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Cisco Security Cloud Control vs FireMon Security Manager comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 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
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
FireMon Security Manager
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of Cisco Security Cloud Control is 4.7%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FireMon Security Manager is 12.6%, down from 17.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewall Security Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FireMon Security Manager12.6%
Cisco Security Cloud Control4.7%
Other82.7%
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,…
SurajYadav - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Consultant at NTT DATA
Centralized policy governance has reduced audit effort and continuously improves risk visibility
I wish to see deeper and more customizable reporting and dashboards, as while the standard reports are useful for audits, operational teams sometimes need real-time, flexible views without exporting data. Tighter integrations with ticketing and change management tools would also enhance the workflow from request to implementation. FireMon Security Manager is excellent for policy governance and risk reduction, but better real-time dashboards and stronger workflow integrations would make it even more powerful for daily operations. There are one or two areas where FireMon Security Manager could be improved to make it even stronger. While FireMon Security Manager overall delivers solid governance and risk insight, it would benefit from more flexible dashboards and deeper integrations to reduce manual steps and improve visibility without relying on external tools. I rate FireMon Security Manager an 8 out of 10. It is a strong tool for firewall policy management, risk analysis, and compliance, clearly improving our audit process and policy governance. The reason I do not give it a 9 out of 10 is mainly because the dashboard could be more flexible and integration with the firewalls could be smoother. FireMon Security Manager is a reliable and high-value platform for managing and governing firewall policies, especially in a multi-vendor environment, though a few areas can still be improved.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"When we're looking to the policies, it identifies the shadow rules. It notifies us about anything that will supersede other rules."
"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 main return on investment is time, and the first time a firewall went down the savings probably exceeded what CDO costs."
"This product provides excellent centralized device controls and reporting."
"If we have a firewall go down, I can hop into CDO, pull the latest configuration off and apply it. That's really good. It helps save time."
"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."
"Before CDO, we had to spend hours and hours to update ten devices, but now, with one simple click, we select the devices, set them to update on a given day, save different configurations, and it's pretty simple and a great feature for us."
"For one particular client, we had almost a 20 percent remediation on some of their equipment as a result of all kinds of attacks from the desktop department, and we got them down to a zero percent remediation."
"FireMon has provided us with a better view into our environment."
"We have quite a large Check Point environment (>60) with a lot of rules, and reports may be a bit slow but they are so valuable that they are worth the wait."
"FireMon decreases errors and misconfigurations by 10% that increase risk in our environment. That has to do a lot with the change reporting that is in place, but also with the built-in controls and custom controls that we have made. Those all decrease the errors that people naturally make on a day-to-day basis for firewall administration."
"It does what it does and it does it well."
"Overall, I would rate this solution a nine out of ten."
"It is a very good product; I always tell others to have FireMon people come and give a demo and encourage people to try it out."
"The most valuable feature is that everything is recorded in the historical logs, including the firewall rules, headcounts, object-level usage, and the rule documentation. The rule certification details are also there, which means that someone can be held accountable for a specific firewall rule."
"Vendor agnostic when it comes to integrating with other product."
 

Cons

"They can also provide an on-premises solution. Currently, Cisco Defense Orchestrator is just for cloud deployments, not for on-premises deployments."
"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."
"If I had to say anything negative it's the price point."
"Right now, there's no benefit to doing changes through CDO; it doesn't save me time."
"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."
"They need to work on the user interface. It needs to be improved to make it more user-friendly."
"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."
"Our experience with FireMon Security Manager pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been reliable but not impressive or inexpensive."
"FireMon Security Manager requires maintenance on my end. We have to pull retrievals, and the retrievals fail many times, and sometimes they succeed."
"When we transferred from one release to the next, the most recent upgrade, the integration with Check Point gateways was very poor and so it was for almost a year that the product was unusable to us."
"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."
"Sometimes, there is a problem related to the sizing itself. If we have many devices added or if the firewall complexity is huge, we might experience some lag in processing. It may relate to the hardware specifications."
"Yes, after an upgrade to version 8 from version 7, we experienced several issues with the Data Collector component."
"FireMon doesn't scale well enough with the complexity of our Palo Alto environment yet."
"We have had some stability issues that are affecting operations. We rely heavily on this solution and if it isn't working then we have to create rules manually."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's around £500 per unit for a three-year license."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Regarding additional costs, if you want things like Policy Optimizer, extra features, that's extra."
"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."
"The pricing is very good, very straightforward. It also came in cheaper than AlgoSec and Tufin."
"FireMon is cheaper than AlgoSec."
"Pricing model seems fair."
"We pay for it yearly."
"Pricing is reasonable."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

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 Business22
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise52
 

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 FireMon?
The initial attraction to FireMon Security Manager was primarily due to its pricing. While it is cheaper than Tufin, I do not recall if AlgoSec was cheaper. Pricing strategies depend on individual ...
What needs improvement with FireMon?
The only feedback I would like to give is that we were requesting them to move to SaaS so that the upgradation and everything would be a little more automatic or maybe just easier.
What is your primary use case for FireMon?
I use FireMon Security Manager as a compliance tool to check rule compliance and firewall rule compliance.
 

Also Known As

Cisco Defense Orchestrator, CDO
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Insurance Company of British Columbia, Shawmut
Convey, MGM Resorts International, Southwest Airlines, Alkami, Costco, Aetna, IBM, Verizon, Wells Fargo
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Security Cloud Control vs. FireMon Security Manager and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.