Item: Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Cisco ASA is [our] organization's firewall product, which is used as [a] firewall [and] to support remote VPN connectivity. It secures the perimeter and remote users. With Cisco ASA we have layer 3 and 4 security based on IP addresses and ports. Also with next-generation Cisco ASA antimalware, antispyware, antispam, [and] cloud-based URL filtering are also utilized.

Pros and Cons

Secure the perimeter
Secure remote users
Secure network from unauthorized connections initiated from outside
Secure from zero day attacks

Cisco ASA can have better GUI compared with other firewall vendors.
Cisco can make its security cloud better.

Return on Investment

Cisco has positive impact as security is a integrated part of enterprise.
Cisco has great support, in less time you can resolve issues, which also has [a] positive impact.

Alternatives Considered

Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series, Juniper SRX and Fortinet FortiGate

Cisco ASA is doing well, has [a] lot of documents available, [and easy] implementation, however, other vendors are also very easy to deploy. Cisco ASA has [a] great support team. Cisco ASA is truly [a] next-generation product. Now it is cloud-managed, along with zero-touch provisioning(ZTP). Cisco ASA is integrated with Cisco FTD which makes it centrally controlled.

Key Insights

Do you think Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software's feature set?

Yes

Did Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series, Cisco Meraki MX, Juniper SRX

Likelihood to Recommend

Well suited when higher network performance is required. When we particularly have high throughput. Cisco ASA is backed by Cisco Inc which provides [the] best support in [the] network market. Cisco ASA is less simple when we compare it with other vendors. Cisco can put more focus on [the] Telecommunication Sector as well on enterprises.

Resilience

Cisco ASA is great and trustable product when it comes to cybersecurity and I felt environment is more secure behind the ASA Firewall. It has stopped couple of attacks with tighter access lists. With great Network Address Translation support ASA has helped keeping internal enterprise network private. Cisco has great support which really helped in easily recovering from network outages.
Cisco ASA active-passive implementation really helped in keeping the network very highly available.
And with context mode feature we can utilise both ASA devices in active-active, so keeping both devices distributing the load equally and utilising the investment in more smarter way.

Leadership in Resilience

More investment is needed when talking about cybersecurity, its not where we need to think about saving capex or opex. As this is very important today to secure the infrastructure, end users, remote users as attack surface is really widened, its not just one way entry, today enterprises are open to work from anywhere, which gives bad user a bigger and larger attack surface.

Likelihood to Renew

Cisco ASA is really great product, it has helped keeping the infrastructure secure. It helped having the remote vpn connected, so making sure access via anywhere is secure. Cisco has the best in the market support due to large user community.
I took back one point as competetors are also coming with some great solutions where Cisco still needed to work more.

Implementation Rating

Cisco implementation is really easy and highly resilient. We can build the firewall solution in active-passive mode which make sure at least one firewall to be available, even if other is malfunctioning. Cisco ASA is also available as virtual security module which we can utilise in public cloud and Linux machine with other added features.

Reliability and Availability

I generally have not noticed the outages, however since it's a machine it can malfunction, we need to implement the firewall infrastructure in such a way that it is highly available with device failure, region failure etc. Else any solution will be having the issues if they are not build with resiliency.

Ease of Integration

Cisco ASA can easily be integrated with different products as it supports all the open source protocols such as IPSEC, BGP, OSPF etc.
On backend we can use any device to connect with Firewall.
In cloud we can implement it as a network virtual appliance. Which make sure we will have multiple options available for ASA integration.

Innovative Uses

Network Virtual Appliance
Hardware Firewall
Perimeter Security
Department saperation
Tenant saperation

Great product, with lots of next generation features.

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software