Recommended VPN client for cisco based infrastructure.
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Our office backbone infrastructure is mainly made of cisco devices like at core cisco ASA and FTD firewalls, at branch level cisco ISR series routers and at distribution level we have mixed vendors and most of them are cisco switches.
So, we mainly use Cisco AnyConnect to help our remote employees to connect to our network and get secure access to office resources. On top of that it goes pretty well with our overall cisco based infrastructure. Most of our critical app servers are hosted inside so it's a must use tool for our daily operation.
Pros
- Most of our users are windows based but we do have linux and MAC users, till now we did not face any issue in any of these OS regarding the installation or connectivity with Cisco AnyConnect. Supports almost in all linux distro which is a huge plus point for us.
- Also, it's a great tool to keep the overall infrastructure posture in check. I mean a user must meet some certain conditions to connect to our office network like having the tamper protection and antivirus on. No user will be allowed until he meet these criteria
- We have the biggest advantage of having the cisco based infra thus we hardly face any issue with Cisco AnyConnect.
- The encryptions methods are highly trustworthy.
Cons
- We did not face any noticeable difficulties with Cisco AnyConnect till now, but we had to migrate our ASA firewall to a different vendor as ASA was EOL in one of our branch. As we have site to site VPN with all the site we were struggling to establish VPN between the cisco FTD and newly deployed firewall (non cisco). Later even after a successful VPN we were struggling to do remote access VPN to our FTD which had tunnel with a non cisco firewall. So overall I would recommend cisco to improve Cisco AnyConnect in terms of compatibility specifically when the remote access vpn needs to work in mixed environments where Cisco devices have to tunnel with non cisco routers or firewalls
- compared to other vpn clients the user interface of Cisco AnyConnect feels very basic. Well, it does have its pros and cons like some non tech employees can use it very effectively!
Return on Investment
- Our overall ROI is mixed though our start was great as earlier mentioned that our infrastructure is based on cisco but as we are planning to move on in few places due to device EOL issue we are facing some complexity regarding the combability of cisco VPN clients with non cisco firewalls which slowed the overall return
Usability
Alternatives Considered
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)
Other Software Used
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)
