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Cisco DNA Center vs FireMon Asset Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 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 DNA Center
Ranking in Network Management Applications
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (20th), Network Automation (2nd)
FireMon Asset Manager
Ranking in Network Management Applications
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (11th), Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management (CAASM) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of Cisco DNA Center is 7.8%, down from 23.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FireMon Asset Manager is 1.1%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco DNA Center7.8%
FireMon Asset Manager1.1%
Other91.1%
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

Mahir Öztürk - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at NGN Bilgi ve İletişim Hizmetleri
Client history has helped resolve past network issues more efficiently
I mostly use the client history feature of Cisco DNA Center. I didn't use the real-time monitoring capability of Cisco DNA Center because I primarily used it for client history regarding issues and problems. I don't use it for real-time monitoring. If there is a problem, I can inspect the situation and see what is happening, which is beneficial.
MC
Business Continuity And Disaster Recovery Manager at Cadence Bank
Continuous asset discovery has strengthened audits and BCDR planning but reporting needs improvement
FireMon Asset Manager supports my disaster recovery and business continuity planning through continuous real-time discovery, which is the foundation of everything. The fact that it's not a point-in-time scan, but ongoing, passive and active discovery, means my inventory is always current. That's what makes it useful for BCDR, where stale data is dangerous. The best features FireMon Asset Manager offers include leak path detection, which is genuinely valuable. It identifies rogue internet connectivity, unauthorized connections, and paths in and out of the network that shouldn't exist. In a bank, that's both a security concern and a BCDR concern because undocumented network paths create recovery risks I don't know I have. The topology mapping is also excellent. Being able to visualize how assets connect to each other and to the network helps my BCDR team understand dependencies between systems, which is critical for sequencing recovery procedures correctly. If I'm recovering a system, I need to know what it depends on and what depends on it. FireMon Asset Manager has positively impacted my organization primarily on our audit and examination posture. Before FireMon Asset Manager, when examiners asked about our asset inventory, I was presenting data I knew had gaps and hoping nobody looked too closely. Now I can walk into an examination with a continuously updated, discovery-validated asset inventory and answer those questions with confidence. That's a qualitative shift, but it has real consequences. Examination findings in banking are not trivial. This shift has led to measurable outcomes, such as reducing the time to compile our annual BIA asset inventory from roughly three weeks of manual effort down to essentially a report pull. That's significant staff time saved. I've also seen our CMDB accuracy improve. FireMon Asset Manager's continuous discovery keeps finding things that manual processes miss. And from a regulatory standpoint, I've had two examinations since deploying FireMon Asset Manager, and in both cases, the asset inventory questions that were previously a weakness in our program were answered cleanly. That's the metric that matters most in a regulated banking environment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The advice I would give to other people who want to use Cisco DNA Center is to go for it, particularly if they have Cisco infrastructure, though these days integration could be an issue."
"What's most valuable in Cisco DNA Center is the ability to manage any Cisco infrastructure and device through it. Setup was straightforward."
"Cisco DNA Center is a user-friendly solution."
"The monitoring features are very useful for network engineers."
"What I found valuable in Cisco DNA Center is the Software-Defined Access Network, so the entire LAN network can be centralized and managed from a single dashboard. Cisco DNA Center is suitable for centralized management and lets you deploy switches in a centralized fashion. You can also do multiple switch port configurations simultaneously and segregate your traffic into multiple fabrics. Another valuable feature of Cisco DNA Center is enhanced security through Scalable Group Tags. Cisco DNA Center can be integrated with your Cisco ISE to enhance the port securities, and this paves the way for Software-Defined Networking in the LAN segment, which is the main advantage of Cisco DNA Center. I also like that you can use Cisco DNA Center for data assurance or correlation. The solution shows your network and client health parameters, which I find convenient for troubleshooting."
"The biggest lesson that I have learned from working with this solution is that this technology is much easier now."
"It enables monitoring of various components such as access points, switch cards, and other elements within the company's solutions."
"My advice to others is if you are a large enough company to have the Cisco DNA Center technology, you must try it because for a large enterprise or multi-site organization it's impressive and it saves a lot of money and time."
"The most valuable feature is the change modules. Whenever there is a change in the firewall, it automatically reflects on FireMon."
"The most valuable aspects of FireMon Asset Manager are its integrations and its ability to passively monitor the network for unknown assets."
"FireMon Asset Manager supports my disaster recovery and business continuity planning through continuous real-time discovery, which is the foundation of everything."
"FireMon Asset Manager fills a genuine gap in network security visibility that many organizations underestimate."
"It offers a single platform for managing firewalls of different brands and simplifies policy deployment and auditing. It helps push policies to different firewalls, and it also helps with policy auditing."
"Now I can walk into an examination with a continuously updated, discovery-validated asset inventory, and I can answer those questions with confidence."
 

Cons

"In my opinion, the client history in Cisco DNA Center can be longer than 10 days, perhaps extending to 15 or 20 days."
"The tool's deployment is complex. It also needs to improve its GUI."
"The pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Cisco DNA Center are expensive."
"The solution's technical support is an area with which my company's clients have a problem. Cisco doesn't provide good technical support unless a user has a big account that Cisco wants to retain."
"It's a very good product, however, it comes with a very high price."
"They can improve the network visibility. Licensing and its maintenance are also needed."
"The solution's integration feature can be better."
"As a user, it would be good if I could plug in controllers, suites, and devices from other vendors to Cisco DNA Center."
"I find that FireMon Asset Manager's reporting customization is more limited than I would like."
"The biggest friction point or frustration I have encountered with FireMon Asset Manager is the support experience being inconsistent."
"While passive discovery remains important, active retrieval of asset details would be valuable, and this functionality is starting to be implemented, as I've observed in recent updates but it is not fully there yet."
"The discovery process could be improved. If incorrect credentials are entered, it should give an error message. That would make our work easy rather than having to troubleshoot why the issue is occurring."
"FireMon Asset Manager can be improved in reporting customization, which is more limited than I'd prefer."
"It is not very good at monitoring the Check Point firewall, but it works very well with other firewalls such as Palo Alto, Fortinet, and Cisco ASA."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We get a yearly license at the time we buy the product."
"The tool is medium-priced."
"Licensing for Cisco DNA Center is a little bit expensive, just like any Cisco solution. Its cost could still be improved."
"I rate the product's pricing an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive."
"The licensing cost for Cisco DNA Center is not more than that of other solutions."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"Cisco DNA Center is a licensed product with multiple levels of licensing available such as basic, advanced, and essential. I don't have the exact figure, but Cisco DNA Center is costly. For example, the box has information about the essential license and costs a considerable amount of money. You need to pay extra to use advanced features in Cisco DNA Center. My company sees Cisco DNA Center as a solution that's worth the money, which is why it invested in the solution. If you want centralized management for your network, especially when upgrading it, Cisco DNA Center is perfect, but it's more suitable for a large-scale rather than a small-scale network."
"The partnership price is notably high, but it ultimately depends on the chosen business model."
"FireMon Asset Manager's pricing has been reasonable and has worked well for us from a licensing standpoint."
"FireMon is more expensive than other brands but justified by its comprehensive feature set. It includes several functions that might require additional subscriptions in other solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Outsourcing Company
23%
Comms Service Provider
18%
Insurance Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco DNA Center?
After evaluating other solutions, we will provide feedback.
What needs improvement with Cisco DNA Center?
The deployment of Cisco DNA Center was complex due to the fact that on the data center side, we have a Juniper infrastructure, which created some complexity, though not significant. The deployment ...
What is your primary use case for Cisco DNA Center?
In my organization, we currently have some Cisco devices such as access switches, and we also have infrastructure, but that is not part of our responsibility. We do not manage that infrastructure. ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FireMon Asset Manager?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing reveals that it's not inexpensive. The license cost is manageable in the context of our overall security budget, but the professional services ...
What needs improvement with FireMon Asset Manager?
The biggest friction point or frustration I have encountered with FireMon Asset Manager is the support experience being inconsistent. Response times can be slow when I have a complex technical issu...
What is your primary use case for FireMon Asset Manager?
My main use case for FireMon Asset Manager is continuous network asset discovery and visibility. We have a complex hybrid environment with a mix of on-premises, cloud, and OT devices, and keeping a...
 

Also Known As

DNA Center
No data available
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco DNA Center vs. FireMon Asset Manager and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.