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Cisco Defense Orchestrator vs Tufin Orchestration Suite 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

Cisco Defense Orchestrator
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
14th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tufin Orchestration Suite
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
184
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Tufin Orchestration Suite is 22.0%, up from 20.3% 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…
MithatBulut - PeerSpot reviewer
New employees can quickly grasp the various IPs, devices, and the network's logical and physical
Tufin is primarily used to orchestrate and manage network traffic and firewall devices. It is specifically useful for implementing firewall policies and handling requests from clients that require policy updates or changes Tufin simplifies understanding network topology. New employees can quickly…

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."
"This product provides excellent centralized device controls and reporting."
"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."
"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."
"The bulk changes feature is definitely the most valuable."
"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."
"With Cisco Defense Orchestrator, we can manage the complete Cisco Security solution. It provides a simple and centralized way to manage all products."
"Cisco Defense Orchestrator has useful guides for the steps that need to follow by users."
"It is an important application for controlling and monitoring firewall rules. It is useful for making and monitoring the changes."
"We can check and analyze the current status of our firewall rules."
"The reports that this solution provides are very useful."
"We are able to stay compliant with many of the regulations."
"The change workflow process is flexible and customizable. I was really impressed with it. It's pretty easy. You can add automatic validation steps. Depending on the security matrix, you can pre-allow whatever flow you want."
"Policy management and the cartography of the network have been the most valuable features."
"The stability is bulletproof."
"One of the things that came up this week was the ability to decommission a server, which we thought was interesting. We had a workshop recently that talked about all the things that need to be thought about when managing firewalls. People said, "A lot of times, things get forgotten when you are decommissioning a server." E.g., making sure rules are taken away and taking out the rule set. The fact that there is an automated workload for that can be helpful."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"It should have more features to manage FirePOWER appliances."
"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."
"Cisco Defense Orchestrator can improve by providing more support for third-party security components."
"The dashboard needs to be more customizable to provide better reporting for our network."
"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."
"Currently, we are able to monitor access rules and the operating system of a firewall. It would be great if we can also monitor the configuration of the firewall through Tufin."
"I would like to see API access into every aspect of Tufin."
"The interface is like a 1990s kind of thing. It's a little ugly. There are many things that you cannot tweak, little things like the column width and how you display the information. You end up exporting everything to an Excel file and doing your work there."
"I think that the interface could be cleaner, and easier to use."
"I would like a better reporting feature and automatic alerting based upon rule changes."
"One feature that is missing is the ability to assign a step in the workflow to a specific user at a specific time, based on how the previous steps of the workflow have been handled."
"We were just talking to them about usage for the F5 platform. They will not be going after specific environments, but a more OpenAPI. They will have other companies write it, etc. It's a little different than I had expected."
"The topology needs improvement. If I click on the network tab, I can go get a cup of coffee, come back, and my topology is still not painted. Maybe, it's just because we have so many devices, but looking at the topology, it is too slow. The problem is that when I click on the network tab, I do not want to see the topology. I want to click on the "Next" button, so I can put in the source and destination, so I can see the path. However, I still have to sit there and wait for the topology to load, and it's frustrating. I'll click on topology and try to click that "Next" button in time to where I can get around it. But, typically, you have to wait for that topology to paint. When it paints it, it's just a bunch of black smudges because there is just so much there. It can't paint it to where you see something. I can always zoom out, or something like that, but it's really worthless."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you compare to what is available on the market, they are in the same range with respect to pricing."
"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."
"It's around £500 per unit for a three-year license."
"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."
"This solution helped us to reduce the time it takes to make changes. We used to spend up to an hour to do a change, and now, it's around five minutes."
"It's not that expensive, except for Security Groups. For us, just the Security Groups were about half of the total price. The total was about €500,000 a year, of which €200,000 was for Security Groups."
"We have seen ROI just in the time savings and knowledge. Knowledge is power. Having the solution do it automatically for you without you doing the work is huge. If you are spending $50,000 a year, it could have cost you a $100,000 in man-hours without it, especially if you are working with a team.."
"Our evaluation showed that Tufin's features were on par with AlgoSec, but Tufin was the better financial choice."
"Our licensing fees are approximately $100,000 USD yearly."
"If you don't buy their premium support, their technical support is not great and you can only call during daytime hours. So, we ended up purchasing their premium support."
"There is no issue with the pricing because we used a VM. That kept the cost low, as compared to an appliance."
"We've seen a decrease of about 50 percent in the overall time it takes to complete a firewall change."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
52%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Legal Firm
3%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
5%
 

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...
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 Tufin SecureCloud?
The most valuable feature of Tufin is security auditing. We are able to check the rules and compliance of the company, for example, what is allowed or not. We are able to check the rules over diffe...
What needs improvement with Tufin SecureCloud?
The design needs improvement, particularly in recognizing target devices and target files. Additionally, there's a need for an improved network map.
What is your primary use case for Tufin SecureCloud?
My primary use case involves applying firewall policies faster from a central point. Additionally, I would like to use it to generate reports, but this hasn't occurred yet.
 

Also Known As

CDO
Tufin SecureCloud
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Insurance Company of British Columbia, Shawmut
3M, AT&T, Blue Cross Blue Shield, BNP Parabas, ConocoPhillips, Deutsche Bank, GE, IBM, Pfizer, United States Postal Service 
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Defense Orchestrator vs. Tufin Orchestration Suite and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
847,862 professionals have used our research since 2012.