.1
    1 Ratings
    12% below category average
    Patch Management00 Ratings7.31 Ratings
    Service configuration management00 Ratings6.41 Ratings
    Software and hardware inventory00 Ratings5.51 Ratings
    Policy-based automation00 Ratings5.51 Ratings
    Reporting
    Comparison of Reporting features of Cisco Secure Firewall and Datadog
    Feature
    Cisco Secure Firewall
    -
    Ratings
    Datadog
    8.2
    2 Ratings
    3% above category average
    Performance data reports00 Ratings8.22 Ratings
    Customizable reporting00 Ratings7.72 Ratings
    Data visualization00 Ratings8.62 Ratings
    Risk analysis00 Ratings8.22 Ratings
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of Cisco Secure Firewall and Datadog
    Feature
    Cisco Secure Firewall
    -
    Ratings
    Datadog
    6.7
    1 Ratings
    9% below category average
    Data backup and recovery00 Ratings6.41 Ratings
    Antivirus and malware management00 Ratings7.31 Ratings
    Administrator access control00 Ratings6.41 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco Secure FirewallDatadog
    Small Businesses
    SonicWall NSA Series
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Amazon CloudWatch
    Score7.8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    Score9.6 out of 10
    LogicMonitor
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Score9 out of 10
    ManageEngine Site24x7
    Score10 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco Secure FirewallDatadog
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.3
    (203 ratings)
    8.9
    (65 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.5
    (6 ratings)
    4.3
    (2 ratings)
    Usability
    7.3
    (6 ratings)
    8.7
    (44 ratings)
    Availability
    9.5
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.7
    (131 ratings)
    5.0
    (7 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.7
    (6 ratings)
    1.0
    (1 ratings)
    Configurability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    8.4
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.5
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Secure FirewallDatadog
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cisco
    I can't think of scenarios where it is less appropriate, unless we are talking about real tiny businesses. More businesses will find Cisco Secure Firewall an outstanding tool to use, love, and trust from a reputable Network giant vendor. It is a must for businesses that want to focus on what they are doing, and leaving the network security for the pros.
    Incentivized
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    Datadog
    Datadog may be better suited for teams that have a more out-of-the-box infrastructure, on the primary platforms Datadog supports. You may also have better results if you have a bigger team dedicated to devops and/or a bigger budget. We found that trying to adapt it to our use case (small team, .NET on AWS Fargate) wasn't feasible. We continually ran into roadblocks that required us to dig through documentation (and at times, having to figure out some documentation was wrong), go back and forth with support, and in my opinion, waste money on excessive and unintended usages due to opaque pricing models and inaccurate usage reports, as well as broken/non-functional rate sampling controls.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Cisco
    • Cisco's firewall actually does its job of blocking what it is supposed to block. We had an old Firewall that led to slippages. Cisco catches 97% of malware and vulnerabilities during testing. For Coitiar, that means an engineer who clicks a link with malware is handled quickly.
    • We actually tested if failovers would affect running sessions. We pulled our primary unit during a certification submission period. The firewall just switched, and the connection kept running.
    • The AI assistant in policy management is excellent, and for our lean team, it makes the whole process easy and efficient. I don't have to audit 200 policies manually; the AI steps in and does its thing.
    Incentivized
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    Datadog
    • The thing which Datadog does really well, one of them are its broad range of services integrations and features which makes it one step observability solution for all. We can monitor all types of our application, infrastructure, hosts, databases etc with Datadog.
    • Its custom dashboard feature which helps us to visualize the data in a better way . It supports different types of charts through those charts we can create our dashboard more attractive.
    • Its AI powered alerting capability though that we can easily identify the root cause and also it has a low noise alerting capability which means it correlated the similar type of issues.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Cisco
    • I mean I think a lot of the technology with managing them is getting better. There's a few cons to the new firewall management console. You can't sort through routes or I think you can with interfaces now, but there's a few caveats that they haven't really worked out yet, but they're implementing AI into it, so it's getting to be a lot easier to use.
    Incentivized
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    Datadog
    • Alert windows cause lag in notifications (e.g. if the alert window is X errors in 1 hour, we won't get alerted until the end of the 1 hour range)
    • I would appreciate more supportive examples for how to filter and view metrics in the explorer
    • I would like a more clear interface for metrics that are missing in a time frame, rather than only showing tags/etc. for metrics that were collected within the currently viewed time frame
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Datadog
    Definitely will not revisit after our issues and, in my opinion, poor support.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Cisco
    i think overall after ALOT of tac cases it works allright now. But still have alot of issues if you use cloud based mangement. fx, if you open 2 windows of access policys, both of the pages, rules starte to jump form side to side. if you then open one more list, its start to jump even faster. if you close the 2 of them, its back to normal. ALSO the extended access lists for VPN, SUCKS. Its the tiniest window when opening the editor, and you are not able to give the rules names, Which means finding and editing rules SUCKS, its a horrible experience, and eveytime we have to we want to yell :P
    Incentivized
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    Datadog
    There are so many features that it can be hard to figure out where you need to go for your own use case. For example, RUM monitoring us buried in a "Digital Experience" sidebar setting when this is one of our key use cases that I sometimes struggle to find in the application. It appears that ECS + Fargate monitoring was recently released which is great because we had to build a lambda reporting solution for ephemeral task monitoring. But this new feature was never on my radar until I starting clicking around the application.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Cisco
    Rationale:


    Strengths:


    High availability (HA) and failover configurations ensure continuous operation during hardware or network issues.


    Minimal unplanned outages reported; system remains responsive under full inspection load.


    Centralized monitoring and proactive alerts help prevent downtime.




    Minor Considerations:


    Occasional maintenance windows or updates may require brief service interruptions.


    Complex integrations with other systems may sometimes require extra attention to maintain uptime.




    Overall, Cisco Secure Firewall is highly available and dependable, supporting business continuity and operational resilience.
    Incentivized
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    Datadog
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Cisco
    We have not had any performance issues with Cisco Secure Firewall, even with DPI and IPS enabled, we have not seen a performance hit. Emoployes have not complained about any slow network speeds that could have been attributed to the secure firewall it has always been something else within the office network.
    Incentivized
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    Datadog
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Cisco
    I rarely get the support I need in the time I need it. Often, while they are "looking at packet captures and going to get back to me" I fix the problem on my own. If you were to look at my TAC cases over the past year, you would see some very lengthy cases that usually ended with me contacting the TAC person and telling them to just close the case
    Incentivized
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    Datadog
    The support team usually gets it right. We did have a rather complicate issue setting up monitoring on a domain controller. However, they are usually responsive and helpful over chat. The downside would be I don’t think they have any phone support. If that is important to you this might not be a good fit.
    Incentivized
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    In-Person Training
    Cisco
    very good
    Incentivized
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    Datadog
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Cisco
    was a good training but questions was answered not so good. Training was "Fundamentals of Cisco Firewall Threat Defense and Intrusion Prevention (SFWIPF)".
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Datadog
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Datadog
    Documentation was difficult to work through, rollout was catastrophic (completely outage)
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Datadog
    Our logs are very important, and Datadog manages them exceptionally well. We frequently use Datadog services for our investigations. Use case: Monitor your apps, infrastructure, APIs, and user experience.


    Key features:


    Logs, metrics, and APM (Application Performance Monitoring)


    Real-time alerting and dashboards


    Supports Kubernetes, AWS, GCP, and other integrations


    RUM (Real User Monitoring) and Synthetics





    ✅ Best for backend, server, and distributed systems monitoring.
    Incentivized
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    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Cisco
    A solid, realistic rating most people give for Cisco Secure Firewall pricing is 7 or 8 out of 10 (because the product is strong but licensing can be a bit complex)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Datadog
    No answers on this topic
    Scalability
    Cisco
    Cisco Secure Firewall has never given us any trouble, it has stayed up at all times, upgrading the appliance has also become much simpler. We operate the appliance in a HA pair, so 0% downtime within our organisation. During switchover while upgrading, not a single packet seems to get lost, so this has been a very valuable asset to our company.
    Incentivized
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    Datadog
    No answers on this topic
    Professional Services
    Cisco
    was not involved
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Datadog
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Cisco
    • Cisco Secure Firewalls help with our segmentation policies and protect our company assets
    • Cisco Secure Firewalls help identify when our policies have changed on or network and troubleshoot network outages
    • Cisco Secure Firewalls help identify threats through Cisco Talos and other threat feeds that they ingest
    Incentivized
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    Datadog
    • Saved us (time & money) from developing our own monitoring utilities that would pale in comparison
    • Alerts allow us to remedy issues before our customers even know about them
    • Tracking resource usage over time allows us to better plan for future needs, before it becomes a pain-point.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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

    Datadog Screenshots

    Screenshot of the out-of-the-box and customizable monitoring dashboards.Screenshot of Datadog's collaboration features, where users can discuss issues in-context with production data, annotate changes and notify their teams, see who responded to that alert before, and discover what was done to fix it.Screenshot of where Datadog unifies traces, metrics, and logs—the three pillars of observability.Screenshot of some of Datadog's 400+ built-in integrations.Screenshot of Datadog's Service Map, which decomposes an application into all its component services and draws the observed dependencies between these services in real timeScreenshot of centralized log data, pulled from any source.