Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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 8.0, 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 25 Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center reviews
  • 499 Views
  • 182 Comparison Views
86% willing to recommend
FireMon Security Manager
Read 54 FireMon Security Manager reviews
  • 4,866 Views
  • 3,798 Comparison Views
87% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report
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.

DOWNLOAD THE COMPLETE REPORT
To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center vs. FireMon Security Manager Report (Updated: December 2024).
Buyer's Guide
Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center vs. FireMon Security Manager
December 2024
Download the complete report
Helped 824,067 peers since 2012
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Secure Firewall Manag...
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
FireMon Security Manager
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FireMon Security Manager is 16.4%, up from 15.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewall Security Management
 

Featured Reviews

Awais Ejaz - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Read full review
JeffReese - PeerSpot reviewer
Makes compliance much easier compared to doing it manually, and automates policy changes across environments
People have a tendency to just add rules to firewalls, but they don't go back and take rules away. Some of our customers have thousands of unused rules that have been sitting out there for over a year. In one report, FireMon tells us there are, say, 1,000 rules that can be taken out and it gives us the ability to disable those for a year and to track when we made our changes. After a year, we can go back and eliminate the rules, to bring the configuration down to an almost human-readable level. It also identifies risks in your environment and helps to prioritize fixes. It actually rates the risk level, meaning you look for the red and try to bring everything to green.
Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The platform has significantly enhanced our organization's operations by providing secure communication channels between different office locations."
"The solution is easy to use."
"The tool's deployment is not complex."
"I like its system management and filtering options as a layer seven firewall."
"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."
"My clients have never contacted me with any issues, so I believe the solution is stable."
"The solution has a great UI and a policy deployment mechanism, and all the configuration is easily manageable for the firewalls."
"The solution is quite scalable."
More Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center pros
"The most valuable features are Policy Optimizer and Firewall Manager for different brands of firewall."
"For the cleanup of firewall rules, it performs really well for us. We utilize it in our regular rule cleanup tasks, several times a year. FireMon is our primary tool when doing that, either by going through its out-of-the-box compliance rules or using it to search for certain things in our rules that we want to prune from our firewalls."
"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."
"Vendor agnostic when it comes to integrating with other product."
"In one report, FireMon tells us there are, say, 1,000 rules that can be taken out and it gives us the ability to disable those for a year and to track when we made our changes. After a year, we can go back and eliminate the rules, to bring the configuration down to an almost human-readable level."
"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 the Firewall reviews for our company compliance."
"Policy test, access path analysis, and change reports."
More FireMon Security Manager pros
 

Cons

"The solution could improve the number of ports available and load balancing."
"Areas for improvement include pricing points and the range of products available at any given time."
"It takes five to seven minutes to push one policy."
"Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center's logging functionality could be improved."
"Improving the product by incorporating SD-WAN functionality would be highly beneficial, especially for remote offices with limited server and Internet availability."
"I recommend they work on usability and ensure the solution is more user-friendly."
"Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center could improve by being less expensive."
"The solution should improve the user interface."
More Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center cons
"To my knowledge, there's no cloud component to FireMon whatsoever. We're on the hook for any updates to versioning of the operating system or the application that runs on the operating system. It would be nice if it was a little bit more automated."
"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."
"The stability has been fairly decent, but there have been a few issues. My coworker has had some issues in the past where he has had to work with support."
"The current health and monitoring of the devices is atrocious... Imagine you have a list of 200 devices, and you can grade each of those devices as either green, yellow, or red. However, there might be three different reasons for you to go to red, or eight different reasons to go to yellow, and all of those things could be combined... Out of all those categories, I only find one or two of them that are, perhaps, pertinent."
"A phone app would be nice. This is the reason why it is not perfect yet."
"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."
"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."
More FireMon Security Manager cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Technical support is an additional annual cost and is not included with the license."
"One of the advantages of Cisco is its range of flexible licensing options."
"I rate the tool's pricing a four out of ten. The licensing costs are yearly."
"It could be considered relatively cheaper when compared to some other vendors in the market."
"I rate Secure Firewall Management Center eight out of 10 for pricing."
"I use the free version of the product."
"It is rather expensive."
"The price of the solution is expensive. We do not have to pay more than the standard licensing fees."
More Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center pricing and cost advice
"We pay for it yearly."
"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."
"We don't license all of the devices in our network, so it does not provide us with a comprehensive visibility of all devices in a hybrid network at this time."
"Pricing model seems fair."
"Relative to what it offers, the price is fair."
"The pricing is very good, very straightforward. It also came in cheaper than AlgoSec and Tufin."
"Regarding additional costs, if you want things like Policy Optimizer, extra features, that's extra."
"FireMon is cheaper than AlgoSec."
More FireMon Security Manager pricing and cost advice
report
See which vendors are best for you
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Firewall Security Management solutions are best for your needs.
See recommendations
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
19%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Engineering Company
7%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
 

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?
The product pricing is reasonable and falls in the mid-range.
See all answers
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center?
We encountered challenges, particularly when building use cases for this firewall, as it requires specific OS versions and firmware upgrades, which can lead to increased downtime. It adds an admini...
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 Logo
AWS Firewall Manager vs Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center
Compared 70% of the time
Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center Logo
Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center
Compared 30% of the time
More Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center Competitors
Tufin Orchestration Suite vs FireMon Security Manager Logo
Tufin Orchestration Suite vs FireMon Security Manager
Compared 41% of the time
AlgoSec vs FireMon Security Manager Logo
AlgoSec vs FireMon Security Manager
Compared 36% of the time
Skybox Security Suite vs FireMon Security Manager Logo
Skybox Security Suite vs FireMon Security Manager
Compared 12% of the time
Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs FireMon Security Manager Logo
Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs FireMon Security Manager
Compared 5% of the time
RedSeal vs FireMon Security Manager Logo
RedSeal vs FireMon Security Manager
Compared 3% of the time
More FireMon Security Manager Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center
December 2024
Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center reportDownload Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center product report
Buyer's Guide
FireMon Security Manager
December 2024
FireMon Security Manager reportDownload FireMon Security Manager product report
 

Learn More

Cisco
FireMon
 

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)

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
 

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
December 2024
Free Report: Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center vs. FireMon Security Manager
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center vs. FireMon Security Manager and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
DOWNLOAD NOW
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.
See our Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center vs. FireMon Security Manager report.
See our list of best Firewall Security Management vendors.

We monitor all Firewall Security Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.