FireMon Security Manager vs Skybox Security Suite comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

FireMon Security Manager
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Skybox Security Suite
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2024, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of FireMon Security Manager is 15.9%, down from 18.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Skybox Security Suite is 11.1%, up from 10.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewall Security Management
Unique Categories:
No other categories found
Vulnerability Management
0.6%
 

Featured Reviews

JeffReese - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 25, 2022
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.
TZ
Jan 24, 2021
Good solution with strong features
In terms of what could be improved, I would say support for Cisco Firepower. This is one of the biggest segments in the Ukraine market. Many customers use Cisco Firepower. It is not a good solution for me, but it make sense. The second feature that could be improved is a deeper integration with Palo Alto. One of my customers uses Palo Alto and during the trial period with Skybox Security, we had some issues because when the IT administrator used the rules Skybox Security didn't understand. But it's not really a problem with Skybox Security. This was a problem for the company who used these stupid rules.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 firewall assessment feature is great."
"The most valuable feature of FireMon is its ability to configure multiple devices and consolidate them into a single desktop, which allows us to manage all of our security devices, such as Palo Alto and Zscaler, from one place."
"The most valuable feature is the reporting capability because everything that we do is a result of our being able to query a report, based on our environment and our PCI compliance efforts."
"Vendor agnostic when it comes to integrating with other product."
"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."
"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."
"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,"
"We use Network Assurance for network visualisation and troubleshooting."
"We are currently working on rule review and compliance. The logging features are good."
"Security review is the most important feature, because it offers a single pane of glass to analyze multiple firewalls."
"The way that it's built with three-tier architecture, it makes it very horizontally scalable, so I can have multiple fallbacks. If one machine does fall offline, there are four other machines that are doing the exact same job to pick it up"
"Aside from Firewall Assurance, we are using Network Assurance and Change Manager for an overview of the whole network and for documenting requests and the recertification of the ruleset."
"The most valuable features are Firewall Assurance and Vulnerability Control."
"The port division management was the solution's most valuable aspect for our organization."
"Change Manager is most important because of the impact on each other of a network change or a firewall change. We want to understand this and to know, beforehand, what the impact of a change will be. We are a large network so that is a very important tool."
 

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."
"FireMon could be easier to use and flexibility regarding reporting could be improved."
"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."
"FireMon could be made more user-friendly when it comes to creating filters or conducting traffic analysis."
"FireMon could improve its end-user practices. As an end user, I am just trying to catch up on all the alerts. There are so many, and you still have to go through them and document what was found."
"I don't like that it comes with bugs, constant issues, and limited functionality."
"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."
"The cost of the solution is pretty expensive. It would be ideal if they could work on their pricing."
"The solution was quite technical. It would be easier to manage if the solution was more specific about aspects of the solution and provided more advisory around how to use it effectively. It would help users a lot if they were more clear about everything."
"The stability is something that is questionable. I don't know whether it is because of the kind of infrastructure we have or because of the product in itself. We're running it on a virtual machine right now. Maybe once a month, or once in every 45 days, it requires a restart because the application fails to connect. So I have to restart the whole Skybox Manager itself, the Skybox server itself, and then connect to it from our Skybox Manager."
"The primary room for improvement would be to enable a web interface, which is not something which is there in the product. This is supposed to have come a year, a year and a half ago, but still has failed to come out. It still needs a client application to be installed on a workstation to be able to access that server and then run these reports. So I cannot extend that access to anybody. It has to be one administrator all the time. So unlike a web interface, where you can give multiple users simultaneous access and generate the various reports, that isn't a possibility at the moment."
"The Network Assurance, which helps to create the network model, is not so rich."
"During implementation, we realised approximately 30 devices were not supported by the Skybox platform​."
"Skybox should improve their UX features by making them easier to use."
"The most recent update was not tested with all of the vendors before it was released, so some of the features are misbehaving."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay for it yearly."
"The pricing is very good, very straightforward. It also came in cheaper than AlgoSec and Tufin."
"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."
"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."
"FireMon is cheaper than AlgoSec."
"This is an expensive solution. The cost of three modules for three years was approximately one million."
"Regarding additional costs, if you want things like Policy Optimizer, extra features, that's extra."
"Relative to what it offers, the price is fair."
"Currently, the licensing costs me about $300 USD for the year. This is a huge amount for my environment."
"The pricing is high, and the licensing model needs more flexibility."
"Fully understand the total cost of ownership. They have gone to a new model where you have to replace the hardware every X amount of years at a very substantial cost and fully understand your intended number of nodes. To operate a firewall, you have to pay two licenses, a firewall node and a network node. If you are a reasonable-sized organization, this gets expensive very quickly."
"The pricing has increased exorbitantly in the last few years, so now it is questionable. Now, it makes me want to review other products."
"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."
"I would rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"With licensing, the number of network nodes becomes very expensive to the point where you have to rationalize if the tools are warranted anymore."
"Skybox comes with extra licenses and has a change management license. The licenses are expensive, but they come with extra value."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FireMon?
It's a good value. From a licensing standpoint, our only limitation is the number of devices that we manage. Our environment is small. We have fewer than 20 enterprise firewalls, meaning it's hard ...
What needs improvement with FireMon?
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 d...
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...
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...
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about FireMon Security Manager vs. Skybox Security Suite and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
787,779 professionals have used our research since 2012.