Cisco Next Generation Firewalls- FirePower

Security is the main concerns now a days in the enterprise world, Everyone thinks about the security whenever they think about the deployment of the network. World is beyond your imagination and find a number of ways to send malware and hack your network. You should always be ready to face these kinds of challenges in your network.

Fig1.1- Palo-Alto Vs Cisco Next Generation Firewall Segment

Initially Cisco introduces the ASA as security hardware device which is act as a firewall for your incoming and outgoing traffic towards the internet. You van say the security device which faces the external words and understand the malware patterns and blocked them. I knew that Cisco is not much successful as per ASA is concerns as it has totally the hardware architecture.

Competing with the rivals like Palo-Alto and Checkpoint is concerned as they were lacking behind and even not able to capture the many of the use-cases in the customer environment network. Customer always thought of taking the firewalls of Checkpoint, Palo-Alto and Fortinet whenever security appliances needs to be deployed. Cisco is nowhere in the market of Security as per the enterprise and the report of the Gartner.

Fig- 1.2 - Enterprise Firewall Datacenter Revenue Share

Is Cisco is a Routing, Switching Company only ?

Well a lot of people thinks that moving to cloud based features are now the key to take, People think Cisco is only have a big market stunt in the base of routing and switching and don't compete with the other portfolios in the market.

You are wrong here, Cisco is one of the intelligent company who already know what customer want in their spaces and how to fulfil that requirements. Cisco is investing huge in the security domain now and the architectural thought of Cisco on Next generation firewall is completed changed. They are come up with the Software image and is called as threat focused next generation firewall with Unified image. They are growing with the huge pace and is in the leaders quadrant in Gartner's Report now.

Cisco NGFW with NGIPS is one of the strongest product in the market. No one is competing with the Next generation FTD which is a software image and can be used on the existing ASA to make as ASA+FTD firewall for your enterprise network.

What does Cisco Next Generations Firewall have ?

As i said in above statement, Cisco FTD is threat focused next generation firewall with Unified image.It includes Application Visibility and Control (AVC), optional Firepower next-gen IPS (NGIPS), Cisco Advanced Malware Protection (AMP), and URL Filtering.

Fig 1.3- Cisco Next Generation Firewalls- FTD

So above are the various models of Cisco FTD called as Next-Generation Firewalls in their domain. It can stop more threads with higher through put and also have contain known and unknown malware list with leading Cisco AMP and sandboxing. Get application firewalling (AVC) for 4000 commercial applications, plus additional custom applications. It can gain superior visibility into your environment with Cisco Firepower next-gen IPS and Automated risk rankings and impact flags identify priorities for your team. 

Fig 1.4 ASA with FTD image and capabilities

Get unified management and automated threat correlation across tightly integrated security functions, including application firewalling, NGIPS, and AMP. Enhance security, and take advantage of your existing investments, with optional integration of other Cisco and third-party networking and security solutions. 

In the next section of the Next generations Firewall, i will come up with the comparison and the other security steps taken by Cisco to enhanced the major market share in the security portfolio.