Chapter 1. Cisco Security Appliance Technology and Features and Families

A long time ago, I was talking to an instructor about firewalls. We were talking about how big of a role they would play in an enterprise network and how popular they would become. This was before Cisco’s release of a product called the PIX. Interestingly enough, firewalls now are seen in nearly every network I have had the pleasure of working in. In fact, you even see firewalls in the home market, on Linksys products, on laptops, desktops, and so on. Needless to say, firewalls play a huge role in the protection of the network today.

Although Cisco has expanded its firewall product line to include the Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and the Cisco IOS Firewall, the PIX still exists, as does the technology on which it is based. The Securing Networks with PIX and ASA (SNPA) exam covers both the PIX and the ASA security appliances. The change from just being called a firewall to being called a security appliance has occurred because the feature-rich software runs on both the PIX and ASA. This feature-rich software extends the basic firewall in many ways. This chapter discusses the technology on which the device is founded, the features that make the PIX and ASA a security appliance, and the two product families.