I have been working on Cisco Secure Firewall since the ASA hardware, not the new FTDs with ASA operating system. For the FTDs, I have been working on them for approximately 10 years.

All of our deployments of Cisco Secure Firewall are currently on-premise.

The stability of the firewall and the way our customers feel about their services and service continuity are critical for our banking customers, as services are very crucial for this type of business.

Cisco Secure Firewall excels on the perimeter; however, the biggest area where you can see the difference between Cisco and other vendors is actually in the data center.

One of the main features I appreciate is the cloud management, which we have had for approximately one year. In version 7.6, we now have the AI assistant, which helps with configuration by automatically reviewing and analyzing what policies are being used and which are not. Additionally, Cisco continues to improve their firewalls with capabilities such as throughput that are becoming increasingly impressive. The same small firewall in size now comes with much greater capabilities, and the configuration deployment and changes are becoming smoother and smoother.

Cisco has something special when comparing it to other firewalls. It has a large portfolio of products that provide extensive integration capabilities and visibility. Meanwhile, other companies may have a vast portfolio, but the stability of the firewalls and how much a customer can rely on them is where Cisco stands out. Mixing these two aspects is what I consider a significant advantage.

Cisco Secure Firewall is very scalable, and I have options in deployment, especially for clustering, where I think in the latest hardware, I can deploy a cluster of six or more. Additionally, they have many sizes available, such as the 200, 3000, 4000, and 6000 series.

Two years ago, I could mention feature X as something I valued, but in every major release, Cisco always surprises me with new features. In every major release, I am surprised and receive nice new features.

Right now, I do not have anything specific in mind that I would say needs improvement, but it is actually improving constantly.

AI is indeed moving very fast. Cisco has already started to integrate and focus on AI, not just in the firewalls but in everything. However, this will need more improvement because AI is advancing quickly.

I have been in networking since 2012, which is approximately 14 years ago.

The stability and service continuity are the most important return on investment that any company or organization can get from Cisco Secure Firewall solution because losing services translates to losing money.

I can say it is just a few times we have cases on the FTDs, but I do not think that there is another vendor that can provide this reliability for the data center.

In the early days of Firepower, we had some issues; however, this has improved significantly over a couple of years. The hardware and software have become more reliable, faster, and user-friendly.

My experience with Cisco's customer service and technical support has been excellent. Since my beginning in networking, Cisco is number one in support, especially in after-sales. Even as an integrator, this advantage is significant for us as Cisco partners, and we often discuss how great Cisco support is.

I have worked on other firewalls, such as Palo Alto and Fortinet.

Deploying Cisco Secure Firewall was harder in the early days, but today it has become very easy. Cisco can support me with the necessary tools to migrate, making the process easier now.

For me, working for an integrator, it is mostly about reputation. The stability of the product gives the vendor, Cisco, and their partners a good reputation. The customer feels that this product is good, this vendor is good, and this partner is good, which extends to the technical engineer as well.

The stability and service continuity are the most important return on investment that any company or organization can get from Cisco Secure Firewall solution because losing services translates to losing money.

Taking a general look at the main competitors of Cisco, the pricing is not high and not low. It is approximately in the middle.

I have worked on other firewalls, such as Palo Alto and Fortinet.

My advice to other companies considering Cisco Secure Firewall is to give it a try. Some companies stick with a vendor, but as an integrator with some experience with Cisco insiders, I recommend giving it a try. Cisco always offers demos, including virtual firewalls. Give it a try, and you will appreciate it. I would rate my overall experience with this product as a 10.

We are deploying Cisco Secure Firewall for customers in the cloud, on-premise, or all around, depending on the customer. We have small customers that are migrating to the cloud, so we have to deploy virtual firewalls as well as on-premise solutions for both large-scale and small-scale operations.

The best return on investment when using Cisco Secure Firewall is the visibility. From my point of view, the best return on investment is the visibility. With Firepower Management and the FMC, you are able to really see everything that's going on in your network.

From my point of view, the stability and reliability of the product is quite good. The firewall sensors and the management are quite stable. We are encountering some problems, but mostly when you implement the solution correctly, you don't have any problems besides hardware failure, which is really rare.

Scalability for Cisco Secure Firewall is a good point. It's hard to say because mostly we are consulting and planning together with the customer. If they can see upfront or if they know when they have to scale big, then we can scale with them. I think the appliances are well scaled for the use of the customer.

I have a lot of experience with the customer service and technical support of Cisco. Recently, we managed to get one of the Cisco engineers to connect with us to solve some customer problems.

My experience with the customer service and technical support of Cisco is quite excellent. The engineers are top-notch and they know what they are doing. They are really experts in their field.

Regarding customer service, I'm not as familiar with that aspect. However, with the technical support, when you know the right people and when you really have problems which you can't solve on your own, they are behind you and they can help you mostly.

I have worked with other solutions in the past, different ones. The vibe which is in Cisco equipment caught me from the early days. When I started, the first security appliance I saw was Cisco PIX. I worked sometimes with Cisco ASA, and this was all before I came to Bechtle. Now I'm where I want to be.

Deploying Cisco Secure Firewall is getting easier, so I would describe the experience as straightforward. You are now able to preconfigure the appliances to send out, so you don't need engineers on site. In some cases, you can preconfigure and send it to the customer, and the customer is able to plug it in and it has access to WAN or to the internet. You are up and can run the system. I would rate Cisco Secure Firewall overall as an eight or a nine out of ten.

This is mostly the system I'm working with, so I do work with other solutions other than Cisco Secure Firewall, but we do have other teams working with other vendors. We are at a point where things are getting more and more complicated and you need more and more knowledge to do the implementation correctly. My goal is to do Cisco and to do it the best I can and do it properly.

I'm mostly on the implementation side, so pricing, the setup cost, and the licensing are not really my part in the business. I hear it's quite expensive, but the service you get is worth it. When you invest so much, you will get a lot of service. About licensing, I don't have experience with other vendors regarding licensing, so I would say the licensing is quite good. I'm not sure if there are any other downsides, so I consider it acceptable.

My use case for Cisco Secure Firewall is because the old solution for the VPN access for the employees and also for the external contractors was already out of date, and there was no possibility of somehow prolonging it. So we did the search for a new solution and from the auction and bidding, Cisco Secure Firewall came.

I consider the most valuable aspect of Cisco Secure Firewall to be that we are basically using it only for termination of the VPN, so that's basically the most valuable thing for us.

If I could improve Cisco Secure Firewall in any way, I have no clue, to be honest. I really don't know what to improve. It's working as it should be. Maybe it would be nice to have a better overview regarding the logging, regarding the issues a client can have with the VPN. But I can understand that because the primary feature for the firewall is not the VPN; it's the firewall, but we are not using the firewall.

There is still room to improve. There can be some things that can be better, such as some of the menu and some of the visibility. It's not chaotic, but it's not that user-friendly.

The GUI of Cisco Secure Firewall could improve, as there are better solutions in terms of how they look and how they can be navigated.

I find the solution reliable and stable, and I can say that there is no downtime. As I am used to Cisco products, they are stable and reliable.

I think that what we bought is overkill, but whatever. Basically, it can serve up to 1,000 clients on VPN, so for us it's basically unlimited. The largest number I have seen on the dashboard was 300 users connected on the VPN.

My experience with Cisco customer support has been nice all the time. Sometimes they can take their time, but if they are properly motivated, they can be fast.

If I had to rate their support from one to ten, with ten being best and one being worst, I would give it an eight.

I evaluated basically the new solution from Pulse Secure, which is now called Ivanti.

The reason we chose Cisco Secure Firewall was more or less politics because Ivanti didn't have the hardware, and they will not have the hardware in the foreseeable future. So we went with the only one who was able to provide it to us.

The deployment of Cisco Secure Firewall was kind of straightforward and was not problematic.

It took us two months, together with the migration, but the thing is that we needed to change the groups and rules and everything in the background. It was more or less up to us, not up to the platform. We needed to change things on our side.

It was internal, not the product's fault. The migration was lengthy.

Regarding the pricing and licensing of Cisco Secure Firewall, it's not up to me.

I know that it was purchased from our partner, from the local distributor.

On a scale of one to ten, with ten being best and one being worst, I would rate Cisco Secure Firewall overall with my past experience as nice. Because I cannot say it was good, from the point of view when I was able to look through Cisco Secure Firewall, it was nice. The FTD, the Firepower Threat Detection, is really mature, but the former ASA was a pain in the ass.

The former ASA was a pain in the ass because when someone is used to the Cisco way, the ASA was a strange thing. My overall rating for this product is 8 out of 10.

Our company's use case involves integration with Cisco Secure Firewall for our clients, typically for remote access VPN. The purpose of our remote access VPN integration is to connect with Duo. We also perform integration with Cisco ICE and integration directly with the firewall.

The most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Firewall for me relates to the remote access VPN, because companies need multi-factor authentication. The selling point of the product revolves around multi-factor authentication for VPNs. I have implemented this with Cisco firewall, Cisco ICE, and Palo Alto integration with Duo.

If I could improve the product in any way to make it better for my clients, that would be beneficial. For now, everything is fine from my perspective, although there may be room for improvement that I have not yet identified.

I have been using Duo for two years.

I find Cisco Secure Firewall to be stable and scalable. It is reliable. The solution has experienced downtime.

I have worked with Cisco support. My experience with Cisco support is fine. When I need to open a case, I have done so. I did not contact Duo support, but I did contact support for Cisco firewall and Cisco ICE. I did not work with an engineer for Duo.

They are responsive. In general, it takes them two to three hours to get back to me. When they need to search for something, it may take a day.

Deploying Duo is quite simple because Duo has very good documentation for all integrations. It typically takes a couple of days to deploy because we need to schedule meetings with our clients. When we gather all the information, we can integrate it, then test it and put it in production.

I have experience with the implementation.

The benefit of using this integration for our company is that clients want solutions from us. Our clients need to find a solution for multi-factor authentication, and we recommend them to use Cisco Secure Firewall with Duo. We integrate that with their firewalls or AAA servers. Cisco Secure Firewall integrates well. I am not involved with pricing and licensing concerns, as our company has a sales team who handles that. My company is a partner. I rate this product ten out of ten.

My main use case for Cisco Secure Firewall is only as a VPN concentrator.

The only feature I find most valuable in Cisco Secure Firewall is the VPN concentrator because we use it.

The only real benefit I realize from using Cisco Secure Firewall in this use case is that it's a different vendor, so a different attack vector.

A significant drawback for Cisco Secure Firewall is the ASA software, as I have not used the Firepower software yet. The ASA software has a GUI that is extremely ugly and appears to be made in the 1980s. At 28 years old, I am not accustomed to working with something that primitive.

The update procedures do not work, and the VPN creation wizard does not work. The GUI is useless for me and frustrates me to a very high degree, which led me to switch to the CLI for configuration.

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for three years.

I assess the stability and reliability of this firewall as both very good. I have had no issues with stability, as once they run, they run.

Since I am not using Cisco Secure Firewall for very heavy operations such as IPS or other intensive features, it scales quite well. We have two Firepower 1150s, and we are far under the limit of what our organization needs, so it scales well with our needs.

I have used Cisco support extensively, and I used it for this product once because during the setup there was an issue with the licensing, and I needed Cisco support to help me with the licensing for the ASA.

I am always satisfied with the level of support that I received. On a scale of 1 to 10, it is a 10 because they are reactive and effective. That is all we ask for in support.

We could accomplish this with another vendor such as Palo Alto, where we would not have to pay for licensing.

When I use the CLI, everything works quite well. I attempted to do everything with the GUI at the beginning, but nothing works. I managed to set up the HA pair with no issues once I used the CLI.

We are using quite a few other vendors for firewalls, and I do not think I can disclose which firewall we use where, but we use other major vendors such as Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Check Point. We have a bit of everything in our portfolio.

If it was my choice, I would have put another firewall there with something easier to configure, more straightforward, and a cleaner interface to maintain it.

My honest advice for someone who is evaluating Cisco Secure Firewall based on my experience would be that if you can get something else, go for something else. If you are going to use it, then use the CLI because the GUI is not usable. If I had the choice, I would not be using Cisco Firepower or ASA on top of it because in my opinion and the opinion of my colleagues and my management, it is not the best device for the role it is playing.

My overall rating for Cisco Secure Firewall is 5 out of 10.

Our main use case for Cisco Secure Firewall is to protect the data center workloads and branch infrastructure.

Many features of Cisco Secure Firewall help us. One of the features is Cisco ISE to authenticate and authorize users and user devices, along with the data center switches and campus switches Catalyst, together with DNA Center.

For segmentation of our application workloads in the data center for East-West traffic, Cisco Secure Firewall is essential.

We primarily use Cisco Secure Firewall as a firewalling solution with basic ACL functionality.

I don't think there are things that could be improved or features that I would have in Cisco Secure Firewall.

We have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for five to six years.

We did not have any major issues with Cisco Secure Firewall. Sometimes some features are a bit buggy, but it doesn't really result in any major outages.

We have quite static infrastructure, so we did not have any growth requirements in the past with Cisco Secure Firewall, so I cannot provide information about that.

We use customer service for Cisco Secure Firewall. Sometimes the GUI is very laggy and slow, and it improves with every update we receive, but sometimes that is a small problem. My rating for customer service is 4.

Before having Cisco Secure Firewall, we used several solutions from different vendors.

We still use Check Point as well, even after changing to Cisco Secure Firewall.

You need some knowledge to set up Cisco Secure Firewall, but overall, there is good documentation and it was doable.

We do not currently have a dedicated implementation team for Cisco Secure Firewall.

It is hard to say if there was something we implemented with Cisco Secure Firewall that gives us a return on investment.

Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cisco Secure Firewall, it is not that relevant, but from my experience, it can be very complex to oversee and to have a good view on the cost and licensing. It is a bit simpler with Cisco Smart, but it can be a challenge.

We did consider another solution before selecting Cisco Secure Firewall. However, we did not want to have that many vendors in the enterprise.

I prefer staying in the same Cisco ecosystem with one or two vendors maximum.

Check Point is one vendor on the firewall level that we still use.

We have to deploy the full feature set of Cisco Secure Firewall, so I cannot provide information about partial deployments.

Our main use case for Cisco Secure Firewall is to have the different clients secured in their own VLAN and subnet, ensuring effective segregation of our network.

We do not have an internet connection with Cisco Secure Firewall; basically, it is all on-premise. We have different use cases and those need to stay separated, so they do not interfere with each other.

My main usage for Cisco Secure Firewall is that I work in a train company where we are basically managing the network for the different use cases of the train. Those need to get separated, so the phone does not interfere with the cameras, for example, and we only allow the designated ports to the other.

What I appreciate most about Cisco Secure Firewall is that it has been working since we bought it without any failure, highlighting its reliability and performance.

An example of how Cisco Secure Firewall benefits my organization is that it performs its function very effectively. We use it as a router, and it works really well, ensuring our operations run smoothly.

I think the old interface could be improved, as it is not that good. Cisco Firewall Management Center is much better, but I need to get more experience with that because we do not really have any experience with it. I did not work extensively with it as we are in the migrating phase.

I have been using a Cisco firewall, specifically the ASA, for ten years and now we are migrating to Cisco Secure Firewall, which represents our ongoing commitment to network security.

I assess the stability and reliability of Cisco Secure Firewall as performing really well. We have had one small issue, but it happened over ten years, and with the new one, we have had no issues.

I believe Cisco Secure Firewall can scale and grow with the needs of my organization because we bought the biggest model, so we do not really need to scale anywhere. We roughly calculated this and it should last the next nine to ten years, so if we buy a new one, it will probably have more performance, but the next ten years are secure.

I have used customer service for Cisco Secure Firewall. We have a partner between us and Cisco and only the extreme cases get to Cisco. Most of the time our partner, Logicalis, will solve the problem for us because they have experts, so only really problems with the software or these kinds of things get right to Cisco.

Before choosing Cisco Secure Firewall, we have a complete Cisco network, so we tried to keep the network together, completely Cisco. Therefore, there were no other solutions, as we did not use one before and we did not consider different options.

I would describe the experience of deploying Cisco Secure Firewall as very smooth. We used the migration software which just took the complete ASA configuration and put it in Cisco Secure Firewall in Cisco Firewall Management Center, and that was it; it worked.

My main use cases for Cisco Secure Firewall include serving as a perimeter firewall between the data center and users, and as the firewall between the internet and users.

An example of how Cisco Secure Firewall benefits my organization is that we use it with Azure, along with Azure firewall and FTD, and it works very well.

Cisco Secure Firewall is highly performant and easy to manage.

Cisco Secure Firewall handles this adequately, but a simpler licensing model would be beneficial, especially when using the firewall in the cloud, since on-premises performance is limited by the hardware being used.

I have been using Cisco Secure Firewall for approximately fifteen years, starting from Cisco PIX.

Cisco Secure Firewall has demonstrated good reliability and stability. Although we did not invest heavily, which results in limited performance due to our license being restricted to one gigabit, that is our constraint rather than a Cisco limitation. I have not experienced any crashes or downtime with Cisco Secure Firewall, and everything has operated smoothly.

Cisco Secure Firewall can scale with the growing needs of my organization.

I have not needed to use customer service.

Deploying Cisco Secure Firewall is very straightforward and uncomplicated, as the systems are simple to deploy and the graphic interface is user-friendly.

My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cisco Secure Firewall is positive.

Before choosing Cisco Secure Firewall, I considered some competitors, as we have other firewalls from different vendors. It is beneficial to use firewalls from different vendors because if someone can overcome one firewall, there is the other firewall for protection.

I selected Cisco Secure Firewall because it works well in the Azure environment.

One of the biggest use cases for Cisco Secure Firewall is Public Bank; they use it in Malaysia, but we implemented it in the Sri Lankan branches.

When a global company is using Cisco Secure Firewall, they would prefer to go with the same product with the same switching and firewall, making it an umbrella solution.

I think the UTM is the best feature of Cisco Secure Firewall.

The UTM features are indeed the best.

The reason why the UTM feature of Cisco Secure Firewall is the best is because the customer is more concerned with security; for a worldwide company, they need the most security, and I think it's very suitable for the most secure companies.

The centralized management console in Cisco Secure Firewall is effective and helpful.

Most of the partners are looking for AI-driven solutions now, so if Cisco improves more on the AI part than other products, it will be very good when they are trying to capture the market.

Cisco Secure Firewall has to enhance its AI part.

Customers using Cisco Secure Firewall are looking for UTM features, and some enhancements have to be done, such as when you block applications, more applications have to be able to be blocked and categorized.

I've been working with Cisco Secure Firewall for around 15 years as a partner.

Cisco Secure Firewall is stable, and there are no issues or challenges that my customers have faced with it.

Customers use Cisco Secure Firewall both on the cloud and on-premises, and it is a scalable solution and easy to scale.

My experience with Cisco support is good. I would rate the technical support of Cisco Secure Firewall eight out of ten.

The deployment of Cisco Secure Firewall takes one day.

Customers see a return on investment with Cisco Secure Firewall, and it is workable in terms of value for money.

Competitively, Checkpoint is the best, but considering pricing and everything else, Cisco Secure Firewall is also the best product.

Cisco Firewall is better in terms of cost and is cheaper; unlike other products, if the license expires, no features work, but Cisco isn't that way. Most of the time, they have perpetual licenses, so that's the best solution customers are looking for.

The threat intelligence functionalities in Cisco Secure Firewall are also good, but when considering Checkpoint and others, they have some enhanced features; there is some differentiation, but it's also good.

They need a global, one single vendor, which is why they see value for money with Cisco Secure Firewall.

I recommend Cisco Secure Firewall because it's a global vendor.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate Cisco Secure Firewall an 8.

Our main use case for Cisco Secure Firewall is to protect our RTU traffic, specifically on the operational technology side, for SCADA systems. For our side, we don't have encrypted traffic; for the most part, we have the firewall to protect everything behind it when it comes to RTU traffic, which is remote terminal units.

The visibility and control capabilities of Cisco Secure Firewall benefit our company by making it easier for us to parse through traffic that is denied or allowed through, and that helps us with troubleshooting, so it does help cut down on troubleshooting.

The feature of Cisco Secure Firewall that I prefer the most is the use of ASDM where we visually are able to see all of our traffic when it comes through the firewall.

Cisco Secure Firewall does a good job unifying policies across our environments because we have many firewalls that have the same rules, so when Cisco Secure Firewalls are able to do that, that's very beneficial.

The fact that unifying policies will help us save time, costs, and be more efficient in general is very important for our company. Unfortunately, the impact of the cloud-delivered firewall on our company's security posture is negligible since we are an air-gapped system, and we do not deal with the cloud infrastructure.

Cisco Secure Firewall does a good job in helping our company implement a zero-trust security model, and it deserves an eight out of ten.

Cisco Secure Firewall could be improved in terms of the GUI and management. It could be more intuitive, as sometimes there might be too many features and buttons that make it harder when we're trying to parse through information.

To make Cisco Secure Firewall a ten out of ten, improving the documentation of all the features would help significantly. I sometimes feel I'm just searching around on Google for specific configurations compared to Palo Alto, which has more detailed steps.

We've been using Cisco Secure Firewall for about 20 years. We've had it since the whole creation of our RT team.

In terms of stability and reliability, Cisco Secure Firewall is reliable. We haven't had real issues where these firewalls have gone down or anything of that nature, so we're happy with the consistency.

When it comes to the scalability of Cisco Secure Firewall, it scales very efficiently and is easy to implement with the growing needs of our company.

Our experience with customer service or technical support through TAC for Cisco Secure Firewall could be more in-depth instead of going through the first levels.

We often find ourselves trying to escalate faster because we need timely responses. I would rate the customer service and technical support from Cisco Secure Firewall a six out of ten. They're good and know what they're doing in general. That said, it's not where we want it to be.

We considered Palo Alto before choosing Cisco Secure Firewall, and we do have some Palo Altos on the network to compare. We're mostly using Cisco products in general. I'm aware Palo Alto is a strong competitor when it comes to firewalls.

The deployment is pretty seamless. Sometimes we do have some issues with Palo Alto Fireworks, where when it comes to deploying, it's not as intuitive. It doesn't work correctly, and there are some bugs that come up. So we have to troubleshoot that aspect. Cisco Secure Firewalls is pretty pretty seamless.

The biggest return on investment when using Cisco Secure Firewall comes from how intuitive it is. The more it's able to identify issues during troubleshooting, the better the ROI we achieve.

I'm not too concerned about the pricing of Cisco Secure Firewall. The pricing is fixed, and we're comfortable with it since pricing doesn't matter as much since we have to purchase it if there's a need for it.

The main differences between Cisco Secure Firewall and Palo Alto come down to the GUI. They are on par when comparing unified policy and how to make things more intuitive for monitoring traffic and creating rules based on that traffic.

We haven't used any new features or functionalities in Cisco Secure Firewall recently. The features work efficiently, and I can't think of anything new that I would want right now.

I would rate Cisco Secure Firewall overall an eight out of ten; it's reliable, and we have no real issues.