FireMon Security Manager vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama comparison

FireMon and Palo Alto Networks are both solutions in the Firewall Security Management category. FireMon is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.0, while Palo Alto Networks is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.1. FireMon holds a 16.5% mindshare in Firewall Security Management, compared to Palo Alto Networks’s 8.3% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of FireMon users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Palo Alto Networks users who would recommend it.

FireMon Security Manager

Read 56 FireMon Security Manager reviews

4,327 Views
3,335 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Read 89 Palo Alto Networks Panorama reviews

4,712 Views
2,008 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

FireMon Security Manager

Palo Alto Networks Panorama

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

FireMon Security Manager and Palo Alto Networks Panorama are competitive products in the domain of firewall management. FireMon has the advantage in detailed rule insights, while Panorama offers superior scalable and intuitive management for large networks.

Features: FireMon Security Manager is recognized for its comprehensive management of ACLs and proactive security intelligence. It excels in compliance and security policy validation, crucial for firewall auditing and traffic analysis. Users value its support for multiple domains and integration with ticketing systems. In contrast, Palo Alto Networks Panorama offers advanced real-time threat detection through a centralized management console. Its automation for policy deployments and strong integration capabilities make it ideal for large network management.

Room for Improvement: FireMon could benefit from improved network map customization and expanded support for more network devices. Enhancing reporting consistency and simplifying updates is also needed. Panorama users suggest reducing redundancy in status alerts and improving endpoint integration. Faster configuration responses and cost reduction would increase its attractiveness.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: FireMon Security Manager, used primarily on-premises, is praised for its responsive customer support and informative training sessions, though deployment can be challenging. Panorama is adaptable across on-premises and hybrid environments, appreciated for ease of centralized management. However, some users report slower support with complex issues. FireMon offers more direct support, while Panorama's broader applicability suits diverse deployments.

Pricing and ROI: FireMon is perceived as costly yet justified by its features, offering flexible licensing and potential savings. Despite not being the cheapest, it's considered valuable for security management. Palo Alto Networks Panorama, with higher costs, is justified by security capabilities and centralized management. Despite higher licensing costs, its robust features are seen as a worthy investment.

To learn more, read our detailed FireMon Security Manager vs. Palo Alto Networks Panorama Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

FireMon Security Manager vs. Palo Alto Networks Panorama

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

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

Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Ranking in Firewall Security Management

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

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 FireMon Security Manager is 16.5%, up from 16.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Panorama is 8.3%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewall Security Management

Featured Reviews

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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Kim Ejby Lorentzen

Senior Principal Solutions Architect, HPE Aruba Networking - Full Stack Platform Expert at Danoffice IT ApS

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…

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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 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."

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

"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."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is the Firewall reviews for our company compliance."

"The automation that the platform provides to create tickets reduces human error and more generally, reduces the operational overhead."

"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 ease of use is the most valuable feature. There are a lot of products out there, but the ability to navigate through and use Firemon is very good."

More FireMon Security Manager pros

"I like the quality of this product, and it performs. It's the best solution in the IT business."

"The most valuable feature is the Threat Intelligence."

"On the one or two occasions that I had to make use of technical support, I felt it to be pretty good."

"It's a reliable solution."

"The solution is absolutely stable."

"The firewall rules and policies are the most valuable aspects of the solution."

"Managing the firewalls in the branch locations from a central management console is easier."

"The product can scale."

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama pros

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."

"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."

"The issue for me started with Fortinet not being able to see things correctly. It lost its appeal in terms of what it could do for me from a security standpoint, so I do not pay as much attention to it."

"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."

"A feature that could be improved is support for more devices, not just the firewall."

"We've had recurring issues managing FireMon's internal backups. Sometimes, the space allocated for the backup is full, and there is no process where it deletes files that are older than I certain date. It's just waiting for the storage to get full and then it's cleaned up. It isn't something that creates serious issues for us."

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

"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."

More FireMon Security Manager cons

"The solution's utilization of network ports makes things as complex as possible."

"The implementation is not that easy."

"There is room for improvement in the integration within endpoint detection. They need to do some integration between endpoints and the firewalls."

"The configuration could be a bit better."

"It could be more secure."

"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."

"Clients need to have an alarm and alert system from which they can forward the trigger. The product needs to improve its integration as well."

"It is an expensive product."

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"This is an expensive solution. The cost of three modules for three years was approximately one million."

"We pay for it yearly."

More FireMon Security Manager pricing and cost advice

"The licensing is not cheap. There are always hidden costs. You have support costs, or maybe you need to buy more optics on how the solution fits into the rest of your environment. It is possible some of the rest of your environment will need to change too."

"It is pretty reasonable as compared to other companies."

"There is a license needed to use Palo Alto Networks Panorama. The cost is not that important, what is important is meeting all the requirements and security features."

"The price of Palo Alto Networks Panorama is high. There is a pay-per-use model."

"Sometimes the company prefers to give a license to test the product in our environment before we go to the customer. But the customer should buy his own license, and that's the system here. The system is different between one country and another. Some countries say that the IT solutions provider should provide the license."

"With the URL filtering, we probably went down from around four hours in response time to about five minutes."

"Pricing is high compared to other vendors in the same space. Licensing is also fairly high for different functions to be added on."

"We have a yearly license. The cost is not that high and not that cheap either."

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

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.

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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...

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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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks Panorama?

The setup cost is too high.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks Panorama?

The solution requires more flexibility and quicker response times. High-speed replies are crucial. Additionally, the AI module should be on-premises, not in the cloud. It should support more flexib...

See all answers

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RedSeal vs FireMon Security Manager

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AlgoSec vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 21% of the time

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 19% of the time

AWS Firewall Manager vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 14% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate Cloud vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 12% of the time

Skybox Security Suite vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

FireMon Security Manager

March 2025

Download FireMon Security Manager product report

Buyer's Guide

Palo Alto Networks Panorama

February 2025

Download Palo Alto Networks Panorama product report

Overview

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

Panorama network security management provides static rules and dynamic security updates in an ever-changing threat landscape. Reduce administrator workload and improve your overall security posture with a single rule base for firewall, threat prevention, URL filtering, application awareness, user identification, file blocking and data filtering.

Palo Alto Networks

Sample Customers

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

University of Arkansas, JBG SMITH, Temple University, Telkom Indonesia

Buyer's Guide

FireMon Security Manager vs. Palo Alto Networks Panorama

January 2025

Free Report: FireMon Security Manager vs. Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Find out what your peers are saying about FireMon Security Manager vs. Palo Alto Networks Panorama and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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