Cisco ASA 5500 Series Firewall Overview & Features:

Cisco has earned its reputation as a leading brand in the business network solutions market through its range of excellent hardware and software. Among these amazing products, the Cisco ASA 5500 series is a classic that has become a part of many business networks across the globe.

So, let us explore the Cisco ASA 5500 series and try to figure out why it is such a sought-after business network product.

What is Cisco ASA 5500?

The Cisco ASA 5500 Series refers to a single series of firewalls made by Cisco that provide hardware capable of supporting a unified perimeter defense. Cisco ASA offers a variety of models to suit small, medium, and large business ASA applications, from the entry-level ASA 5505 to the high-end ASA 5550 firewalls.

The Cisco ASA is known for its durability, reliability, and performance levels that are unmatched by its competitors.

Variety of Cisco ASA 5500 Series Models

There are many firewall models within the Cisco ASA 5500 series with each having varying levels of connectivity, set of features, and licensing options. The ASA 5505 is at the low end, providing up to 150 megabits per second firewall throughput for small branch environments.

At the high end, the Cisco ASA 5550 delivered 1.2 gigabits per second of firewall throughput along with high connectivity. This is because it is intended for environments that are either too large or expected to grow to such levels in the future.

Core Features of Cisco ASA 5500 Series Models

Every Cisco ASA 5500 series model has inspection firewall technology. This means that the network traffic will be constantly checked and evaluated. In addition to this, Cisco ASA 5500 models also provide centralized network access control making it very easy for administrators to implement security policies and grant access from one system.

Secure remote access has become a vital part of nearly every enterprise operation, especially those enterprises that have mobile employees working from multiple locations.  Cisco0 series models make it very easy to manage such enterprise operations with its centralized network access control.

Several models also include features like deep packet inspection, quality of service, NAT, and access control lists. Administrators can manage all of these either through the command-line interface or the graphical interface.

Security and Virtualization

Certain models within the Cisco ASA 5500 Series are compatible with expansion modules, such as the AIP-SSM, which adds advanced intrusion prevention capabilities. These modules provide businesses with advanced intrusion prevention to restrict the entry of non-authorized systems into the network.

They achieve this by enabling the firewall to examine network traffic for any suspicious behavior. This allows the network administrators to take immediate action and prevent any unnecessary damage.

Along with its physical scaling features, the Cisco series models also support virtual firewall functions. A virtual firewall lets a single device function as two or more independent firewalls, each with its own policies, routing, and configurations.

This feature proves highly useful for managed service providers or enterprises with multiple departments, as it allows them to create isolated network segments that enable secure and efficient data transfer.

VPN

One of the most extensively utilized features of the Cisco ASA 5500 Series is its robust VPN functionality. Depending on the model and license, the model can support hundreds or thousands of IPsec and SSL VPN users.

Capabilities such as AnyConnect provide secure client-based remote access along with endpoint control and posture assessment capabilities. Redundancy is also a major feature of Cisco ASA models.

Many models can be deployed in high-availability pairs, supporting either active/standby or active/active configurations. This allows for uptime consistency and failover which is necessary if your business requires 24/7 access to mission-critical applications.

Management and Monitoring

Administrators are able to manage the Cisco ASA Series via the command line and/or via the ASDM graphical interface. ASDM makes it easy for less experienced administrators to configure policies, VPNs, and firewall rules. More experienced users can use the CLI to automate configurations and push updates to devices simultaneously.

The Cisco ASA models have advanced logging and monitoring features like extensive event logging, syslog integration, SNMP support for monitoring, and security alerts for heightened security management and incident response capability.

This platform contains additional functions for operational efficiency as well including failover logging, VPN session logging, and interface/health monitoring.

So, if you are looking for a Cisco ASA 5500 series model for your business network, contact us on WhatsApp today.