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Cisco Security Cloud Control vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 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
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of Cisco Security Cloud Control is 1.5%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Panorama is 6.9%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewall Security Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Palo Alto Networks Panorama6.9%
Cisco Security Cloud Control1.5%
Other91.6%
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

"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."
"The bulk changes feature is definitely the most valuable."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"If our server is blocked, this solution shows us why it is blocked and allows us to update the network routing."
"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."
"Panorama integrates security management by allowing easy modification of policy by account, IP, or application."
"Technical support is helpful and knowledgeable."
"The initial setup isn't very complex, it's user-friendly."
"Using this solution means that you can store logs for longer periods, up to perhaps two years, depending on your attached storage."
"Managing the firewalls in the branch locations from a central management console is easier."
"Variable creation and template stack functionalities make Palo Alto Networks Panorama a brilliant solution. It is a completely scalable system, with good technical support."
"This solution is user-friendly. It is centrally managed and provides role optimization, without the need for additional tools."
"Panorama enables you to provision all your firewalls and other things as a cluster. It is quite useful for that."
 

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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Cisco Defense Orchestrator should be made more user-friendly overall."
"It would be beneficial to improve the capabilities of Panorama to handle logs more efficiently, potentially reducing the need for additional local collectors. Adding more predefined dashboards as features would enhance the monitoring and reporting capabilities."
"Price is probably one of the biggest things that we struggle with, specifically with Palo, and that's across their whole portfolio."
"The configuration could be a bit better."
"There is room for improvement in the graphical user interface (GUI), which is becoming outdated, especially the NAT section."
"Customer support can improve."
"A bottleneck in Palo Alto Networks Panorama is the licensing. The licensing model for the product is complicated. Another area for improvement is the PDF report generation because you'll notice that it's missing some details."
"We have had some issues in the past because integrating a new device is not intuitive."
"The initial setup can be complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's around £500 per unit for a three-year license."
"If you compare to what is available on the market, they are in the same range with respect to pricing."
"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."
"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."
"The product's pricing is high but flexible. It now follows the pay-per-use pricing model. I would rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten."
"The pricing could be lower."
"The solution is priced a bit higher than competitors."
"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."
"It is not a cheap solution."
"If I were to rate the pricing of Palo on a scale of one to five, with one being really high and five being a good, reasonable price, I would rate Palo as a three."
"We're a reseller, and we're an MSSP. So, we get some extreme discounts."
"The price of Palo Alto Networks Panorama is high. There is a pay-per-use model."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
46%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Legal Firm
3%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
 

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 Business32
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise47
 

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?
If you go with the cloud-based deployment, it is pretty much affordable. If you go with the physical bare-metal hardware, then it is quite expensive.
What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks Panorama?
I do see some disadvantages with Panorama. If your staff is not technical enough, you have to be very careful if you have production devices on Panorama because once you push any changes, those get...
 

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: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.