Cisco just captured cybersecurity's Olympic gold again! Our Secure Firewall 4225 is the first firewall ever to earn SE Labs' coveted AAA rating in the ultra-tough Advanced Performance test, hot on the heels of its February AAA rating for efficacy. This dual recognition underscores a powerful truth: blazing speed combined with impeccable protection creates a champion designed to keep even the most sophisticated threats on the sidelines. 

To understand the magnitude of this achievement, it's important to know how SE Labs structures its evaluations: 

• Certification:Basic validation of core security capabilities and essential industry standards. 
• Evaluation:More in-depth efficacy testing with a broader range of threats and real-world scenarios. 
• Advanced:The most challenging test, pushing products to their limits with highly realistic loads and sophisticated attack simulations. Achieving an "AAA" rating at this level is akin to winning an Olympic gold medal in cybersecurity performance. 

The Cisco Secure Firewall 4225's success at this 'Advanced' level is a clear indication of its industry-leading throughput and security efficacy, demonstrating its ability to deliver robust security without compromising the speed and efficiency your business demands. 

What did SE Labs do, and why does It matter? 

SE Labs is renowned for its objective, in-depth testing methodologies that go beyond simple benchmarks. For this report, they put the Cisco Secure Firewall 4225 through a series of rigorous evaluations designed to simulate real-world network loads and traffic patterns. This included:  

• Diverse Traffic Mixes:Testing with a wide range of well-established, synthetic, and realistic protocol mixes to mimic actual enterprise network conditions.  
• Application-Specific Scenarios:Assessing performance across various applications, from standard web traffic (HTTP/HTTPS) to specific enterprise applications like FTP, SMB, Skype, and Oracle.  
• Industry-Standard Methodologies:Basing their tests on available standards, including recommendations from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), ensuring the results are credible and comparable. 

Why is this important to you?  

In today's dynamic threat landscape, your firewall needs to do more than just block threats; it needs to do so at scale, without slowing down your critical business operations. Independent testing by organizations like SE Labs provides: 

• Unbiased Validation:It confirms that our products perform as advertised under conditions that reflect your actual network environment. 
• Real-World Relevance:Unlike theoretical benchmarks, these tests use traffic patterns and loads that your network is likely to experience, giving you confidence in the firewall's effectiveness in your environment. 
• Trust and Transparency:The detailed methodology and transparent reporting builds trust, allowing you to make informed decisions about your security investments. 

The Results Speak for Themselves: Uncompromised Performance 

A crucial challenge in modern network security is inspecting the growing volume of encrypted traffic without slowing network performance significantly. Cisco Secure Firewall can tackle this challenge in multiple ways. It leverages specialized hardware to offload decryption tasks from the main processor, and the Encrypted Visibility Engine (EVE) which can identify threats in encrypted traffic without decrypting. These capabilities led to the exceptional security efficacy and network performance highlighted in the SE Labs report.  

The SE Labs report identified Cisco Secure Firewall 4225's ability to provide: 

• Outstanding Throughput:The device demonstrated its ability to handle significant traffic volumes, achieving 30 Gigabits per second (Gbps) with realistic traffic loads and exceeding 57 Gbps for web-based traffic (HTTP and HTTPS). This means your network can move data quickly and efficiently, even with SSL inspection enabled.  
• Superior Application Handling:The firewall effectively managed diverse application traffic, performing well beyond the established benchmarks, including strong performance for applications like Skype and FTP. This ensures your critical business applications run smoothly. 
• Ultra-Low Latency:Crucially, the tests showed consistently low average URL response times and time to first data byte for both HTTP and HTTPS. This translates directly to a fast and responsive user experience. 
• High Connection and Transaction Rates:The Cisco Secure Firewall 4225 sustained impressive connection (CPS) and transaction (TPS) rates, proving its capacity to handle a high volume of concurrent network activities without slowing performance. 

In essence, the Cisco Secure Firewall 4225 doesn't just block threats; it does so with industry-leading speed and efficiency, ensuring your network remains secure and your operations unhindered. 

Looking to dive deeper into the findings?  

Explore the full SE Labs report to see how the Cisco Secure Firewall 4225 can secure your organization with uncompromised performance. 

Want to give it a try? 

Join the Cisco Secure Firewall Test Drive, an instructor-led 4-hour security course, allowing you to gain firsthand experience with Cisco firewalls, and discover the new techniques of attackers that have changed the network security needs. 

We'd love to hear what you think! Ask a question and stay connected with Cisco Security on social media.

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