Item: Cisco Secure Firewall
Rating: 10
Author: Peter Muchau

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In our organization, we use Cisco Secure Firewall and the Firewall Management Center for administration. Due to the structured configuration, the rules can be rolled out to multiple devices and systems simultaneously via the firewall management center. This makes work easier and saves time. We also install this solution for many customers.

Pros and Cons

Easy administration of the Cisco Secure Firewall
Developing workflows and automations thanks to the FMC API
Versioning the configuration and rollback

AI Integration is missing
Import of objects
Backup of the access control policy (FMC)

Return on Investment

Positive: simple and quick administration
Negative: software has some bugs
Negative: FMC Deployment take a lot of time

Security and Performance

The performance of the Cisco Secure Firewall FTD is great, the snort engine works stably and the monitoring from the firewall management center works reliably. Unfortunately, the software is sometimes a bit buggy. Software updates and the deployment of new rules take a comparatively long time (reference Paloalto, Fortinet). Installation is easy and integration into other management systems works quite well.

Support Rating

The Cisco support works very well for the FMC and the FTD, unfortunately it takes a while to fix SW errors. The system engineers do a great job and are well trained.

Cisco Security Ecosystem

In addition to Cisco Secure Access, we also use FTD's SSL VPN via the secure client. This can be easily installed and rolled out via the SW distribution. The policies can be administered centrally. The VPN solution makes reliable work possible, and it's also good that the secure client has many other functions in addition to the VPN function.

Alternatives Considered

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center

We use the FMC as a virtual machine, it combines administration, monitoring and can be used perfectly for error analysis. There are restrictions due to administration without the FMC, so we decided on the FMC as the central administration.

Key Insights

Do you think Cisco Secure Firewall delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Cisco Secure Firewall's feature set?

Yes

Did Cisco Secure Firewall live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Cisco Secure Firewall go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Cisco Secure Firewall again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Barracuda Firewall Insights, Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center, Cisco Secure Access

Likelihood to Recommend

The Cisco Secure Firewall is only recommended in combination with the firewall management center. The FMC makes work easier and saves time. We use several 31xx in the data center, which are administered via an FMC. Managing OSPF routing information could be easier and clearer. Deploying the configuration to the FTD takes too long. Service objects can only be defined based on the destination ports. The source port address is missing.

Cisco FTD and FMC

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Secure Firewall