Cisco Network Consulting Firm

Cisco is a long-time front-runner in developing cutting-edge firewalls for the widest possible range of deployments. Cisco's Firepower Next Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) provide an advanced cybersecurity solution that marshals dedicated hardware, cloud services, and next-generation intrusion protection system (NGIPS) to anticipate, discover, and respond to threats automatically. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE-certified firewall consultants can help you to plan and execute an efficient upgrade to Cisco Firepower Series firewalls from Cisco's from ASA 5500-X, ASA 5500, or PIX firewalls and help you enhance Firepower firewalls with Cisco's cloud-based services to build and centrally manage network ecosystems that span local offices, data centers, and cloud resources. Progent's firewall consultants can also assist you to maintain and troubleshoot legacy Cisco security appliances. Progent's certified network security experts can help you with policy creation driven by industry best practices in order to establish a consistent and effective cybersecurity profile that applies to all your networked endpoints anywhere.

Cisco's Firepower NGFW Firewalls
Cisco's Firepower NGFWs Firewalls provide a significant performance boost over Cisco's previous-generation ASA 5500-X security appliances and offer centralized control of modern security capabilities such as application visibility, next-generation intrusion protection (NGIPS) with intelligent prioritization of risks, advanced malware protection (AMP), URL filtering, and sandboxing. For more information about Cisco's Firepower line of Next Generation Firewalls, refer to Firepower Series firewalls consulting services.

Cisco's ASA 5500-X and Legacy Firewalls
Cisco's ASA 5500-X Series, ASA 5500 Series, and PIX firewall appliances offer combined firewall, IPsec VPN, and intrusion prevention system capabilities in single-box packages, delivering a wide range of features to match the security and compliance needs of organizations from small and mid-size businesses to enterprises and Internet service providers. Cisco's ASA 5500-X, ASA 5500 Series, and PIX 500 firewall appliances allow IT security staffs to defend their network perimeter and offer safe remote access while using powerful administration mechanisms built on Cisco's world-class firewall technology.

Cisco's ASA 5500 and PIX 500 firewall appliances have arrived at end-of-life (EOL) but are still commonly used in small and mid-size businesses and in a few enterprise data centers. Cisco's ASA 5500-X Next-Generation Firewalls deliver substantially more value and have supplanted the ASA 5500 and PIX 500 families of firewalls for new deployments. Still, Cisco's older model firewalls, if properly managed, continue to offer a high degree of security by providing a variety of security functions such as firewall, VPN tunneling, and IPS.

After Cisco's acquisition of Sourcefire, the whole family of ASA 5500-X devices can be configured to support Firepower Services, built on Sourcefire's Snort technology, which is the world's most popular network intrusion protection system (IPS). Firepower services provide enhanced capabilities including advanced malware protection (AMP), URL filtering, dynamic threat analytics, and automation.

Progent's Cisco-premier infrastructure consultants can assist your organization to support and debug legacy ASA 5500 Series and PIX firewalls and can also help you to plan and carry out a smooth migration to Cisco's ASA 5500-X firewalls with Firepower Services. Progent can also assist you to design, deploy, optimize, administer and debug new firewall solutions based on Cisco's current ASA 5500-X firewalls with Firepower Services. Progent can also assist you to upgrade from your Cisco ASA 5500-X solution to Cisco's latest Firepower Next Generation Firewalls.

Cisco's ASA 5500-X Firewall Product Family
Cisco's comprehensive family of ASA 5500-X security appliances features an enhanced substitute for every rack-mountable unit in the older ASA 5500 series of devices. Each ASA 5500-X firewall targets the same market as the associated earlier models, which gives small and midsize businesses ample room for picking a firewall that meets their security needs and budgets. All ASA 5500-X products are based on Cisco's proven stateful-inspection firewall technology and all incorporate purpose-built 64-bit hardware with multicore CPUs and support Cisco's powerful protection services. All models in Cisco's ASA 5500-X product line provide consistent protection across any mix of physical, virtual, and cloud deployments.

For more information about Cisco's ASA 5500-X firewalls, Cisco Firepower services, and Progent's support for ASA security appliances, go to Firepower configuration and debugging consulting

Firepower Services for ASA 5500-X Firewalls
Cisco ASA 5500-X firewalls accept either software or physical modules that support Cisco's Firepower Services, which offer layered defense against multi-vector attacks. Cisco's Firepower Services are based on innovative technology acquired by Cisco from Sourcefire. Key capabilities of Firepower Services for ASA security appliances include:

• Multi-layer protection against familiar and new threats
• Cisco's Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) that uses big data techniques to find and mitigate intrusions
• A Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention System (NGIPS) that performs contextual analysis that covers users, infrastructure, apps, and content to discover attacks that incorporate simultaneous approaches
• Fine-grained Application Visibility and Control that is aware of thousands of apps and can automatically launch standard and custom IPS policies depending on the severity of risk

Simpler implementations of Cisco ASA 5500-X firewalls can be effectively administered using Cisco's on-box Adaptive Security Device Manager (ASDM) Adaptive Security Device Manager, a web-based utility which is provided with all ASA 5500-X models. ASDM provides a simple web console for deploying, administering, and debugging ASA 5500-X devices and service modules.

For more complex environments, ASA 5500-X firewalls with Firepower Services can be administered with Firepower Management Center, implemented as one or several physical or virtual appliances. Cisco's Firepower Management Center provides unified firewall management, Application Visibility and Control, advanced IPS, URL filtering, and Cisco's Advanced Malware Protection. Due to ongoing rebranding after Cisco's acquisition of Sourcefire Defense Center, Cisco's Firepower Management Center has been delivered under various names that include Defense Center, FireSIGHT Defense Center, and FireSIGHT Management Center.

Firepower Management Center provides capabilities unavailable with Cisco's on-device ASDM utility. Additional features include expanded context awareness, Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) with mitigation for client devices, a dashboard that offers real-time infrastructure visualization, automated policy tuning driven by risk evaluation of threats, comprehensive IPS, custom application discovery for Application Visibility and Control, customized health alerts, improved reporting features, and APIs for host input and database access. Hardware-dependent capabilities like clustering, stacking, switching, routing, VPN, and NAT must be managed using either the on-box ASDM or the ASA 5500-X CLI.

Cisco ASA 5500 Series Firewalls
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) 5500 Series Firewalls build on engineering developed for Cisco's PIX 500 family firewall, Cisco's IPS 4200 Intrusion Prevention System, and Cisco's VPN 3000 family concentrator. These technologies converge on the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) 5500 Series Firewall product line to offer a platform that stops the widest variety of threats. Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances 5500 Series Firewalls deliver application protection, network containment, and clean VPN connectivity across Cisco's product line. This breadth of protection allows defense of any network area, which includes the most common threat vectors such as remote locations, LAN-attached inside users, and remote access VPNs.

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances 5500 Series firewalls deliver robust application security through smart, application-sensitive inspection engines that examine traffic at Layers 4-7. This results in a safer network covering Web, voice, and 3G-mobile wireless services. To protect against application-layer assaults and to provide stronger control over the applications and protocols utilized in their environments, Cisco's inspection engines incorporate extensive application and protocol knowledgebases and employ protection enforcement technologies such as anomaly sensing and state tracking. Also included are attack detection and mitigation technology such as application and protocol command filters and content verification. Cisco ASA firewall inspection engines also deliver control over IM and tunneling applications, enabling organizations to enforce usage policies and conserve bandwidth for important business processes.

For additional details about Progent's support services for ASA 5500 firewalls, see Cisco ASA 5500 firewalls integration and debugging support.

Cisco PIX Firewall Appliances
Built upon a hardened, specialized software platform that delivers rich security features, PIX firewall appliances offer excellent security and have earned Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 4 status and ICSA Labs Firewall and IP Security certification. PIX security appliances offer security for a broad array of Voice over IP and additional mixed-media standards including H.323 v. 4, SIP, Cisco Skinny Client Control Protocol, Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), and Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP), helping businesses to safeguard deployments of a wide array of contemporary and upcoming VoIP and multimedia applications.

Administrators can also remotely configure, monitor, and troubleshoot Cisco PIX security appliances using a CLI interface. Safe command-line interface (CLI) communication is available through a number of techniques including SSHv2 Protocol, Telnet through IPsec, and out-of-band through a console port. Cisco PIX firewalls also have dependable automatic-update features, a set of advanced secure remote-management services that make sure that security configurations and software images are kept current.

For more information about Progent's consulting services for PIX 500 firewalls, go to PIX 500 firewalls configuration and troubleshooting consulting.

Progent's Migration Consulting Support for Cisco Firewalls
Since Cisco has discontinued selling the PIX and ASA 5500 product lines, many companies are uncomfortable with depending on a critical infrastructure mechanism that may stop being supported by Cisco. ASA 5500-X and Firepower Series firewalls offer the benefit of being current products and also offer a number of technical and financial benefits in comparison to PIX firewalls. These benefits include substantially higher throughput, optional SSL tunneling support, and an expandable design that guards your investment by allowing you to self-install new security services when and if you require them. Progent's Cisco certified network engineers can help your company to assess the business case for upgrading from PIX 500 or Cisco ASA 5500 firewalls, create a migration plan that allows for a quick and seamless upgrade, help you to deploy new ASA 5500-x Series or Firepower NGFW Series appliances, and provide online, consulting, and troubleshooting services.

Additional Ways Progent Can Assist Your Business with Cisco ASA and PIX Firewalls
Cisco's Firepower NGFW Series, ASA Series, and PIX family firewalls incorporate a wealth of configuration, monitoring, and analysis features that offer you the flexibility to configure these security appliances to align optimally with your business needs. Progent's CCIE certified network professionals can help you to build a cost-effective infrastructure that incorporates Cisco firewalls and that provides world-class security, fault tolerance, throughput, and manageability. Progent's CISA and CISM-premier information security professionals can assist you to develop a security strategy that makes sense for your situation and can configure your PIX or ASA firewall to support your security strategy. Progent's risk evaluation experts can evaluate the strength of your current firewall deployment and validate the security of your whole IT environment. Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC) can deliver emergency online technical support for Cisco products and can give you quick access to a Cisco CCIE expert.

To learn more details about Progent's professional help for Cisco products, pick a subject:

• Overview of Progent's Cisco Engineering Services
• Timely Online Support from a Cisco CCIE Network Engineer
• Cisco Routers Engineering Support
• Cisco Wireless Engineering Expertise
• Aironet Access Points Engineering Services
• Cisco Small Business Wireless Access Points System Design Help
• Cisco Catalyst 802.11ax APs Planning, Deployment and Troubleshooting Services
• Cisco Wireless Controllers Consulting
• Meraki Wireless Access Points Deployment Help
• Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM or Unified CM) and Cisco CallManager Consulting and Technical Support
• Cisco Voice over IP Phones and IP Video Desktop Phones Expertise and Wireless VoIP Phone Integration
• Cisco Jabber Configuration and Troubleshooting Expertise
• Cisco Catalyst Switches Configuration and Maintenance Services
• Cisco Nexus Switches Support and Troubleshooting Expertise
• Meraki MS Switches Deployment Services
• Cisco VPN Consulting Support
• SIP and CUBE Infrastructure Solutions: SIP Trunks and Cisco CUBE Integration Expertise
• Design Solutions for Cisco-powered Datacenters
• Infrastructure Optimization Expertise for ISPs
• Remote Management Strategies for Cisco-powered Infrastructure

Integration of Cisco and Third-party Security Technology
Progent offers expertise in firewall and VPN products from all major vendors and can help you integrate Cisco technology with additional security solutions to help you build a cost-effective network infrastructure that provides a level of security and flexibility appropriate for your business. Third-party firewall and VPN support services available from Progent include:

• Check Point Software Consulting
• Watchguard Consulting
• Juniper Networks NetScreen and SSG Firewall Consulting
• SonicWall Consulting
• Symantec Raptor Consulting

To ask Progent about engineering support for Cisco products, phone 1-800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.