Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center vs FireMon Security Manager comparison

Cisco and FireMon are both solutions in the Firewall Security Management category. Cisco is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.1, while FireMon is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.0. Cisco holds a 0.8% mindshare in Firewall Security Management, compared to FireMon’s 16.4% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of FireMon users who would recommend it.

Cisco Secure Firewall Manag...

Read 26 Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center reviews

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166 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

FireMon Security Manager

Read 56 FireMon Security Manager reviews

4,466 Views
3,472 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Cisco Secure Firewall Manag...

FireMon Security Manager

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

FireMon Security Manager and Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center are key players in the network security management category. FireMon seems to have the upper hand with its comprehensive auditing capabilities and policy review features, essential for maintaining top-tier security across various environments.

Features: FireMon Security Manager provides sophisticated firewall rule auditing, unused and redundant rule identification, and thorough compliance validation. It offers change monitoring and policy mapping, vital in multi-vendor setups. Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center excels in intrusion prevention, advanced malware protection, and threat intelligence from Talos.

Room for Improvement: FireMon needs enhancements in network maps and reporting features and smoother system updates and integration with other vendors. Cisco faces challenges in improving user interface simplicity, performance, cloud management, ease of configuration, update frequency, and customer support responsiveness.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: FireMon Security Manager is mainly on-premises but can extend to public clouds. It's known for responsive technical support despite occasional variability in response times. Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center is available for both private and on-premises deployment, with a generally good support reputation but suggested enhancements in communication and efficiency.

Pricing and ROI: FireMon, although perceived as expensive, offers substantial ROI through effective rule management, error reduction, and operational efficiencies. Its flexible pricing structure supports discounts balancing costs for features. Cisco's licensing is customizable but additional support costs may be a deterrent. Both emphasize streamlining network security operations.

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

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center 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

Cisco Secure Firewall Manag...

Ranking in Firewall Security Management

6th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

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 February 2025, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center is 0.8%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FireMon Security Manager is 16.4%, up from 16.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewall Security Management

Featured Reviews

Awais Ejaz

Chief Information Security Officer at Allied Bank Limited

A stable and reasonably priced product that protects organizations from malware

The product must improve its performance. When we push policies from the console, it takes a lot of time. It takes five to seven minutes to push one policy. If someone pushes a wrong policy and there is an outage in the banking system, they would have to wait six to seven minutes to revert it. We have highlighted this issue to Cisco. A year ago, we told Cisco that we need APIs for integration with SOAR for pushing policies. We cannot push policies or run playbooks from SOAR to block any IOCs on the web and email gateway because Cisco doesn’t expose the APIs. It is one thing for which we have been following up with Cisco for the last year, but I don't think they've developed the API integration. Palo Alto and Fortinet provide this feature to their users.

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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

"Cisco's support and services are far superior to any other security product in Pakistan."

"Scalability is not an issue as long as you are able to buy additional licenses. Ten percent of our customers use Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center, and we have large accounts with 50% of their end users behind this firewall."

"I like the dashboard since it gives me a lot of information."

"The most valuable features are the Virtual Private Network and the Electronic Control Lists."

"The platform has significantly enhanced our organization's operations by providing secure communication channels between different office locations."

"The tool's deployment is not complex."

"Malware detection, URL filtering, and antivirus are the most beneficial features for our security management. The platform has three main components: filters, hardware, and antivirus. We use the standard approach for automation and integration. The person in charge of management follows the rules and policies of the equipment and handles operations. However, we haven't set up any notifications, so it's mostly manual."

"My clients have never contacted me with any issues, so I believe the solution is stable."

More Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center pros

"Compared to other applications, it is user-friendly. The appearance of the menus and titles is clear and they are easy to follow. Of course, it requires some experience through using it, to go through everything, but it is not very difficult. It is an easy application to use."

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

"FireMon Security Manager is a fast and intelligent device that delivers results in under ten seconds, even with thousands of policies."

"Vendor agnostic when it comes to integrating with other product."

"Firewall auditing is very important. We also use the solution for rule traffic analysis, traffic flow discovery and hidden/shadow rules within over 100 firewalls spanning five different brands."

"The Security Manager part of FireMon... gives me an eye on everything that's out there, everything that I cannot see. Because I'm not a network admin, I cannot go to a firewall itself, but at least I have FireMon so that I can go in and view everything that I want to view. And I can eliminate whatever I see that is wrong,"

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

"The most valuable features are Policy Optimizer and Firewall Manager for different brands of firewall."

More FireMon Security Manager pros

Cons

"Improving the product by incorporating SD-WAN functionality would be highly beneficial, especially for remote offices with limited server and Internet availability."

"The initial setup is a bit complex."

"Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center's logging functionality could be improved."

"Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center needs to reduce its price."

"I expect more integration with AI."

"Cisco firewalls use old ESR or a Linux system, and there are problems with encryption. When we switch on encryption, the throughput goes down."

"Some duplicated values and security standards are not working in some high-application protocols with Cisco's next-generation firewalls."

"The tool is a little bit pricey. I was not involved much with finance, but it appeared to be really expensive."

More Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center cons

"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."

"FireMon could be made more user-friendly when it comes to creating filters or conducting traffic analysis."

"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."

"When it comes to identifying risk in our environment and prioritizing fixes, it is really about the different priorities within the organization. FireMon is not so smart that it can tell what's important to us. It's up to us to figure that out."

"FireMon could be easier to use and flexibility regarding reporting could be improved."

"We are looking for more integration with SIEM and other tools."

"The cost of the solution is pretty expensive. It would be ideal if they could work on their pricing."

"When it comes to real-time compliance management, something that is missing is alerting on certain, predefined controls. It would be good to have a predefined set of controls which, if not complied with in a newly set up rule, would create an alert for us. That is something that is missing, out-of-the-box."

More FireMon Security Manager cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate Secure Firewall Management Center eight out of 10 for pricing."

"The product pricing is reasonable and falls in the mid-range."

"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."

"I rate the tool's pricing a four out of ten. The licensing costs are yearly."

"The platform is costly."

"As for pricing, the tool is expensive for us. I'd rate it eight out of ten on a scale where ten is the most expensive."

"Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center has the best price on the market."

"Technical support is an additional annual cost and is not included with the license."

More Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center pricing and cost advice

"The pricing was very good during our initial year, but they increased it this year a little bit. The price is okay. It is not cheap, but it is still average."

"Relative to what it offers, the price is fair."

"Pricing model seems fair."

"FireMon is cheaper than AlgoSec."

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

"Pricing is reasonable."

"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."

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

More FireMon Security Manager pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Government

21%

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Engineering Company

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center?

The platform has significantly enhanced our organization's operations by providing secure communication channels between different office locations.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center?

I would rate setup cost as four for now.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center?

I expect more integration with AI. I expect Cisco to be easier for users in India, especially for junior users. For a junior one, it may somehow be complex, especially when configuring something. I...

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 needs improvement with FireMon?

Although configuration is not the most difficult aspect of FireMon, a basic understanding of cloud computing and firewall principles is necessary for successful implementation. Therefore, simplifyi...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for FireMon?

FireMon Security Manager is a highly intelligent and useful device that consolidates all our security policies, including those for Zscaler proxies, into a single console. This centralized view eli...

See all answers

Comparisons

AWS Firewall Manager vs Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center

Compared 64% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center

Compared 36% of the time

More Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center Competitors

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 40% of the time

AlgoSec vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 38% of the time

Skybox Security Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 11% 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

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center

February 2025

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center report

Download Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center product report

Buyer's Guide

FireMon Security Manager

February 2025

Download FireMon Security Manager product report

Overview

The Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center is the administrative nerve center for select Cisco security products running on multiple platforms. It provides unified management of Cisco Secure Firewalls with Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) software for port and protocol control, application control, IPS, URL filtering, and malware protection functions. Firewall Management Center is the centralized event and policy manager for:

● Cisco Secure Firewall with the Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) OS

● Cisco ASA with FirePOWER Services

● Cisco Secure IPS (Firepower Next-Gen IPS / NGIPS)

● Cisco FirePOWER Threat Defense for ISR

● Cisco Malware Defense (AMP)

Cisco

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

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center vs. FireMon Security Manager

January 2025

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