Cisco Security Cloud Control vs FireMon Security Manager comparison

Cisco Security Cloud Control vs. FireMon Security Manager

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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 January 2026, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of Cisco Security Cloud Control is 2.5%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FireMon Security Manager is 17.6%, up from 16.3% 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	17.6%
Cisco Security Cloud Control	2.5%
Other	79.9%

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.

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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 Intrusion prevention."

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

"The most valuable feature is the automation, as it reduces user intervention and allows us to focus on other tasks."

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

"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."

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

"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."

More Cisco Security Cloud Control pros

"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."

"Policy test, access path analysis, and change reports."

"We also use the solution’s SASE integration capabilities to extend security policy management for cloud firewall management. It helps in creating one consistent rule across multiple platforms and it improves accuracy."

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

"FireMon saves us a lot of time and it's nice because if you're adding a rule that's similar to another rule, it'll tell you so sometimes you can just edit the one and add another source or destination in there without creating a duplicate rule. It enables you to consolidate and have fewer, more meaningful rules. We're saving around 30% of our time."

"The ease of use is the most valuable feature. There are a lot of products out there, but the ability to navigate through and use Firemon is very good."

"FireMon Security Manager has had a very positive impact on our organization by reducing manual effort and improving overall security posture."

"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."

"It should have more features to manage FirePOWER appliances."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Cisco Defense Orchestrator can improve by providing more support for third-party security components."

More Cisco Security Cloud Control cons

"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."

"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."

"I don't like that it comes with bugs, constant issues, and limited functionality."

"FireMon could be easier to use and flexibility regarding reporting could be improved."

"The support response time has room for improvement."

"We're working on implementing FireMon with our ticketing system service now. Having that would be an improvement."

"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."

"I think that having a more open system and providing documentation for it would be helpful for users like us. We are pretty adept and can navigate through the Linux software that the on-premises FireMon is based on. It would help us in the long run."

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."

"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."

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

"If you compare to what is available on the market, they are in the same range with respect to pricing."

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

"FireMon is cheaper than AlgoSec."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"Pricing is reasonable."

More FireMon Security Manager pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

38%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Performing Arts

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

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	10
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	44

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 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.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FireMon?

Comparatively, FireMon has a very good price and is below the general competition in cost. I have not seen any additional fees beyond the general contract fees for the usage I have. So, I have not ...

What needs improvement with FireMon?

For one company I work with, I use Fortinet, and FireMon is not able to understand the zones that Fortinet uses. Part of that compliance piece does not provide me with the necessary information. An...

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs Cisco Security Cloud Control

Comparisons

Compared 22% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs Cisco Security Cloud Control

Compared 15% of the time

AlgoSec vs Cisco Security Cloud Control

Compared 12% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate Cloud vs Cisco Security Cloud Control

Compared 12% of the time

Skybox Security Suite vs Cisco Security Cloud Control

Compared 8% of the time

More Cisco Security Cloud Control Competitors

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 42% of the time

AlgoSec vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 35% of the time

Skybox Security Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 9% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 4% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 1% of the time

More FireMon Security Manager Competitors

Product Reports

Cisco Security Cloud Control

Download Cisco Security Cloud Control product report

FireMon Security Manager

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

Cisco Security Cloud Control vs. FireMon Security Manager