Cisco IT Consulting Firm

Cisco is a perennial front-runner in delivering state-of-the-art firewall appliances for the widest possible range of environments. Cisco's Firepower Next Generation Firewalls represent an advanced cybersecurity platform that marshals dedicated hardware, cloud-based services, and next-generation intrusion protection system (NGIPS) to anticipate, discover, and respond to threats automatically. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE firewall experts can assist your organization to plan and carry out a smooth upgrade to Cisco Firepower firewalls from Cisco's from ASA 5500-X, ASA 5500, or PIX appliances and help you enhance Firepower firewalls with Cisco's subscription-based security services to create and centrally control IT ecosystems that include local offices, data centers, and cloud resources. Progent's firewall consultants can also help you to maintain and debug legacy Cisco security appliances. Progent's certified network security consultants can help you with policy creation and tuning based on industry best practices so you can establish a consistent cybersecurity profile across all your endpoints at any location.

Cisco's Firepower NGFW Firewalls
Cisco's Firepower Next Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) provide a significant performance improvement over Cisco's previous-generation ASA 5500-X firewalls and include unified control of advanced security capabilities such as application visibility and control, next-generation intrusion protection (NGIPS) with intelligent prioritization of risks, advanced malware protection, DDoS mitigation, and multi-node sandboxing. For details about Cisco's Firepower family of Next Generation Firewalls, visit Firepower Series firewalls consulting experts.

Cisco's ASA 5500-X and Legacy Firewalls
Cisco's ASA 5500-X, ASA 5500, and PIX firewall appliances provide integrated firewall, VPN, and intrusion prevention system services in single-box devices, delivering a wide range of features to match the security requirements of organizations ranging from small businesses to enterprises and ISPs. Cisco's ASA 5500-X, ASA 5500, and PIX firewalls allow IT security staffs to defend their network edge and offer secure offsite and mobile connectivity while utilizing advanced management mechanisms based on Cisco's world-class firewall products.

Cisco's ASA 5500 and PIX firewalls have reached end-of-life (EOL) but are still commonly used in smaller organizations as well as in some enterprise data centers. The ASA 5500-X Series Next-Generation Firewalls deliver substantially more value and have supplanted Cisco's ASA 5500 and PIX 500 lines of firewalls for new deployments. However, Cisco's legacy firewalls, if properly maintained, continue to deliver a high level of protection by providing multiple features such as firewall, Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections, and IPS.

After Cisco's acquisition of Sourcefire, the entire line of ASA 5500-X firewalls can be configured to enable Firepower Services, built on Sourcefire's Snort product, which is the market's most popular network intrusion protection system. Firepower services provide enhanced capabilities including advanced malware protection (AMP), URL filtering, dynamic threat analytics, and automation.

Progent's Cisco CCIE-certified network engineers can assist your organization to maintain and troubleshoot older ASA 5500 Series and PIX firewall appliances and can also help you to design and carry out a smooth migration to Cisco's ASA 5500-X Series firewalls with Firepower. Progent can also help you to design, deploy, optimize, manage and troubleshoot new firewall ecosystems based on Cisco's current ASA 5500-X models with Firepower. Progent can also assist your organization to migrate from your Cisco ASA 5500-X solution to Cisco's latest Firepower Next Generation Firewalls (NGFWs).

Cisco's ASA 5500-X Series Firewalls
Cisco's extensive family of ASA 5500-X security appliances includes an enhanced substitute for every rack-mountable model in the older ASA 5500 line of firewalls. Each ASA 5500-X model targets the same environment as the corresponding previous models, which offers small and midsize businesses plenty of room for picking a solution that aligns with their security requirements and IT budgets. All ASA 5500-X firewalls build on Cisco's proven stateful-inspection firewall technology and all incorporate purpose-built 64-bit hardware with multicore processors and are capable of running Cisco's advanced protection services. All devices in Cisco's ASA 5500-X family provide dependable protection across any mix of physical, virtual, and cloud deployments.

For more information about ASA 5500-X firewalls, Firepower services, and Progent's support for ASA 5500-X security appliances, go to Cisco Firepower integration and troubleshooting expertise

Firepower Services for ASA 5500-X Firewalls
Cisco ASA 5500-X security appliances work with software or physical modules that enable Cisco's Firepower Services, which offer layered protection against multi-vector attacks. Firepower Services are powered by innovative technology acquired by Cisco from Sourcefire. Key features of Firepower Services for ASA 5500-X firewalls include:

• Multi-layer protection against familiar and new attacks
• Advanced Malware Protection that utilizes big data to find and mitigate security breaches
• Cisco's Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention System (NGIPS) that provides contextual analysis that covers users, network infrastructure, software applications, and content to discover attacks that use multiple vectors
• Fine-grained Application Visibility and Control (AVC that is aware of thousands of applications and can automatically activate both standard and customized IPS policies based on the severity of threats

Smaller implementations of Cisco ASA 5500-X firewalls can be efficiently administered using Cisco's on-box Adaptive Security Device Manager (ASDM) Adaptive Security Device Manager, a web-based tool which is provided with all ASA 5500-X versions. ASDM provides a convenient web console for configuring, administering, and troubleshooting ASA 5500-X firewalls and modules.

For more complex environments, ASA 5500-X appliances with Firepower can be administered using Firepower Management Center, implemented as one or several physical or virtual appliances. Firepower Management Center provides centralized firewall management, Application Visibility and Control (AVC, advanced IPS, URL filtering, and Cisco's Advanced Malware Protection. Because of frequent rebranding since Cisco's purchase of Sourcefire Defense Center, Firepower Management Center has been offered under several names including Defense Center, Cisco Firesight Defense Center, and Cisco Firesight Management Center.

Firepower Management Center provides capabilities beyond those available with Cisco's on-box ASDM tool. Additional features include greater context awareness, Advanced Malware Protection with remediation for client devices, a console that offers dynamic network infrastructure visualization, automated policy tuning driven by impact assessment of threats, advanced IPS, custom application discovery for Application Visibility and Control, customized health notifications, improved reporting options, and application interfaces for host input and database access. Hardware-dependent features like clustering, stacking, switching, routing, VPN, and NAT must be handled using either Cisco's ASA 5500-X on-box ASDM or the ASA command line interface.

Cisco ASA 5500 Family of Firewalls
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) Firewalls leverage technology behind the PIX 500 Security Appliance, the Cisco IPS 4200 family Intrusion Prevention System, and Cisco's VPN 3000 model concentrator. These technologies converge on the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) Firewall product line to offer a firewall that stops the broadest range of threats. Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances 5500 Series Firewalls provide application protection, local containment and control, and clean Virtual Private Network connectivity throughout the entire product portfolio. This breadth of protection allows defense of any network segment, including the most common threat conduits like remote sites, LAN-attached internal users, and remote connected Virtual Private Networks.

Cisco ASA firewalls provide a high-level of application protection via intelligent, application-sensitive inspection engines that examine traffic at Layers 4-7. This results in a safer network including Web, voice, and mobile wireless access. To protect against application-layer assaults and to provide better policing of the programs and protocols utilized in their networks, Cisco's inspection engines incorporate extensive application and protocol knowledge and rely on security enforcement solutions such as anomaly detection and state monitoring. Also incorporated are assault sensing and mitigation technology including application/protocol command filters and content verification. Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) firewall inspection engines also provide control over IM and peer-to-peer file sharing, allowing organizations to enforce usage policies and conserve network bandwidth for crucial business processes.

For more information about Progent's support services for ASA 5500 firewalls, go to ASA 5500 firewalls integration and troubleshooting support.

PIX Firewall Appliances
Built around a tested, specialized software platform that delivers rich security features, PIX security appliances provide a high level of security and have been awarded Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) 4 status and ICSA Firewall and IPsec qualification. PIX security appliances offer protection for a wide array of VoIP and additional multimedia standards including H.323 v. 4, SIP, SCCP, Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), and Media Gateway Control Protocol, helping businesses to protect installations of a broad range of contemporary and upcoming Voice over IP and video applications.

IT managers can furthermore remotely configure, track, and troubleshoot Cisco PIX firewall appliances using a command-line interface (CLI). Safe command-line interface communication is available through a number of techniques including Secure Shell (SSHv2) Protocol, Telnet through IPsec, and out-of-band through a console port. Cisco PIX firewall appliances also have robust auto-update features, a set of advanced secure remote-administration services that make sure that firewall settings and software images are kept current.

For additional information about Progent's consulting services for Cisco PIX 500 security appliances, see PIX 500 firewalls configuration and troubleshooting services.

Progent's Migration Support for Cisco Firewalls
Since Cisco has stopped offering the PIX 500 and ASA 5500 product lines, many businesses are uncomfortable with depending on a key infrastructure mechanism that may no longer be supported. ASA 5500-X and Firepower Series security appliances have the advantage of being current products and also offer several functions and budgetary advantages in comparison to PIX firewalls. These benefits include significantly higher throughput, optional SSL VPN support, and an expandable design that protects your investment by enabling you to self-install more security services whenever you require them. Progent's Cisco certified experts can help your company to assess the strategic case for moving from PIX or Cisco ASA 5500 firewalls, design a migration process that permits a quick and non-disruptive upgrade, assist your IT staff to install new ASA 5500-x Series or Firepower Series firewalls, and provide online, consulting, and troubleshooting services.

Other Ways Progent Can Assist Your Business with Cisco ASA and PIX Firewalls
Cisco Firepower Series, ASA 5500 Series, and PIX firewalls provide a wealth of configuration, monitoring, and troubleshooting features that give you the flexibility to set up these security appliances to align optimally with your company's requirements. Progent's CCIE authorized network consultants can help you to build an efficient network infrastructure that incorporates Cisco security appliances and that offers advanced security, resilience, performance, and manageability. Progent's CISA and CISSP-ISSP-premier IS security engineers can assist you to create a security strategy that makes sense for your environment and can configure your PIX or ASA firewall to enforce your security policies. Progent's risk evaluation engineers can evaluate the effectiveness of your current firewall solution and audit the security of your entire IS environment. Progent's Help Desk Call Center can provide urgent remote technical support for Cisco products and can give you quick access to a Cisco expert.

To see more details concerning Progent's engineering assistance for Cisco products, select a subject:

• Introduction to Cisco Support
• Fast Online Support from a Cisco CCIE Engineer
• Cisco Routers Engineering Support
• Cisco Wireless Network Design Expertise
• Aironet Access Points Engineering Help
• Cisco Small Business 100, 300 and 500 WiFi Access Points Consulting Services
• Cisco Catalyst 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6/6E Wireless APs Planning, Deployment and Debugging Support
• Cisco Wireless Controllers Experts
• Meraki Wireless APs Design Services
• Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM or Unified CM) and CallManager Integration and Troubleshooting
• Cisco Voice over IP Phones and IP Video Desktop Phones Consulting and Wireless IP Phone Integration
• Cisco Jabber Integration Services
• Catalyst Switches Configuration and Maintenance Expertise
• Cisco VPN and Network Security Engineering Expertise
• SIP and CUBE Infrastructure Solutions: SIP Trunks and Cisco CUBE Integration Expertise
• Cisco Duo MFA Two-factor Authentication (2FA) Services for Telecommuters
• Design and Support for Cisco-powered Datacenters
• Network Optimization Services for Service Providers
• Unified Cloud-based and Hybrid Network Management Technologies for Cisco Environments

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

To get in touch with Progent about engineering expertise for Cisco technology, phone 1-800-993-9400 or go to Contact Progent.