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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

    NGINX

    Score9.1 out of 10
    Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
    NGINX, a business unit of F5 Networks, powers over 65% of the world's busiest websites and web applications. NGINX started out as an open source web server and reverse proxy, built to be faster and more efficient than Apache. Over the years, NGINX has built a suite of infrastructure software products o tackle some of the biggest challenges in managing high-transaction applications. NGINX offers a suite of products to form the core of what organizations need to create…N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco Secure FirewallNGINX
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Secure FirewallNGINX
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    Cisco Secure FirewallNGINX
    Firewall
    Comparison of Firewall features of Cisco Secure Firewall and NGINX
    Feature
    Cisco Secure Firewall
    8.2
    196 Ratings
    5% below category average
    NGINX
    -
    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
    Application Servers
    Comparison of Application Servers features of Cisco Secure Firewall and NGINX
    Feature
    Cisco Secure Firewall
    -
    Ratings
    NGINX
    8.8
    43 Ratings
    10% above category average
    IDE support00 Ratings8.127 Ratings
    Security management00 Ratings8.638 Ratings
    Administration and management00 Ratings8.939 Ratings
    Application server performance00 Ratings9.139 Ratings
    Installation00 Ratings9.040 Ratings
    Open-source standards compliance00 Ratings9.037 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco Secure FirewallNGINX
    Small Businesses
    SonicWall NSA Series
    Score8.3 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Oracle WebLogic Server
    Score7.3 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Score9 out of 10
    Red Hat JBoss EAP
    Score8.5 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco Secure FirewallNGINX
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.3
    (203 ratings)
    9.3
    (72 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.5
    (6 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Usability
    7.3
    (6 ratings)
    8.3
    (25 ratings)
    Availability
    9.5
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.7
    (131 ratings)
    8.0
    (5 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.7
    (6 ratings)
    8.0
    (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 FirewallNGINX
    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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    F5
    Nginx is well-suited for any web server scenarios, such as web applications, backend or reverse proxy for both application and HTTP requests, and distribution. It is less appropriate for Windows-based applications that run directly on a Windows Server host. In any case, it is very easy to manage, through separate conf files for each application or site you want to host with it.
    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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    F5
    • Very low memory usage. Can handle many more connections than alternatives (like Apache HTTPD) due to low overhead. (event-based architecture).
    • Great at serving static content.
    • Scales very well. Easy to host multiple Nginx servers to promote high availability.
    • Open-Source (no cost)!
    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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    F5
    • Customer support can be strangely condescending, perhaps it's a language issue?
    • I find it a little weird how the release versions used for Nginx+ aren't the same as for open source version. It can be very confusing to determine the cross-compatibility of modules, etc., because of this.
    • It seems like some (most?) modules on their own site are ancient and no longer supported, so their documentation in this area needs work.
    • It's difficult to navigate between nginx.com commercial site and customer support. They need to be integrated together.
    • I'd love to see more work done on nginx+ monitoring without requiring logging every request. I understand that many statistics can only be derived from logs, but plenty should work without that. Logging is not an option in many environments.
    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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    F5
    Great value for the product
    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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    F5
    This tool is really easy to use and configure. Consumes very less system resources. It is highly modular and configurable. You can easily use it with other tools like certbot for SSLs. You can configure basic security with configuration and headers
    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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    F5
    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
    Read full review
    F5
    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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    F5
    Community support is great, and they've also had a presence at conferences. Overall, there is no shortage of documentation and community support. We're currently using it to serve up some WordPress sites, and configuring NGINX for this purpose is well documented.
    Incentivized
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    In-Person Training
    Cisco
    very good
    Incentivized
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    F5
    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
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    F5
    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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    F5
    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.
    Incentivized
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    F5
    I have found that [NGINX] seems to perform better throughout the years with less issues although I've used Apache more. I would definitely recommend [NGINX] for any high volume site and I've seen this to usually be the case from most provided web hosts who will pick [NGINX] over alternatives
    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
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    F5
    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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    F5
    No answers on this topic
    Professional Services
    Cisco
    was not involved
    Incentivized
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    F5
    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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    F5
    • By using Nginx, we can host multiple web services on a single server, keeping our infrastructure costs lower.
    • Nginx maintains our HTTPS connections, allowing us to keep our promise to our customers that their data is safe in transit.
    • Due to Nginx's extremely low failure rate, our web addresses always return something meaningful, even when individual services go down. In sense, this means we are "always online" and allows us to maintain brand and support our customers even in the face of catastrophe.
    Incentivized
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    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

    NGINX Screenshots

    Screenshot of Overview of the NGINX Application PlatformScreenshot of NGINX Controller - MonitoringScreenshot of NGINX Controller - Configuration