Cisco IOS Security vs. Cloudflare Zero Trust Services

When it comes to security on the edge of your network (downstream) Cisco's IOS security features provide pretty much everything you need when it comes to securing your network, network devices, and access. I would absolutely recommend Cisco switches due to many reasons, but a big reason is security.

Incentivized

I wanted to securely connect to my servers without getting tracked by malicious attackers, even though I was on public Wi-Fi. Security was my top priority, and I also wanted a setup that was easy and quick to start and provided great network performance. Cloudflare's Zero trust matches my criteria for becoming my first choice.

Incentivized

• Authentication.
• Access lists.
• Port security.

Incentivized

• Granular Restrictions
• Bot Management
• DNS protection

Incentivized

• Cisco could provide an initial set up script for those are not used to the CLI (Command Line Interface). With that initial script, people could easily deploy the security features instead of having to learn how to use the commands.
• The web interface that Cisco provides with the routers, although it’s useful to set up the security features, it could also have some sort of tutorials to help people understand the main concepts of iOS security.
• You have to license iOS security separately from the main OS. For that reason, sometimes it tends to be a little expensive if you have a small business.

Incentivized

• Good to see content re-categorization with different list for organizations.
• URL and headers rewrite.
• Events forwarding to on-premise SIEM.

Incentivized

Overall, Cloudflare Zero Trust Services is very usable. We just need to do a one-time setup on Cloudflare Zero Trust Service's website, download their app on the device, and connect it with secure authentication. That's it. The apps are available for almost all kinds of devices that we use, and hence, we can secure all of our required devices. The app interface is very user-friendly and has logging capability to debug in case something goes wrong.

Incentivized

Cisco has the best Support team that gives us 24/7 support as we need. Cisco has huge detailed documentation for design, implementation, and troubleshooting all areas of the IOS security. There are many communities discussing all Cisco devices and solutions for studying groups and for customers to share their stories, technical problem and solutions.

Incentivized

Good chat support from the portal for basic questions and minor issues. The enterprise support line is provided as well.

I also like HP Procurve. It is my choice when the customer cannot afford Cisco. Cisco is better all round but HP is the only other [product] I will use if I have a choice.

Incentivized

Cloudflare was both the most feature-rich and cost-effective of comparisons. Presales engagement understood our challenges and was keen to solve them.

Incentivized

• Cisco iOS security helped our business deploy a relatively safe solution for a small amount of money.
• If you don’t have enough budget to invest in a robust and expensive firewall solution, you can safely use Cisco iOS security to protect your branch or remote office without compromise your network.
• Because Cisco iOS security uses a simple command-line based interface, you can deploy standardized scripts and keep the operational costs low.

Incentivized

• Cloudflare as a multipurpose vendor and solution helped us to replace many overlapped imperfect solutions.
• Cloudflare gives the company administrator a single pane of glass view which makes his work more effective.
• Cloudflare makes cloud transformation easier and more effective.

Incentivized