CISCO ASA5515-K7 ASA 5500-X Series Firewalls

ASA5515-K7 Exact Firewall Edition

ASA5515-K7 is a physical Cisco ASA 5515-X Firewall Edition in the no-payload-encryption (NPE) edition. Cisco documents 6 copper Gigabit Ethernet data ports, one copper Gigabit Ethernet management port and one AC power supply for this edition.

Encryption suffix boundary

K7 does not provide payload-encryption capability. Do not advertise or accept it as a substitute for a K9 VPN appliance, and do not infer AES, 3DES or encrypted-tunnel operation from the platform family's general VPN scale.

Platform scale is not current fitness

Cisco's data sheet lists up to 250 IPsec VPN peers for the ASA 5515-X family, but this historical maximum does not override the K7 encryption restriction, current software support, measured performance or lifecycle status.

Lifecycle decision

Cisco ended sale of ASA 5515-X in 2017 and lists August 31, 2022 as the last support date. Current use must be governed as unsupported legacy infrastructure rather than a routine new firewall deployment.

No-encryption service isolation

ASA5515-K7 is the NPE version of the ASA 5515-X. The page must make clear that a larger chassis model number does not add payload encryption to the K7 edition.

Restrict the design to non-encrypted inspection boundaries and list all services that must move because they need VPN, TLS interception or protected payload transport. Assign a retirement date instead of allowing the NPE appliance to acquire new dependencies.

K7 dependency exit test

Confirm exact chassis and K7 identity, trace every routed and translated flow, and prove that encrypted service termination occurs elsewhere. Test configuration restoration and the successor cutover path, then record the event that ends the temporary exception.

Encryption handoff diagram

Draw every path that crosses the NPE firewall and mark the device that provides transport encryption, application TLS, remote access or site-to-site protection. Unmarked paths are unresolved risks, not assumed clear-text exceptions. Include certificate and key owners outside this appliance, monitoring points and the failure behavior when the actual encryption endpoint is unavailable. The retirement review closes only when the diagram matches packet captures and the replacement topology.

Related ASA Firewall Edition records

• ASA5515-K8 - compare chassis scale and the K7/K8/K9 encryption boundary.
• ASA5512-K7 - compare chassis scale and the K7/K8/K9 encryption boundary.
• ASA5555-K7 - compare chassis scale and the K7/K8/K9 encryption boundary.

Official Cisco evidence: Cisco ASA 5500-X data sheet, Cisco platform lifecycle notice, and Cisco Secure Firewall compatibility record.