We performed a comparison between FireMon Security Manager and Skybox Security Suite based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewall Security Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."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."
"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."
"The SQL language is convenient to use. It allows us to process a bunch of criteria very quickly and narrows things down if there is an issue with the firewall. It's easy to do that with SQL queries."
"It is a good product. Previously, we were using only spreadsheets to compare the usage, but now with FireMon, we are able to clean up or review the policies to some extent. It is still a work in progress, but we are at a good stage now."
"What I like about FireMon is the ability to track changes made by network engineers on the network."
"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."
"The most valuable features are the security assessments and the ability to identify unused rules or objects."
"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."
"I think that compliance checks and policy compliance are the product's good features."
"It's given us more visibility in terms of what are the kinds of configurations that are on these devices, and how many of these are stale rules. So it's helped greatly in terms of cleaning up of rules, for sure. And it has definitely given us a more secure way of backing up the configuration on these devices."
"This type of tool does a great job of reaching into those other devices producing risk recommendations, compliance recommendations, and a single plane of glass to do your queries, so you can find where these rules might exist."
"It shows me a client's or an organization's entire network. I can see everything."
"Skybox deployment is simple, and it's very useful."
"Change Manager is most important because of the impact on each other of a network change or a firewall change. We want to understand this and to know, beforehand, what the impact of a change will be. We are a large network so that is a very important tool."
"It can be integrated with a vulnerability management solution. When a client comes, apart from pitching network and firewall change management, we are recommending having vulnerability management. So, rather than just having the audit of the firewall, they can integrate it with their vulnerability management solution, which could be Rapid7, Qualys, or any other solution. This provides them the most value out of the platform. That is the way we are approaching our customer base."
"The most valuable features are Firewall Assurance and Vulnerability Control."
"Our firewalls have multiple paths through them and FireMon falls short a little bit because it's not Palo Alto-centric. I don't think FireMon has kept up with where Palo Alto is at. They started out being Check Point-centric for years and they've never really fully embraced the nuances others, like Palo Alto or Fortinet, have. They don't handle a lot of the capabilities and attributes that Palo Alto does yet. They're working on it. They're getting there."
"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."
"We have not used the Policy Planner but even so, we have identified areas of improvement with it during our testing. For example, it could be better when it comes to ease of integration or ease of policy automation. Another problem is that there is a console where it has too many options and is not very straightforward. Essentially, controlling it could be made more seamless."
"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."
"One area for 7.x customers that needs improvement is the migration. It is an involved process so get ready to spend some time getting your environment back to the way it was."
"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."
"While I like the reporting, I think that has the biggest room for improvement. Right now, as a user of FireMon, if I create a report, I am the only one who can see it inside FireMon. If someone on my team creates a report, they are the only person who can see that report on FireMon. It doesn't matter if you're admin in FireMon or not. The way we have to do it now is that we have created a service account user and that service account user runs all the reports. This way, all the reports, which are running, are just run under a single user so we can always access them. This definitely needs to change so users can see other users' reports or we can share reports within FireMon."
"FireMon could be made more user-friendly when it comes to creating filters or conducting traffic analysis."
"The most recent update was not tested with all of the vendors before it was released, so some of the features are misbehaving."
"The vendor's support is terrible."
"Skybox Security Suite can improve the change management module. It is the one part of the tool that is used with the firewall devices and you have a change management module that is used to record changes of all firewalls in the company. It's not compatible with all brands, this is where they can improve the solution."
"The solution does not support certain devices or vendors in some regions or countries due to regulations."
"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."
"The solution needs to move improve its interface to a full web browser version that is more accessible and doesn't require installation for use."
"The cloud site could be better. They should provide some use cases to help users."
"The primary room for improvement would be to enable a web interface, which is not something which is there in the product. This is supposed to have come a year, a year and a half ago, but still has failed to come out. It still needs a client application to be installed on a workstation to be able to access that server and then run these reports. So I cannot extend that access to anybody. It has to be one administrator all the time. So unlike a web interface, where you can give multiple users simultaneous access and generate the various reports, that isn't a possibility at the moment."
FireMon Security Manager is ranked 4th in Firewall Security Management with 53 reviews while Skybox Security Suite is ranked 6th in Firewall Security Management with 34 reviews. FireMon Security Manager is rated 8.2, while Skybox Security Suite is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of FireMon Security Manager writes "Makes compliance much easier compared to doing it manually, and automates policy changes across environments". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Skybox Security Suite writes "Efficient in vulnerability management, stable and easy to use ". FireMon Security Manager is most compared with Tufin Orchestration Suite, AlgoSec, Palo Alto Networks Panorama, ManageEngine Firewall Analyzer and RedSeal, whereas Skybox Security Suite is most compared with AlgoSec, Tufin Orchestration Suite, Palo Alto Networks Panorama, RedSeal and Qualys VMDR. See our FireMon Security Manager vs. Skybox Security Suite report.
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