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FireMon Security Manager vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

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

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
Palo Alto Networks Panorama
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of FireMon Security Manager is 16.3%, up from 16.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Panorama is 8.6%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewall Security Management
 

Featured Reviews

Ganesh-Khutwad - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Kim Ejby Lorentzen - PeerSpot reviewer
Unified firewall management streamlines operations across branches with prompt support services
The primary use case for this solution is the management of the entire firewall portfolio across various branches Palo Alto Networks Panorama has simplified management by providing a unified interface for firewall management and configuration. One of the key advantages of Palo Alto Networks…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We also use the solution’s SASE integration capabilities to extend security policy management for cloud firewall management. It helps in creating one consistent rule across multiple platforms and it improves accuracy."
"Policy test, access path analysis, and change reports."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the Firewall reviews for our company compliance."
"We are attracted to Palo Alto because it is stable."
"Technical support is helpful and knowledgeable."
"Panorama has improved the organization by enabling log collection, administration, and optimization of firewall policies. It supports policy migration and offers platform stability and decent uptime."
"Technical support is quite helpful."
"One valuable feature is centralized management. We are able to manage it centrally for two to three remote offices, our head office and our data centers. So, it is very simple to manage."
"You don't need an overly experienced workforce to handle Palo Alto. It's very easy to use."
"The most valuable item is centralization and we can get all of the router bases in a single window."
"The interface is very easy to use. You can do most jobs from one single console."
 

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."
"I think that having a more open system and providing documentation for it would be helpful for users like us. We are pretty adept and can navigate through the Linux software that the on-premises FireMon is based on. It would help us in the long run."
"The support response time has room for improvement."
"The advanced features are complex in setting up the rules."
"A phone app would be nice. This is the reason why it is not perfect yet."
"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."
"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."
"I don't like that it comes with bugs, constant issues, and limited functionality."
"The solution could improve by having a true single pane of glass environment for unified management. At the present time, you still have to use three or four different solutions to bring everything together."
"It is very hard to understand the platform. It is not easy and user-friendly. You need a lot of experience to use Panorama. It is very complex, and you must know exactly what to do. I would like to have a more user-friendly product. FortiManager is comparatively very easy to use. It would be good if Panorama improves in terms of user-friendliness. It is also harder to use than Palo Alto Firewalls."
"Its scalability can be improved. It is too expensive to scale it in the way Palo Alto wants us to scale. Scalability is one of the main reasons why our customer is looking for alternatives. It is too expensive to scale. Its redundancy also requires improvement, but it seems that in the latest version, redundancy is improved, and you can have more than two devices in an HA pair. So, they are heading in that direction. It would be good if they combine their dynamic list functionality in a much better way with Panorama and include it as out-of-the-box functionality. Palo Alto supports the dynamic list functionality for some basic threats, but there is a lot of scope for improvement."
"An area for improvement would be the connectivity, which sometimes means logs can be slow to display."
"The solution's utilization of network ports makes things as complex as possible."
"Price is probably one of the biggest things that we struggle with, specifically with Palo, and that's across their whole portfolio."
"Palo Alto Networks Panorama has some bugs that could be fixed."
"There is room for improvement in response time for tech support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"This is an expensive solution. The cost of three modules for three years was approximately one million."
"FireMon is cheaper than AlgoSec."
"We pay for it yearly."
"Pricing model seems fair."
"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."
"The price of Panorama is expensive."
"Licensing fees are paid yearly."
"It is not a cheap solution."
"It is very affordable when compared to more expensive firewalls."
"You only pay for the license and there are no additional costs."
"The pricing is considered a little bit expensive, but depending on the client, it's worth it."
"Palo Alto Networks Panorama has so many licenses. For example, it has threat protection and group protection licenses. One license depends on another. I find it more expensive than Cisco."
"Palo Alto is expensive and there are many cheaper firewalls, but they do not work as well."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
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...
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...
What do you like most about Palo Alto Networks Panorama?
The most valuable aspect of Palo Alto Networks Panorama for me is the centralized management of multiple firewalls.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks Panorama?
In large installations, it can be expensive with hardware appliances, however, virtual Panorama is well-priced and is sold every time there's a solution.
What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks Panorama?
The integration between Strata Cloud Manager and Panorama could be enhanced to allow customers to stay on Panorama for many years while still utilizing Strata Cloud Manager for deployment.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Convey, MGM Resorts International, Southwest Airlines, Alkami, Costco, Aetna, IBM, Verizon, Wells Fargo
University of Arkansas, JBG SMITH, Temple University, Telkom Indonesia
Find out what your peers are saying about FireMon Security Manager vs. Palo Alto Networks Panorama and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,881 professionals have used our research since 2012.