Cisco Secure Firewall vs. F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Secure Firewall
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Secure Firewall (formerly Cisco Firepower NGFW) is a firewall product that integrates with other Cisco security offerings. It provides Advanced Malware protection, including sandboxing environments and DDoS mitigation. Cisco also offers a Next Generation Intrusion Prevention System, which provides security across cloud environments using techniques like internal network segmentation. The firewall can be managed locally, remotely, and via the cloud. The product is scalable to the scope of…N/A
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
F5 Networks offers the F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager, a firewall software combining a number of features including DDoS, DNS security, and other protections.N/A
Pricing
Cisco Secure FirewallF5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Secure FirewallF5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
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 FirewallF5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Cisco Secure FirewallF5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Secure Firewall
7.7
74 Ratings
10% below category average
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
8.6
2 Ratings
1% above category average
Identification Technologies7.966 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Visualization Tools6.768 Ratings7.02 Ratings
Content Inspection7.767 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Policy-based Controls8.371 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP7.961 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Firewall Management Console7.670 Ratings7.02 Ratings
Reporting and Logging7.270 Ratings8.02 Ratings
VPN7.961 Ratings10.01 Ratings
High Availability8.167 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Stateful Inspection8.165 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Proxy Server7.039 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cisco Secure FirewallF5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
Small Businesses
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Score 9.6 out of 10
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Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
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Score 9.6 out of 10
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Enterprises
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Score 9.5 out of 10
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
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Score 9.5 out of 10
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User Ratings
Cisco Secure FirewallF5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
Likelihood to Recommend
7.9
(79 ratings)
8.3
(5 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
6.8
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.3
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.4
(31 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Secure FirewallF5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
Well, I mean it is really meant for the edge. I think maybe some of the smaller models you could maybe use at your, if you have remote workers where you wanted to protect their environment more than in their home network or whatever, but for us, we've always use the enterprise versions.
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F5
We were able to eliminate a firewall from our network architecture by integrating the module into our existing F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM). This allowed us to save on tech refresh costs, since the F5 was able to handle the module without much additional strain on the device. However, if a firewall had features that the AFM lacked, then using that firewall in tandem with an F5 would be preferable.
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Pros
Cisco
  • It's been a big change for us because like I said, we've been using it about a year, I think. And we went from ASAs to this, so it was a big changeover from being able to do everything in CLI honestly, it's a bit clunky and more time consuming to have to configure things through the Gooey, which has been a pain point for us. But we've tried to automate as much as we can. What it does well is the analysis. The event, not event viewer, but unified event, that's what it is. Handy tool. Also the tunnel troubleshooting the site to site tunnel monitoring or troubleshooting, I can't remember what it's called. It's pretty good too. It's nice how it has some predefined commands in there. I'd say those are probably the things we like about it the most.
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F5
  • Load balancing using pools
  • SSL offloading
  • iRules for threat handling
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Cons
Cisco
  • Sometimes it's the limitation of the throughput or limitation of the firewall. One DDoS attack they have the bandwidth capacity is very little. And then once there is DDoS attack. Many not only the firewall can protect that they need to take action further at the Upstreaming Provider, that side with the bigger pipe bandwidth for protecting the attack. Not only the firewall can prevent,. Yes. So sometimes firewalls still have the limitation and then need to do any additional monitoring or something. But we can do that with the ideas and IPS, but required to have the bigger pipe to protect DDos Attack, for example the bandwidth from the upstream network as well. I mean when many DDos Attack comes with big bandwidth, not only firewall can protect, but also the blackholing the traffic from upstream providers who has bigger bandwidth DDos mitigation services.
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F5
  • If unsure, can be overly cautious.
  • There are few changes the end user can make.
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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.
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F5
No answers on this topic
Usability
Cisco
Solution is highly effective, offers a lot of features with constant improvements and additions of new features over time. It's relatively easy to get familiar with the system, especially if transitioning from adaptive security appliances. If this is not the case, as for learnability there's a learning curve but once learned it is relatively easy to remember the details about the system even after a period of non-use
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F5
No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
Cisco
We have had really good success with Cisco Secure Firewall when it comes to availability. Even when we’ve had temporary issues with one appliance or the other, or with the Firewall Management Center, it has stayed up and defended our network diligently. We even had an issue where the licensing got disabled for multiple days, and it kept spinning like a top
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F5
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Cisco
Cisco support is not at all suitable for this product, at least. It takes a long for them to help us with our server issues. A lot of the time, the customer support person keeps on redirecting calls to another person. They need to be well versed with the terminologies of the product they are supporting us with. Support needs a lot of improvement. Cisco Fire Linux OS, the operating system behind Cisco Firepower NGFW (formerly Sourcefire), also doesn't receive regular patches. In short, average customer service.
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F5
F5 Advanced Firewall Manager has been a solid, strong solution to both keep our systems safe and being seamless for our end users. Most of the time, the end-user is not impacted and does not even know F5 Advanced Firewall Manager is running which is exactly what we are looking for.
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Implementation Rating
Cisco
In the beginning transition from Adaptive Security Appliance to Cisco Secure Firewall did not look like the best choice. Solution was new, there were a lot of bugs and unsupported features and the actual execution in the form of configuration via Firepower Management Center was extremely slow. Compare configuring a feature via CLI on ASA in a manner of seconds (copy/paste) to deployment via FMC to Secure Firewall which took approx. 10 mins (no exaggeration). Today, situation is a bit different, overall solution looks much more stable and faster then it was but there's still room for improvement.
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F5
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Cisco
We use the FMC as a virtual machine, it combines administration, monitoring and can be used perfectly for error analysis. There are restrictions due to administration without the FMC, so we decided on the FMC as the central administration.
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F5
Both F5 [BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager] and Radware require training as they are not easy to use. But Radware uses some configuration that needs deep learning and proper labs. From an admin's perspective, Configuration and management for F5 [BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager are] less. Also, the cost of implementing F5 [BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager] is lesser than that of Radware Alteon.
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Return on Investment
Cisco
  • Some patching for zero day exploits have resulted in bugs causing downtime, meaning decision between vuln patching or risk of downtime needs to be discussed.
  • Peace of mind that the device will receive continued upgrades and with a quick turnaround.
  • Ability to use TAC for issues.
  • Ease of hiring candidates with experience in product line.
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F5
  • When we had to decide on whether to buy different hardware our team were all in support of renewal for F5 [BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager]
  • F5 [BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager] requires proper training on tools and clear concepts of packets, headers, and content to create WAF policies
  • Overall, we are satisfied by the ROI provided by our F5 AFM and GTMs
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ScreenShots