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Cisco Security Cloud Control vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 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
12th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Palo Alto Networks Panorama
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of Cisco Security Cloud Control is 3.7%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Panorama is 8.2%, up from 7.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewall Security Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Palo Alto Networks Panorama8.2%
Cisco Security Cloud Control3.7%
Other88.1%
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,…
Richard Dombo - PeerSpot reviewer
Application Support Administrator at Meridian Port Services
Monitoring and managing multiple firewalls has become more efficient through centralized oversight and reliable logging
I would say that while Palo Alto Networks Panorama reporting capability is functional, it is not really intuitive. The presentation is not really as advanced as what an advanced solution would have provided. I would like to improve the dashboards on Palo Alto Networks Panorama, especially because I work in an environment where my managers are not really that technical. They do a great job leading us, but they do not have a technical background. If the dashboard could be improved to suit more executive use cases when it comes to reporting, that would be excellent. It is basic as far as I am concerned, and from an executive standpoint, it is not really that good. I would rate Palo Alto Networks Panorama as a product nine or 9.5 out of ten because there is always room for improvement, especially on the dashboard. I think if they could improve the dashboard, I would give them ten out of ten because from a technical standpoint, the dashboard is good, but at an executive level, it is not really that good. I usually struggle when doing presentations to my bosses because the dashboard and reporting from Palo Alto Networks Panorama are not as polished as they could be.

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, which is pretty valuable to me because I have dual ASAs and when I go through CDO it does everything for me in the back-end so I just initiate, pick the image, pick when I want it done, and it just does it whether I have a single ASA or a dual ASA."
"The main return on investment is time, and the first time a firewall went down the savings probably exceeded what CDO costs."
"We are using this solution for filtering and blocking some websites, as a firewall, and as the main tool for network segmentation and intrusion prevention, blocking malware and malicious activity."
"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."
"This product provides excellent centralized device controls and reporting."
"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."
"With Cisco Defense Orchestrator, we can manage the complete Cisco Security solution, and it provides a simple and centralized way to manage all products."
"The bulk changes feature is definitely the most valuable."
"Panorama has the capacity for SD-WAN configuration, which is appreciated alongside its capabilities for firewall management and firmware upgrades."
"All my clients are happy and satisfied with the solution."
"Support from Palo Alto is very good."
"Panorama integrates security management by allowing easy modification of policy by account, IP, or application."
"This is like a cherry on the top of all of your network security from Palo Alto in your organization."
"The dashboards are very good on Palo Alto. They offer a centralized dashboard for managers as well."
"The installation was straightforward in a complex environment, which means that we could have had far more issues were the product not well-designed from an installation standpoint."
"The telemetry visibility is really good as well as the automated workflows for creating policies, and the overall solution is quite intuitive to use."
 

Cons

"There could be some slight improvements to navigation."
"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."
"Cisco Defense Orchestrator can improve by providing more support for third-party security components."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It hasn't really improved our organization. It has been more like a PoC which was spun up and played with for a little while, and we haven't gotten back to it."
"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 product could offer more integration with other solutions."
"It communicates with remote devices, and sometimes, there is a little bit of delay during its communication with remote devices. There should be real-time communication or updates from the manager to devices."
"In our version, there is no feature to transfer or upload a database of third-party vulnerabilities or signatures so that Panorama can convert them into its own database. This kind of feature might already have come in version 10."
"My pain point is the automation process is not well-documented."
"In the future, it would be beneficial if Panorama could include a firewall assurance feature similar to Skybox."
"It could be easier to manage. In the future, it should be much easier because it's not very easy to manage. So in the next release, I think it should be much easier to manage, especially in the first configuration. It could also be more stable."
"It is an expensive product."
"The solution should improve the speed at which they make changes on the system. Historically, they've been a bit slow in that respect."
 

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'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."
"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."
"If you compare to what is available on the market, they are in the same range with respect to pricing."
"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 has freed up staff time, which is where we are seeing ROI."
"Everyone, I suppose, would like the price to be improved. Price is always a good thing to change."
"The pricing could be lower."
"Cost-wise, it's very expensive."
"The solution is relatively cheap; I rate it four out of five for affordability."
"We pay approximately $3,000 a year in order to use the product."
"You only pay for the license and there are no additional costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
 

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 Business34
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise46
 

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 Palo Alto Networks Panorama?
We did not purchase Palo Alto Networks Panorama through the Azure Marketplace. We purchased it directly through Palo Alto.
What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks Panorama?
From a monitoring perspective, if we could improve on data retention and keep it for quite a long time, such as 90 days of data retention, that would be good for us to manage our CPU usage, as we c...
What is your primary use case for Palo Alto Networks Panorama?
My main use case for Palo Alto Networks Panorama is to manage our firewalls. We have around 450 firewalls, and we manage them through Panorama. Configuration entry is the primary focus of our use.
 

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: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.