Cisco Network Consulting Firm

Cisco is a long-time front-runner in delivering cutting-edge firewall appliances for the broadest possible range of environments. Cisco's Firepower Next Generation Firewalls represent a modern firewall solution that combines sophisticated hardware, cloud-based services, and machine learning to anticipate, identify, and respond to cyber attacks automatically. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE firewall experts can help you to design and carry out an efficient migration to Firepower firewalls from Cisco's legacy ASA 5500-X, ASA 5500, or PIX firewalls and show you how to enhance Firepower firewalls with Cisco's subscription-based security services to create and centrally manage IT environments that span local offices, data centers, and cloud resources. Progent's firewall consultants can also help you to manage and troubleshoot legacy Cisco security appliances. Progent's certified network security experts can assist you with policy creation and tuning based on leading best practices in order to build a consistent security posture that applies to all your endpoints at any location.

Cisco's Firepower NGFW Firewalls
Cisco's Firepower Next Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) deliver a major performance improvement over Cisco's previous-generation ASA 5500-X firewalls and include unified management of modern cybersecurity capabilities like application visibility, next-generation intrusion protection (NGIPS) with intelligent prioritization of risks, advanced malware protection, DDoS mitigation, and sandboxing. For details about Cisco's Firepower family of Next Generation Firewalls (NGFWs), visit Cisco Firepower firewalls consulting services.

Cisco's ASA 5500-X and Legacy Firewalls
Cisco's ASA 5500-X Series, ASA 5500, and PIX 500 firewalls provide integrated firewall, VPN, and intrusion prevention system services in single-box packages, delivering a broad range of features to match the security and compliance requirements of companies ranging from small and mid-size businesses to enterprises and Internet service providers. Cisco's ASA 5500-X, ASA 5500, and PIX firewall appliances allow network security staffs to protect their network perimeter and offer secure remote access while using advanced administration tools built on Cisco's industry-leading firewall products.

Cisco's ASA 5500 and PIX 500 firewall appliances have reached end-of-life (EOL) but are still commonly used in small and mid-size organizations as well as in some enterprise networks. Cisco's ASA 5500-X Next-Generation Firewalls represent significantly more bang for the buck and have superseded the ASA 5500 and PIX lines of firewalls for new installations. Still, Cisco's older model firewalls, if properly maintained, can deliver a high level of protection by supplying a variety of services such as stateful firewall, IPsec VPN, and IPS.

Following Cisco's acquisition of Sourcefire, the entire family of ASA 5500-X firewalls can be configured to enable Firepower Services, built on Sourcefire's Snort technology, which is the market's most deployed intrusion protection system. Firepower services bring powerful new features such as advanced malware protection (AMP), URL filtering, real-time threat analytics, and automation.

Progent's Cisco-certified infrastructure engineers can assist your organization to maintain and debug older ASA 5500 and PIX 500 firewalls and can also help you to design and carry out an efficient upgrade to Cisco's ASA 5500-X Series firewalls with Firepower Services. Progent can also help you to plan, integrate, tune, manage and troubleshoot new firewall solutions built on Cisco's latest ASA 5500-X models with Firepower Services. Progent's firewall consultants can also help your organization to migrate from your Cisco ASA 5500-X solution to Cisco's Firepower Next Generation Firewalls.

Cisco's ASA 5500-X Firewall Product Family
Cisco's comprehensive line of ASA 5500-X firewalls features an enhanced substitute for each rack-mountable unit in the older ASA 5500 series of firewalls. Each ASA 5500-X firewall is suited for the same environment as the corresponding earlier models, which gives most ample room for picking a solution that meets their security needs and IT budgets. All ASA 5500-X products build on Cisco's tested stateful-inspection firewall technology and all incorporate purpose-built 64-bit hardware with multicore processors and support Cisco's powerful protection services. All models in Cisco's ASA 5500-X product line provide dependable security across any combination of physical, virtual, and cloud deployments.

For more details about ASA 5500-X security appliances, Firepower services, and Progent's support for ASA 5500-X firewalls, see Cisco Firepower configuration and troubleshooting expertise

Firepower Services for ASA 5500-X Security Appliances
Cisco ASA 5500-X firewalls accept either software or hardware modules that enable Firepower Services, which provide layered protection against sophisticated threats. Cisco's Firepower Services are powered by innovative technology acquired by Cisco from Sourcefire. Major features of Firepower Services for ASA 5500-X security appliances include:

• Multi-layer protection against familiar and new threats
• Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) that uses big data techniques to discover and remediate intrusions
• A Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention System that provides contextual analysis that looks at clients, network infrastructure, apps, and content to discover attacks that use multiple vectors
• High-resolution Application Visibility and Control (AVC that is familiar with thousands of applications and can automatically activate standard and custom IPS policies depending on the severity of risk

Smaller deployments of ASA 5500-X firewalls can be effectively administered using Cisco's on-device Adaptive Security Device Manager (ASDM) Adaptive Security Device Manager, a web-based utility provided with all ASA 5500-X versions. ASDM includes a convenient web dashboard for configuring, managing, and debugging ASA 5500-X devices and modules.

For multi-device and multi-site environments, ASA 5500-X firewalls with Firepower can be administered with Firepower Management Center, implemented as one or several physical units or virtual devices. Firepower Management Center provides unified firewall management, Application Visibility and Control, enhanced IPS, URL filtering, and Cisco's Advanced Malware Protection (AMP). Due to ongoing rebranding after Cisco's acquisition of Sourcefire Defense Center, Cisco's Firepower Management Center has been offered under several names including Defense Center, Cisco Firesight Defense Center, and Cisco Firesight Management Center.

Cisco's Firepower Management Center provides capabilities beyond those available with Cisco's on-device ASDM tool. Additional features include expanded context awareness, Cisco's Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) with mitigation for user devices, a console that provides real-time infrastructure visualization, automated policy tuning based on impact evaluation of threats, comprehensive IPS, custom app detectors for Application Visibility and Control (AVC), customized health notifications, improved reporting options, and APIs for host input and databases. Hardware-dependent features such as clustering, stacking, switching, routing, VPN, and NAT must be managed using the on-box ASDM or the ASA CLI.

Cisco ASA 5500 Adaptive Security Appliances
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) Firewalls leverage technology developed for the PIX 500 Series firewall, the IPS 4200 Series Intrusion Prevention System, and Cisco's VPN 3000 Series concentrator. These technologies converge on the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances 5500 Series Firewall product line to deliver a firewall that stops the widest range of attacks. Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) Firewalls deliver program security, local containment and control, and safe VPN functionality across Cisco's product portfolio. This breadth of security allows the guarding of any network segment, which includes the most common threat conduits such as remote locations, locally-attached inside users, and off-site connected VPNs.

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) 5500 Series firewalls deliver robust application protection through smart, application-aware inspection processes that analyze traffic at Layers 4-7. This produces a more secure environment including Web, voice, and mobile wireless access. To protect networks against application-layer attacks and to provide stronger policing of the programs and protocols utilized in their environments, these inspection engines incorporate broad application and protocol knowledge and rely on protection enforcement solutions that include protocol anomaly detection and state tracking. Also included are assault detection and mitigation technology such as application/protocol command filters and URL deobfuscation. Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) 5500 Series firewall inspection engines also deliver control over instant messaging and peer-to-peer file sharing, enabling organizations to police usage policies and free up network bandwidth for crucial business processes.

For additional details about Progent's support services for ASA 5500 security appliances, see Cisco ASA 5500 series firewalls integration and troubleshooting consulting.

Cisco PIX Security Appliance Series
Built upon a tested, purpose-built operating system that delivers a wealth of security features, Cisco PIX firewalls offer a high level of security and have been awarded Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) 4 status and ICSA Labs Firewall and IP Security (IPsec) qualification. PIX firewalls offer security for a broad array of Voice over IP and additional mixed-media conventions such as H.323 v. 4, Session Initiation Protocol, Cisco Skinny Client Control Protocol (SCCP), Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), and MGCP, enabling organizations to protect deployments of a wide range of contemporary and next-generation Voice over IP and video applications.

Administrators can furthermore remotely configure, track, and analyze Cisco PIX firewall appliances via a CLI interface. Safe command-line interface access is possible using a number of methods including Secure Shell (SSHv2) Protocol, Telnet through IPsec, and out-of-band through a console port. PIX firewall appliances also include robust auto-update features, a collection of revolutionary secure remote-management options that make sure that firewall configurations and software images are always current.

For more information about Progent's support services for Cisco PIX 500 security appliances, go to PIX firewalls configuration and debugging consulting.

Progent's Migration Consulting Services for Cisco Firewalls
Because Cisco has stopped offering the PIX 500 and ASA 5500 product lines, many businesses are uncomfortable with relying on a critical infrastructure component that might no longer be supported by Cisco. Cisco ASA 5500-X and Firepower Series security appliances offer the benefit of being new devices and also bring several technical and financial benefits in comparison to PIX 500 devices. These benefits include significantly higher throughput, optional Secure Sockets Layer VPN capability, and a modular architecture that protects your investment by allowing you to add new security services whenever you require them. Progent's Cisco certified experts can assist your company to assess the strategic case for moving from PIX 500 or Cisco ASA 5500 firewalls, create a migration plan that allows for a fast and non-disruptive upgrade, assist your IT staff to install new ASA 5500-x Series or Firepower NGFW Series firewalls, and offer remote training, consulting, and troubleshooting services.

Other Ways Progent Can Assist Your Business with Cisco ASA and PIX Security Appliances
Cisco's Firepower NGFW Series, ASA Series, and PIX family security appliances provide an array of configuration, monitoring, and analysis options that offer you the ability to deploy these firewalls to align optimally with your company's requirements. Progent's CCIE authorized network professionals can help you to build a cost-effective infrastructure that incorporates Cisco firewall technology and that offers advanced security, resilience, throughput, and manageability. Progent's CISA and CISM-premier IS security professionals can help your business to develop a security policy that makes sense for your environment and can set up your PIX or ASA firewall to support your security strategy. Progent's risk evaluation consultants can evaluate the effectiveness of your current firewall deployment and help determine the security of your whole information system network. Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC) can deliver emergency online troubleshooting for Cisco technology and offer quick access to a Cisco expert.

For more details about Progent's engineering expertise for Cisco products, choose a topic:

• Introduction to Cisco Expertise
• Fast and Affordable Remote Access to a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) Consultant
• Cisco Routers Configuration and Troubleshooting Support
• Cisco Wireless Network Design Help
• Aironet APs Consulting Services
• Cisco Small Business Wireless Access Points Deployment Services
• Catalyst Wi-Fi 6/6E Wireless Access Points Planning, Deployment and Debugging Services
• Cisco Wireless Controllers Consulting
• Cisco Meraki APs Engineering Expertise
• Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM or Unified CM) and Cisco CallManager Consulting and Troubleshooting
• Cisco Voice over IP (VoIP) Phones and IP Video Desktop Phones Consulting Services and Cisco Wireless VoIP Phone Solutions
• Cisco Jabber Integration Services
• Cisco Catalyst Switches Consulting and Support Services
• Nexus Switches Support and Troubleshooting Expertise
• Cisco Meraki MS Switches Configuration and Maintenance Expertise
• Cisco VPN and Network Security Integration Services
• SIP and CUBE Integration Solutions: SIP Trunking and Cisco CUBE Integration Expertise
• Cisco Duo MFA Two-factor Authentication (2FA) Services for Remote Workers
• Design and Support for Cisco-powered Data Centers
• Infrastructure Optimization Expertise for Internet Service Providers
• Centralized Cloud-based and Hybrid Network Management Technologies for Cisco Infrastructure

Integration of Cisco and Third-party Firewall 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:

• Palo Alto Networks PA-Series Firewalls Consulting
• Check Point Software Consulting
• Barracuda CloudGen Firewall Consulting
• Watchguard Consulting
• Juniper Networks NetScreen and SSG Firewall Consulting
• SonicWall Consulting
• Fortinet FortiGate Firewall Consulting
• Symantec Raptor Consulting

In order to contact Progent about professional expertise for Cisco products, call 1-800-993-9400 or see Contact Progent.