The focused Cisco Multicloud Defense alternative — same idea, a fraction of the floor.

On one job, yes: both deploy a secure gateway into your own cloud account that replaces the managed NAT gateway and adds egress control, and both are flat-rate with no per-GB data-processing tax. Valtix — the company Cisco acquired in 2023 and rebranded to Multicloud Defense — pioneered that cloud-native gateway model, and it is a genuinely good idea. Where they diverge is scope. Cisco Multicloud Defense is a four-cloud security platform — Snort3 IPS with Talos, TLS decryption, DLP, a web application firewall and antivirus, orchestrated from a SaaS controller. Enforza is a focused, flat-priced tool for the NAT + FQDN-egress job on one or a handful of networks. Different products for different-sized estates.

It is the same lineage. Valtix, a cloud-native network security startup, was acquired by Cisco in 2023 and the product is now sold as Cisco Multicloud Defense. The Valtix-heritage gateway is still the core enforcement engine — a SaaS controller that deploys autoscaling security gateways into your AWS, Azure, Google Cloud or Oracle Cloud accounts. If you are searching 'Valtix alternative', Cisco Multicloud Defense is what Valtix became, and this page compares Enforza to it fairly.

It is bought as prepaid units of 100 gateway-hours, in an Advantage or Premier tier, through Cisco Commerce Workspace or an Enterprise Agreement on 1-, 3- or 5-year terms — and, as Cisco's own ordering guide states, it is not a pay-as-you-go offering. An Advance unit lists at roughly $160 per 100 gateway-hours; a high-availability egress gateway pair running 24×7 works out at roughly $28,000/year in gateway-hour licensing alone, before the underlying compute VMs in your account and before any Premier-tier uplift. The AWS and Azure Marketplace listings are private-offer-only, so there is no public self-serve price. Enforza's floor is a free tier, then one small VM plus a flat per-firewall subscription. Figures are Cisco's published model and reseller list prices, taken 2026-07-10, directional and subject to change.

For the focused NAT + FQDN-egress job, and especially below the enterprise threshold, yes — the entry economics are very different. Enforza is one small VM plus a flat per-firewall licence, with a genuine free tier and self-serve BYOL on AWS Marketplace; Cisco Multicloud Defense is prepaid multi-year gateway-hour units bought through Cisco Commerce Workspace, roughly $28,000/year in licensing for an HA egress pair before compute. Both products are flat-rate with no per-GB tax, so this is not a per-GB argument — it is about the entry floor and the procurement model. If your estate is large enough to use the whole Cisco platform — the IPS, decryption, DLP and four-cloud reach — that footprint earns its keep; if the job is secure egress on a few networks, Enforza is priced for it.

No, and we will not pretend otherwise. Cisco Multicloud Defense runs a full Snort3 signature IPS backed by Cisco Talos threat intelligence — genuinely strong, and one of the clearest reasons to choose it. Enforza does threat hardening on the data path — anti-scan, SYN-flood protection and JA3 fingerprinting — but it has no signature engine, by design. If inline signature IDS/IPS is a hard requirement, Cisco has it and Enforza does not.

No, and that is a deliberate design choice rather than a gap we are working to close. Cisco Multicloud Defense can run a full TLS forward proxy — decrypting egress traffic to filter on the URL path and to feed its IPS, DLP and antivirus. That requires holding keys and man-in-the-middling the connection. Enforza never decrypts TLS and never holds your keys, so it filters by SNI and FQDN (the hostname) but not the URL path. If URL-path-level control is a hard requirement, Cisco has it and Enforza does not. If you would rather not decrypt egress traffic at all, that is exactly why Enforza works the way it does.

In several places, and we say so plainly. Cisco Multicloud Defense gives you real signature IDS/IPS — Snort3 with Cisco Talos — full TLS forward-proxy decryption for URL-path filtering, inline DLP and antivirus, a web application firewall, and four-cloud coverage including Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, all orchestrated as autoscaling gateway fleets from one SaaS controller. It also comes with Cisco enterprise procurement and TAC support. If you already run a Cisco security estate, need that deep inspection, or need OCI in the mix, Cisco Multicloud Defense is the right call.

Enforza runs on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud or on-prem, managed from one console, so a mixed estate is one fleet rather than several firewall products. What Enforza does not cover is Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and it does not orchestrate autoscaling gateway fleets from a central controller the way Cisco Multicloud Defense does across all four clouds. Enforza places focused appliances where you need egress control; Cisco runs a broader, four-cloud security platform. If four-cloud reach and central fleet orchestration are the requirement, that is Cisco's home ground.

Yes. Enforza has a genuine free tier — one firewall with L3/L4 policy and network objects, no card required. A 14-day trial unlocks the full feature set, including FQDN/SNI egress filtering, compliance packs, log export and live logs. The paid plan is £179/month per firewall, dropping to £149 from your sixth, plus the Linux VM you provision, and it is available BYOL self-serve on AWS Marketplace. Cisco Multicloud Defense is a procurement-led buy through Cisco Commerce Workspace — a heavier commitment to begin.