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Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center vs Cisco Security Cloud Control comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 22, 2025

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 Secure Firewall Manag...
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Cloud Control
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
14th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
15
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 Secure Firewall Management Center is 0.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Security Cloud Control is 1.0%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewall Security Management
 

Featured Reviews

Yonas Abebe - PeerSpot reviewer
Great dashboard with extensive visibility and good support
I expect more integration with AI. I expect Cisco to be easier for users in India, especially for junior users. For a junior one, it may somehow be complex, especially when configuring something. I remember version 6.4 had an integration with Eddie, allowing me to define a policy according to my users, however, the latest version, lacks this integration. The logging of FMC should be improved as it does not offer real-time solutions like DazaSodo.
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco's support and services are far superior to any other security product in Pakistan."
"My clients have never contacted me with any issues, so I believe the solution is stable."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the intrusion prevention system."
"One of the most valuable features of Cisco Secure Firewalls is their seamless integration with other Cisco products."
"The policy management capabilities streamline security tasks by facilitating policy configuration. This ensures the impactful implementation of security policies during product installation, enhancing overall security measures."
"The tool helps with internet access protection."
"The platform's most valuable feature has been its centralized management capability, which allows us to monitor and control multiple devices from one location."
"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"With Cisco Defense Orchestrator, we can manage the complete Cisco Security solution. It provides a simple and centralized way to manage all products."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the automation, as it reduces user intervention and allows us to focus on other tasks."
"For this product, they are very uncharacteristically interested in resolving whatever issue the customer reports. They're really attentive, and they address whatever we bring up as quickly as they can. That's been a very positive aspect of the product."
"The most valuable feature is the Intrusion prevention."
"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."
"Cisco Defense Orchestrator has useful guides for the steps that need to follow by users."
 

Cons

"The tool is a little bit pricey. I was not involved much with finance, but it appeared to be really expensive."
"The solution should improve the user interface."
"I had a challenging time trying to size the firewall on the cloud. Maybe the information is there, but I couldn't find it easily. Usually, it depends on the cloud provider itself, whether you use AWS or Azure. These guys give you the information, so this part is not as detailed."
"Areas for improvement include pricing points and the range of products available at any given time."
"It takes five to seven minutes to push one policy."
"The IOS and the deploy option could be improved."
"The solution could improve the number of ports available and load balancing."
"Due to the lack of enough tutorials available online, I face problems with Cisco."
"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."
"They can centralize all products and provide a correlation about an incident and the response. They can also provide an on-premises solution. Currently, Cisco Defense Orchestrator is just for cloud deployments, not for on-premises deployments. Customers have to manage it on the cloud. We are based in Vietnam, and most of the customers here prefer to have on-premises deployments. Customers, especially from banking and government sectors, do not prefer to do anything on the cloud. Some of the small enterprises use the cloud."
"The dashboard needs to be more customizable to provide better reporting for our network."
"It would be a better product if it incorporated device control for third-party products easily."
"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."
"There could be some slight improvements to navigation. In some of the navigation you've got to go back to be able to get into where you need to be once you've made a change. If I make a change, I've then got to go back to submit and send the change."
"They need to work on the user interface. It needs to be improved to make it more user-friendly."
"If I make a change locally to the firewall, CDO gives an alarm or an error message and says there's a change in compliance: "The firewall has this configuration but the last time it was compiled it had that configuration." That view of new changes versus the old could be better... I had to log in manually, locally on the firewall, to check which version, which configuration was actually running. I couldn't see it in CDO."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The platform is costly."
"It is rather expensive."
"One of the advantages of Cisco is its range of flexible licensing options."
"It could be considered relatively cheaper when compared to some other vendors in the market."
"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."
"When you are using a Cisco solution you know it will be expensive. Cisco makes you pay for everything individually. We pay for the licenses that we need."
"I rate Secure Firewall Management Center eight out of 10 for pricing."
"Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center has the best price on the market."
"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 covered under the CIsco Enterprise License Agreement (ELA). So, it is licensed and ours."
"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."
"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 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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
22%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Engineering Company
8%
Computer Software Company
52%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Legal Firm
3%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center?
The platform has significantly enhanced our organization's operations by providing secure communication channels between different office locations.
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center?
I expect more integration with AI. I expect Cisco to be easier for users in India, especially for junior users. For a junior one, it may somehow be complex, especially when configuring something. I...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Cisco Defense Orchestrator, CDO
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Insurance Company of British Columbia, Shawmut
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center vs. Cisco Security Cloud Control and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,335 professionals have used our research since 2012.