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Cisco Security Cloud Control vs FireMon Security Manager comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 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
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
FireMon Security Manager
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of Cisco Security Cloud Control is 4.7%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FireMon Security Manager is 12.6%, down from 17.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewall Security Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FireMon Security Manager12.6%
Cisco Security Cloud Control4.7%
Other82.7%
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

"Once it was up and running, I could see value from it straight away, in the first minute."
"The main return on investment is time, and the first time a firewall went down the savings probably exceeded what CDO costs."
"For one particular client, we had almost a 20 percent remediation on some of their equipment as a result of all kinds of attacks from the desktop department, and we got them down to a zero percent remediation."
"The most valuable feature is the automation, as it reduces user intervention and allows us to focus on other tasks."
"The bulk changes feature is definitely the most valuable."
"When we're looking to the policies, it identifies the shadow rules. It notifies us about anything that will supersede other rules."
"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."
"Overall, our monitoring and compliance are on much higher levels, and the visibility we have into our firewall rules is much better now than it was prior to having FireMon."
"Overall, I would say FireMon Security Manager is hard to beat, and there are hardly any tools that can do better from what I have known."
"This tool allowed us to go through and identify rules that we could get rid of, allowing our rule sets to be a lot smaller than we originally had intended them to be and helping with our ongoing maintenance of our firewalls."
"FireMon Security Manager delivers ROI through significant time savings, cleaner rule bases, and improved risk visibility, especially for organizations with complex multi-vendor firewalls."
"It is a good product. Previously, we were using only spreadsheets to compare the usage, but now with FireMon, we are able to clean up or review the policies to some extent. It is still a work in progress, but we are at a good stage now."
"The firewall assessment feature is great."
"The most valuable features are the security assessments and the ability to identify unused rules or objects."
"The most valuable feature is security management because it allows us to look inside the firewall and see things that the firewall doesn't report."
 

Cons

"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."
"Cisco Defense Orchestrator can improve by providing more support for third-party security components."
"There could be some slight improvements to navigation."
"Right now, there's no benefit to doing changes through CDO; it doesn't save me time."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Our firewalls have multiple paths through them and FireMon falls short a little bit because it's not Palo Alto-centric. I don't think FireMon has kept up with where Palo Alto is at. They started out being Check Point-centric for years and they've never really fully embraced the nuances others, like Palo Alto or Fortinet, have. They don't handle a lot of the capabilities and attributes that Palo Alto does yet. They're working on it. They're getting there."
"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."
"A feature that could be improved is support for more devices, not just the firewall."
"What is limited or has no capability in FireMon Security Manager is integration with all the cloud-based firewall native vendors."
"When it comes to documentation, they need to start putting together a basic command manual. With Cisco, you can look up a command and it gives you examples of three or four different ways that command can be used. It tells you how to put it into the GUI and the CLI. FireMon does need to start doing that."
"FireMon could be made more user-friendly when it comes to creating filters or conducting traffic analysis."
"When it comes to documentation, they need to start putting together a basic command manual."
"The advanced features are complex in setting up the rules."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you compare to what is available on the market, they are in the same range with respect to pricing."
"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."
"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'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."
"FireMon is cheaper than AlgoSec."
"We don't license all of the devices in our network, so it does not provide us with a comprehensive visibility of all devices in a hybrid network at this time."
"The pricing is very good, very straightforward. It also came in cheaper than AlgoSec and Tufin."
"It's a good value. From a licensing standpoint... it's very simple to understand, and gives us a good bang for the buck."
"Relative to what it offers, the price is fair."
"Pricing model seems fair."
"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."
"Regarding additional costs, if you want things like Policy Optimizer, extra features, that's extra."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise52
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FireMon?
The initial attraction to FireMon Security Manager was primarily due to its pricing. While it is cheaper than Tufin, I do not recall if AlgoSec was cheaper. Pricing strategies depend on individual ...
What needs improvement with FireMon?
The only feedback I would like to give is that we were requesting them to move to SaaS so that the upgradation and everything would be a little more automatic or maybe just easier.
What is your primary use case for FireMon?
I use FireMon Security Manager as a compliance tool to check rule compliance and firewall rule compliance.
 

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: September 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.