Azure Firewall Manager vs FireMon Security Manager comparison

Microsoft and FireMon are both solutions in the Firewall Security Management category. Microsoft is ranked #12 with an average rating of 9.0, while FireMon is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.0. Microsoft holds a 1.7% mindshare in Firewall Security Management, compared to FireMon’s 16.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of FireMon users who would recommend it.

Azure Firewall Manager

Read 6 Azure Firewall Manager reviews

672 Views
473 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

FireMon Security Manager

Read 56 FireMon Security Manager reviews

4,327 Views
3,335 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Azure Firewall Manager

FireMon Security Manager

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

FireMon Security Manager and Azure Firewall Manager compete in network security management, with Azure Firewall Manager having an advantage due to its integration capabilities within Microsoft's cloud ecosystem, while FireMon Security Manager is noted for cost-effectiveness and ease of deployment.

Features: FireMon Security Manager provides real-time network monitoring, automated compliance validation, and a comprehensive policy overview. Azure Firewall Manager is known for seamless integration with Azure services, central management of security policies, and its web application firewall capabilities.

Room for Improvement: FireMon Security Manager could enhance cloud compatibility, improve user interface design, and expand automation capabilities. Azure Firewall Manager might improve support for non-Azure platforms, provide more competitive pricing options, and enhance offline management capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: FireMon Security Manager is easy to deploy on-premises and offers strategic consultancy services. Azure Firewall Manager benefits from native Azure integration, simplifying management for organizations within the Microsoft ecosystem, with both providing solid customer support.

Pricing and ROI: FireMon Security Manager generally has lower upfront costs and a quicker ROI suitable for small to mid-sized businesses. Azure Firewall Manager, priced more at a premium, fits enterprises looking for robust features and ecosystem integration, reflecting each product's targeted market segment.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Firewall Manager vs. FireMon Security Manager Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Firewall Manager vs. FireMon Security Manager

January 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

Azure Firewall Manager

Ranking in Firewall Security Management

12th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Microsoft Security Suite (27th)

FireMon Security Manager

Ranking in Firewall Security Management

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of Azure Firewall Manager is 1.7%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FireMon Security Manager is 16.5%, up from 16.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewall Security Management

Featured Reviews

Rashedul Khan

Senior Software Engineer at cimsolutions

Security management has improved with centralized threat detection and automation

I have been using Azure actively in my company, engaging with various technologies such as Azure SQL Server, virtual machines, and other cloud-dependent development scenarios. To secure the environment, we sometimes utilize Azure Firewall Manager. We needed to manage different individual firewalls…

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Ganesh-Khutwad

Senior Network Specialist at Tech Mahindra Limited

Rapid policy insights with robust dashboards and cross-vendor automation

FireMon Security Manager is excellent for real-time compliance management. It allows us to quickly retrieve any policy needed for testing and easily analyze it for loopholes. If a loophole exists, FireMon provides comprehensive details within the policy manager. It alerts us to firewall rule additions or changes that violate compliance policies. It supports various firewall platforms, including Checkpoint, Zscaler, Fortinet, Cisco, and AWS, and provides centralized management for all configured policies through a single console. FireMon Security Manager provides many features, like whether my firewall is compatible with required standards such as NTP and SNMP. Each compliance included in our RFPs is shown in the UI of FireMon. It gives robust and clear dashboards, making it easier to understand risks because the policies have ratings showing usage, and the number of hit attacks. It streamlines our compliance reporting processes by providing comprehensive risk and compliance assessments. It offers a range of features, including verification of firewall compatibility with protocols like NTP and SNMP, and detection of signal charges. FireMon effectively addresses all compliance requirements outlined in our RFPs. For instance, it can determine if firewalls or proxies within a stack are configured in Secure Mode or Active-Active mode. FireMon Security Manager enables us to generate reports on all these aspects, ensuring thorough compliance monitoring and documentation. FireMon Security Manager is robust and can help automate firewall policy changes across large multi-vendor enterprise environments. FireMon Security Manager helps automate firewall policy changes across various environments, including on-premises, cloud, hybrid, SASE, and SD-WAN. It also simplifies cleaning up firewall rules in our environment. The time required to accurately create, approve, and deploy firewall policy rules has been reduced. Tasks that took 30 minutes can now be completed in just five minutes using FireMon. FireMon provides immediate visibility into our policies through a robust and clear dashboard, making it easy to identify errors or misconfigurations based on the policy rating.

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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

"It is easy to install and does not require any plugins for your browser."

"The most valuable feature of Azure Firewall Manager is the testing and configuration."

"The tool's support is good."

"Azure Firewall Manager centralizes network security management with a hub and spoke architecture."

"The solution has improved our organization with its firewall."

"The solution is very easy to set up."

"Azure Firewall Manager centralizes network security management with a hub and spoke architecture."

"The technical support is very good. They've always been helpful."

"Overall, I would rate this solution a nine out of ten."

"I've been using the reports to see what is going on, and that is a helpful feature. We can track down unused rules, which helps with compliance. We can see rules that have not been used or that are duplicates or overly permissive."

"It is the single place where we go to review all of our firewall changes. The solution makes it easier for us to track all the changes made. It is a central place where we can look at all the firewall rules, because we have three different firewall vendors. It save us time and creates efficiencies by looking at the general picture."

"The most valuable feature is that everything is recorded in the historical logs, including the firewall rules, headcounts, object-level usage, and the rule documentation. The rule certification details are also there, which means that someone can be held accountable for a specific firewall rule."

"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."

"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."

"The most valuable features are the security assessments and the ability to identify unused rules or objects."

More FireMon Security Manager pros

Cons

"The solution can improve the integration with open-source tools."

"There should be a simple one-click deployment for a firewall, rather than a set of setup instructions that include steps such as the DNS configuration, et cetera."

"The tool's security features need to improve. It needs also to include a monitoring system for logs. It is also complicated to find a query on the Azure firewall."

"We could do only one-way NAT-ing, where the traffic comes from outside to internal, to Azure, which is fine. However, when we actually do NAT-ed traffic to hit the firewall, that way is not working."

"The price is okay. This said, the solution is certainly expensive in comparison with other cloud services."

"The configuration and settings require substantial time for learning, particularly for new users. Improvements in ease of configuration would benefit users significantly."

"The configuration and settings require substantial time for learning, particularly for new users."

"When it comes to documentation, they need to start putting together a basic command manual. With Cisco, you can look up a command and it gives you examples of three or four different ways that command can be used. It tells you how to put it into the GUI and the CLI. FireMon does need to start doing that."

"Its reporting can be improved. I am the only one who works a lot with it, and I am having problems in terms of reporting. In the case of Palo Alto, I'm okay with it, but with some of the Cisco devices, such as routers, when I provide the reports to other teams for review, they always say that the hit count is incorrect. So, I was struggling for a long time to work with them. When working with other teams, they have a lot of questions about reporting, such as how it reports, and we are still struggling with that."

"I ran a report and FireMon suggested that certain tools were not used. When I removed them, while it didn't bring our environment down completely, a lot of our environment started malfunctioning. Our backup system did not work, nor did other things that involve internal and external communication. We are not comfortable with what it did."

"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."

"The support response time has room for improvement."

"It comes as a Linux appliance on a server and we're not a Linux shop, we're more of a Windows shop. It would be great if they could automate or integrate the backups into it and other things through their GUI interface, just to make the management of Linux a little more transparent."

"Policy Planner requirements section is good, but could use some improvement to allow flexibility to enter different types of requests (modifying an existing policy, object or service group, for example) in a structured task format that can be auto-verified."

"The support response time has room for improvement."

More FireMon Security Manager cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is certainly expensive in comparison with other cloud services."

"The price of the solution is reasonable but it is reasonable for the features."

"Pricing model seems fair."

"Its pricing is good. Compared to others, it is not so expensive."

"The pricing is very good, very straightforward. It also came in cheaper than AlgoSec and Tufin."

"It's a good value. From a licensing standpoint... it's very simple to understand, and gives us a good bang for the buck."

"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."

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

"FireMon is cheaper than AlgoSec."

"We pay for it yearly."

More FireMon Security Manager pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Azure Firewall Manager?

The most valuable feature of Azure Firewall Manager is the testing and configuration.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Firewall Manager?

The pricing for Azure Firewall Manager seems okay compared to its good features. Although extra expenses are incurred for additional services, these are not directly related to the firewall, and th...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Azure Firewall Manager?

The configuration and settings require substantial time for learning, particularly for new users. Improvements in ease of configuration would benefit users significantly.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Azure Firewall vs Azure Firewall Manager

Compared 45% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs Azure Firewall Manager

Compared 22% of the time

FortiGate Cloud-Native Firewall (FortiGate CNF) vs Azure Firewall Manager

Compared 22% of the time

AWS Firewall Manager vs Azure Firewall Manager

Compared 10% of the time

More Azure Firewall Manager Competitors

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 41% of the time

AlgoSec vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 38% of the time

Skybox Security Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 10% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 4% of the time

ManageEngine Firewall Analyzer vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 3% of the time

More FireMon Security Manager Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Firewall Security Management

March 2025

Download Azure Firewall Manager product report

Buyer's Guide

FireMon Security Manager

March 2025

Download FireMon Security Manager product report

Overview

Azure Firewall Manager is a security management service that provides central security policy and route management for cloud-based security perimeters.

To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

Microsoft

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

Information Not Available

Convey, MGM Resorts International, Southwest Airlines, Alkami, Costco, Aetna, IBM, Verizon, Wells Fargo

Buyer's Guide

Azure Firewall Manager vs. FireMon Security Manager

January 2025

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