SE Labs awards Cisco Firewall dual AAA ratings for unmatched protection accuracy and performance
SE Labs named Cisco Secure Firewall the Best Next-Generation Enterprise Firewall of 2025. The reason: dual AAA ratings for both protection and performance, a combination no firewall has achieved before.
Zero Breaches. Zero Compromises.
In SE Labs’ Advanced Security Test, Cisco Secure Firewall 4225 achieved 100% protection accuracy against every simulated attack, including sophisticated campaigns modeled after APT29 (Russian state actors behind SolarWinds) and Scattered Spider a highly organized threat group known for targeting large enterprises through advanced social engineering and cloud exploitation tactics. Every attack was stopped at initial access, before reconnaissance could become infiltration.
Critically, this protection held firm even with TLS decryption enabled, delivering security without sacrificing throughput. This real-world validation proves Cisco’s differentiated approach: hardware-accelerated intelligent decryption for line-rate inspection, Talos threat intelligence and AI-powered tools such as SnortML, for behavioral detection, and Encrypted Visibility Engine (EVE), to detect threats hidden in encrypted traffic, both capable of zero-day prevention of threats never seen before.
Performance Without Compromise
The Advanced Performance Test isn’t a lab curiosity. SE Labs built it to reflect how enterprises operate, using IETF standards to simulate real network conditions. The 4225 sustained 30 Gbps under realistic mixed traffic and exceeded 57 Gbps for HTTP throughput. These aren’t synthetic benchmarks. This is the performance you’d actually see in production.
How does it deliver both? Custom silicon handles decryption at wire speed. AI-driven detection focuses on inspection where threats hide. The architecture inspects intelligently with a balance of inference and deep packet inspection.
Engineering That Shows Up in Production
The AAA ratings validate what Cisco’s engineering teams built: a firewall where security, speed, and manageability work together.
Security Cloud Control provides unified visibility across every deployment. Policies include MITRE ATT&CK context, so security teams see adversary tactics, not just stock categories and scores. Threat intelligence updates in real time accounting for context derived from telemetry when available. Other vendors excel at one thing and patch around the rest. Cisco engineered the full stack as an integrated system: detection engines, hardware acceleration, threat intelligence, and an AI powered management platform working together.
“Behind every AAA rating is engineering excellence focused on solving real problems,” said Shaila Shankar, Senior Vice President of Engineering, Cisco Security Business Group. “We didn’t optimize for an existing benchmark — we set a new one. We built a firewall that protects at scale, performs under load, and doesn’t burden your team with operational complexity.”
The Bottom Line
SE Labs tested what enterprises need most: a firewall that protects without compromise and performs without excuses. Cisco delivered both.
“Enterprises shouldn’t have to choose between security and performance,” said Peter Bailey, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco Security Business Group. “These results prove what our customers experience every day, Cisco Secure Firewall stops threats without slowing business. Backed by Talos Threat Intelligence, it’s the backbone of our Hybrid Mesh Firewall and a clear example of how security built into the network can be powerful and seamless.”
The tests are done. The ratings are in. Now the question is simple: Are you willing to settle for less?
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