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Cisco Defense Orchestrator vs Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

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
Cisco Secure Firewall Manag...
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of Cisco Defense Orchestrator is 1.2%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewall Security Management
 

Featured Reviews

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…
Awais Ejaz - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable and reasonably priced product that protects organizations from malware
The product must improve its performance. When we push policies from the console, it takes a lot of time. It takes five to seven minutes to push one policy. If someone pushes a wrong policy and there is an outage in the banking system, they would have to wait six to seven minutes to revert it. We have highlighted this issue to Cisco. A year ago, we told Cisco that we need APIs for integration with SOAR for pushing policies. We cannot push policies or run playbooks from SOAR to block any IOCs on the web and email gateway because Cisco doesn’t expose the APIs. It is one thing for which we have been following up with Cisco for the last year, but I don't think they've developed the API integration. Palo Alto and Fortinet provide this feature to their users.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This product provides excellent centralized device controls and reporting."
"The bulk changes feature is definitely the most valuable."
"With Cisco Defense Orchestrator, we can manage the complete Cisco Security solution. It provides a simple and centralized way to manage all products."
"If our server is blocked, this solution shows us why it is blocked and allows us to update the network routing."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 tool helps with internet access protection."
"The tool's deployment is not complex."
"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The policy management capabilities streamline security tasks by facilitating policy configuration. This ensures the impactful implementation of security policies during product installation, enhancing overall security measures."
"The solution has a great UI and a policy deployment mechanism, and all the configuration is easily manageable for the firewalls."
"Cisco's support and services are far superior to any other security product in Pakistan."
"It's a fine solution in terms of scalability."
"The platform's most valuable feature has been its centralized management capability, which allows us to monitor and control multiple devices from one location."
 

Cons

"Cisco Defense Orchestrator can improve by providing more support for third-party security components."
"It would be a better product if it incorporated device control for third-party products easily."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"They need to work on the user interface. It needs to be improved to make it more user-friendly."
"There could be some slight improvements to navigation. In some of the navigation you've got to go back to be able to get into where you need to be once you've made a change. If I make a change, I've then got to go back to submit and send the change."
"The dashboard needs to be more customizable to provide better reporting for our network."
"Cisco Firepower has been effective in solving various problems, but it could be improved by making it simpler and more user-friendly like Fortinet."
"The solution could improve the number of ports available and load balancing."
"Improving the product by incorporating SD-WAN functionality would be highly beneficial, especially for remote offices with limited server and Internet availability."
"It's not very user-friendly and can be somewhat disorganized."
"The IOS and the deploy option could be improved."
"The first version had a lot of bugs, but the recent versions have sorted them out."
"Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center's logging functionality could be improved."
"The interface is an area that could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's around £500 per unit for a three-year license."
"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."
"It is covered under the CIsco Enterprise License Agreement (ELA). So, it is licensed and ours."
"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."
"I rate Secure Firewall Management Center eight out of 10 for pricing."
"As for pricing, the tool is expensive for us. I'd rate it eight out of ten on a scale where ten is the most expensive."
"The price of the solution is expensive. We do not have to pay more than the standard licensing fees."
"The solution is not expensive."
"It is rather expensive."
"The product pricing is reasonable and falls in the mid-range."
"I rate the tool's pricing a four out of ten. The licensing costs are yearly."
"When you are using a Cisco solution you know it will be expensive. Cisco makes you pay for everything individually. We pay for the licenses that we need."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
50%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
3%
Government
19%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Engineering Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What do you like most about Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center?
The platform has significantly enhanced our organization's operations by providing secure communication channels between different office locations.
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center?
We encountered challenges, particularly when building use cases for this firewall, as it requires specific OS versions and firmware upgrades, which can lead to increased downtime. It adds an admini...
 

Also Known As

CDO
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Learn More

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Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Insurance Company of British Columbia, Shawmut
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Defense Orchestrator vs. Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.