Cisco Network Consulting Firm

Cisco is a long-time front-runner in delivering cutting-edge firewall appliances for the broadest possible range of deployments. Cisco's Firepower Next Generation Firewalls provide an advanced firewall solution that combines dedicated hardware, cloud-based services, and machine learning to block, identify, and mitigate threats automatically. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE-certified firewall experts can help your organization to plan and carry out an efficient migration to Cisco Firepower firewalls from Cisco's from ASA 5500-X, ASA 5500, or PIX appliances and help you integrate Firepower firewalls with Cisco's cloud-based services to build and centrally control IT ecosystems that include branch offices, data centers, and cloud resources. Progent can also assist you to maintain and debug legacy Cisco firewalls. 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 posture that applies to all your endpoints at any location.

Cisco's Firepower NGFW Firewalls
Cisco's Firepower Next Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) deliver a significant performance improvement over Cisco's previous-generation ASA 5500-X firewalls and offer centralized management and automation of modern security features like application visibility, next-generation intrusion protection (NGIPS) with risk prioritization, advanced malware protection (AMP), distributed denial of service (DDoS) mitigation, and sandboxing. For details about Cisco's Firepower family of NGFWs Firewalls, visit Firepower Series firewalls integration experts.

Cisco's ASA 5500-X and Legacy Firewalls
Cisco's ASA 5500-X, ASA 5500 Series, and PIX firewall appliances offer combined firewall, VPN, and IPS services in single-box packages, delivering a broad array of features to meet the security and compliance requirements of companies from small businesses to enterprises and Internet service providers. Cisco's ASA 5500-X Series, ASA 5500 Series, and PIX 500 firewalls enable IT security teams to protect their network perimeter and provide secure offsite and mobile connectivity while using advanced administration mechanisms built on Cisco's world-class firewall products.

Cisco's ASA 5500 Series and PIX firewalls have arrived at end-of-life status but are still commonly deployed in small and mid-size organizations and in a few enterprise data centers. The ASA 5500-X Series Next-Generation Firewalls deliver substantially more value and have supplanted Cisco's ASA 5500 and PIX families of firewalls for new installations. However, Cisco's legacy firewall appliances, if carefully managed, continue to offer a high level of security by providing a variety of features including stateful firewall, VPN tunneling, and IPS.

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

Progent's Cisco CCIE-premier network consultants can help you to support and debug older ASA 5500 Series and PIX 500 firewall appliances and can also assist you to plan and carry out an efficient upgrade to Cisco's ASA 5500-X firewalls with Firepower Services. Progent can also help you to design, deploy, tune, manage and debug new firewall ecosystems built on Cisco's latest ASA 5500-X firewalls 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.

Cisco's ASA 5500-X Firewall Product Family
Cisco's extensive line of ASA 5500-X firewalls features an enhanced substitute for each rack-mountable model in the older ASA 5500 generation of devices. Each ASA 5500-X firewall targets the identical environment as the associated earlier models, which offers small and midsize businesses plenty of choice for picking a firewall that aligns with their security needs and IT budgets. All ASA 5500-X products build on Cisco's tested stateful-inspection firewall technology and all include 64-bit hardware with multicore processors and support Cisco's advanced protection services. All devices in Cisco's ASA 5500-X family deliver dependable security across any combination of physical, virtual, and cloud deployments.

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

Cisco's Firepower Services for ASA 5500-X Security Appliances
Cisco ASA 5500-X firewalls work with software or physical modules that enable Cisco's Firepower Services, which provide layered defense against sophisticated attacks. Firepower Services are powered by technology acquired by Cisco from Sourcefire. Key capabilities of Firepower Services for ASA security appliances include:

• Multi-layer defense against both familiar and new threats
• Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) that utilizes big data to find and mitigate security breaches
• A Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention System that performs contextual analysis that covers users, infrastructure, apps, and content to discover attacks that incorporate multiple vectors
• High-resolution Application Visibility and Control (AVC that is aware of thousands of apps and can automatically launch standard and customized IPS policies based on the degree of risk

Smaller implementations of ASA 5500-X firewalls can be effectively managed via Cisco's on-device Adaptive Security Device Manager (ASDM) Adaptive Security Device Manager, a web tool included with all ASA 5500-X versions. ASDM includes a convenient web console for configuring, administering, and troubleshooting ASA 5500-X devices and service modules.

For multi-device and multi-site deployments, ASA 5500-X appliances with Firepower can be administered using Firepower Management Center, available as one or more physical or virtual appliances. Cisco's Firepower Management Center offers unified firewall management, Application Visibility and Control, advanced IPS, URL filtering, and Advanced Malware Protection. Due to ongoing rebranding after Cisco's purchase of Sourcefire Defense Center, Cisco's Firepower Management Center has been offered under several names including Defense Center, FireSIGHT Defense Center, and FireSIGHT Management Center.

Firepower Management Center provides features beyond those available with Cisco's on-box Adaptive Security Device Manager tool. Additional features include greater context awareness, Cisco's Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) with mitigation for client devices, a console that provides dynamic network visualization, automated policy optimization driven by risk evaluation of attacks, advanced IPS, custom app discovery for Application Visibility and Control, customized health alerts, improved reporting options, and APIs for host input and databases. Hardware-dependent options like clustering, stacking, switching, routing, VPN, and NAT must be handled using Cisco's ASA 5500-X on-device ASDM or the ASA 5500-X CLI.

Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) 5500 Series Firewalls leverage technology behind Cisco's PIX 500 family Security Appliance, Cisco's IPS 4200 Series Intrusion Prevention System, and the Cisco VPN 3000 family concentrator. These technologies enable the Cisco ASA Firewall family to offer a firewall that stops the broadest variety of attacks. Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) Firewalls deliver program security, local containment, and safe Virtual Private Network connectivity across the entire product portfolio. This breadth of security enables defense of any network section, which includes the most typical threat vectors like remote sites, LAN-connected internal users, and remote connected Virtual Private Networks.

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) firewalls deliver robust application protection through smart, application-aware inspection engines that examine traffic at Layers 4-7. This produces a more secure environment covering Web, voice, and 3G-mobile wireless services. To protect networks against application-layer assaults and to provide stronger control over the applications and protocols utilized in their environments, Cisco's inspection engines integrate broad application and protocol knowledge and rely on security enforcement technologies that include protocol anomaly sensing and application and protocol state monitoring. Also incorporated are attack sensing and remediation techniques including application and protocol command filters and content verification. Cisco ASA 5500 Series firewall inspection engines also deliver control over IM and tunneling applications, enabling businesses to enforce usage policies and free up network bandwidth for vital business processes.

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

PIX Firewall Appliances
Based upon a hardened, purpose-built operating system that offers a wealth of protection features, PIX firewall appliances provide a high level of security and have earned Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 4 status and ICSA Labs Firewall and IP Security (IPsec) qualification. Cisco PIX security appliances offer protection for a wide array of Voice over IP and other mixed-media standards including H.323 v. 4, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), Cisco Skinny Client Control Protocol (SCCP), RTSP, and MGCP, helping organizations to safeguard deployments of a wide range of contemporary and upcoming IP voice and mixed-media applications.

IT managers can also remotely configure, track, and troubleshoot Cisco PIX firewall appliances via a command-line interface. Secure command-line interface (CLI) communication is available through several methods including SSHv2 Protocol, Telnet over IP Security (IPsec), and out-of-band through a console port. Cisco PIX security appliances also include robust automatic-update capabilities, a collection of advanced protected remote-management services that make sure that firewall configurations and software images are always current.

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

Progent's Migration Support Services for Cisco Firewalls
Because Cisco has ceased offering the PIX 500 and ASA 5500 families of firewalls, many companies are concerned about depending on a key infrastructure component that may stop being supported by Cisco. ASA 5500-X and Firepower NGFW Series firewalls offer the benefit of being current products and also offer a number of functions and financial benefits in comparison to PIX devices. These benefits include substantially higher performance, optional SSL tunneling support, and a modular architecture that protects your investment by allowing you to self-install more security services whenever you require them. Progent's CCIE-certified network engineers can assist you to determine the business case for migrating from PIX or Cisco ASA 5500 firewalls, create a migration process that permits a fast and seamless upgrade, help you to configure new ASA 5500-x or Firepower NGFW Series appliances, and provide online, consulting, and technical support services.

Additional Ways Progent Can Assist You with Cisco Firewalls
Cisco Firepower NGFW Series, ASA 5500 Series, and PIX security appliances incorporate a wealth of configuration, tracking, and troubleshooting options which offer you the flexibility to set up these security appliances to match your business requirements. Progent's CCIE certified network professionals can help you to build an efficient infrastructure that includes Cisco firewalls and that provides world-class security, resilience, performance, and manageability. Progent's GISA and CISSP-ISSP-premier information security experts can assist your business to create a security policy appropriate for your environment and can configure your PIX or ASA firewall to enforce your security policies. Progent's risk assessment engineers can evaluate the effectiveness of your current firewall solution and validate the security of your entire IS network. Progent's Technical Response Center can deliver emergency remote troubleshooting for Cisco products and offer quick access to a Cisco network engineer.

To find out additional information concerning Progent's professional support for Cisco technology, pick a subject:

• Overview of Progent's Cisco Engineering Services
• Fast and Affordable Remote Support from a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) Consultant
• Cisco Routers Configuration and Troubleshooting Support
• Cisco Wireless Consulting Services
• Cisco Aironet APs Deployment Support
• Cisco Small Business WiFi Access Points System Design Help
• Catalyst Wi-Fi 6/6E Access Points Planning, Deployment and Debugging Expertise
• Cisco WiFi Controllers Experts
• Cisco Meraki Wireless APs Consulting Expertise
• Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM or Unified CM) and Cisco CallManager Integration and Troubleshooting
• Cisco Voice over IP (VoIP) Phones and IP Video Desktop Phones Consulting Services and Cisco Wireless VoIP Phone Solutions
• Cisco Jabber Configuration and Troubleshooting Expertise
• Cisco Catalyst Switches Deployment Services
• Cisco VPN and Network Security Consulting Assistance
• SIP and CUBE Infrastructure Solutions: SIP Trunks and CUBE Integration Consulting
• Cisco Duo MFA Two-factor Authentication (2FA) Services for Teleworkers
• Infrastructure Design for Cisco-based Datacenters and Colocation Centers
• Data Center Design Consulting for ISPs
• Unified Cloud-based and Hybrid Management Techniques for Cisco-powered 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

To get in touch with Progent about technical expertise for Cisco products, phone 1-800-993-9400 or refer to Contact Progent.