Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Forcepoint NGFW

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Secure Firewall
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Secure Firewall delivers comprehensive threat protection for modern, distributed environments. It offers an architecture designed to support hybrid and multicloud strategies, enabling Zero Trust access, robust application visibility, and secure remote work. With integrations across the Cisco Secure portfolio and threat intelligence from Talos, Cisco Secure Firewall helps organizations stop more threats, respond faster, and reduce complexity through centralized management and automation.N/A
Forcepoint NGFW
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Forcepoint Next-Generation Firewall delivers network security at scale. They can be deployed from anywhere through the Secure Management Console (SMC) and unify policy management, incident response and reporting.
$900
one-time fee for the entry tier Forcepoint N60 (approx)
Pricing
Cisco Secure FirewallForcepoint NGFW
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Forcepoint NGFW N60
$900
one-time fee (approx)
Forcepoint NGFW N120
$1314
one-time fee (approx)
Forcepoint NGFW N350
$7850
one-time fee (approx)
Forcepoint NGFW N1200
$13600
one-time fee (approx)
Forcepoint NGFW N2200
$36000
one-time fee (approx)
Forcepoint NGFW N3400 & N3500
varies
one-time fee
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Secure FirewallForcepoint NGFW
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsFirewalls are bought predominately through partners and third-party VARs. Pricing for purchase and lease and support options vary by reseller.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Secure FirewallForcepoint NGFW
Features
Cisco Secure FirewallForcepoint NGFW
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Secure Firewall
7.8
128 Ratings
10% below category average
Forcepoint NGFW
8.1
1 Ratings
6% below category average
Identification Technologies8.0112 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Visualization Tools7.0113 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Content Inspection7.8110 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Policy-based Controls8.4118 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP8.0101 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Firewall Management Console7.5117 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Reporting and Logging7.5119 Ratings8.01 Ratings
VPN7.9104 Ratings9.01 Ratings
High Availability8.3113 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Stateful Inspection8.3109 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Proxy Server6.958 Ratings00 Ratings
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Score 9.3 out of 10
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Score 9.3 out of 10
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Score 9.4 out of 10
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Score 9.4 out of 10
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User Ratings
Cisco Secure FirewallForcepoint NGFW
Likelihood to Recommend
7.8
(136 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.3
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.3
(78 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Secure FirewallForcepoint NGFW
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
Kind of going back to my previous point, segregating networks, it's super useful for that. It's easy to look through firewall logs and see what's going on in your network. Also like intrusion detection and prevention. So great security products for the network.
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Forcepoint
If you are looking for a smaller network/security team, the ease and low complexity create an easy to manage environment. One engineer can easily manage 100 nodes/locations. If you are just starting to get security conscious and predict regular adjustments to policy, routing, and access, this is a very good system for making easy to understand and low impact changes on a regular basis without operations interruption.
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Pros
Cisco
  • Gives detailed information on what user is utilizing the VPN such as Ip address and the origin of country for the Ip address.
  • The graphical user interface is detailed and organized, a good level of intuition.
  • It provides troubleshooting tools such as packet tracer, that allows individuals to see where the packets are being accepted or dropped.
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Forcepoint
  • Easy to manage and make changes on - ACL's are done with ease.
  • Easy USB initial configuration - The easy initial setup of a new location and firewall saves massive time. Settings are automatically pushed to new nodes upon contact with the controller.
  • Low Complexity - This system does not have a lot of complexity requiring extra hours, training, or personnel to manage.
Read full review
Cons
Cisco
  • I have one argument, failover scenario. It's not quite easy. Failover scenario of firewalls. It's sometimes not quite easy to know the issue. But if we open a tech case, a technical case to Cisco, Cisco will help us, it's a little bit con, but we are happy with this product.
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Forcepoint
  • Poor Reporting - It exists but even when calling in to support for assistance, they have no idea how to tackle customizing reports or searching for specific data.
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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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Forcepoint
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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Forcepoint
The Graphical User Interface is very easy to read, understand and work with. The usability of this product is very high.
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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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Forcepoint
No answers on this topic
Performance
Cisco
no slowing down, vpn is working fast
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Forcepoint
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Cisco
Firewall support is professional just like any other technology Cisco sells. From answering simple questions to bringing out outages affecting a large population of our workforce, Cisco support is always courteous, professional, and communicates with our team to keep our request on their radar. Some of the brightest people I've met are from Cisco support both in IQ and EQ which shows the talent Cisco is able to onboard to their team.
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Forcepoint
Support has varied over the history of the company. Terro is a name that comes up often with the best of service from this company.
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In-Person Training
Cisco
very good
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Forcepoint
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)".
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Forcepoint
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.
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Forcepoint
No answers on this topic
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.
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Forcepoint
There are similar hardware and license costs between the two products. The Forcepoint NGFW product is by far easier to use and manage.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Cisco
was not involved
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Forcepoint
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Cisco
you can choose up to 50 devices i think thats enough for our organization
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Forcepoint
No answers on this topic
Professional Services
Cisco
was not involved
Read full review
Forcepoint
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Cisco
  • I think it's all been positive, except for the fact, like I was mentioning before, when we had problems with the initial integration, we were trying to migrate over to the new FMC and from the 1500 to the 1600, we had some downtime during that time and we had to do some escalations within Cisco Tech. They were very helpful, but I think that was the biggest thing, and that's long since been resolved. So I don't really have any other thing, anything negative to say at this point. I think it's all positive.
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Forcepoint
  • Efficiency/Productivity increase. The company moved from Cisco firewall and routing hardware to Forcepoint NGFW. It now takes fewer people and fewer hours to manage the new product. This has allowed the company to put the man-hours to use on other projects and tasks.
  • Long term viability. This has been a concern in the past when the company started as Stonegate, merged to become Stonesoft then got purchased by McAfee, then McAfee got purchased by Intel. However, with Forcepoint the product seems to have found a stable home.
  • Low complexity. The Web GUI based system for management has reduced the cost of personnel and training required. There is no longer a need for the company to have higher trained and higher salary cost employees to manage the system. Mid-level admins at lower salaries are capable of managing the GUI based system with ease.
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