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Cisco Security Cloud Control vs Skybox Security Suite 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
Skybox Security Suite
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (50th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of Cisco Security Cloud Control is 3.9%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Skybox Security Suite is 7.6%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewall Security Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Skybox Security Suite7.6%
Cisco Security Cloud Control3.9%
Other88.5%
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,…
AnoopBhat - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Architect at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Firewall policy management has improved access control but still needs simpler setup and upgrades
The features that I appreciated the most in Skybox Security Suite were not comparable with Tufin, as Tufin was far ahead in terms of the technology and the user interface. The effectiveness of the vulnerability management in Skybox Security Suite is an area I have not used that much. The firewall management feature has streamlined rule configuration and compliance in Skybox Security Suite and has evolved over time, but Tufin is far better. In terms of comparison between both tools, only the licensing part of Skybox had an edge. We were not renewing the licenses of Skybox every year, but in the case of other tools, we would have to renew if we wanted to use those tools. The disadvantages and weaknesses of Skybox Security Suite include the interface, complexity with setup, and upgrading. There are some smaller issues as well that would take more time to discuss, but there are ways around them. We use this tool to implement a new policy on the firewall by going to Skybox, creating a flow there, and then using an approval mechanism in place. There are two different levels of approvals which we have to go through, and once both approvers approve the request, we are ready to implement it. A specific challenge is that if we have to create a new object group and place ten different objects in that and use that object group in two different rules, we have to create the object group in the first rule and add the ten new objects. Then if we have to create another rule, we do not get an option to recall or reuse that same group which we created in the previous rule. We have to create a new object group again and then add the objects into it again. If we had created an object group once, we should have gotten an option to recall that or call that object group in the new rule, and that should have made the process easier.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup was straightforward; we spun up the VM onsite, generated the key that it needed to talk to the Cloud Orchestrator, and after that, as I started adding devices, it was relatively quick and easy."
"The main return on investment is time, and the first time a firewall went down the savings probably exceeded what CDO costs."
"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."
"If our server is blocked, this solution shows us why it is blocked and allows us to update the network routing."
"With Cisco Defense Orchestrator, we can manage the complete Cisco Security solution, and it provides a simple and centralized way to manage all products."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the automation, as it reduces user intervention and allows us to focus on other tasks."
"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."
"I am impressed with the tool's change management, firewall and network assurance."
"What we have done is found a lot of misconfigured stuff on firewalls."
"Understanding the real exposure from vulnerabilities and associated assets can reduce the time and investment needed to mitigate risks."
"I would definitely recommend this solution; if you have a complex network with more than 20 firewalls, or you are managing a data center with a lot of security challenges, it is better to go with this solution."
"Skybox has an amazing portfolio that makes up the security solution."
"Skybox deployment is simple, and it's very useful."
"The most valuable feature is the compliance, whether it's access compliance or the configuration compliance, to make sure that all of our devices are configured as they're supposed to be, to limit access as much possible, to follow least-access guidelines."
"We have been able to generate reliable results with Skybox Security Suite."
 

Cons

"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."
"I wanted CDO to be a central place so where I could do everything but right now I don't think that's possible."
"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."
"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."
"Right now, there's no benefit to doing changes through CDO; it doesn't save me time."
"They should make it more of a one-stop shop for everything. It should have more features to manage FirePOWER appliances."
"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."
"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 is room for improvement in pricing. It would be better, especially if a customer bought all four modules."
"The price is costly, and I hope they can reduce the cost."
"Change Manager can be improved. If they can improve Change Manager so that whatever we want to do on a firewall, we are able to do it through Change Manager, it will be helpful for us. Whenever we are doing a change, it only does them at an L3 and L4 level, but all the firewalls are at the application layer. So, whatever needs to be done on the firewall, we aren't able to get it done through Change Manager. Currently, this functionality is not there because of which we are sometimes losing customers. I can create a role on Layer 3, Layer 4, but when it comes to the application layer, such as configuring and defining URLs or other things at the application level, it can't be done through Change Manager. Customers demand that they should be able to do everything through Change Manager. They don't want to do it through some other mechanism to accomplish their complete change management policy. They don't want to use a firewall manager because sometimes, they don't have any manager. They ask if they can use our solution so that a manager is not required. If Change Manager can do all the management automatically without involving any other manager, it will be great. They can also provide better integration with other managers so that everything can be done through a central point."
"Technical support is not something which I would rate very high. Support is available but they need to ensure that they bring in their local team to give us support."
"Reporting. A lot of the reports, out of the box, are limited to a certain number of either configuration violations or access rule violations. So when you first set up a new firewall to be monitored by Skybox, you don't get a real full report. You have to really tweak it to get everything."
"The solution needs to move and improve its interface to a full web browser version that is more accessible and doesn't require installation for use."
"Skybox Security Suite's attack surface management feature needs improvement."
"The tool does not offer options for customization."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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 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's around £500 per unit for a three-year license."
"Fully understand the total cost of ownership. They have gone to a new model where you have to replace the hardware every X amount of years at a very substantial cost and fully understand your intended number of nodes. To operate a firewall, you have to pay two licenses, a firewall node and a network node. If you are a reasonable-sized organization, this gets expensive very quickly."
"Currently, the licensing costs me about $300 USD for the year. This is a huge amount for my environment."
"Skybox comes with extra licenses and has a change management license. The licenses are expensive, but they come with extra value."
"It's expensive."
"The pricing has increased exorbitantly in the last few years, so now it is questionable. Now, it makes me want to review other products."
"I've seen the pricing of every solution on the market. When you compare apples to apples, where Skybox becomes exceedingly expensive is if you look at it compared to something like FireMon that only does a fraction of what Skybox does. But if you include everything that Skybox does, it becomes way more expensive than the competition, but you're also not comparing apples to apples. If you look at FireMon, and you look at like just the firewall assurance piece, they are fairly comparable and, actually, Skybox comes in a little bit cheaper in some cases, depending on which product you're looking at."
"I think for the cost, what we got definitely is worth it. The only caution I would give is that whenever you license for Firewall Assurance at the same time, for some weird reason, you have to get one Network Assurance license, just to manage one firewall. That's a little bit of overkill. But otherwise, in general, the pricing is fairly okay."
"I rate the pricing two on a scale of one to ten, where one is very expensive, and ten is cost-effective."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

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 Business21
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise21
 

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 Skybox Security Suite?
From a commercial perspective, AlgoSec is more expensive compared to Skybox Security Suite. Skybox Security Suite is cost-effective.
What needs improvement with Skybox Security Suite?
The features that I appreciated the most in Skybox Security Suite were not comparable with Tufin, as Tufin was far ahead in terms of the technology and the user interface. The effectiveness of the ...
What is your primary use case for Skybox Security Suite?
Skybox Security Suite is primarily used for allowing access on firewalls and getting the access to allow some connectivity on the firewall.
 

Also Known As

Cisco Defense Orchestrator, CDO
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Insurance Company of British Columbia, Shawmut
ADP, Blue Cross Blue Shield, BT, USAID, Delta Dental, EDF Energy, EMC, HSBC, Johnson & Johnson
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Security Cloud Control vs. Skybox Security Suite and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.