A10 Thunder Convergent Firewall (CFW) vs. Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER Services

The scenario implemented by our teams was for edge protection. We also created a DMZ network for access to some servers and services. Our firewall has a remote SSL VPN license that allows remote access for several employees working from home or traveling on business. We created web access networks with content filtering, specific application protection with AVC, IPS, and protection against malware and external intruders. Cisco ASA with FirePOWER Services is one of the best solutions in the market that we researched for a long time to protect our data and access from intruders.

Incentivized

• Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER Services are very well suited for most environments.
• Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER Services have a variety of networking features including NextGen, web content filtering, data analysis, high availability failover, packet inspection, context-based ACL, and other features to protect your networks.
• It's easy to deploy and manage.

Incentivized

• URL Filtering feature could be easier to utilize for beginners
• I'd like to see a visual of VPN networks setup and show the functioning or malfunctioning status to assist in making troubleshooting easier
• Recommendations on ACLs for beginners based on their account creation date

Incentivized

Ever since we installed Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER Services we have never had to deal with an attack. We can see in the logs almost every day hackers attempting to break into our networks and failing. We also have the ability to blacklist every IP address that attempts to break into our firewalls

Incentivized

Cisco firepower provides automatation for an organisations security operations to detect and stop the most advanced threats fast. It also assists in preventing attacks in using intelligence and innovative solutions.

Incentivized

We have never had an outage caused by firewall failure. We have had a few outages caused by the internet failing or cloud applications going offline but never a firewall breaking down. When making changes we have a very strong change control, major software updates are always carried out out of working hours. At places where we have two firewalls in HA, we are able to do upgrades in working ours and the users will never know that an upgrade is taking place, that how great these firewalls are

Incentivized

The Cisco ASA 5500X with Firepower performance needs consideration before deploying. Although the solution is Pay as you grow, adding additional features to the system has a negative impact on overall throughput. I would more like now only to deploy the Cisco FPR units as they have better performance and will last the test of time.

Incentivized

I would recommend the purchase of the Smartnet 24x7 service in the case of a unit and the Smartnet 8x5NBD in the case of only one appliance installed on site. This service is important to always have the latest firmware updates, corrective updates and especially the hardware warranty and maintenance service in case of problems. The service is done by phone or on the official Cisco website and I can say that it is very good and efficient.

Incentivized

We implemented a centralized management of all our Cisco ASA 5500-x with FirePOWER Services so that we can have a holistic view of all our sites in London and other European countries. This also helps when making changes, instead of login on to each firewall we can use Firepower Management Center (FMC) to central deploy changes across all devices

Incentivized

The network is homogenous to Cisco and the integration with Cisco products is very easy (e.g. Identity Services Engine). As I am a certified engineer in Cisco Security, it feels very easy to handle Cisco products especially as more and more support docs are available across the internet and Cisco portal. The support from Cisco is also on the very next level. Even the community support for issues on the Cisco community is better than the support provided by the different vendor firewalls.

Incentivized

• As an integrated appliance, we saved costs on getting other security technologies.
• It provided secure access to our remote users, saving costs and time as our users could get access to the network anywhere and anytime.
• Since we have other Cisco devices, integration was seamless.
• Integration with Active Directory meant we did not need to create addition user accounts.

Incentivized