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Cisco Security Cloud Control vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama 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 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
Palo Alto Networks Panorama
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of Cisco Security Cloud Control is 1.2%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Panorama is 7.1%, down from 10.6% 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…
Waleed Aboda - PeerSpot reviewer
Centralized monitoring enhances control while seeking greater flexibility and rapid response
I am still working for Lotus. We work with Palo Alto three series, Panorama, and Firewall Banu, specifically Firewall three series and five series I find this solution valuable for full monitoring, centralized control for reporting, and centralized management. These features are instrumental in…

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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the automation, as it reduces user intervention and allows us to focus on other tasks."
"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."
"We use a lot of image upgrades. We take some 20 devices and then we update everything at once, including the policies. We apply policies for groups. For certain groups, like anti-viruses, we send out policies and apply them to every single device. It's really easy and simple."
"When we're looking to the policies, it identifies the shadow rules. It notifies us about anything that will supersede other rules."
"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 firewall rules and policies are the most valuable aspects of the solution."
"Our team has the option to make configuration changes at any given time."
"We use the solution for centralized monitoring."
"Panorama has improved the organization by enabling log collection, administration, and optimization of firewall policies. It supports policy migration and offers platform stability and decent uptime."
"The product was great, and whenever there was a bug or issue, they released updates quickly. Additionally, their support was very good."
"The management and the deployment features are most valuable. We can easily deploy and manage the devices. We can do fast deployments without moving from our office and by just providing a short description to the end-user about how to install the physical device."
"It is great that the records go back to 30 days."
"I like the quality of this product, and it performs. It's the best solution in the IT business."
 

Cons

"The dashboard needs to be more customizable to provide better reporting for our network."
"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 can improve by providing more support for third-party security components."
"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."
"Cisco Defense Orchestrator should be made more user-friendly overall."
"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 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 alerts in Palo Alto Networks Panorama could improve by integration with other systems, such as a forwarding trigger system. For example, if a customer has their own system it would be helpful to have the alarms integrated."
"Sometimes technical support is slow to respond."
"Sometimes in Palo Alto Networks Panorama, we receive issues where it is overloaded and unresponsive. We have issues with accessing the devices due to a slow response from Panorama."
"The solution should improve the speed at which they make changes on the system. Historically, they've been a bit slow in that respect. They should apply changes to the box quicker and more often."
"An area for improvement would be the connectivity, which sometimes means logs can be slow to display."
"The general customer feedback is when saving the configuration, it takes a long time. That needs to be fixed. The troubleshooting, the debugging part is also a little bit of a pain. It's not user-friendly on the interface to do our debugging when comparing it with other firewalls, like Forcepoint."
"I would like to have better analytics."
"It is an expensive product."
 

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."
"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."
"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 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."
"The licensing is not cheap. There are always hidden costs. You have support costs, or maybe you need to buy more optics on how the solution fits into the rest of your environment. It is possible some of the rest of your environment will need to change too."
"The solution is priced well and there is a license for this solution that we pay annually for."
"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."
"Palo Alto Networks Panorama is a more expensive solution than competitors. They should lower the price to stay competitive."
"Pricing is high compared to other vendors in the same space. Licensing is also fairly high for different functions to be added on."
"Palo Alto is expensive and there are many cheaper firewalls, but they do not work as well."
"Pricing for Palo Alto Networks Panorama is always high. If you're going to sell the product, you always have to talk about the technology because it should be about the solution rather than the price."
"The solution is priced a bit higher than competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
49%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Legal Firm
3%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks Panorama?
Palo Alto Networks Panorama is expensive but provides good value for money. For the higher end, the cost is justified. However, for the lower end, a reduction in cost could improve competitiveness.
What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks Panorama?
From the reporting side, naming the reports properly so that they can be easily identified would be an improvement. Other than that, it works well. There was a bug causing us to not get the latest ...
 

Also Known As

Cisco Defense Orchestrator, 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 Security Cloud Control vs. Palo Alto Networks Panorama and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.