FireMon Security Manager and Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center are key players in the network security management category. FireMon seems to have the upper hand with its comprehensive auditing capabilities and policy review features, essential for maintaining top-tier security across various environments.
Features: FireMon Security Manager provides sophisticated firewall rule auditing, unused and redundant rule identification, and thorough compliance validation. It offers change monitoring and policy mapping, vital in multi-vendor setups. Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center excels in intrusion prevention, advanced malware protection, and threat intelligence from Talos.
Room for Improvement: FireMon needs enhancements in network maps and reporting features and smoother system updates and integration with other vendors. Cisco faces challenges in improving user interface simplicity, performance, cloud management, ease of configuration, update frequency, and customer support responsiveness.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: FireMon Security Manager is mainly on-premises but can extend to public clouds. It's known for responsive technical support despite occasional variability in response times. Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center is available for both private and on-premises deployment, with a generally good support reputation but suggested enhancements in communication and efficiency.
Pricing and ROI: FireMon, although perceived as expensive, offers substantial ROI through effective rule management, error reduction, and operational efficiencies. Its flexible pricing structure supports discounts balancing costs for features. Cisco's licensing is customizable but additional support costs may be a deterrent. Both emphasize streamlining network security operations.
The Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center is the administrative nerve center for select Cisco security products running on multiple platforms. It provides unified management of Cisco Secure Firewalls with Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) software for port and protocol control, application control, IPS, URL filtering, and malware protection functions. Firewall Management Center is the centralized event and policy manager for:
● Cisco Secure Firewall with the Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) OS
● Cisco ASA with FirePOWER Services
● Cisco Secure IPS (Firepower Next-Gen IPS / NGIPS)
● Cisco FirePOWER Threat Defense for ISR
● Cisco Malware Defense (AMP)
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.
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