Cisco Security Cloud Control vs FireMon Security Manager comparison

Cisco Security Cloud Control vs. FireMon Security Manager

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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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

FireMon Security Manager

Ranking in Firewall Security Management

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of Cisco Security Cloud Control is 1.1%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FireMon Security Manager is 17.1%, up from 16.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewall Security Management

Featured Reviews

Vivek Balaji

Technical Director - Cyber Security at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees

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…

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Ganesh-Khutwad

Senior Network Specialist at Tech Mahindra Limited

Rapid policy insights with robust dashboards and cross-vendor automation

FireMon Security Manager is excellent for real-time compliance management. It allows us to quickly retrieve any policy needed for testing and easily analyze it for loopholes. If a loophole exists, FireMon provides comprehensive details within the policy manager. It alerts us to firewall rule additions or changes that violate compliance policies. It supports various firewall platforms, including Checkpoint, Zscaler, Fortinet, Cisco, and AWS, and provides centralized management for all configured policies through a single console. FireMon Security Manager provides many features, like whether my firewall is compatible with required standards such as NTP and SNMP. Each compliance included in our RFPs is shown in the UI of FireMon. It gives robust and clear dashboards, making it easier to understand risks because the policies have ratings showing usage, and the number of hit attacks. It streamlines our compliance reporting processes by providing comprehensive risk and compliance assessments. It offers a range of features, including verification of firewall compatibility with protocols like NTP and SNMP, and detection of signal charges. FireMon effectively addresses all compliance requirements outlined in our RFPs. For instance, it can determine if firewalls or proxies within a stack are configured in Secure Mode or Active-Active mode. FireMon Security Manager enables us to generate reports on all these aspects, ensuring thorough compliance monitoring and documentation. FireMon Security Manager is robust and can help automate firewall policy changes across large multi-vendor enterprise environments. FireMon Security Manager helps automate firewall policy changes across various environments, including on-premises, cloud, hybrid, SASE, and SD-WAN. It also simplifies cleaning up firewall rules in our environment. The time required to accurately create, approve, and deploy firewall policy rules has been reduced. Tasks that took 30 minutes can now be completed in just five minutes using FireMon. FireMon provides immediate visibility into our policies through a robust and clear dashboard, making it easy to identify errors or misconfigurations based on the policy rating.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the automation, as it reduces user intervention and allows us to focus on other tasks."

"This product provides excellent centralized device controls and reporting."

"Cisco Defense Orchestrator has useful guides for the steps that need to follow by users."

"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."

"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."

"With Cisco Defense Orchestrator, we can manage the complete Cisco Security solution. It provides a simple and centralized way to manage all products."

More Cisco Security Cloud Control pros

"It is the single place where we go to review all of our firewall changes. The solution makes it easier for us to track all the changes made. It is a central place where we can look at all the firewall rules, because we have three different firewall vendors. It save us time and creates efficiencies by looking at the general picture."

"The SQL language is convenient to use. It allows us to process a bunch of criteria very quickly and narrows things down if there is an issue with the firewall. It's easy to do that with SQL queries."

"The most valuable feature of FireMon is its ability to configure multiple devices and consolidate them into a single desktop, which allows us to manage all of our security devices, such as Palo Alto and Zscaler, from one place."

"The most valuable feature for me is its capability for cleanup and managing the complexity of security products."

"The most valuable feature is the reporting capability because everything that we do is a result of our being able to query a report, based on our environment and our PCI compliance efforts."

"The most valuable feature is the Firewall reviews for our company compliance."

"It gives us the ability to go to one place to look for potential firewall rules that are inappropriate, or which don't meet compliance. Instead of manually searching hundreds of firewalls for a policy, we can go to this one location and find the rules which are now out of compliance."

"FireMon saves us a lot of time and it's nice because if you're adding a rule that's similar to another rule, it'll tell you so sometimes you can just edit the one and add another source or destination in there without creating a duplicate rule. It enables you to consolidate and have fewer, more meaningful rules. We're saving around 30% of our time."

More FireMon Security Manager pros

Cons

"They need to work on the user interface. It needs to be improved to make it more user-friendly."

"Cisco Defense Orchestrator can improve by providing more support for third-party security components."

"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."

"It should have more features to manage FirePOWER appliances."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Cisco Security Cloud Control cons

"When it comes to documentation, they need to start putting together a basic command manual. With Cisco, you can look up a command and it gives you examples of three or four different ways that command can be used. It tells you how to put it into the GUI and the CLI. FireMon does need to start doing that."

"We're working on implementing FireMon with our ticketing system service now. Having that would be an improvement."

"We have not used the Policy Planner but even so, we have identified areas of improvement with it during our testing. For example, it could be better when it comes to ease of integration or ease of policy automation. Another problem is that there is a console where it has too many options and is not very straightforward. Essentially, controlling it could be made more seamless."

"The current health and monitoring of the devices is atrocious... Imagine you have a list of 200 devices, and you can grade each of those devices as either green, yellow, or red. However, there might be three different reasons for you to go to red, or eight different reasons to go to yellow, and all of those things could be combined... Out of all those categories, I only find one or two of them that are, perhaps, pertinent."

"To my knowledge, there's no cloud component to FireMon whatsoever. We're on the hook for any updates to versioning of the operating system or the application that runs on the operating system. It would be nice if it was a little bit more automated."

"We are looking for more integration with SIEM and other tools."

"The AWS integration is still not mature for us to use. It is just not ready for our use case for AWS connectivity. Therefore, it does not provide us with a single pane of glass for our cloud environments, because we can't manage our cloud environment with the tool."

"FireMon could improve its end-user practices. As an end user, I am just trying to catch up on all the alerts. There are so many, and you still have to go through them and document what was found."

More FireMon Security Manager cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is covered under the CIsco Enterprise License Agreement (ELA). So, it is licensed and ours."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"This is an expensive solution. The cost of three modules for three years was approximately one million."

"FireMon is very expensive. I think that they charge a premium. In general, they are very pricey. Compared to their competitors, they cost a little more than the other solutions that we evaluated."

"FireMon is cheaper than AlgoSec."

"The pricing was very good during our initial year, but they increased it this year a little bit. The price is okay. It is not cheap, but it is still average."

"Relative to what it offers, the price is fair."

"Its pricing is good. Compared to others, it is not so expensive."

"We don't license all of the devices in our network, so it does not provide us with a comprehensive visibility of all devices in a hybrid network at this time."

"Pricing is reasonable."

More FireMon Security Manager pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

50%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

Legal Firm

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

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 FireMon?

I like the Security Manager console where we can see any changes that have been made or pull the results of an assessment and control the policies that we implement.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FireMon?

Comparatively, FireMon has a very good price and is below the general competition in cost. I have not seen any additional fees beyond the general contract fees for the usage I have. So, I have not ...

What needs improvement with FireMon?

For one company I work with, I use Fortinet, and FireMon is not able to understand the zones that Fortinet uses. Part of that compliance piece does not provide me with the necessary information. An...

Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs Cisco Security Cloud Control

Comparisons

Compared 57% of the time

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs Cisco Security Cloud Control

Compared 43% of the time

More Cisco Security Cloud Control Competitors

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 43% of the time

AlgoSec vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 38% of the time

Skybox Security Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 9% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 4% of the time

ManageEngine Firewall Analyzer vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 3% of the time

More FireMon Security Manager Competitors

Product Reports

Cisco Security Cloud Control

Download Cisco Security Cloud Control product report

FireMon Security Manager

Download FireMon Security Manager product report

Also Known As

Cisco Defense Orchestrator, CDO

No data available

Interactive Demo

Cisco

Demo not available

FireMon

Overview

Cisco Security Cloud Control offers centralized management, real-time visibility, and AI-driven automation for on-premises and cloud environments, simplifying scalability and deployment.

With a unified approach, Cisco Security Cloud Control enhances security posture by providing cross-platform insights across Cisco's ecosystem. It accelerates threat detection and optimizes policy enforcement through a blend of AI automation and natural language querying capabilities. The intuitive platform serves multiple devices, enabling comprehensive management of Secure Firewall, Secure Access, and other services with guidance from the Cisco AI Assistant. It also includes an AI Operations feature that identifies critical issues and provides real-time insights, enhancing response times while a policy analyzer improves security hygiene by detecting and closing security gaps. Its automation minimizes manual tasks, secures cloud-stored configurations, and supports two-factor authentication. However, it could benefit from improvements in navigation clarity, bulk change handling, and expanded third-party integrations.

What are the key features of Cisco Security Cloud Control?

Centralized Device Control: Streamlines management with bulk policy upgrades and automation.
AI-Driven Automation: Reduces manual tasks and enhances threat detection.
Network Visibility: Provides insights with valuable reporting and intrusion prevention.
Intuitive Configuration: Enables easy policy adjustments and restoration of secure connections.

What benefits can users anticipate?

Increased Efficiency: Reduces operational overhead with centralized management.
Improved Security: Enhances protection through automated policy enforcement and AI insights.
Time Savings: Simplifies management of multiple devices in cloud and on-premises environments.
Scalability: Supports growth with ease of deployment and policy consistency.

Industries implementing Cisco Security Cloud Control leverage its capabilities for tasks ranging from firewall management to intrusion prevention. Enterprises use it to streamline policy management, automate configurations, and integrate Cisco devices with cloud strategies, benefiting from simplified security orchestration and network segmentation.

Cisco

The increasing complexity of networks, driven by the constant influx of new devices, applications, and cloud services, presents a daunting challenge for managing firewall policies and rules. A typical enterprise environment has millions of rules, and just one simple misconfiguration can lead to devastating consequences like compliance violations, outages, and data breaches.

FireMon’s Security Manager is a purpose-built network security policy management (NSPM) platform that automates the management of firewall and cloud security policies to eliminate policy-related risk, accurately and quickly change rules, and meet internal and external compliance requirements.

Reduce Risk Manage risk with real-time visibility and control
Manage Change Avoid misconfigurations, accelerate business, and improve security
Enforce and Maintain Compliance Avoid violations, avoid risk, and avoid fines

FireMon

Sample Customers

Insurance Company of British Columbia, Shawmut

Convey, MGM Resorts International, Southwest Airlines, Alkami, Costco, Aetna, IBM, Verizon, Wells Fargo

Cisco Security Cloud Control vs. FireMon Security Manager