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AWS Firewall Manager vs Cisco Defense Orchestrator comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

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

AWS Firewall Manager
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
8
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
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of AWS Firewall Manager is 5.1%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Defense Orchestrator is 1.2%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewall Security Management
 

Featured Reviews

Bassam Khoreich - PeerSpot reviewer
Automated security operations streamline network protection
I use AWS Firewall Manager primarily for cybersecurity solutions, particularly for AWS Firewall Manager AWS Firewall Manager can be the control plane for multiple deployed applications like CloudFront and any other network firewall, BPF, and VPC. Everything can be managed with one dashboard. It…
Vivek Balaji - PeerSpot reviewer
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The interface is intuitive and it is easy for the users."
"The most valuable feature is the centrally managed rule. I also like the central orchestration."
"It has centralized cloud firewall management rules. It provides compliance in tracking and reporting."
"The most valuable feature is scaling, which allows you to deploy one configuration and scan and deploy it across the network. The automated policy application feature also streamlines security operations."
"AWS Firewall Manager isn't a separate solution when you create the virtual private cloud (VPC), so you can control the traffic through that security group."
"Also, the strength of the community is invaluable."
"The product is highly reliable."
"Once this solution is set up, we hardly have to touch it."
"With Cisco Defense Orchestrator, we can manage the complete Cisco Security solution. It provides a simple and centralized way to manage all products."
"The ability to see the uptimes on the different VPNs that we have configured for site-to-site."
"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."
"This product provides excellent centralized device controls and reporting."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
 

Cons

"It needs to be more employee-friendly, and the security management could be more efficient."
"The product could benefit from improvements in the user interface and integration capabilities."
"They could consider organizing and enhancing documentation in a more structured and chronological manner"
"AWS Firewall Manager should be open to manage other third-party appliances as well."
"Enabling and configuring the logging is not that straightforward."
"I would like to see AWS add some UTM features to the firewall. It would also be great if AWS Firewall had native IPS/IDS. They have the separate IPS/IDS, GuardDuty."
"This solution is suitable for a small-scale enterprise and may not scale up to a very high volume of traffic or a large number of servers."
"The system should be more customizable."
"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."
"I've found dozens of bugs over the year we've been using it. The more I use it for different things, the more problems I find... Most of the problems have to do with the user interface. A lot of thought and work has gone into the back-end component to make the product do what it's intended to do, but the way it is presented for use hasn't gotten nearly as much thought to make it smart and bug-free."
"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."
"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."
"It would be a better product if it incorporated device control for third-party products easily."
"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."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"From what I've heard from my colleagues, it appears that the pricing is competitive, which influenced our decision to choose this option."
"The licensing is on a pay-as-you-go basis and we are billed monthly."
"It is a cost-efficient product."
"The AWS Firewall Manager is a little on the costly side."
"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."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
51%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Legal Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Firewall Manager?
It has centralized cloud firewall management rules. It provides compliance in tracking and reporting.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Firewall Manager?
On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the pricing for AWS Firewall Manager as seven, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.
What needs improvement with AWS Firewall Manager?
AWS Firewall Manager should be open to manage other third-party appliances as well.
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Also Known As

No data available
CDO
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Insurance Company of British Columbia, Shawmut
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Firewall Manager vs. Cisco Defense Orchestrator and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,997 professionals have used our research since 2012.