Azure Firewall Manager vs FireMon Security Manager comparison

Azure Firewall Manager vs. FireMon Security Manager

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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

Azure Firewall Manager

Ranking in Firewall Security Management

10th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

4.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Microsoft Security Suite (26th)

FireMon Security Manager

Ranking in Firewall Security Management

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of Azure Firewall Manager is 2.5%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FireMon Security Manager is 17.7%, up from 16.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewall Security Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
FireMon Security Manager	17.7%
Azure Firewall Manager	2.5%
Other	79.8%

Firewall Security Management

Featured Reviews

Sikkander Batcha

DevOps Engineer at CloudIQ

Has managed traffic effectively but lacks visibility and advanced control features

Azure Firewall is typically behind other vendor firewalls because we don't see what kind of traffic is traveling through it. That is one drawback. The main drawback is that we need log support from Azure Firewall, which can be quite costly. There is no login feature in Azure Firewall because only the IAM feature is available in the Azure site; we manage it only through the Azure portal, not through any other portal. Other vendors, such as Palo Alto, provide GUI or CLI interfaces to manage their firewalls, whereas we only manage Azure Firewall through the Azure portal. In the future, I would like to see additional features in Azure Firewall Manager to make it more competitive, such as technologies like App-ID and User-ID that Palo Alto has. Azure Firewall currently only allows traffic based on layer four and sometimes layer seven, so they need to improve in those areas compared to other vendors.

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SurajYadav

Network Security Consultant at NTT DATA

Centralized policy governance has reduced audit effort and continuously improves risk visibility

I wish to see deeper and more customizable reporting and dashboards, as while the standard reports are useful for audits, operational teams sometimes need real-time, flexible views without exporting data. Tighter integrations with ticketing and change management tools would also enhance the workflow from request to implementation. FireMon Security Manager is excellent for policy governance and risk reduction, but better real-time dashboards and stronger workflow integrations would make it even more powerful for daily operations. There are one or two areas where FireMon Security Manager could be improved to make it even stronger. While FireMon Security Manager overall delivers solid governance and risk insight, it would benefit from more flexible dashboards and deeper integrations to reduce manual steps and improve visibility without relying on external tools. I rate FireMon Security Manager an 8 out of 10. It is a strong tool for firewall policy management, risk analysis, and compliance, clearly improving our audit process and policy governance. The reason I do not give it a 9 out of 10 is mainly because the dashboard could be more flexible and integration with the firewalls could be smoother. FireMon Security Manager is a reliable and high-value platform for managing and governing firewall policies, especially in a multi-vendor environment, though a few areas can still be improved.

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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 of Azure Firewall Manager is the testing and configuration."

"The tool's support is good."

"The solution is very easy to set up."

"The best feature of Azure Firewall Manager is that it is easy to maintain and configure."

"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."

"From a traffic management perspective, it's a good firewall because it's automatically scalable based on the traffic availability."

More Azure Firewall Manager pros

"It’s worked well for us."

"Customer Service: Excellent."

"The most valuable feature is that everything is recorded in the historical logs, including the firewall rules, headcounts, object-level usage, and the rule documentation. The rule certification details are also there, which means that someone can be held accountable for a specific firewall rule."

"This tool allowed us to go through and identify rules that we could get rid of, allowing our rule sets to be a lot smaller than we originally had intended them to be and helping with our ongoing maintenance of our firewalls."

"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."

"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 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."

"Policy test, access path analysis, and change reports."

More FireMon Security Manager pros

Cons

"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."

"Azure charges for many aspects including scaling, automated scaling deployment, and traffic management, which leads to higher costs."

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

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

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

"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."

"For Azure Firewall Manager, the learning curve for new people is a bit challenging, but the integration should be more straightforward for configuring a centralized system."

More Azure Firewall Manager cons

"Its reporting can be improved. I am the only one who works a lot with it, and I am having problems in terms of reporting. In the case of Palo Alto, I'm okay with it, but with some of the Cisco devices, such as routers, when I provide the reports to other teams for review, they always say that the hit count is incorrect. So, I was struggling for a long time to work with them. When working with other teams, they have a lot of questions about reporting, such as how it reports, and we are still struggling with that."

"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."

"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."

"It’s been a constant need not only to analyze firewall rules and configurations but also implement them, for which FireMon has no support."

"Some of the things that you want to do in FireMon are not exactly straightforward, like creating certain reports or controls. Some of the functions could be a little more user-friendly, such as creating certain filters."

"One area for 7.x customers that needs improvement is the migration. It is an involved process so get ready to spend some time getting your environment back to the way it was."

"Needs more functional basic workflow for the Policy Planner for those who do not need a fully customized workflow."

"The support response time has room for improvement."

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."

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

"Relative to what it offers, the price is 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."

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

"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."

"Pricing model seems fair."

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

"FireMon is cheaper than AlgoSec."

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.

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884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

15%

Educational Organization

University

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	2

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	46

Questions from the Community

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

The pricing for Azure Firewall Manager is expensive. In our project, we have used both Palo Alto Firewall and Azure Firewall. Azure charges for many aspects including scaling, automated scaling dep...

What needs improvement with Azure Firewall Manager?

What is your primary use case for Azure Firewall Manager?

My customers are using Azure Firewall Manager, so I'm learning from both documentation and practical knowledge. I usually recommend Azure Firewall Manager for projects such as an animal hospital pr...

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?

Our experience with FireMon Security Manager's pricing and licensing is that it is on the higher side, but justified for a large, regulated environment. The setup cost and licensing made sense give...

What needs improvement with FireMon?

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

Comparisons

Compared 21% of the time

AlgoSec vs Azure Firewall Manager

Compared 15% of the time

Azure Firewall vs Azure Firewall Manager

Compared 15% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs Azure Firewall Manager

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Azure Firewall Manager

Compared 9% of the time

More Azure Firewall Manager Competitors

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 36% of the time

AlgoSec vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 33% of the time

Skybox Security Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 7% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 6% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 2% of the time

More FireMon Security Manager Competitors

Product Reports

Azure Firewall Manager

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