What users are saying about
30 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 8.9 out of 100
Based on 30 reviews and ratings
3 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 7.8 out of 100
Based on 3 reviews and ratings
Feature Set Ratings
Firewall

8.5
Cisco Secure Firewall
85%

Stonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
Feature Set Not Supported
N/A
Cisco Secure Firewall ranks higher in 11/11 features
Cisco Secure Firewall ranks higher in 11/11 features
Identification Technologies

7.8
78%
14 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Visualization Tools

7.6
76%
14 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Content Inspection

9.4
94%
14 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Policy-based Controls

8.8
88%
14 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP

7.2
72%
13 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Firewall Management Console

8.9
89%
14 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Reporting and Logging

8.3
83%
14 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
VPN

9.4
94%
12 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
High Availability

9.9
99%
14 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Stateful Inspection

9.3
93%
14 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Proxy Server

7.2
72%
12 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Attribute Ratings
- Cisco Secure Firewall is rated higher in 1 area: Likelihood to Recommend
Likelihood to Recommend

9.4
Cisco Secure Firewall
94%
14 Ratings

7.0
Stonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
70%
1 Rating
Usability

8.0
Cisco Secure Firewall
80%
1 Rating

Stonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
N/A
0 Ratings
Support Rating

7.9
Cisco Secure Firewall
79%
6 Ratings

Stonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
N/A
0 Ratings
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco Secure Firewall
If you are already using [a] Cisco product like the Cisco ASA Series and you need more security on layer 7 then you can upgrade with firepower. This is well suited for middle and big organizations. If your company deals with credit card information then you should buy this firewall. It provides you all the features to stop any type of advanced attack on your organization
project lead
DashClicksInformation Technology & Services, 51-200 employees
Stonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
Any scenario where a dedicated firewall administrator is on staff and a secure firewall solution that requires high availability is needed will be a good solution for the McAfee Firewall Enterprise product. The McAfee Firewall Enterprise however comes with some of its own parlance that is different from other vendors and does require some comfort on the administrators side when it comes to working in the command line. Added knowledge of protocols and how they interact is a must for any firewall admin but particularly for the McAfee Firewall Enterprise product due to its flexible nature. If the environment is to be mostly hands off where a very limited rule set is to be configured and not likely to change often, I would defer to a different product
Systems Engineer
University of Florida Jacksonville Physicians, Inc.Financial Services, 501-1000 employees
Pros
Cisco Secure Firewall
- Updates with the HA Pair are incredibly easy and automated
- FMC with Firepowers provide a single place to view information about devices and connections
- Tedious policy changes can be staged during the working hours and then deployed in one click after hours

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Education Management Company, 201-500 employeesStonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
- Based on the SecureComputing Sidewinder firewalls, the McAfee Firewall Enterprise does similar backend containerization of each service which provides for added security in the unlikely event of failures or breeches.
- Tie in reporting services (if used by the admin) provide very granular details on rules accessed and the firewalls response to the requests.
- Configurable options are plentiful. Unbound DNS can be configured on each "burb" (SecureComputing/McAfee parlance for interface), similar options for sendmail while rulesets can be configured at the application level down to simple IP-filter making options for enhancing security as well as troubleshooting equally as useful.
- Full control over shell for scripting and/or scheduling (cron) purposes.
- Solid HA and patching architecture.
- Support was always helpful, knowledgeable and insightful (especially the staff that migrated from SecureComputing).
Systems Engineer
University of Florida Jacksonville Physicians, Inc.Financial Services, 501-1000 employees
Cons
Cisco Secure Firewall
- The UI in Cisco Firepower formerly Sourcefire) is complicated and entirely redundant. A lot of these features are not useful, and therefore, it can be removed from the main window.
- The interface is very slow, with each operation taking a lot of time. Searching through the logs takes too much time.
Graduate Research Assistant
University of Colorado DenverHigher Education, 5001-10,000 employees
Stonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
- For an application-layer firewall the applications supported (at the time I managed them) were too few and would need to be expanded and the application ruleset needed to be expanded as well.
- The remote access VPN client configuration was overly complex for the average user and would need to be supplemented with a configuration file that had already been generated. Other solutions from CheckPoint or Cisco ASA are not as complex for end user remote access.
- Enhancing the GUI with a builtin "packet capture" feature would be useful for administrators not familiar with tcpdump.
Systems Engineer
University of Florida Jacksonville Physicians, Inc.Financial Services, 501-1000 employees
Pricing Details
Cisco Secure Firewall
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
—Stonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
—Usability
Cisco Secure Firewall
Cisco Secure Firewall 8.0
Based on 1 answer
It's overall very great, however the Management Console needs updating to fix the slowness of policy and rule deployments.
AVP Network Security Team Lead
East West BankFinancial Services, 1001-5000 employees
Stonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Cisco Secure Firewall
Cisco Secure Firewall 7.9
Based on 6 answers
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.
Graduate Research Assistant
University of Colorado DenverHigher Education, 5001-10,000 employees
Stonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Cisco Secure Firewall
pfsence is a very complicated firewall and there is lots of documentation available on Cisco website for help. The configuration is very difficult and less documentation available. Cisco Secure Firewall provides us all the security features in low cost and this is very easy to configure firewall.
Sr Team Leader
Dish TVInformation Technology & Services, 1001-5000 employees
Stonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
Compared to other firewalls I've managed (Palo Alto, Cisco ASA & CheckPoint) I would say that McAfee Firewall Enterprise was probably at the time not the leader in its field however it is a product that proved its reliability and flexibility over the other vendors. The addition of many new features usually comes as a detriment to some other area (restricted CLI, decreased logging etc.). In my experience this product gave the flexibility and options that the organization needed.
Systems Engineer
University of Florida Jacksonville Physicians, Inc.Financial Services, 501-1000 employees
Return on Investment
Cisco Secure Firewall
- This product is great for inspection and normal firewall controls.
- If there's a bug in it, it can take a lot of resource time to chase it and work around it.
- Deciphering which data is useful has taken a bit of time and trimming.
Network Systems Administrator
Johnson County LibraryLibraries, 201-500 employees
Stonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
- In its highly available configuration the impact on any business objective has been positive given the fact that any downtime of the firewall would negatively impact all business objectives.
Systems Engineer
University of Florida Jacksonville Physicians, Inc.Financial Services, 501-1000 employees