Cisco Security Cloud Control vs FireMon Security Manager comparison

Cisco and FireMon are both solutions in the Firewall Security Management category. Cisco is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.0, while FireMon is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.2. Cisco holds a 2.7% mindshare in Firewall Security Management, compared to FireMon’s 17.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of FireMon users who would recommend it.

Cisco Security Cloud Control

Read 15 Cisco Security Cloud Control reviews

928 Views
928 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

FireMon Security Manager

Read 57 FireMon Security Manager reviews

3,576 Views
3,469 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Cisco Security Cloud Control

FireMon Security Manager

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

FireMon Security Manager and Cisco Security Cloud Control are key players in network security management. FireMon appears to have an edge due to its advanced analytics and wide vendor support.

Features: FireMon Security Manager provides robust features including redundant ACL analysis, policy trace, graphical views, rule management, Security Manager, and Risk Analyzer. Cisco offers centralized device control, automation, and integration but lacks some of the advanced analytics found in FireMon.

Room for Improvement: FireMon users desire better network map customization, improved rule integration, and simplified reporting. Cisco users suggest enhancement in user interface, third-party support, and report customization.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: FireMon is primarily on-premises with hybrid cloud support and responsive customer service. Cisco spans both public and private cloud deployments, excelling in cloud support and training, but integration aspects need improvement.

Pricing and ROI: FireMon is seen as expensive but balanced with structured licensing and significant ROI in automation and security. Cisco's comprehensive capabilities justify its cost for heavily invested users, offering value despite high investment.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Security Cloud Control vs. FireMon Security Manager Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Security Cloud Control vs. FireMon Security Manager

December 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

Cisco Security Cloud Control

Ranking in Firewall Security Management

13th

Average Rating

8.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

FireMon Security Manager

Ranking in Firewall Security Management

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of Cisco Security Cloud Control is 2.7%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FireMon Security Manager is 17.9%, up from 16.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewall Security Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
FireMon Security Manager	17.9%
Cisco Security Cloud Control	2.7%
Other	79.4%

Firewall Security Management

Featured Reviews

Francisco Delos Santos

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,…

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Kallamuddin Ansari

Cyber Security Consultant at ProTechmanize

Centralized firewall oversight has transformed policy audits and now streamlines risk reviews

The best features of FireMon Security Manager are centralized firewall visibility, policy risk analysis, and compliance reporting. It provides a single view across all firewalls, helps quickly identify risks and unused rules, and generates audit-ready reports, which is extremely useful in large, regulated environments. Change tracking is also very helpful, as it shows who changed what and when, reducing the risk of misconfiguration. The change tracking feature has helped our team by giving clear visibility into what rule was changed, when it was changed, and whether it introduced any risk. This has reduced troubleshooting time and helped us quickly validate changes during audit and incident review. Policy risk analysis and unused rule identification are also very valuable, especially in large environments, as they have helped us continuously reduce risk and keep firewall policies clean. The reporting and dashboard visibility are worth highlighting. FireMon Security Manager makes it easy to share clear, understandable reports with auditors and management, which saves time and reduces back-and-forth during review. FireMon Security Manager has had a very positive impact on our organization by reducing manual effort and improving overall security posture. It helped us gain centralized visibility across a large firewall environment, reduce risk and unused rules, and significantly shorten the time required for audit and policy reviews. It has also improved change control and accountability, which reduced configuration errors and operational risk.

Read full review

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."

"If our server is blocked, this solution shows us why it is blocked and allows us to update the network routing."

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

"The bulk changes feature is definitely the most valuable."

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

"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."

"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."

More Cisco Security Cloud Control pros

"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."

"Firewall auditing is very important. We also use the solution for rule traffic analysis, traffic flow discovery and hidden/shadow rules within over 100 firewalls spanning five different brands."

"Overall, I would rate this solution a nine out of ten."

"When it comes to real-time compliance management, it is very good because it is able to compare changes in the configuration as well as giving us a timestamp. It also sends email alerts to our environment so we know if someone has made a change on the network. It gives us the whole picture of that change. Whether it is a configuration change or just a small comment, it gives us the before and after snapshot."

"In one report, FireMon tells us there are, say, 1,000 rules that can be taken out and it gives us the ability to disable those for a year and to track when we made our changes. After a year, we can go back and eliminate the rules, to bring the configuration down to an almost human-readable level."

"The most effective feature is the general reporting on compliance."

"The most valuable features are the security assessments and the ability to identify unused rules or objects."

"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."

More FireMon Security Manager pros

Cons

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"If I make a change locally to the firewall, CDO gives an alarm or an error message and says there's a change in compliance: "The firewall has this configuration but the last time it was compiled it had that configuration." That view of new changes versus the old could be better... I had to log in manually, locally on the firewall, to check which version, which configuration was actually running. I couldn't see it in CDO."

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

More Cisco Security Cloud Control cons

"The initial setup can take some time, including connecting it and configuring it. It's not something that is easy for anybody to do. There is time and energy required because of the number of systems you have to configure to get it to work properly."

"The cost of the solution is pretty expensive. It would be ideal if they could work on their pricing."

"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."

"When it comes to real-time compliance management, something that is missing is alerting on certain, predefined controls. It would be good to have a predefined set of controls which, if not complied with in a newly set up rule, would create an alert for us. That is something that is missing, out-of-the-box."

"Some of the core functionality in our environment doesn't seem to work. We will get buggy code releases. They need to work on their Q&A of every code release."

"The training for configuring new users or operators is confusing because the UI is not user-friendly and has room for improvement."

"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."

"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."

More FireMon Security Manager cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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'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."

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

"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."

"Pricing model seems fair."

"It's a good value. From a licensing standpoint... it's very simple to understand, and gives us a good bang for the buck."

"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."

"We pay for it yearly."

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

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

"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."

"Regarding additional costs, if you want things like Policy Optimizer, extra features, that's extra."

More FireMon Security Manager pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

25%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Performing Arts

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	45

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...

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

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FireMon?

Our experience with FireMon Security Manager's pricing and licensing is that it is on the higher side, but justified for a large, regulated environment. The setup cost and licensing made sense give...

See all answers

What needs improvement with FireMon?

FireMon Security Manager is a strong platform. However, it could be improved with a more intuitive user interface and faster initial onboarding for new users. Simplifying some workflows and dashboa...

See all answers

Comparisons

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs Cisco Security Cloud Control

Compared 20% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs Cisco Security Cloud Control

Compared 13% of the time

Skybox Security Suite vs Cisco Security Cloud Control

Compared 13% of the time

AlgoSec vs Cisco Security Cloud Control

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiPortal vs Cisco Security Cloud Control

Compared 6% of the time

More Cisco Security Cloud Control Competitors

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 37% of the time

AlgoSec vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 34% of the time

Skybox Security Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 8% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 5% of the time

AWS Firewall Manager vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 1% of the time

More FireMon Security Manager Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Security Cloud Control

January 2026

Download Cisco Security Cloud Control product report

Buyer's Guide

FireMon Security Manager

January 2026

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

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Security Cloud Control vs. FireMon Security Manager

December 2025

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