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Cisco ASA - Aging tech no longer a leader in the firewall market
October 19, 2018

Cisco ASA - Aging tech no longer a leader in the firewall market

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco ASA

The Cisco ASA platform has a niche place in our infrastructure. It is a decent stateful firewall but lacks features and functionality for changes in network security, segmentation, and user-based access controls. It is a good SSL VPN technology but that is about the only feature on the ASA platform that is widely used. As technology advances, it appears that Cisco has forgotten about the ASA.
  • SSL VPN
  • Authentication tiering
  • User-based access control functionality
  • Better logging
  • User interface
  • ASA has good ROI for SSL VPN
  • Negative ROI as a firewall platform
  • Negative ROI for logging
Cisco tried to build a new platform by bolting acquired and rebranded SourceFire as a next generation platform but really missed the boat. Cisco should be considered a networking company not security. Firewall technology is changing and Cisco needs to reevaluate their place in this market.
The ASA platform really is only suitable for SSL VPN use cases that can't be solved by other means. Its time as an industry leading firewall has ended. Cisco missed the boat with updates to the ASA platform and has not kept up with firewall trends. They tried to add bolt on functionality but the ASA really is not a security appliance and is one of the last stateful firewalls left that only has vanilla functionality.