Cisco has announced the “end-of-life” for Cisco PIX Security related products and has encouraged the migration to Cisco ASA 5500. Businesses face a growing number of network security challenges due to many different dynamics in the industry.
The number and sophistication of attacks is increasing, with threats such as botnets and the exploitation of multiple vulnerabilities in many of today’s Web services, applications, and back-end systems. Increasing collaboration with business partners and customers requires more security at what was the Internet edge and new forms of secure remote access to critical business data. Many advanced technologies, such as unified communications and wireless, are being adopted as mission-critical infrastructure and require new forms of security to protect them. Finally, regulations pertaining to business governance and privacy are affecting businesses more than ever and forcing them to change their business practices and increase their overall level of information security.
On January 28, 2008, Cisco announced the end-of-sale and end-of life dates for Cisco PIX Security Appliances, software, accessories, and licenses. The last day for purchasing Cisco PIX Security Appliance platforms/bundles will be July 28, 2008 and the last day to purchase accessories and licenses will be January 27, 2009. It is important to note that Cisco will continue to support Cisco PIX Security Appliance customers through July 27, 2013.
Cisco PIX Security Appliance customers are encouraged to migrate to Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances. In addition to providing the same robust firewall and IPsec VPN capabilities as Cisco PIX Security Appliances, the Cisco ASA 5500 Series offers significantly better performance and scalability, SSL VPN support, advanced Unified Communications (voice/video) security, and a modular design that allows you to add features such as intrusion prevention (IPS), antivirus, antispam, antiphishing, and URL filtering. Migration to the Cisco ASA 5500 Series is straightforward, because consistent management and monitoring interfaces allow you to take advantage of your knowledge and investment in Cisco PIX Security Appliances.
The Cisco ASA 5500 delivers many benefits, including the following:
- Assists businesses meet compliance and regulatory requirements like HIPAA, PCI and many more.
- Delivers secure mobility services to improve access to SSL VPN technologies.
- Overall cost to maintain one or more security services is lowered.
- Gives customeres the ability to take advantage of training and operational experience from Cisco PIX Security Appliances.
- Secures unified communications with end-to-end encrypted voice and video communication with greater capacity and scalability.
Why Migrate to Cisco ASA 5500?
Better Performance. Stronger Security. Increased Scalability. Protection from application-layer threats.
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