I distinctly remember my desktop and mobile updates that slowed my systems to a crawl.

The fine print often says something like, “May not run optimally on lower-end hardware.” Which is a pity, when a treasured custom-built system can no longer supported the latest updates, compromising its security, or a smart phone dialer needs 5 seconds to open for a phone call. But sometimes, updates are also upgrades for your existing hardware.

Secure Firewall Threat Defense 7.0 and Snort 3: The upgrade you definitely want to make

Secure Firewall Threat Defense 7.0 and Snort 3 improves security, provide more capabilities, AND simultaneously delivers enhanced performance.

For Cisco Secure Firewall 1000, 2100, 4100 and 9300 series, updating your firewall to Threat Defense 7.0 with Snort 3 delivers up to 77% performance improvement – plus a wealth of new capabilities.  

Performance improvements are across the board, with significant gains on throughput with Application Visibility and Control enabled, IPS throughput, VPN and TLS performance. These gains are realized through performance optimizations, improved scalability, and enhanced multithreading for packet processing.

For the 1000 Series, here’s a look at the performance improvements –

For the 2100 Series,

For the 4100 series –

And finally, for the 9300s –

So there you go  – a rare update that actually improves performance and delivers several new capabilities.

Don’t let this update go the way of all those updates that make you cringe with the downsides that come with them. Update for a better firewall and enable more use cases for your organization, including better visibility with Snort 3 and the ability to process Layer 7 rules on encrypted TLS 1.3 traffic.

P.S. Looking for help with your upgrade? Head to Level Up!