Cisco IT Consultants

Cisco is a long-time front-runner in developing state-of-the-art firewalls for the widest possible variety of deployments. Cisco's Firepower Next Generation Firewalls provide an advanced cybersecurity platform that combines dedicated hardware, cloud-based services, and machine learning to anticipate, identify, and mitigate cyber attacks automatically. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE firewall experts can help you to plan and execute an efficient upgrade to Cisco Firepower Series firewalls from Cisco's legacy ASA 5500-X, ASA 5500, or PIX appliances and show you how to enhance Firepower appliances with Cisco's security services to build and centrally control network environments that span local offices, data centers, private clouds and public clouds. Progent can also help you to manage and debug legacy Cisco firewalls. Progent's certified cybersecurity experts can help you with policy creation and tuning based on leading best practices so you can establish a consistent security profile that applies to all your networked endpoints at any location.

Cisco's Firepower NGFW Firewall Appliances
Cisco's Firepower NGFWs Firewalls provide a major performance boost over Cisco's previous-generation ASA 5500-X security appliances and include unified control of advanced cybersecurity capabilities such as application visibility, next-generation intrusion protection with risk prioritization, advanced malware protection, URL filtering, and multi-node sandboxing. For more information about Cisco's Firepower family of Next Generation Firewalls, visit Cisco Firepower Series firewalls consulting experts.

Cisco's ASA 5500-X Series and Legacy Firewalls
Cisco’s ASA 5500-X Series, ASA 5500, and PIX firewall appliances provide combined firewall, IPsec VPN, and IPS capabilities in single-box packages, delivering a wide array of features to match the security and compliance requirements of companies ranging from small businesses to enterprises and ISPs. Cisco’s ASA 5500-X Series, ASA 5500 Series, and PIX firewall appliances enable network security staffs to defend their network perimeter and offer secure offsite and mobile access while using powerful management mechanisms built on Cisco's industry-leading firewall technology.

Cisco’s ASA 5500 Series and PIX 500 firewall appliances have reached end-of-life (EOL) but are still commonly deployed in smaller businesses and in a few larger networks. Cisco’s ASA 5500-X Series Next-Generation Firewalls deliver significantly more value and have superseded Cisco's ASA 5500 and PIX families of firewalls for new installations. Still, Cisco's legacy firewall appliances, if carefully managed, continue to deliver a high degree of security by providing multiple security functions such as stateful firewall, VPN, and IPS.

Following Cisco's acquisition of Sourcefire, the whole family of ASA 5500-X devices can be provisioned to enable Firepower Services, based on Sourcefire's Snort technology, which is the market's most popular network intrusion protection system. Firepower services provide powerful new features including advanced malware protection (AMP), URL filtering, dynamic threat analytics, and security automation.

Progent's Cisco-certified network engineers can help you to support and troubleshoot legacy ASA 5500 Series and PIX firewalls and can also assist you to design and implement a smooth migration to Cisco’s ASA 5500-X firewalls with Firepower Services. Progent can also assist you to plan, configure, tune, manage and debug new firewall solutions based on Cisco's latest ASA 5500-X firewalls with Firepower. Progent's firewall consultants can also help your organization to upgrade from your Cisco ASA 5500-X Series solution to Cisco's Firepower Next Generation Firewalls (NGFWs).

Cisco's ASA 5500-X Series Firewalls
Cisco's extensive family of ASA 5500-X firewalls includes an enhanced replacement for every rack-mountable model in the older ASA 5500 line of devices. Each ASA 5500-X firewall targets the identical market as the corresponding earlier models, which offers most ample choice for selecting a firewall that meets their security needs and IT budgets. All ASA 5500-X firewalls are based on Cisco's proven stateful-inspection firewall technology and all incorporate 64-bit hardware with multicore CPUs and support Cisco's advanced protection services. All devices in Cisco's ASA 5500-X product line deliver consistent security across any mix of physical, virtual, and cloud deployments.

For additional information about Cisco's ASA 5500-X firewalls, Firepower services, and Progent's support for Cisco ASA firewalls, visit Cisco Firepower integration and troubleshooting consulting

Firepower Services for ASA 5500-X Firewalls
Cisco ASA 5500-X firewalls work with software or physical modules that support Cisco's Firepower Services, which offer layered defense against sophisticated threats. Cisco's Firepower Services are based on innovative technology acquired by Cisco from Sourcefire. Major capabilities of Firepower Services for ASA 5500-X security appliances include:

• Multi-layer defense against familiar and new threats
• Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) that utilizes big data techniques to discover and remediate security breaches
• A Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention System (NGIPS) that provides contextual analysis that covers clients, network infrastructure, software applications, and content to discover attacks that use simultaneous approaches
• Fine-grained Application Visibility and Control that is aware of thousands of applications and can automatically launch standard and customized IPS policies depending on the severity of risk

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

For multi-device and multi-site environments, ASA 5500-X firewalls with Firepower can be managed using Firepower Management Center, implemented as one or more physical units or virtual appliances. Cisco's Firepower Management Center provides unified firewall management, Application Visibility and Control (AVC, enhanced IPS, URL filtering, and Advanced Malware Protection. Because of ongoing rebranding after Cisco's acquisition of Sourcefire Defense Center, Firepower Management Center has been delivered under various names that include Cisco Defense Center, Cisco Firesight Defense Center, and Cisco Firesight Management Center.

Firepower Management Center offers capabilities unavailable with Cisco's on-device Adaptive Security Device Manager tool. Additional capabilities include greater context awareness, Cisco's Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) with mitigation for client devices, a console that offers real-time network visualization, automated policy tuning driven by impact assessment of threats, advanced IPS, custom application discovery for Application Visibility and Control, customized health alerts, enhanced reporting features, and application interfaces for host input and database access. Hardware-dependent features like clustering, stacking, switching, routing, VPN, and NAT must be managed using either Cisco's ASA 5500-X on-device ASDM or the ASA CLI.

Cisco ASA 5500 Family of Firewalls
Cisco ASA Firewalls leverage engineering behind the PIX 500 family firewall, Cisco's IPS 4200 family sensor, and Cisco's VPN 3000 model concentrator. These solutions enable the Cisco ASA 5500 Series Firewall product line to offer a platform that stops the broadest range of attacks. Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) 5500 Series Firewalls provide application security, network containment and control, and safe Virtual Private Network functionality throughout Cisco's product portfolio. This breadth of protection allows the guarding of any network area, including the most typical threat conduits like remote sites, LAN-connected internal users, and remote connected Virtual Private Networks.

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) 5500 Series firewalls deliver robust application protection via intelligent, application-aware inspection engines that analyze traffic at Layers 4-7. The result is a safer environment covering Web, voice, and 3G-mobile wireless access. To defend against application-layer assaults and to offer better policing of the applications and protocols used in their environments, these inspection engines integrate broad application and protocol knowledgebases and employ security enforcement solutions that include protocol anomaly detection and state monitoring. Also included are assault detection and remediation technology such as application/protocol command filtering and URL deobfuscation. Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) firewall inspection engines also provide control over IM and tunneling applications, enabling businesses to enforce usage policies and conserve network bandwidth for important business applications.

For more information about Progent's support services for ASA 5500 security appliances, go to ASA 5500 series firewalls configuration and troubleshooting support.

PIX Security Appliance Series
Built around a tested, purpose-built OS that delivers a wealth of security services, PIX firewall appliances provide a high level of protection and have earned EAL 4 status and ICSA Labs Firewall and IP Security (IPsec) qualification. PIX firewalls provide security for a wide array of Voice over IP and other multimedia standards such as H.323 Version 4, Session Initiation Protocol, SCCP, Real-Time Streaming Protocol, and Media Gateway Control Protocol, helping organizations to protect installations of a wide array of contemporary and upcoming Voice over IP and video applications.

Administrators can also remotely set up, monitor, and troubleshoot Cisco PIX firewall appliances via a CLI interface. Safe command-line interface communication is available using several methods including Secure Shell Protocol, Telnet over IP Security, and out-of-band via a console port. PIX firewall appliances also have dependable automatic-update features, a set of revolutionary secure remote-administration services that ensure security configurations and software images are always up to date.

For more information about Progent's support services for Cisco PIX security appliances, see Cisco PIX firewalls integration and troubleshooting consulting.

Progent's Migration Consulting for Cisco Firewalls
Because Cisco has stopped offering the PIX and ASA 5500 families of firewalls, many businesses are uncomfortable with relying on a critical infrastructure mechanism that may stop being supported by Cisco. ASA 5500-X and Firepower NGFW Series firewalls have the advantage of being new products and also bring several technical and financial advantages in comparison to PIX devices. These advantages include significantly higher throughput, optional Secure Sockets Layer VPN support, and a modular architecture that guards your investment by allowing you to add new security features whenever you need them. Progent's Cisco certified experts can assist your company to assess the business case for migrating from PIX 500 or ASA 5500 security appliances, design a migration process that permits a fast and non-disruptive changeover, help you to set up new ASA 5500-x Series or Firepower Series firewalls, and offer remote training, consulting, and troubleshooting services.

Other Ways Progent Can Assist You with Cisco ASA and PIX Firewalls
Cisco's Firepower Series, ASA Series, and PIX family firewalls incorporate a wealth of configuration, monitoring, and analysis options which give you the ability to configure these security appliances to match your business requirements. Progent's CCIE certified network professionals can assist you to design an efficient infrastructure that includes Cisco firewall technology and that offers advanced protection, fault tolerance, throughput, and recoverability. Progent's GISA and CISSP-ISSP-certified IS security engineers can assist you to create a security policy that makes sense for your business and can configure your firewall to enforce your security policies. Progent's risk evaluation consultants can evaluate the effectiveness of your existing firewall solution and validate the security of your entire IS network. Progent’s Help Desk support team can provide urgent online troubleshooting for Cisco technology and can give you fast access to a Cisco network engineer.

To learn additional information concerning Progent's engineering expertise for Cisco products, choose a subject:

• Introduction to Cisco Consulting Services
• Timely Online Assistance from a Cisco CCIE Consultant
• Cisco Routers Configuration and Troubleshooting Support
• Cisco Wireless Consulting Support
• Cisco Aironet APs Consulting Services
• Cisco Small Business 100, 300 and 500 WiFi APs System Design Services
• Catalyst Wi-Fi 6 Wireless APs Solution Design, Deployment and Troubleshooting Services
• Cisco Wireless Controllers Consultants
• Cisco Meraki Wireless APs Deployment Expertise
• Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM or Unified CM) and Cisco CallManager Integration and Technical Support
• Cisco VoIP Phones and IP Video Phones Consulting and Cisco Wireless IP Phone Solutions
• Cisco Jabber Migration and Support Services
• Catalyst Switches Consulting and Support Expertise
• Cisco VPN and Security Engineering Expertise
• SIP and CUBE Integration Solutions: SIP Trunking and Cisco CUBE Integration Consulting
• Design and Support for Cisco-powered Datacenters and Colocation Centers
• Network Design Services for Internet Service Providers
• Remote Management Solutions for Cisco-based Environments

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

If you wish to ask Progent about professional support for Cisco technology, call 1-800-993-9400 or go to Contact Progent.