Network security professionals today clearly understand that there is no longer just one perimeter surrounding the enterprise. Rather, security and network management now extend across multiple, overlapping perimeters, each of which usually has its own firewall and related network equipment.

For security teams and network admins, this translates into the need to oversee and coordinate policy on a potentially large number of separate devices. Cisco Defense Orchestratoris a cloud-based application that enables admins to consistently manage and harmonize policies across a variety of Cisco security products as well as cloud-native tools such as AWS Security Groups.

Users of Cisco Defense Orchestrator shared their experiences with the product on IT Central Station. Their reviews reveal a solution that is appreciated for its simplicity and efficiency. Users also noted that Cisco Defense Orchestrator makes their teams more productive, particularly when managing policies across Cisco ASA, FTD and Meraki MX devices.

The Simplicity of Cisco Defense Orchestrator

Cisco Defense Orchestrator is known for enabling streamlined security policy management across an extended network. As Jairo M., Network and Security Specialist at a small tech services company, explained, “The initial setup was really straightforward. If the person setting this up has knowledge of firewalls and switches, it’s pretty simple. It took about two hours for us to deploy.”

Todd E., CTO at a small tech services company, similarly noted, “In terms of visibility and getting everybody involved, it was simple, scalable, and saved them tons of time, which in turn saved them money. Its effect on firewall builds and daily management of firewalls is that it’s super-simple on new deployments.”

Efficiency in Centralization

IT Central Station members remarked that Cisco Defense Orchestrator has made their teams more efficient. According to Mohamed N., an I.T. Manager at a consumer goods company with over 5,000 employees, “This efficient, time-saving, centralized device manager is easy to deploy and requires minimal administrative IT resources.” Todd E. spoke to this point as well, noting, “The simplicity, efficiency, and effectiveness of it are valuable. It’s efficient, simple, and there’s the visibility on the security side. Deployment is fast. As a security person, I love the visibility and the ease of use when doing my upgrades.”

Team Productivity and Support for ASA, FTD and Meraki MX

Network managers and security teams want to manage security policies across multiple Cisco products, including ASA, FTD and Meraki MX devices. The outcome is consistent security across the network. Isiac S., Network Administrator at a manufacturing company with over 200 employees, praised Cisco Defense Orchestrator in this context. He said, “Its support for ASA, FTD, and Meraki MX helps maintain consistent security.”

Todd E. addressed the team productivity aspects of this capability. He said, “When it comes to making bulk changes across common tasks, like policy management and image upgrades, one of the biggest complaints that I had from a lot of network engineers, was that everything was GUI, that Cisco had gone to GUI. But they can do bulk changes on the CLI. That was a big win for them, being able to do that across all the ASAs without having to log into every single ASA and make changes. They can do a lot of bulk changes on the fly. It’s a huge time-saver.”

Other notable comments on this issue included:

• “Its support for ASA, FTD, and Meraki MX devices could potentially free up staff to do other work, although I have not tried the FTD or the MX.” – Andreas F., Systems Engineer at a tech services company
• “The biggest part of ROI is the improvement to the operations. Our clients with CDO are having fewer issues. Things are just not going down. People are more productive.” – Todd E.
• “The solution has made our security team more productive because it allows us to have more people do the same kind of work, and they take less time doing it. It catches what could have been mistakes on our part.” – A Systems Architect at a university with over 1,000 employees
• “The solution’s support for ASA, FTD, and Meraki MX devices helps free up staff time for other work.” – Jairo M.
• “Defense Orchestrator has made my network team more productive, since it’s the network team which manages it.” – Richard B., Network and Data Centre Platform Manager at a manufacturing company with over 1,000 employees
• “Now, with one simple click, we select the devices and set it to update on a given day, and save different configurations. It’s pretty simple and a great feature for us. Whenever we have found any problems in the devices and we want to create a new policy that applies to ten or 20 companies, we select the devices and we send the same commands to all those devices at once.” – Jairo M.

To read more Cisco Defense Orchestrator reviews, visit IT Central Station.

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