CISCO ASA5515-K8 ASA 5500-X Series Firewalls

ASA5515-K8 Exact Firewall Edition

ASA5515-K8 is a physical Cisco ASA 5515-X Firewall Edition in the DES-license 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

K8 identifies the DES-limited edition, not the 3DES/AES K9 edition. Because DES is obsolete for modern security policy, any continued deployment needs an explicit non-encrypted or migration use case rather than an assumption of acceptable VPN protection.

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 K8 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.

DES-limited segmentation cleanup

ASA5515-K8 provides the ASA 5515-X firewall hardware with a DES license. Treat it as a legacy segmentation appliance, not a modern encrypted edge.

Build a zone-to-zone flow matrix and classify rules by owner, last use and replacement control. Any IPsec or remote-access dependency must be migrated to a supported cryptographic platform rather than justified by the K8 suffix.

Rule-base reduction checkpoint

Verify six data GE ports, management GE, AC power and the K8 entitlement, then replay representative allowed and denied flows while checking log timestamps. Remove abandoned policy objects in a controlled migration copy and retain a rollback export.

Segmentation flow matrix

Build matrix rows for source zone, destination zone, application, identity, inspection requirement, log destination and accountable owner. Compare the matrix with observed flows and classify each rule as retain, redesign, expire or investigate. The successor policy should be generated from approved rows rather than copied from the full legacy configuration. Keep sample allowed and denied events for each retained class so post-cutover validation tests policy intent instead of only checking connectivity.

Related ASA Firewall Edition records

• ASA5515-K7 - compare chassis scale and the K7/K8/K9 encryption boundary.
• ASA5545-K8 - compare chassis scale and the K7/K8/K9 encryption boundary.
• ASA5555-K8 - 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.