Azure Firewall Manager vs FireMon Security Manager comparison

Azure Firewall Manager vs. FireMon Security Manager

Download the complete report

Helped 849,686 peers since 2012

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

Azure Firewall Manager

Ranking in Firewall Security Management

12th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Microsoft Security Suite (27th)

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

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of Azure Firewall Manager is 1.7%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FireMon Security Manager is 16.6%, up from 16.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewall Security Management

Featured Reviews

Rashedul Khan

Senior Software Engineer at cimsolutions

Security management has improved with centralized threat detection and automation

I have been using Azure actively in my company, engaging with various technologies such as Azure SQL Server, virtual machines, and other cloud-dependent development scenarios. To secure the environment, we sometimes utilize Azure Firewall Manager. We needed to manage different individual firewalls…

Read full review

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.

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 most valuable feature of Azure Firewall Manager is the testing and configuration."

"The solution is very easy to set up."

"Azure Firewall Manager centralizes network security management with a hub and spoke architecture."

"The tool's support is good."

"The solution has improved our organization with its firewall."

"Azure Firewall Manager centralizes network security management with a hub and spoke architecture."

"It is easy to install and does not require any plugins for your browser."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"It gives us the ability to go to one place to look for potential firewall rules that are inappropriate, or which don't meet compliance. Instead of manually searching hundreds of firewalls for a policy, we can go to this one location and find the rules which are now out of compliance."

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

More FireMon Security Manager pros

Cons

"The configuration and settings require substantial time for learning, particularly for new users."

"The configuration and settings require substantial time for learning, particularly for new users. Improvements in ease of configuration would benefit users significantly."

"The tool's security features need to improve. It needs also to include a monitoring system for logs. It is also complicated to find a query on the Azure firewall."

"There should be a simple one-click deployment for a firewall, rather than a set of setup instructions that include steps such as the DNS configuration, et cetera."

"We could do only one-way NAT-ing, where the traffic comes from outside to internal, to Azure, which is fine. However, when we actually do NAT-ed traffic to hit the firewall, that way is not working."

"The price is okay. This said, the solution is certainly expensive in comparison with other cloud services."

"The solution can improve the integration with open-source tools."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The AWS integration is still not mature for us to use. It is just not ready for our use case for AWS connectivity. Therefore, it does not provide us with a single pane of glass for our cloud environments, because we can't manage our cloud environment with the tool."

"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 training for configuring new users or operators is confusing because the UI is not user-friendly and has room for improvement."

"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."

"FireMon could be easier to use and flexibility regarding reporting could be improved."

More FireMon Security Manager cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is certainly expensive in comparison with other cloud services."

"The price of the solution is reasonable but it is reasonable for the features."

"It's a good value. From a licensing standpoint... it's very simple to understand, and gives us a good bang for the buck."

"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."

"We pay for it yearly."

"Pricing model seems fair."

"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."

"Its pricing is good. Compared to others, it is not so expensive."

"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."

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

More FireMon Security Manager pricing and cost advice

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

849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

18%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Azure Firewall Manager?

The most valuable feature of Azure Firewall Manager is the testing and configuration.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Firewall Manager?

The pricing for Azure Firewall Manager seems okay compared to its good features. Although extra expenses are incurred for additional services, these are not directly related to the firewall, and th...

What needs improvement with Azure Firewall Manager?

The configuration and settings require substantial time for learning, particularly for new users. Improvements in ease of configuration would benefit users significantly.

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?

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 ...

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...

Azure Firewall vs Azure Firewall Manager

Comparisons

Compared 38% of the time

FortiGate Cloud-Native Firewall (FortiGate CNF) vs Azure Firewall Manager

Compared 23% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs Azure Firewall Manager

Compared 18% of the time

AlgoSec vs Azure Firewall Manager

Compared 12% of the time

AWS Firewall Manager vs Azure Firewall Manager

Compared 9% of the time

More Azure Firewall Manager Competitors

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 40% of the time

AlgoSec vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 38% of the time

Skybox Security Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 11% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 4% of the time

RedSeal vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 3% of the time

More FireMon Security Manager Competitors

Product Reports

Firewall Security Management

Download Azure Firewall Manager product report

FireMon Security Manager

Download FireMon Security Manager product report

Overview

Azure Firewall Manager is a security management service that provides central security policy and route management for cloud-based security perimeters.

To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

Microsoft

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

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

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

Azure Firewall Manager vs. FireMon Security Manager