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Cisco Security Cloud Control vs FireMon Security Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Security Cloud Control
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
FireMon Security Manager
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of Cisco Security Cloud Control is 2.7%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FireMon Security Manager is 17.9%, up from 16.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewall Security Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
FireMon Security Manager17.9%
Cisco Security Cloud Control2.7%
Other79.4%
Firewall Security Management
 

Featured Reviews

FS
Security Engineer at Metrobank
Automation reduces intervention and speeds up threat prevention
Our primary use case for Cisco Defense Orchestrator is the automation of playbooks. We primarily use it for this purpose to streamline processes The most valuable feature is the automation, as it reduces user intervention and allows us to focus on other tasks. Since the system is automated,…
SurajYadav - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Consultant at NTT DATA
Centralized policy governance has reduced audit effort and continuously improves risk visibility
I wish to see deeper and more customizable reporting and dashboards, as while the standard reports are useful for audits, operational teams sometimes need real-time, flexible views without exporting data. Tighter integrations with ticketing and change management tools would also enhance the workflow from request to implementation. FireMon Security Manager is excellent for policy governance and risk reduction, but better real-time dashboards and stronger workflow integrations would make it even more powerful for daily operations. There are one or two areas where FireMon Security Manager could be improved to make it even stronger. While FireMon Security Manager overall delivers solid governance and risk insight, it would benefit from more flexible dashboards and deeper integrations to reduce manual steps and improve visibility without relying on external tools. I rate FireMon Security Manager an 8 out of 10. It is a strong tool for firewall policy management, risk analysis, and compliance, clearly improving our audit process and policy governance. The reason I do not give it a 9 out of 10 is mainly because the dashboard could be more flexible and integration with the firewalls could be smoother. FireMon Security Manager is a reliable and high-value platform for managing and governing firewall policies, especially in a multi-vendor environment, though a few areas can still be improved.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We have quite a few Active Stone by pairs. If they fail over... I'll see that there's a change on it and I'll have a look. The only change on it is that now this one is the standby, it took over the active role. I can go into that firewall and find out what happened... and troubleshoot based on that. That's pretty cool too."
"There are a lot of templates that are already built-in. They give you quick-to-create and quick-to-apply policies that are typically a little more complicated for people."
"The most valuable feature is that you can push one policy or one rule out to several devices at a time."
"This product provides excellent centralized device controls and reporting."
"When we're looking to the policies, it identifies the shadow rules. It notifies us about anything that will supersede other rules."
"The most valuable feature is the Intrusion prevention."
"If we have a firewall go down, I can hop into CDO, pull the latest configuration off and apply it. That's really good. It helps save time."
"Cisco Defense Orchestrator has useful guides for the steps that need to follow by users."
"The ease of use is the most valuable feature. There are a lot of products out there, but the ability to navigate through and use Firemon is very good."
"For the cleanup of firewall rules, it performs really well for us. We utilize it in our regular rule cleanup tasks, several times a year. FireMon is our primary tool when doing that, either by going through its out-of-the-box compliance rules or using it to search for certain things in our rules that we want to prune from our firewalls."
"The most valuable feature is that everything is recorded in the historical logs, including the firewall rules, headcounts, object-level usage, and the rule documentation. The rule certification details are also there, which means that someone can be held accountable for a specific firewall rule."
"Policy test, access path analysis, and change reports."
"It gives us the ability to go to one place to look for potential firewall rules that are inappropriate, or which don't meet compliance. Instead of manually searching hundreds of firewalls for a policy, we can go to this one location and find the rules which are now out of compliance."
"The Security Manager part of FireMon... gives me an eye on everything that's out there, everything that I cannot see. Because I'm not a network admin, I cannot go to a firewall itself, but at least I have FireMon so that I can go in and view everything that I want to view. And I can eliminate whatever I see that is wrong,"
"What I like about FireMon is the ability to track changes made by network engineers on the network."
"FireMon Security Manager delivers ROI through significant time savings, cleaner rule bases, and improved risk visibility, especially for organizations with complex multi-vendor firewalls."
 

Cons

"CDO doesn't have a report, an official report that I can check daily. It has another module called FTD, but it doesn't have that specifically for ASA. In the reporting, there are a lot of things that aren't there. There is also room for improvement in the daily monitoring."
"They need to work on the user interface. It needs to be improved to make it more user-friendly."
"Cisco Defense Orchestrator should be made more user-friendly overall. Currently, to use it effectively, one must be specific with the rule set that needs to be set up."
"It should have more features to manage FirePOWER appliances."
"The main thing that would useful for us would the logging and monitoring. I have to check it out, to get the beta, because I don't have access to them... I wanted CDO to be a central place so where I could do everything but right now I don't think that's possible. I really don't want to go back and forth between this and FMC. Maybe the logging portion, when I look at it, will give me some similarities."
"Cisco Defense Orchestrator should be made more user-friendly overall."
"Cisco Defense Orchestrator can improve by providing more support for third-party security components."
"I'd like CDO to be the one-stop-shop where we could do all the configurations easily. It would be nice, for ASA upgrades, if we could do them from a central repository and not have to reach out to Cisco. That would be a definite plus."
"It comes as a Linux appliance on a server and we're not a Linux shop, we're more of a Windows shop. It would be great if they could automate or integrate the backups into it and other things through their GUI interface, just to make the management of Linux a little more transparent."
"FireMon could be easier to use and flexibility regarding reporting could be improved."
"The AWS integration is still not mature for us to use. It is just not ready for our use case for AWS connectivity. Therefore, it does not provide us with a single pane of glass for our cloud environments, because we can't manage our cloud environment with the tool."
"We've had recurring issues managing FireMon's internal backups. Sometimes, the space allocated for the backup is full, and there is no process where it deletes files that are older than I certain date. It's just waiting for the storage to get full and then it's cleaned up. It isn't something that creates serious issues for us."
"When it comes to identifying risk in our environment and prioritizing fixes, it is really about the different priorities within the organization. FireMon is not so smart that it can tell what's important to us. It's up to us to figure that out."
"We have had some stability issues that are affecting operations. We rely heavily on this solution and if it isn't working then we have to create rules manually."
"When it comes to real-time compliance management, something that is missing is alerting on certain, predefined controls. It would be good to have a predefined set of controls which, if not complied with in a newly set up rule, would create an alert for us. That is something that is missing, out-of-the-box."
"The cost of the solution is pretty expensive. It would be ideal if they could work on their pricing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you compare to what is available on the market, they are in the same range with respect to pricing."
"It's around £500 per unit for a three-year license."
"It is about a $100 per year for an ASA 5506 firewall, and from there it keeps going up if you have a bigger box. For example, the 5516 is $200 to $300 per year."
"I work with a lot of clients, and the price or value of the Cisco Defense Orchestrator can vary from one client to another. If you have a lot of Cisco solutions, the price of the Cisco Defense Orchestrator is justified. Whereas if you have some security components from other vendors, such as Check Point or Palo Alto. This solution would be a pretty expensive proposition considering that they don't integrate with them well."
"After our free trial was done we got a subscription for three years and it was under $3,000 or so. It's part of the EA we already paid for, so I don't know what it would be if it was a la carte."
"It is covered under the CIsco Enterprise License Agreement (ELA). So, it is licensed and ours."
"FireMon is cheaper than AlgoSec."
"FireMon is very expensive. I think that they charge a premium. In general, they are very pricey. Compared to their competitors, they cost a little more than the other solutions that we evaluated."
"The pricing was very good during our initial year, but they increased it this year a little bit. The price is okay. It is not cheap, but it is still average."
"Pricing is reasonable."
"Its pricing is good. Compared to others, it is not so expensive."
"Regarding additional costs, if you want things like Policy Optimizer, extra features, that's extra."
"Pricing model seems fair."
"We pay for it yearly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
23%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Performing Arts
7%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise46
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cisco Defense Orchestrator?
Cisco Defense Orchestrator should be made more user-friendly overall. Currently, to use it effectively, one must be specific with the rule set that needs to be set up. Additionally, I suggest impro...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Defense Orchestrator?
Our primary use case for Cisco Defense Orchestrator is the automation of playbooks. We primarily use it for this purpose to streamline processes.
What advice do you have for others considering Cisco Defense Orchestrator?
Those who want to use Cisco Defense Orchestrator should build their own use case and see if it fits their environment. The most significant benefit for us is the response time because it automates ...
What do you like most about FireMon?
I like the Security Manager console where we can see any changes that have been made or pull the results of an assessment and control the policies that we implement.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FireMon?
Our experience with FireMon Security Manager's pricing and licensing is that it is on the higher side, but justified for a large, regulated environment. The setup cost and licensing made sense give...
What needs improvement with FireMon?
FireMon Security Manager is a strong platform. However, it could be improved with a more intuitive user interface and faster initial onboarding for new users. Simplifying some workflows and dashboa...
 

Also Known As

Cisco Defense Orchestrator, CDO
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Insurance Company of British Columbia, Shawmut
Convey, MGM Resorts International, Southwest Airlines, Alkami, Costco, Aetna, IBM, Verizon, Wells Fargo
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Security Cloud Control vs. FireMon Security Manager and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.