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The Gold Standard in Enterprise Firewalls
May 10, 2018

The Gold Standard in Enterprise Firewalls

Michael Timms | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco ASA

Cisco ASA is the industry standard for firewall software. I am not an expert on ASA by any means, but I have used several of the basic functions such as SSL VPN and configuring different VLANs for multiple devices. I only use the Command Line Interface, and never the ASDM which runs on a Java applet.
  • Customer support is Cisco's forte, and ASA is no exception. If you have issues, they are available 24/7 to help you resolve them.
  • Longevity. I still have a 5510 running that has been running for over 3 years without a reboot with zero issues.
  • URL filtering works great.
  • Get rid of the Java based ASDM
  • The licensing could be easier.
  • Packet filtering could use some improvement.
  • Asa protects my enterprise from dangerous traffic.
  • It provides SSL VPN.
  • ASA gives me what I call the Cisco peace of mind i.e., if something happens, I know that help is just a phone call away.
Cisco has been in the networking industry for what seems like an eternity. That being said they take what they do and the products they make very seriously. Cisco products are created with the customer in mind, and they are made to be somewhat easy to configure, to the point that you "set it and forget it" and you never have to touch them unless there are some major changes made to your network.
The ideal situations that Cisco ASA is best suited for are large enterprises with tons of traffic and several thousand users that need to have certain URLs or IPs restricted for security or client compliance reasons. ASA, of course, can be configured and used for any size environment, but the example that I can give that it would not be well suited for would be a very small business with only a handful of employees where IP or URL restriction is not necessarily required. The cost is also a factor, as ASA is very expensive.