FTD

Well its been very confusing for me till now .

FTD is nothing but a combination of IPS and ASA capabilities in one.

box.

5 years ago Cisco acquired a company Source fire. It was an IPS company.

They put it out as their product known as firepower.

CISCO IPS = firepower

This (firepower) replaced their legacy IPS.

In old set ups it was pretty simple, behind the firewall they used to put IPS , two separate boxes.

So the ASA used to deal with L3 and layer 4 and send it across to the IPS device.

The other capability which came along the way was , they integrated the IPS module inside the ASA.

So the traffic used to go first to ASA module then to the IPS.

And then the IPS used to send it back to the ASA.

But still remember this was a separate module (the appliance that you would get was ASA )

known as Firepower service module.)

Now they have combined both IPS and firewall (ASA) capabilities into one BOX.

You still have flexibility to buy it separately!!

But they combined it into one and named it as FIREPOWER THREAT DEFENSE.

which has capabilities to perform actions for IPS and ASA at the same time.

So there are below ways now.

1. OLD ASA appliance

2. Install FTD on ASA (you actually dont get ASA , you get FTD!!)

Remember Firepower = IPS

FTD = IPS + ASA

3. You can get the actual FTD devices. (44 series which are running FTD software).

The ASA physical device is getting re-imaged.!!

Is this NGFW?

Ans. YES

Just remember this is not the OLD ASA anymore. You might be running FTD on a ASA appliance but it is not running core ASA anymore called as Unified code.