AlgoSec vs Cisco Defense Orchestrator comparison

AlgoSec and Cisco are both solutions in the Firewall Security Management category. AlgoSec is ranked #1 with an average rating of 9.0, while Cisco is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.0. AlgoSec holds a 22.3% mindshare in Firewall Security Management, compared to Cisco’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of AlgoSec users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Cisco users who would recommend it.

AlgoSec

Read 183 AlgoSec reviews

9,910 Views
4,303 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Cisco Defense Orchestrator

Read 15 Cisco Defense Orchestrator reviews

724 Views
243 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

AlgoSec

Cisco Defense Orchestrator

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

AlgoSec and Cisco Defense Orchestrator compete in network security management, with Cisco Defense Orchestrator holding the upper hand due to its robust features and perceived value for the price.

Features: AlgoSec offers comprehensive policy analysis, risk management, and compliance assurance capabilities. Cisco Defense Orchestrator provides powerful automation, multi-vendor support, and streamlined policy change management, making it suitable for complex network environments with better integration and scalability.

Room for Improvement: AlgoSec could benefit from enhancements in automation and scalability to better serve large enterprises. Improving user interface and integration capabilities would also enhance its appeal. Cisco Defense Orchestrator could improve customer support response times, offer more flexible pricing options, and increase compatibility with various network components.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AlgoSec features a flexible deployment model with strong customer support, ideal for smaller networks. Cisco Defense Orchestrator's cloud-based model simplifies deployment for large-scale operations but faces challenges with support response times.

Pricing and ROI: AlgoSec is recognized for its competitive setup cost and cost-effective policy management, delivering a good ROI. Cisco Defense Orchestrator may have higher initial costs but justifies them with significant ROI through enhanced security features and operational efficiencies, especially valuable for large enterprises.

To learn more, read our detailed AlgoSec vs. Cisco Defense Orchestrator Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AlgoSec vs. Cisco Defense Orchestrator

March 2025

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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

AlgoSec

Ranking in Firewall Security Management

1st

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

183

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Cisco Defense Orchestrator

Ranking in Firewall Security Management

14th

Average Rating

8.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of AlgoSec is 22.3%, up from 19.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Defense Orchestrator is 1.1%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewall Security Management

Featured Reviews

Shameerudheen Kp

Manager, MS Operations at NTT Security

Easy to setup with good auto-implementation and good rule reviews

AlgoSec is slow when it is loaded with too many firewalls and policies. A plan to take care of heavy usage is to be considered. Support of all firewalls and policy features to be enabled. AlgoSec should support in identifying most hit rules and re-ordering existing firewall rules - this is a very key to manage firewall CPU. A clustering of AlgoSec can also be considered. A group of AlgoSec servers managing large client bases geographically or datacenter-wise or function-wise. A head reporting unit and child processing units.

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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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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 unused rule optimization, where it clears the policy when appropriate."

"The most valuable feature is the Firewall Analyser, which has a number of fantastic features."

"It has reduced the workload for the firewall team thanks to the API integration with our ticketing system, handling the standard types of requests automatically."

"We were able to improve the security ratings of our firewalls."

"The product gave us more agility on the process to analyze and resolve tickets by requesting permissions to access services not enabled by default."

"The most valuable feature is traffic simulation because, with this function, it has become more practical to know if something is released or blocked in my environment."

"The most valuable feature is the reporting, including the policy report and regulatory compliance reports."

"It helps in regulatory compliance metrics and overall firewall security optimization."

More AlgoSec pros

"For this product, they are very uncharacteristically interested in resolving whatever issue the customer reports. They're really attentive, and they address whatever we bring up as quickly as they can. That's been a very positive aspect of the product."

"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."

"When we're looking to the policies, it identifies the shadow rules. It notifies us about anything that will supersede other rules."

"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."

"The ability to see the uptimes on the different VPNs that we have configured for site-to-site."

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

"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."

"The most valuable feature is being able to do centralized upgrades on the ASAs. We can select all of those ASAs, and say, "Upgrade these ASAs at this scheduled time." It will copy down the ASA image, ASDM image, and then do the upgrade and failovers, and then put it all back into service as required at a scheduled time. It automates that process for us."

More Cisco Defense Orchestrator pros

Cons

"We are using AlgoSec directly against our Cisco Firepower. At first, AlgoSec didn't work with Firepower. It didn't know how to read the logs. So, improvement has been made. Now, the feature that was available on the older generation firewall is available on the current one, but this is a problem which has already been dealt with."

"The user interface for AlgoSec has remained unchanged for the last ten years and could benefit from being more interactive and informative."

"Environments with many devices need a lot of hardware resources to avoid slowdowns."

"More scope for editing alerts would be a welcome change."

"A more granular approach and the possibility to separate data and show relevant data to specific key roles or key users would be a great achievement in future releases."

"Algosec should also be exploring the integration with the open source firewalls as well."

"One important thing they should improve is their support level. We have a lot of trouble with the basic enterprise support level. They are very slow to respond and solve problems."

"It would be nice if it was more variable when checking virtual domain baseline in the same way as Fortigate's firewalls do."

More AlgoSec cons

"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."

"The dashboard needs to be more customizable to provide better reporting for our network."

"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."

"It would be a better product if it incorporated device control for third-party products easily."

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

"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."

"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."

More Cisco Defense Orchestrator cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is offered as a subscription and as a perpetual model."

"I compared the prices of AlgoSec with Tufin and FireMon. I don't recall the exact cost, but it was within budget and not very expensive. In addition to standard licensing fees, we didn't have any significant additional costs. We did hire new people for the change management process, but that's not a technology issue."

"Pricing is great if you have a small number of large firewalls, otherwise, it does not bring ROI."

"The licensing is very easy to set up, with flexible licensing methods such as subscription and perpetual."

"My advice is that you must do a POC and show value."

"The price is high but the support is extremely poor, so keep that in mind before choosing this product."

"It is fair."

"Pricing is okay and the licensing can be a little tricky with the initial setup."

More AlgoSec pricing and cost advice

"It's around £500 per unit for a three-year license."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Computer Software Company

51%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Legal Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AlgoSec?

AlgoSec's ability to integrate with various security and networking solutions enhances its overall value.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AlgoSec?

I am into operations and not aware of cost or pricing.

See all answers

What needs improvement with AlgoSec?

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs AlgoSec

Compared 34% of the time

FireMon Security Manager vs AlgoSec

Compared 27% of the time

Skybox Security Suite vs AlgoSec

Compared 18% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs AlgoSec

Compared 7% of the time

Azure Firewall Manager vs AlgoSec

Compared 1% of the time

More AlgoSec Competitors

Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs Cisco Defense Orchestrator

Compared 39% of the time

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs Cisco Defense Orchestrator

Compared 32% of the time

More Cisco Defense Orchestrator Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AlgoSec

March 2025

Download AlgoSec product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Defense Orchestrator

March 2025

Download Cisco Defense Orchestrator product report

Also Known As

No data available

CDO

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

AlgoSec

Cisco

Overview

AlgoSec, a global cybersecurity leader, empowers organizations to secure application connectivity and cloud-native applications throughout their multi-cloud and hybrid network. Trusted by more than 1,800 of the world’s leading organizations, AlgoSec’s application-centric approach enables to securely accelerate business application deployment by centrally managing application connectivity and security policies across the public clouds, private clouds, containers, and on-premises networks. Using its unique vendor-agnostic deep algorithm for intelligent change management automation, AlgoSec enables acceleration of digital transformation projects, helps prevent business application downtime and substantially reduces manual work and exposure to security risks. AlgoSec’s policy management and CNAPP platforms provide a single source for visibility into security and compliance issues within cloud-native applications as well as across the hybrid network environment, to ensure ongoing adherence to internet security standards, industry, and internal regulations. Learn how AlgoSec enables application owners, information security experts, DevSecOps and cloud security teams to deploy business applications up to 10 times faster while maintaining security at www.algosec.com.

AlgoSec

Cisco Defense Orchestrator (CDO) is a cloud-based management solution designed to ensure streamlined and consistent security policies across the Cisco security portfolio. Specifically tailored to manage all Cisco Secure Firewall form factors (running either ASA or Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) software), CDO offers real-time visibility and troubleshooting capabilities, effectively enhancing overall network security.

CDO addresses the challenges of migration, supporting transitions from on-premises to cloud environments and facilitating the shift from ASA to FTD configurations. As organizations embark on their cloud adoption journey, CDO simplifies provisioning workflows for remote branches, reduces operational expenditures related to inventory management, and offers scalability for multi-cloud deployments.

Cisco

Sample Customers

Maersk, Delta Airlines, Chevron, General Motors, T-Mobile, Chevron, AT&T, BP, Bell Canada, HCA Healthcare, Morgan Stanley, Unilever, Nationwide Insurance Enterprise, US Bank, Microsoft

Insurance Company of British Columbia, Shawmut

Buyer's Guide

AlgoSec vs. Cisco Defense Orchestrator

March 2025

Free Report: AlgoSec vs. Cisco Defense Orchestrator

Find out what your peers are saying about AlgoSec vs. Cisco Defense Orchestrator and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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