Borderware / Cisco PIX opinions

[ValS]

We are choosing a new firewall, and I think are down to 2 main choices, but I would like some opinions of things I should be sure to consider...

Borderware - good ease of use, but is it to 'marginal'? i.e. will it be around for long? With other applications put any effort into working with it? Any other Borderware thoughts or considerations?

CISCO - is it cumbersome to work with? Are there security issues with it?

Any opinions are welcome!

thanks,
Val

 

[havanajoe]

Personally between the two FWs that you mentioned I have only used the Cisco PIX. I never had a problem with it and I was able to get accomplished anything that I wanted to (Client-FW VPN, FW-FW VPN, DM, etc.). For configuration and support you can always find help for whatever you need on either the Cisco site, or I found that this site has great users, always willing to help and make suggestions. The PIX is more of a hardware firewall so it has higher throughput and can handle more traffic also it doesn't seem to be vulnerable to attacks or vulnerabilities (at least from what I have seen). Whereas software based FWs still run on some type of OS. It is hard to have a good feeling when you have a FW that is running on a Microsoft OS when there are so many holes in MS. I hope this helps and this is only my opinion.

 

[SteveTheGeek]

I also favor hardware 'appliances' for firewalls, for the same reasons. I would note that if you're talking about BorderManager from Novell (I've never heard of 'Borderware') then you're talking about a slightly more secure (or at least far less well-known in the blackhat community) underlying OS than NT4/Win2k, but one with it's own security holes.
-Steve