Cisco Network Consultants

Cisco is a long-time leader in delivering cutting-edge firewall appliances for the broadest possible variety of deployments. Cisco's Firepower Next Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) provide a modern firewall solution that marshals sophisticed hardware, cloud-based services, and machine learning to block, identify, and respond to cyber attacks without manual intervention. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE firewall consultants can assist you to plan and carry out an efficient migration to Firepower firewalls from Cisco's from ASA 5500-X, ASA 5500, or PIX appliances and show you how to integrate Firepower appliances with Cisco's subscription-based security services to create and centrally control network environments that span branch offices, data centers, and cloud resources. Progent's firewall consultants can also help you to maintain and troubleshoot legacy Cisco security appliances. Progent's certified network security consultants can assist you with policy creation and tuning driven by industry best practices so you can establish a consistent security profile that applies to all your networked devices anywhere.

Cisco's Firepower NGFW Firewall Appliances
Cisco's extensive line of Firepower NGFW firewalls delivers advanced security and centralized management at prices, performance levels, and scale to fit environments ranging from branch offices and small businesses to major enterprises and Internet service providers. Cisco's Firepower Next Generation Firewalls provide a major performance improvement over Cisco's previous-generation firewalls and include centralized management and automation of advanced security capabilities such as application visibility and control, next-generation intrusion protection (NGIPS) with intelligent prioritization of risks, advanced malware protection (AMP), URL filtering, and multi-node sandboxing.

All Firepower Next-Generation firewalls have a single-pass architecture and support uninterrupted inspection and retrospective identification, which makes it possible to initiate outbreak controls and to uncover patient zero. Firepower NGFW firewalls also offer URL Filtering and subscription-free sandboxing for detecting elusive threats, IoCs, and malware artifacts. Next-Generation IPS rule tuning and firewall policy are performed automatically, requiring no manual intervention by cybersecurity specialists. All Firepower Next-Generation firewalls offer the choice of running either Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) or Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) software. Unified deployment, logging, system monitoring, and reporting capabilities can be controlled either by Cisco's Management Center or in the cloud with Defense Orchestrator.

Cisco Firepower 1000 Series Next-Generation Firewalls
Cisco Firepower NGFW 1000 Series Firewalls are targeted at small organizations, telecommuters, or branches. Firewalls in this family deliver improved price/performance vs. corresponding Cisco ASA 5506-X to ASA 5525-X models, delivering 4-6X higher firewall throughput. Local management can be performed using Firepower Device Manager. 1000 Series appliances include an integrated 10/100/1000 Ethernet interface for network management, an RJ-45 console interface, a USB interface, and 200 GB of storage. High availability is provided as well as virtual private network load balancing. For more specs, refer to Cisco Firepower 1000 Series NGFW firewalls consulting and management expertise.

Cisco Firepower 2100 Series NGFW Firewalls
Cisco's Firepower 2100 Series NGFW Firewalls are 1RU appliances designed for operation at the Internet edge. Firewalls in this line have a dual multicore processor design that enables them to deliver 3-6X higher performance than Cisco ASA 5545-X to ASA 5555-X models they are designed to succeed. Local management can be performed with Firepower Device Manager. All Firepower 2100 Series NGFW Firewalls incorporate 12 RJ45 interfaces and four SFP interfaces. These firewalls include one build-in 10/100/1000 Ethernet port for network management, an RJ-45 console port, and one USB port. High availability is supported along with virtual private network load balancing. For additional specs, see Cisco Firepower 2100 Series Next-Generation firewalls consulting and troubleshooting services.

Cisco Firepower 4100 Series Next-Generation Firewalls
Cisco's Firepower 4100 Series Next-Generation Firewalls are 1RU units intended for use at the Internet edge or high-performance data centers. Devices in this family deliver 5-10X higher performance than the Cisco ASA 5585-X firewall they are engineered to replace. Local management can be done using Cisco Firepower Device Manager. All Firepower 4100 Series NGFW Firewalls include 8 integrated SFP+ interfaces and all accept a selection of add-in network modules for a maximum of 24 interfaces. All Firepower 4100 Series Next-Generation Firewalls support VPN load balancing, Active/standby high availability, and clustering of as many as six chassis. These firewalls feature an integrated 1 Gigabit Ethernet interface for management, one RJ-45 console port, and one USB 2.0 connection. For more details, refer to Cisco Firepower 4100 Series Next-Generation firewalls consulting and management expertise.

Cisco Firepower 9300 Series NGFW Firewalls
Cisco's Firepower 9300 Series NGFW Firewalls are highly scalable and ultra-high performing security appliances. The 3 Rack Units enclosure of Firepower 9300 Next-Generation Series firewalls can hold two network modules and three security modules. Altogether, the 9300 can hold 24 10G Ethernet Enhanced Small Form-Factor Pluggable interfaces or eight 100G interfaces. Intrachassis clustering of up to five chassis delivers a total 1.2 Tbps of firewall throughput. The top-of-the-line Cisco Firepower 9300 SM-56 delivers 70 Gbps firewall throughput and 27 Gbps IPsec VPN performance. The 9300 SM-56 allows 35 million concurrent sessions, 490K new connections per second, and up to 20 VPN peers.

Cisco's Firepower Services
Cisco's Firepower Series firewalls accept either software or physical modules that support Cisco's Firepower Services, which offer layered defense against sophisticated attacks. Firepower Services are powered by innovative technology acquired by Cisco from Sourcefire. Key capabilities of Firepower Services include:

• Layered defense against familiar and new attacks
• Advanced Malware Protection that uses big data to find and remediate security breaches
• Cisco's Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention System (NGIPS) that performs contextual analysis that looks at users, network infrastructure, software applications, and content to detect attacks that use simultaneous approaches
• Fine-grained Application Visibility and Control (AVC that is familiar with thousands of applications and can automatically launch standard and customized IPS policies depending on the severity of threats

Smaller deployments of Firepower Next Generation security appliances can be effectively administered using Cisco's on-box Adaptive Security Device Manager (ASDM) Adaptive Security Device Manager, a web utility provided with all firewall versions. ASDM includes an easy-to-use web dashboard for deploying, managing, and troubleshooting NGFW devices and modules.

For more complex deployments, Cisco's Next Gerneration appliances with Firepower Services can be managed with Firepower Management Center, implemented as one or several physical units or virtual devices. Cisco's Firepower Management Center provides centralized firewall management, Application Visibility and Control (AVC, enhanced IPS, URL filtering, and Advanced Malware Protection (AMP). Because of frequent rebranding since Cisco's acquisition of Sourcefire Defense Center, Firepower Management Center has been delivered under several names including Defense Center, Cisco Firesight Defense Center, and Cisco Firesight Management Center.

Firepower Management Center appliance provides features unavailable with Cisco's on-box Adaptive Security Device Manager utility. Additional capabilities include expanded context awareness, Advanced Malware Protection with mitigation for user devices, a dashboard that offers dynamic network visualization, automated policy optimization driven by impact assessment of threats, comprehensive IPS, custom application discovery for Application Visibility and Control (AVC), customized health alerts, improved reporting features, and APIs for host input and databases. Hardware-dependent capabilities like clustering, stacking, switching, routing, VPN, and NAT must be managed via Cisco's on-box ASDM or the Firepower command line interface.

Progent's Migration Consulting for Cisco Next Generation Firewalls
Because Cisco has ceased selling the PIX 500 and ASA 5500 families of firewalls, many businesses are concerned about depending on a critical infrastructure component that may stop being supported. Firepower NGFW Series security appliances have the advantage of being new devices and also bring multiple technical and financial advantages in comparison to legacy devices. These benefits include significantly better throughput, optional SSL tunneling capability, and a modular design that guards your investment by enabling you to self-install new security features when and if you need them. Progent's CCIE-certified network engineers can help your company to determine the business value of for upgrading from PIX or Cisco ASA 5500 firewalls, design a migration plan that permits a fast and seamless changeover, help you to deploy new Firepower Series firewalls, and provide remote training, consulting, and troubleshooting services.

Other Ways Progent Can Support Your Cisco Firewalls
Cisco Firepower Next-Generation Series security appliances incorporate an array of configuration, tracking, and analysis options which give you the flexibility to deploy these security appliances to align optimally with your company's needs. Progent's CCIE certified network experts can show you how to configure and support an efficient network infrastructure that includes Cisco firewalls and that provides world-class protection, resilience, throughput, and manageability. Progent's GISA and CISM-certified IS security engineers can help you to create a security policy that makes sense for your environment and can configure your security appliance to support your security policies. Progent's risk assessment experts can assess the effectiveness of your existing firewall deployment and help determine the security of your whole information system network. Progent’s Help Desk support team can deliver emergency remote technical support for Cisco products and can give you fast access to a Cisco network engineer.

Progent offers remote or on-premises consulting services and can deliver as-needed guidance to help your organization with a stubborn technical impasse or Progent offers end-to-end project management services to make sure your firewall initiative is completed on schedule and within budget.

To see additional details concerning Progent's consulting expertise for Cisco solutions, pick a subject:

• Overview of Cisco Support
• Fast and Affordable Remote Support from a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) Engineer
• Cisco ASA 5500-X Firewalls with Firepower Services: Integration and Management Support
• Cisco ASA 5500 Firewalls Consulting Assistance
• Cisco PIX 500 Firewall Upgrade. Migration Support
• Cisco Routers Configuration and Troubleshooting Expertise
• Cisco Wireless Network Design Expertise
• Aironet Access Points Deployment Services
• Cisco Small Business Wireless Access Points Consulting Help
• Cisco Catalyst 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 Wireless Access Points Solution Design, Deployment and Debugging Expertise
• Cisco Wireless Controllers Consultants
• Meraki Wireless APs Engineering Support
• Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM or Unified CM) and CallManager Integration and Troubleshooting
• Cisco VoIP Phones and IP Video Desktop Phones Consulting and Cisco Wireless IP Phone Solutions
• Cisco Jabber Consulting and Support Services
• Cisco Catalyst Switches Configuration and Maintenance Expertise
• Cisco Nexus Switches Support and Troubleshooting Services
• Meraki MS Switches Deployment Expertise
• Cisco VPN and Network Security Setup and Troubleshooting Support
• SIP and CUBE Infrastructure Solutions: SIP PSTN Trunks and Cisco CUBE Integration Expertise
• Design and Support for Cisco-powered Datacenters and Colocation Centers
• Network Design Services for ISPs
• Centralized Network Management Techniques for Cisco-powered Environments