The Cisco ASA 5500 Series includes the Cisco ASA 5505, 5510, 5520, 5540, 5550, and 5580 Adaptive Security Appliances-purpose-built, high-performance security solutions that take advantage of Cisco expertise in developing industry-leading, award-winning security and VPN solutions.

The series builds upon proven technologies from Cisco PIX 500 Series Security
Appliances, Cisco IPS 4200 Series Sensors, and Cisco VPN 3000 Series Concentrators.

Designed as a key component of the Cisco Self-Defending Network, the Cisco ASA 5500 Series provides proactive threat defense that stops attacks before they spread through the network, controls network activity and application traffic, and delivers flexible VPN connectivity. The result is a powerful multifunction network security appliance family that provides the security breadth and depth for protecting small and medium-sized business (SMB), enterprise, and service provider networks while reducing the overall deployment and operations costs and complexities associated
with providing this new level of security.

Through its unique Modular Policy Framework (MPF), the Cisco ASA 5500 Series brings a new level of security and policy control to applications and networks. MPF allows businesses to adapt and extend the profile of the Cisco ASA 5500 Series through highly customizable, flow-specific security policies tailored to application requirements while providing performance and extensibility through user-installable SSMs.

This adaptable architecture enables businesses to rapidly deploy security services when and where they are needed, such as tailoring inspection techniques to
specific application and user needs or adding additional intrusion prevention and content security such as those delivered by the Adaptive Inspection and Prevention (AIP) and Content Security and Control (CSC) SSM. Furthermore, the modular hardware architecture of the Cisco ASA 5500 Series along with flexible MPF enables the integration of future network and security, extending the outstanding investment protection provided by the Cisco ASA 5500 Series, and allowing
businesses to adapt their network defenses to new threats as they arise.

All Cisco ASA 5500 Series appliances include maximum IPsec VPN users on the base system; SSL VPN is licensed and purchased separately. By converging SSL and IPsec VPN services with comprehensive threat defense technologies, the Cisco ASA 5500 Series provides highly customizable network access tailored to meet the requirements of diverse deployment
environments while providing advanced endpoint and network-level security.