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Cisco Defense Orchestrator vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

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 Defense Orchestrator
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
14th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Palo Alto Networks Panorama
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of Cisco Defense Orchestrator is 1.0%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Panorama is 8.1%, down from 10.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewall Security Management
 

Featured Reviews

Vivek Balaji - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful guides, excellent support, integration could improve
Cisco Defense Orchestrator has useful guides for the steps that need to follow by users Cisco Defense Orchestrator can improve by providing more support for third-party security components. I have been using Cisco Defense Orchestrator for approximately eight months. The Cisco Defense…
Kim Ejby Lorentzen - PeerSpot reviewer
Unified firewall management streamlines operations across branches with prompt support services
The primary use case for this solution is the management of the entire firewall portfolio across various branches Palo Alto Networks Panorama has simplified management by providing a unified interface for firewall management and configuration. One of the key advantages of Palo Alto Networks…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the upgrade feature. That is pretty valuable to me because I have dual ASAs and when I go through CDO it does it for me pretty well. It's all done in the back-end and I don't really have to be involved. I just initiate, pick the image, and I pick when I want it done and it just does it, whether I have a single ASA or have a dual ASA."
"With Cisco Defense Orchestrator, we can manage the complete Cisco Security solution. It provides a simple and centralized way to manage all products."
"The initial setup was straightforward. We spun up the VM onsite. We generated the key that it needed to talk to the Cloud Orchestrator. After that, as I started adding devices, it was relatively quick and easy."
"The most valuable feature is the Intrusion prevention."
"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 being able to do centralized upgrades on the ASAs. We can select all of those ASAs, and say, "Upgrade these ASAs at this scheduled time." It will copy down the ASA image, ASDM image, and then do the upgrade and failovers, and then put it all back into service as required at a scheduled time. It automates that process for us."
"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 ability to do operations on multiple firewalls at once is valuable because it saves time and mental effort. The solution's ability to make bulk changes makes it very convenient to manage things at once on multiple targets."
"The threat prevention and layer seven security features were the most used and important for us. All operations are quite good in this solution."
"The solution doesn't need a proxy for the Prisma Access Firewall."
"I found logging and management features the most valuable in Palo Alto Networks Panorama. Another good feature of the product is that it lets you define global firewall policies and templates."
"The entire ease of use is most valuable. If you're managing firewalls locally with PAN-OS, the look and feel of Panorama is the same. So, you don't have to relearn another product. If you're used to managing firewalls from Palo Alto, you can easily use Panorama to manage them. It looks and feels the same."
"The most valuable item is centralization and we can get all of the router bases in a single window."
"I like the quality of this product, and it performs. It's the best solution in the IT business."
"Panorama enables you to provision all your firewalls and other things as a cluster. It is quite useful for that."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is the ability to manage our devices centrally. Additionally, we can monitor the workforce connections, receive reports, and use the backup feature."
 

Cons

"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."
"They need to work on the user interface. It needs to be improved to make it more user-friendly."
"I've found dozens of bugs over the year we've been using it. The more I use it for different things, the more problems I find... Most of the problems have to do with the user interface. A lot of thought and work has gone into the back-end component to make the product do what it's intended to do, but the way it is presented for use hasn't gotten nearly as much thought to make it smart and bug-free."
"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 would be a better product if it incorporated device control for third-party products easily."
"We had some MX devices that were blocking Windows Update from happening. We found out it was a Meraki issue, but it would have been nice if it had been flagged for us: "Hey, these updates are failing because the MX is blocking it." It wasn't a huge problem, but there was a loss of our time as well as the fact that the updates didn't get pushed out... It would have been nice if CDO had let us know that that was an issue."
"When logging into the device, we sort of had problems with it staying in sync. If somebody made a change onsite, it wouldn't do an automatic sync. It would have to wait, as you would have to do a manual sync up."
"It should have more features to manage FirePOWER appliances."
"Palo Alto needs to improve deployment by making it easier to deploy an agent to a desktop."
"Reporting might be an area to improve. It can provide reporting or some sort of graphical representation of your environment."
"Palo Alto Networks Panorama has some bugs that could be fixed."
"It's difficult to implement."
"Instead of searching their knowledge base in their website, maybe they can interact with us in the user interface to explain things better."
"It can take a few minutes to test to see if any changes are successful or not. This needs to be improved. A commit change should take a second, not a minute or more."
"As the cybersecurity threats have become more aggressive these days, Palo Alto Networks Panorama can still be improved, particularly on the security side, for example, more network management, and penetration test. Improving the security feature for internal endpoints is needed in the solution."
"I am observing that whenever pushing our configurations sometimes the configuration will not push properly and then we have to go to the individual firewall and save it again."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It is covered under the CIsco Enterprise License Agreement (ELA). So, it is licensed and ours."
"If you compare to what is available on the market, they are in the same range with respect to pricing."
"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."
"It's around £500 per unit for a three-year license."
"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."
"The price of Panorama is expensive."
"The pricing is considered a little bit expensive, but depending on the client, it's worth it."
"The pricing model is reasonable for this class of solutions."
"Palo Alto Networks Panorama has so many licenses. For example, it has threat protection and group protection licenses. One license depends on another. I find it more expensive than Cisco."
"Palo Alto Networks Panorama is a more expensive solution than competitors. They should lower the price to stay competitive."
"We pay approximately $3,000 a year in order to use the product."
"Everyone, I suppose, would like the price to be improved. Price is always a good thing to change."
"Sometimes the company prefers to give a license to test the product in our environment before we go to the customer. But the customer should buy his own license, and that's the system here. The system is different between one country and another. Some countries say that the IT solutions provider should provide the license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
51%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Legal Firm
3%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 Palo Alto Networks Panorama?
The most valuable aspect of Palo Alto Networks Panorama for me is the centralized management of multiple firewalls.
What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks Panorama?
The solution requires more flexibility and quicker response times. High-speed replies are crucial. Additionally, the AI module should be on-premises, not in the cloud. It should support more flexib...
 

Also Known As

CDO
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Insurance Company of British Columbia, Shawmut
University of Arkansas, JBG SMITH, Temple University, Telkom Indonesia
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Defense Orchestrator vs. Palo Alto Networks Panorama and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.