Introduction

In today's digital age, Cybersecurity is crucial for organizations of all sizes. The newest addition to the Cisco Secure Firewall Hardware portfolio provides a robust Firewall solution to protect your enterprise branches with an all-in-one compact firewall, while maintaining complete attack surface visibility and comprehensive threat protection. This means visibility and control even in encrypted traffic by leveraging the industry's first Encrypted Visibility Engine (EVE), and Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) powered by Snort 3 to protect against known and emerging threats.

Cisco Secure Firewall 1200 Series features the same software that runs on all Cisco Secure Firewall products and can either be managed locally or centrally through Secure Firewall Management Center (FMC) or Secure Firewall Cloud-delivered Firewall Management Center (cdFMC).

Technical Specifications

Beyond delivering quality-driven software into the hands of administrators, the Secure Firewall 1200 Series is built for resilience and scale at the enterprise branch while maintaining performance and simplicity.

Performance is a critical factor in Network Security, and the Secure Firewall 1200 Series is designed to handle high-traffic volumes without compromising network speed. The architecture features enterprise-grade ARM-based SoC bundled with Cisco's Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) software excelling at several critical visibility capabilities, along with an integrated switch for those small-to-medium business use cases. The software architecture includes deep packet inspection provided by Snort 3, threat intelligence provided by Cisco Talos, and unique capabilities to detect threats in encrypted traffic with the Encrypted Visibility Engine (EVE).

Similar to the Secure Firewall 4200 Series, inline crypto acceleration design reduces resource-intensive packet traversal across the system bus. This frees up the main SoC for more complex tasks and threat inspection. The Secure Firewall 1200 Series introduces three additional models to the lower-end of the Firewall Portfolio - 1210CE, 1210CP, and 1220CX.

Compared to the previous compact firewall (the 1000 Series), the 1200 series performance numbers demonstrate a significant boost in the low-end of the Cisco Firewall Hardware Portfolio.

Secure Firewall 1200 Available Models

Below is a breakdown of the Cisco Secure Firewall 1220CX. Similar options are available in the other models in the product family, however the 1220CX model is shown for completeness of available hardware specifics:

Secure Connectivity for the Modern Branch

The Secure Firewall 1200 Series is an ideal choice when it comes to enterprise-grade security and connectivity offered in a smaller footprint. By enabling SD-WAN and Direct Internet Access at the branch location, it allows organizations to manage security policies using the same tools employed for securing campus and datacenter environments. This ensures consistent and versatile protection across all network segments.

For those organizations with multiple branch locations, the Secure Firewall 1200 Series provides a scalable VPN solution to provide secure communication between the main and remote site. VPN is thus integrated with the firewall's security capabilities including an Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) for real-time threat detection, Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) for continuous analysis and remediation, and URL Filtering to control access to websites.

Summary

The Cisco Secure Firewall 1200 is an all-around powerful firewall solution designed to meet the needs of the ever-evolving threat landscape. With advanced threat protection, high performance, and comprehensive management features, it provides in-depth defense against a wide range of cyber threats. Deployed in enterprise branch networks or service provider environments, the Cisco Secure Firewall 1200 delivers the security and reliability that organizations need to protect their assets and maintain critical business operations.

📚Additional Resources

To learn more about the release of the Cisco Secure Firewall 1200 Series, check out the main Cisco page:

• Cisco Secure Firewall 1200 Series
• Cisco Secure Firewall 1200 Series Data Sheet