Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Symantec Advanced Threat Protection

The software offers advanced firewall solutions from Web threats management to behavioural analytics and comprehensive application security. Cisco Secure firewall software is incredibly easy to deploy and implement. Customer support services providers are concise and very responsive. Integration and customization of the software are exceptional. The product boasts impressive capabilities, enabling it to stop threats and manage all security flaws in real time.

Incentivized

I think Symantec ATP is more of a medium or large-scale product where a company has a lot of endpoints. It is burdensome for smaller companies with limited IT support to try and get the product up and running. In addition I feel the new own, Broadcomm, is also trying to angle their product more to the large customer base. A medium or large scale customer in the need of end-to-end protection for their network really cannot go wrong with the product once configured correctly.

Incentivized

• It's good at segregating networks and ensuring that you only give the access that you need to give. Especially with medical devices, you want to only give the access that they need and keep them in their own separate areas so that they can't just communicate with the rest of the network. It's also good at the border for keeping attackers out of the network.

Incentivized

• It was easy to install on machines in an active directory environment, and maintain/update whenever we needed without having to physically go to clients.
• The interface was pretty well locked down for clients, which was good in order to stop accidental meddling.
• Symantec has good online resources for current threats, including messages or warning signs and what to do/where to find them on a machine in case SATP cannot deal with it on its own.

Incentivized

• I have one argument, failover scenario. It's not quite easy. Failover scenario of firewalls. It's sometimes not quite easy to know the issue. But if we open a tech case, a technical case to Cisco, Cisco will help us, it's a little bit con, but we are happy with this product.

Incentivized

• Supplier support - Really dire. Technical support off shore was passable, but account management was non existent. Really reflects on Symantec poorly given our spend per annum with them.
• Cost per annum. At the upper end of protection systems. With little or no account support this was poor value.
• Proactive communications with customer

Incentivized

It works really well. We can do most anything we want or need to with it, and you don’t have to have a doctorate or multiple certs to necessarily figure it out. The thing that would probably have to happen to make us switch would be if we just got priced out - Cisco’s more powerful and higher bandwidth models cost a pretty penny.

Incentivized

Symantec Advanced Threat Protection has done a sufficient job at identifying true positives. However, the UI could be improved and the amount of false positives is a little too frequent for my liking

Incentivized

The platform is powerful and feature-rich, especially when paired with tools like Firepower Management Center (FMC) and SecureX. The policy structure is logical, and the visibility into traffic flows, threat activity, and rule hits is quite strong once you're familiar with the interface

Incentivized

There is a small learning curve, but compared to other AV products it is fairly simple and easy to catch onto

Incentivized

As for the availability, in general we did not experience any issues with it, neither in situations where there's only one physical device implemented nor when there's and High Availability pair. Failover works like a charm, no complaints here, it works as it should and so far it has been highly reliable.

Incentivized

no slowing down, vpn is working fast

Incentivized

Our experience with Cisco TAC support for Cisco Secure Firewall has been very good. The support engineers are knowledgeable about the product and have many tools available to them to work "under the hood" of the firewalls or management center. When we've had equipment failures, the RMA process has been simple and straightforward.

Incentivized

Support responds fast for higher priority issues, they have always been good at solving the problems we encounter.

Incentivized

very good

Incentivized

was a good training but questions was answered not so good. Training was "Fundamentals of Cisco Firewall Threat Defense and Intrusion Prevention (SFWIPF)".

Incentivized

Our initial implementation was aided by Cisco's professional services and was excellent. The engineer was very knowledgeable and helped us work through issues while building out our new internet security edge Part of this involved tools to migrate the firewall configuration from old to new.

Incentivized

No, besides to review documentation prior to beginning. That is what helped lead to a smooth implementation

Incentivized

Cisco Secure Firewall works better with the Cisco ecosystem when we can utilize it and feels beefy enough when we utilize it in the data center. The Fortinet we have found are great, small cost boxes for remote offices with a better UI then Cisco Secure Firewalls. The feature set included with the firewalls feels similar from a security point of view.

Incentivized

Proofpoint Advanced Threat Protection is a software with a high potential to detect and respond quickly to threats that target email, however Symantec Advanced Threat Protection provides a more complete protection that protects the entire network or devices and endpoints that are managed on a daily basis and has incredible ease of use. While Proofpoint Advanced Threat Protection is not a software that is very easy to use, it requires high maintenance and its protection is based on attacks that enter through email; this is why Symantec Advanced Threat Protection was finally chosen.

Incentivized

you can choose up to 50 devices i think thats enough for our organization

Incentivized

• Cisco Secure Firewall gives details on the possible intrusions attempts that are occurring on the network, which gives stakeholders confidence that the network is being protected.
• Cisco's reputation as a longstanding network leader provides the trust that is needed in keeping networks secure.
• The wide variety of tools and features that Cisco Secure Firewall provides allows business owners to plan for changes that can occur in the network as Cisco is able to adapt to the different needs.

Incentivized

• We haven't ever suffered from a serious security compromise, and I owe that to our Symantec AV.
• Once installed and set up, it's difficult to pull it out of the environment and try something else, so it has a way of keeping itself stable.
• Some customers have a hard time paying the price because they don't "see" it do anything, and wonder what they are paying for.

Incentivized