Cisco PIX Security Appliance customers are encouraged to migrate to Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances. Built on the same software foundation as Cisco PIX Security Appliances, the Cisco ASA 5500 Series offers more robust firewall and IPsec VPN capabilities, as well as many additional benefits, including:

• Significantly better performance and scalability
• Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) VPN support (including clientless, portal-based remote access)
• Advanced Unified Communications (voice/video) security
• A modular design that allows you to add features such as intrusion prevention (IPS), anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-phishing, and URL filtering.

Migration to the Cisco ASA 5500 Series is straightforward. Customers can take advantage of their knowledge and investment in Cisco PIX Security Appliances, because there are essentially no changes in user interface, operations, or training.

Key Milestones for the Cisco PIX Security Appliance End-of-Sales

Milestone Date External announcement January 28, 2008 End of sales for platforms and bundles July 28, 2008 End of sales for accessories January 27, 2009 End of software maintenance releases July 28, 2009 End of service contract renewals October 23, 2012 End of support/end of life July 27, 2013

Evolving Business Challenges and Business Benefits of Migrating to Cisco ASA 5500

Businesses face a growing number of network security challenges due to many different dynamics in the industry. The number and sophistication of attacks continues to grow, with threats such as botnets and the exploitation of multiple vulnerabilities in many of today's Web services, applications, and back-end systems. Increasing collaboration with business partners and customers requires more security at what was the Internet edge and new forms of secure remote access to critical business data. Many advanced technologies, such as unified communications and wireless, are being adopted as mission-critical infrastructure and require new forms of security to protect them. Finally, regulations pertaining to business governance and privacy are affecting businesses more than ever and forcing them to change their business practices and increase their overall level of information security.

Security solutions must evolve to meet these and other dynamics that businesses are facing. The Cisco ASA 5500 Series is a security appliance family designed to be nimble and help businesses thrive and adapt in these dynamic environments. It brings together more than a decade of Cisco innovation in multiple security and networking disciplines, making use of all the technology from Cisco PIX Security Appliances, Cisco VPN 3000 Security Appliances, Cisco IPS 4200 Series Appliances, and many Cisco IP networking innovations. The Cisco ASA 5500 delivers many benefits, including the following:

• Helps businesses meet stringent compliance requirements, such as Sarbanes Oxley, HIPAA, PCI, and many others through its strong combination of market-proven firewall and IPS technologies
• Delivers secure mobility services improving access to applications and data through marketing-leading SSL VPN technology
• Lowers overall cost to procure and maintain one or more security services, while enabling customers to take advantage of training and operational experience from Cisco PIX Security Appliances
• Secures unified communications, with the ability to apply security services to end-to-end encrypted voice and video communications, and offers greater voice and video connection capacity and scalability
• Provides stronger security, better performance, and increased scalability to help protect against the wide range of application-layer threats that networks encounter

Cisco PIX-to-ASA Migration Tool Now Available

Cisco offers the Cisco PIX-to-ASA Migration Tool to assist customers in the process of converting their Cisco PIX Security Appliance configurations to Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliance configurations. Available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, the tool can be downloaded from the Cisco.com Software Center.

Cisco PIX-to-ASA Migration Services

Cisco and its partners can help you migrate to Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances, and can also help you take full advantage of the new platform´s features by integrating SSL VPN, IPS, and content security to extend the value of your investment in Cisco security technology.

Cisco ASA Migration Services - At-A-Glance
Learn more about Cisco Security Services