Summary

This chapter provided a brief overview of the workings and capabilities of the Cisco PIX and ASA firewalls. Both firewalls provide stateful packet inspection as well as deep packet-inspection firewall capabilities in models designed to protect environments from the SOHO to the largest of enterprises and service providers. With the implementation of many of the features that the 7.x firewall software provides, the PIX/ASA can meet the security needs of virtually any environment or organization. The PIX has a long and distinguished history in the firewall marketplace, and although the ASA is newer, it builds upon the PIX history and functionality, allowing either firewall to be implemented as the cornerstone of an organization's network security architecture.