Cisco Defense Orchestrator vs Skybox Security Suite comparison

Cisco and Tufin are both solutions in the Firewall Security Management category. Cisco is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.0, while Tufin is ranked #7 with an average rating of 7.3. Cisco holds a 1.0% mindshare in Firewall Security Management, compared to Tufin’s 11.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 83% of Tufin users who would recommend it.

Cisco Defense Orchestrator

Read 15 Cisco Defense Orchestrator reviews

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234 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Skybox Security Suite

Read 36 Skybox Security Suite reviews

2,802 Views
2,131 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Cisco Defense Orchestrator

Skybox Security Suite

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 25, 2025

Skybox Security Suite and Cisco Defense Orchestrator are prominent solutions in the cybersecurity sector. Skybox gains an advantage with its robust risk visualization and advanced risk management tools, whereas Cisco Defense Orchestrator leads in seamless integration with existing Cisco infrastructures.

Features: Skybox Security Suite offers noteworthy features such as risk visualization, firewall assurance, and vulnerability management, providing comprehensive coverage for network and security management. Cisco Defense Orchestrator features exceptional integration capabilities, centralized control over Cisco security products, and strong security policy management, enhancing its utility for users with existing Cisco environments.

Room for Improvement: Skybox Security Suite can enhance its user interface and simplify some complex functionalities to improve user experience. Additionally, refining integration with non-Cisco products and enhancing documentation could benefit Skybox users. For Cisco Defense Orchestrator, there is room to improve interface responsiveness, expand compatibility with third-party applications, and address scalability issues for larger network environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Skybox provides a centralized management system that is straightforward to deploy and is supported by a responsive customer service team, ideal for complex networks. Cisco emphasizes a cloud-based deployment model with efficient integration processes, backed by extensive customer service infrastructure, offering significant support for existing Cisco customers.

Pricing and ROI: Skybox Security Suite demands a significant initial investment but offers a strong ROI through effective risk management. Conversely, Cisco Defense Orchestrator comes with a higher cost, justified by its seamless integration and feature-rich offerings, enhancing ROI through improved efficiency and reduced operational overhead in organizations with Cisco products.

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

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Defense Orchestrator vs. Skybox Security Suite

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

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

Skybox Security Suite

Ranking in Firewall Security Management

7th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Vulnerability Management (41st)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of Cisco Defense Orchestrator is 1.0%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Skybox Security Suite is 11.0%, up from 10.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewall Security Management

Featured Reviews

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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NenadMijatovic

Director of Sales at S4E Serbia

Efficient in vulnerability management, stable and easy to use

Vulnerability management is the most valuable feature because it lets you focus on the most critical vulnerabilities. That's the important thing. Here in Serbia, there are not so many companies that have too many firewalls inside one company. So, they usually don't buy this model for Firewall Assurance unless there is some compliance. So you can prove that your firewalls are compliant. So, that model is not so important here in Serbia. It's for bigger companies. So, they usually buy network assurance to build the model of the network and vulnerability management to focus on the most important vulnerabilities. Moreover, Skybox can collect data for many vendors. From the endpoint protection vendors to the network equipment vendors to other security vendors. So, it supports more than one hundred vendors to collect data from them.

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 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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Cisco Defense Orchestrator pros

"The port division management was the solution's most valuable aspect for our organization."

"We use Network Assurance for network visualisation and troubleshooting."

"The most impressive feature is optimization and clean-up."

"Correlates logs and threats and prioritizes; provides network maps;p provides change result context and resulting vulnerability."

"I think that compliance checks and policy compliance are the product's good features."

"Aside from Firewall Assurance, we are using Network Assurance and Change Manager for an overview of the whole network and for documenting requests and the recertification of the ruleset."

"It shows me a client's or an organization's entire network. I can see everything."

"The performance could be good because we chose it at the time, but it is too complex for us to appreciate its performance because we lack the necessary skills."

More Skybox Security Suite pros

Cons

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

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

"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."

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

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

"Cisco Defense Orchestrator should be made more user-friendly overall."

"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."

"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."

More Cisco Defense Orchestrator cons

"The solution needs improvement in firewall configuration checks. I would also like to see more configuration checks for Forcepoint and for other non-supported firewalls."

"The price could be cheaper."

"The support could be improved."

"The solution was quite technical. It would be easier to manage if the solution was more specific about aspects of the solution and provided more advisory around how to use it effectively. It would help users a lot if they were more clear about everything."

"Change Manager can be improved. If they can improve Change Manager so that whatever we want to do on a firewall, we are able to do it through Change Manager, it will be helpful for us. Whenever we are doing a change, it only does them at an L3 and L4 level, but all the firewalls are at the application layer. So, whatever needs to be done on the firewall, we aren't able to get it done through Change Manager. Currently, this functionality is not there because of which we are sometimes losing customers. I can create a role on Layer 3, Layer 4, but when it comes to the application layer, such as configuring and defining URLs or other things at the application level, it can't be done through Change Manager. Customers demand that they should be able to do everything through Change Manager. They don't want to do it through some other mechanism to accomplish their complete change management policy. They don't want to use a firewall manager because sometimes, they don't have any manager. They ask if they can use our solution so that a manager is not required. If Change Manager can do all the management automatically without involving any other manager, it will be great. They can also provide better integration with other managers so that everything can be done through a central point."

"Modifications and the deletion of existing policies are currently unavailable."

"There are multiple dashboards but no custom dashboard. It would be good to include a custom dashboard so that we can actually choose which field and what kinds of things we want to look at."

"The only place where Skybox has room for improvement, and they're working on releasing this, it's just a slow-go, is the UI. The user interface has historically been via a locally installed thick client. They are moving to a web-based console and it's slowly coming out."

More Skybox Security Suite cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"It's expensive."

"I think for the cost, what we got definitely is worth it. The only caution I would give is that whenever you license for Firewall Assurance at the same time, for some weird reason, you have to get one Network Assurance license, just to manage one firewall. That's a little bit of overkill. But otherwise, in general, the pricing is fairly okay."

"The pricing is high, and the licensing model needs more flexibility."

"The price is not expensive."

"Licensing is normally on a yearly basis. There may also be a perpetual license. Normally, the customers ask for a lower price. If you want to sell more, you have to think about it."

"The product's pricing is excellent value. In terms of licensing, make sure you understand your network components, all your hops through your network, thoroughly, before you decide on the total cost. If you want to do point-to-point flow analysis and such, you need to have the configuration of all the devices in between point A and point B. A lot of people don't realize all their network components until they start using this product."

"Fully understand the total cost of ownership. They have gone to a new model where you have to replace the hardware every X amount of years at a very substantial cost and fully understand your intended number of nodes. To operate a firewall, you have to pay two licenses, a firewall node and a network node. If you are a reasonable-sized organization, this gets expensive very quickly."

"I rate the pricing two on a scale of one to ten, where one is very expensive, and ten is cost-effective."

More Skybox Security Suite pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

52%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Legal Firm

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

Energy/Utilities Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

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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.

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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 ...

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What do you like most about Skybox Security Suite?

Overall, the tool has helped us reduce risks. If any step is missing, it's easier for my team or engineers to identify it. The tool provides accurate recommendations based on the data. Its integrat...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Skybox Security Suite?

Skybox Security Suite has indeed helped us reduce costs. The prices of AlgoSec and Skybox Security Suite are approximately 50 percent different. The tool may require special vendor support from abr...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Skybox Security Suite?

There is room for improvement in the product's user interface. It could be more user-friendly.

See all answers

Comparisons

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs Cisco Defense Orchestrator

Compared 36% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs Cisco Defense Orchestrator

Compared 36% of the time

AlgoSec vs Cisco Defense Orchestrator

Compared 28% of the time

More Cisco Defense Orchestrator Competitors

AlgoSec vs Skybox Security Suite

Compared 33% of the time

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs Skybox Security Suite

Compared 29% of the time

FireMon Security Manager vs Skybox Security Suite

Compared 14% of the time

RedSeal vs Skybox Security Suite

Compared 5% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs Skybox Security Suite

Compared 4% of the time

More Skybox Security Suite Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Defense Orchestrator

April 2025

Download Cisco Defense Orchestrator product report

Buyer's Guide

Skybox Security Suite

March 2025

Download Skybox Security Suite product report

Also Known As

CDO

No data available

Interactive Demo

Cisco

Demo not available

Tufin

Overview

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

Skybox Security Suite provides comprehensive tools for network and firewall compliance, vulnerability management, and change management, with a focus on risk reduction and network optimization.

Skybox Security Suite supports over 130 vendors with massive scalability and seamless integration, notably with Nessus and Qualys. Its features include network path analysis and offline attack simulation, which enhance management effectiveness. Despite its robust offering, improvements are needed in its UI, web interface, reporting detail, and customization. Automation, orchestration, and device policy provisioning require better support, and integration with tools like Rapid7 could be improved. Enhancements in firewall configuration checks, cloud connectivity, pricing, and marketing awareness are also called for, alongside a transition from Java GUI to a consistent web-based system.

What Are Key Features of Skybox Security Suite?

Network Assurance: Enhances visibility and optimization of network paths.
Firewall Assurance: Facilitates firewall rule set audits for compliance.
Vulnerability Management: Offers path detection and risk prioritization.
Compliance Management: Ensures adherence to standards like PCI.
Change Management: Simplifies management across extensive infrastructures.

What Benefits and ROI Can Users Expect?

Scalability: Supports numerous vendors and large-scale deployments.
Integration: Seamlessly connects with tools like Nessus and Qualys.
Risk Reduction: Improves security across network infrastructures.
Simplified Management: User-friendly interface and reporting tools enhance usability.
Network Optimization: Streamlines processes and improves performance.

Skybox Security Suite is commonly used in industries requiring strict compliance like finance and healthcare. Firms employ it for firewall audits, enhancing network visibility, and managing configurations against standards such as PCI, ensuring security and policy compliance across expansive networks.

Tufin

Sample Customers

Insurance Company of British Columbia, Shawmut

ADP, Blue Cross Blue Shield, BT, USAID, Delta Dental, EDF Energy, EMC, HSBC, Johnson & Johnson

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Defense Orchestrator vs. Skybox Security Suite

March 2025

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