ASA5545-K8

ASA5545-K8 Exact Firewall Edition

ASA5545-K8 is a physical Cisco ASA 5545-X Firewall Edition in the DES-license edition. Cisco documents 8 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 Because DES is obsolete for modern security policy, any continued deployment needs an explicit non-encrypted or migration use case rather than an assumption of acceptable VPN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 2500 IPsec VPN peers for the ASA 5545-X family, but this historical maximum does not override the K8 encryption restriction, current software support, measured performance or lifecycle status.

Lifecycle decision

Cisco's compatibility record shows September 30, 2025 as the end-of-support date for the ASA 5545-X family. Any present acquisition requires migration evidence and cannot be described as a current supported security platform.

Eight-port DES firewall containment

Use the ASA5545-K8 record only where the eight data interfaces are needed for a bounded legacy firewall role and encrypted payload services are not an approved requirement.

Map each interface to a zone, routing boundary and log destination. Mark every rule or tunnel request that would require modern encryption, then route that demand to the replacement design instead of extending DES.

DES-edition receiving and policy audit

Verify the ASA5545-X chassis, eight data GE ports, one management GE port, AC supply and K8 entitlement. Export the complete rule base, identify unused objects, confirm central logging and document why the workload can be removed or migrated without relying on DES.

Interface retirement ledger

Create eight interface records covering physical port, cable destination, VLAN or routed subnet, security zone, NAT role, routing neighbor and monitoring owner. Rank each dependency by migration difficulty and mark whether it moves to a firewall, router or direct switching path. The ledger should expose unused ports and shared failure domains before the old chassis is removed. For every active rule, attach a last-hit observation and an application owner; rules without evidence move to a review queue instead of being copied automatically.

Related ASA Firewall Edition records

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