Cisco PIX vs ASA; what are the differences and benefits?

Cisco PIX is being replaced by ASA firewalls for a number of reasons. The main reason being that even though PIX was a breakthrough firewall during its time, its technology is becoming more and more outdated. Stateful packet filtering alone is not enough to protect an entire network anymore.  Security risks such as viruses, phishing, application-layer attacks, and worms are becoming harder and harder for the PIX series of firewalls to handle.

The Cisco ASA firewall has a feature referred to as Anti-X, meaning it protects against a variety of different threats. Granted, an organization can have a PIX acting as their stateful packet filtering appliance and have other appliances doing the other necessary security jobs; however more often then not this is not cost effective. The ASA series is basically a PIX except it includes other features that make it more like an all in one, most notably  the Content Security and Control Security Service Module (CSC-SSM). Cisco ASA firewalls generally cost less than the Pix firewalls and are better for protecting against multiple threats.

Article written by MyComputerAid.com

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