FireMon Security Manager vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama comparison

FireMon Security Manager vs. Palo Alto Networks Panorama

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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

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Ranking in Firewall Security Management

5th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of FireMon Security Manager is 17.5%, up from 15.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Panorama is 7.1%, down from 10.6% 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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Waleed Aboda

Senior Network Engineer at UPS

Centralized monitoring enhances control while seeking greater flexibility and rapid response

I am still working for Lotus. We work with Palo Alto three series, Panorama, and Firewall Banu, specifically Firewall three series and five series I find this solution valuable for full monitoring, centralized control for reporting, and centralized management. These features are instrumental in…

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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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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 ease of use is the most valuable feature. There are a lot of products out there, but the ability to navigate through and use Firemon is very good."

"Overall, I would rate this solution a nine out of ten."

"The most valuable feature for me is its capability for cleanup and managing the complexity of security products."

"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."

More FireMon Security Manager pros

"The most valuable feature is the Threat Intelligence."

"Everything about the reporting and everything about Palo Alto Networks Panorama is good."

"It has shared profiles for all gateways. If I do not have Panorama, I need to create a separate profile for each and every gateway by logging into that particular gateway, but with Panorama, I can create a shared profile and just push it down to each and every gateway connected to it."

"The main value of Palo Alto Networks Panorama lies in its ability to centralize management, similar to FortiManager."

"I found logging and management features the most valuable in Palo Alto Networks Panorama. Another good feature of the product is that it lets you define global firewall policies and templates."

"The entire ease of use is most valuable. If you're managing firewalls locally with PAN-OS, the look and feel of Panorama is the same. So, you don't have to relearn another product. If you're used to managing firewalls from Palo Alto, you can easily use Panorama to manage them. It looks and feels the same."

"It has made our ROIs easier, but consolidating the correlation of data into one single point, which is pretty great."

"It is really useful for big deployments."

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama pros

Cons

"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."

"A feature that could be improved is support for more devices, not just the firewall."

"A phone app would be nice. This is the reason why it is not perfect yet."

"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 date. It's just waiting for the storage to get full and then it's cleaned up. It isn't something that creates serious issues for us."

"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."

"Some of the core functionality in our environment doesn't seem to work. We will get buggy code releases. They need to work on their Q&A of every code release."

"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."

"While I like the reporting, I think that has the biggest room for improvement. Right now, as a user of FireMon, if I create a report, I am the only one who can see it inside FireMon. If someone on my team creates a report, they are the only person who can see that report on FireMon. It doesn't matter if you're admin in FireMon or not. The way we have to do it now is that we have created a service account user and that service account user runs all the reports. This way, all the reports, which are running, are just run under a single user so we can always access them. This definitely needs to change so users can see other users' reports or we can share reports within FireMon."

More FireMon Security Manager cons

"It's difficult to implement."

"Palo Alto Networks Panorama has some bugs that could be fixed."

"When creating remote access for users, it would be beneficial to be able to base the object on on-premises or the cloud."

"The integration between Strata Cloud Manager and Panorama could be enhanced to allow customers to stay on Panorama for many years while still utilizing Strata Cloud Manager for deployment."

"The solution requires more flexibility and quicker response times."

"Lacking in speed and reliability."

"There is room for improvement in the graphical user interface (GUI), which is becoming outdated, especially the NAT section."

"They can improve its cloud integration."

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is reasonable."

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

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

"We pay for it yearly."

"FireMon is cheaper than AlgoSec."

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

"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."

More FireMon Security Manager pricing and cost advice

"The solution is relatively cheap; I rate it four out of five for affordability."

"Palo Alto Networks Panorama is a more expensive solution than competitors. They should lower the price to stay competitive."

"Initially, Palo Alto looks expensive, but if you dig deeper then you will find that it is very comparable, or even cheaper than other solutions."

"The price of Palo Alto Networks Panorama is expensive."

"Palo Alto products are generally priced higher compared to their competitors."

"Palo Alto is costly compared to Fortinet and Sophos."

"The product's pricing is high but flexible. It now follows the pay-per-use pricing model. I would rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten."

"You can buy the hardware only and each box is not even $10,000. It's only $8,000 for the unit itself. However, then you are charged a three-year license at $81,000."

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

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?

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...

What do you like most about Palo Alto Networks Panorama?

The most valuable aspect of Palo Alto Networks Panorama for me is the centralized management of multiple firewalls.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks Panorama?

Palo Alto Networks Panorama is expensive but provides good value for money. For the higher end, the cost is justified. However, for the lower end, a reduction in cost could improve competitiveness.

What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks Panorama?

From the reporting side, naming the reports properly so that they can be easily identified would be an improvement. Other than that, it works well. There was a bug causing us to not get the latest ...

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

Comparisons

Compared 44% of the time

AlgoSec vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 38% of the time

Skybox Security Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 8% 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

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AlgoSec vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 22% of the time

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 15% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate Cloud vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 11% of the time

AWS Firewall Manager vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 10% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 6% of the time

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama Competitors

Product Reports

FireMon Security Manager

Download FireMon Security Manager product report

Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Download Palo Alto Networks Panorama product report

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

FireMon

Panorama network security management provides static rules and dynamic security updates in an ever-changing threat landscape. Reduce administrator workload and improve your overall security posture with a single rule base for firewall, threat prevention, URL filtering, application awareness, user identification, file blocking and data filtering.

Palo Alto Networks

Sample Customers

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

University of Arkansas, JBG SMITH, Temple University, Telkom Indonesia

FireMon Security Manager vs. Palo Alto Networks Panorama