FireMon Security Manager vs Skybox Security Suite comparison

FireMon and Skybox Security are both solutions in the Firewall Security Management category. FireMon is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.0, while Skybox Security is ranked #7 with an average rating of 7.3. FireMon holds a 16.3% mindshare in Firewall Security Management, compared to Skybox Security’s 10.8% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of FireMon users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 82% of Skybox Security users who would recommend it.

FireMon Security Manager

Read 54 FireMon Security Manager reviews

4,714 Views
3,646 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Skybox Security Suite

Read 35 Skybox Security Suite reviews

3,183 Views
2,387 Comparison Views

82% willing to recommend

FireMon Security Manager

Skybox Security Suite

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

FireMon Security Manager and Skybox Security Suite compete in the network security management category. FireMon appears to have the upper hand with its strong rule comparison and policy validation features.

Features: FireMon Security Manager provides valuable features like redundant ACL reports, policy review, and ticket integration. It also offers alerts for firewall changes, making it well-suited for compliance and security policy validation. Skybox Security Suite excels in firewall management and vulnerability control, integrating with multiple vendors, and offering change management and network path analysis to understand network changes.

Room for Improvement: FireMon requires enhanced network maps, better SMB firewall support, and improved migration processes. Reporting needs consistency, and update processes should be more user-friendly. Skybox's web interface and firewall change management need development. Reporting should be expanded, and customer support could be more responsive, requiring improved third-party tool integration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: FireMon supports on-premises deployment with excellent customer service and technical support. Users appreciate its various support channels. Skybox supports on-premises and hybrid cloud deployments, offering superior technical support and highlighting its flexibility in deployment environments.

Pricing and ROI: FireMon's pricing is seen as balanced but expensive, delivering significant ROI through time savings in audits. High renewal costs are a concern. Skybox is costly, with a pricing model that could be more flexible, but it offers value in network assurance and vulnerability management, providing potential for cost reduction and ROI in larger implementations.

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

Buyer's Guide

FireMon Security Manager vs. Skybox Security Suite

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

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Skybox Security Suite

Ranking in Firewall Security Management

7th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Vulnerability Management (43rd)

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 Skybox Security Suite is 10.8%, up from 10.4% 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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NenadMijatovic

Director of Sales at S4E Serbia

Efficient in vulnerability management, stable and easy to use

Vulnerability management is the most valuable feature because it lets you focus on the most critical vulnerabilities. That's the important thing. Here in Serbia, there are not so many companies that have too many firewalls inside one company. So, they usually don't buy this model for Firewall Assurance unless there is some compliance. So you can prove that your firewalls are compliant. So, that model is not so important here in Serbia. It's for bigger companies. So, they usually buy network assurance to build the model of the network and vulnerability management to focus on the most important vulnerabilities. Moreover, Skybox can collect data for many vendors. From the endpoint protection vendors to the network equipment vendors to other security vendors. So, it supports more than one hundred vendors to collect data from them.

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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

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

"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."

"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."

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

"It provides us with a single pane of glass for our on-prem environment, to see configuration. We have not implemented into the cloud yet. We can search for an object group and see where it lives on any firewall in the enterprise or find security rules, no matter what firewall they're on."

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

"FireMon is nice and provides 360-degree user views."

More FireMon Security Manager pros

"The solution offers very nice dashboards and they've recently added a very good Java-based web interface."

"I think that compliance checks and policy compliance are the product's good features."

"Overall, the tool has helped us reduce risks. If any step is missing, it's easier for my team or engineers to identify it. The tool provides accurate recommendations based on the data. Its integration is easy, and I have integrated it with Fortinet firewalls."

"The most valuable features are the rule compliance and the OS vulnerability checks."

"instead of asking for firewall rules which may or may not be relevant, or could already be there, or could be over-permissioned, Skybox can be used to map out the resources that that application is going to use and provide the exact rules that an application would require to function correctly. If the traffic isn't able to flow for the application, if it's erring out, Skybox can be used to troubleshoot that and say, "All right, where is the traffic being stopped and why, and how do I fix that.""

"It can be integrated with a vulnerability management solution. When a client comes, apart from pitching network and firewall change management, we are recommending having vulnerability management. So, rather than just having the audit of the firewall, they can integrate it with their vulnerability management solution, which could be Rapid7, Qualys, or any other solution. This provides them the most value out of the platform. That is the way we are approaching our customer base."

"The performance could be good because we chose it at the time, but it is too complex for us to appreciate its performance because we lack the necessary skills."

"The most valuable feature is firewall management."

More Skybox Security Suite pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"We're working on implementing FireMon with our ticketing system service now. Having that would be an improvement."

"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 advanced features are complex in setting up the rules."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More FireMon Security Manager cons

"The price could be cheaper."

"There is room for improvement in pricing. It would be better, especially if a customer bought all four modules."

"It's expensive."

"Skybox Security Suite can improve the change management module. It is the one part of the tool that is used with the firewall devices and you have a change management module that is used to record changes of all firewalls in the company. It's not compatible with all brands, this is where they can improve the solution."

"The solution needs improvement in firewall configuration checks. I would also like to see more configuration checks for Forcepoint and for other non-supported firewalls."

"The Network Assurance, which helps to create the network model, is not so rich."

"Change Manager can be improved. If they can improve Change Manager so that whatever we want to do on a firewall, we are able to do it through Change Manager, it will be helpful for us. Whenever we are doing a change, it only does them at an L3 and L4 level, but all the firewalls are at the application layer. So, whatever needs to be done on the firewall, we aren't able to get it done through Change Manager. Currently, this functionality is not there because of which we are sometimes losing customers. I can create a role on Layer 3, Layer 4, but when it comes to the application layer, such as configuring and defining URLs or other things at the application level, it can't be done through Change Manager. Customers demand that they should be able to do everything through Change Manager. They don't want to do it through some other mechanism to accomplish their complete change management policy. They don't want to use a firewall manager because sometimes, they don't have any manager. They ask if they can use our solution so that a manager is not required. If Change Manager can do all the management automatically without involving any other manager, it will be great. They can also provide better integration with other managers so that everything can be done through a central point."

"The most recent update was not tested with all of the vendors before it was released, so some of the features are misbehaving."

More Skybox Security Suite cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"We pay for it yearly."

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

"Pricing model seems fair."

"FireMon is cheaper than AlgoSec."

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

"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."

"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."

More FireMon Security Manager pricing and cost advice

"The product's pricing is excellent value. In terms of licensing, make sure you understand your network components, all your hops through your network, thoroughly, before you decide on the total cost. If you want to do point-to-point flow analysis and such, you need to have the configuration of all the devices in between point A and point B. A lot of people don't realize all their network components until they start using this product."

"I think the price is fair."

"I think for the cost, what we got definitely is worth it. The only caution I would give is that whenever you license for Firewall Assurance at the same time, for some weird reason, you have to get one Network Assurance license, just to manage one firewall. That's a little bit of overkill. But otherwise, in general, the pricing is fairly okay."

"It's expensive."

"Licensing is normally on a yearly basis. There may also be a perpetual license. Normally, the customers ask for a lower price. If you want to sell more, you have to think about it."

"The software is expensive. I rate its pricing an eight out of ten."

"The licensing fee is paid yearly and is approximately $100,000."

"Currently, the licensing costs me about $300 USD for the year. This is a huge amount for my environment."

More Skybox Security Suite pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

Energy/Utilities Company

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

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.

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...

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What do you like most about Skybox Security Suite?

Overall, the tool has helped us reduce risks. If any step is missing, it's easier for my team or engineers to identify it. The tool provides accurate recommendations based on the data. Its integrat...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Skybox Security Suite?

Skybox Security Suite has indeed helped us reduce costs. The prices of AlgoSec and Skybox Security Suite are approximately 50 percent different. The tool may require special vendor support from abr...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Skybox Security Suite?

There is room for improvement in the product's user interface. It could be more user-friendly.

See all answers

Comparisons

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 41% of the time

AlgoSec vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 37% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 5% of the time

RedSeal vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 3% of the time

ManageEngine Firewall Analyzer vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 3% of the time

More FireMon Security Manager Competitors

AlgoSec vs Skybox Security Suite

Compared 34% of the time

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs Skybox Security Suite

Compared 29% of the time

RedSeal vs Skybox Security Suite

Compared 5% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs Skybox Security Suite

Compared 4% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs Skybox Security Suite

Compared 3% of the time

More Skybox Security Suite Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

FireMon Security Manager

January 2025

Download FireMon Security Manager product report

Buyer's Guide

Skybox Security Suite

December 2024

Download Skybox Security Suite product report

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FireMon

Skybox Security

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

The Skybox Security Suite platform combines firewall and network device data with vulnerability and threat intelligence, prioritizing security issues in the context of your unique environment. Powerful attack vector analytics reduce response times and risks, bringing firewall, vulnerability and threat management processes for complex networks under control.

Firewall Assurance brings all firewalls into one normalized view, continuously monitoring policy compliance, optimizing firewall rulesets and finding attack vectors that others miss. Skybox covers the most comprehensive list of firewall vendors, complex rulesets, even virtual and cloud-based firewalls. With proven scalability in 1,500+ firewall deployments, Firewall Assurance keeps rules optimized and ensures changes don’t introduce new risk.

Gain total visibility of the vulnerabilities in your attack surface without waiting for a scan. Leverage Skybox Research Lab's vulnerability and threat intelligence, and automatically correlate it to your unique environment. With network modeling and advanced simulations, pinpoint exposed vulnerabilities and other attack vectors. And use context to prioritize vulnerabilities in terms of actual risk and respond to threats with accuracy and efficiency.

For more information or to view a demo, visit www.skyboxsecurity.com.

Sample Customers

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

ADP, Blue Cross Blue Shield, BT, USAID, Delta Dental, EDF Energy, EMC, HSBC, Johnson & Johnson

Buyer's Guide

FireMon Security Manager vs. Skybox Security Suite

January 2025

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