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FireMon Security Manager vs RedSeal comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Firewall Security Management (4th)
RedSeal
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

FireMon Security Manager and RedSeal aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. FireMon Security Manager is designed for Firewall Security Management and holds a mindshare of 16.6%, up 16.2% compared to last year.
RedSeal, on the other hand, focuses on Risk-Based Vulnerability Management, holds 0.3% mindshare, up 0.1% since last year.
Firewall Security Management
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

Ganesh-Khutwad - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Sajid Mukhtar - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides a graphical overview of our network and is easy to deploy, but needs a user-friendly interface and a feature for compliance audit policy
Sometimes, it required us to refresh the configuration. When we integrated any of the configurations into the device, sometimes, it could not detect the exact picture of that device. So, we had to reset the device to see that if it was giving true-positive results or false-positive results. In some cases, we were not able to get true-positive results. There was some kind of bug in that version. Its interface is not user-friendly and needs to be improved. It takes time to understand the interface and various options. Skybox has quite a user-friendly interface. They could provide a feature for compliance audit policy if it is already not there. A compliance audit policy ensures that all configurations are based on the best practices standards, such as CIS benchmarks standard or other similar standards. It provides visibility about whether your device configuration is based on best practices or not. Usually, such a feature is provided by other solutions such as Meteor or Tenable Nessus.

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 features are the security assessments and the ability to identify unused rules or objects."
"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."
"FireMon Security Manager is a fast and intelligent device that delivers results in under ten seconds, even with thousands of policies."
"The most effective feature is the general reporting on compliance."
"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."
"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."
"It is a good product. Previously, we were using only spreadsheets to compare the usage, but now with FireMon, we are able to clean up or review the policies to some extent. It is still a work in progress, but we are at a good stage now."
"Vendor agnostic when it comes to integrating with other product."
"The most valuable features are network mapping and configuration."
"RedSeal integrates the network and gives us a visual or graphical overview of our network. If an organization is geographically dispersed, for instance, with one office in Canada and one office in the Philippines, the whole network, including all devices, is integrated into RedSeal, and you can see from where the traffic is going in and out."
"RedSeal has different modules, such as the Analyzer module, which can be leveraged."
"This is the only solution in the world that gives you a digital resilience score."
 

Cons

"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."
"FireMon could be easier to use and flexibility regarding reporting could be improved."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"We have not used the Policy Planner but even so, we have identified areas of improvement with it during our testing. For example, it could be better when it comes to ease of integration or ease of policy automation. Another problem is that there is a console where it has too many options and is not very straightforward. Essentially, controlling it could be made more seamless."
"When it comes to identifying risk in our environment and prioritizing fixes, it is really about the different priorities within the organization. FireMon is not so smart that it can tell what's important to us. It's up to us to figure that out."
"We're working on implementing FireMon with our ticketing system service now. Having that would be an improvement."
"There is room for improvement in integrating the OT security part and the private 5G security part in RedSeal."
"The dashboard should be improved to make correlating data easier to do."
"Sometimes, it required us to refresh the configuration. When we integrated any of the configurations into the device, sometimes, it could not detect the exact picture of that device. So, we had to reset the device to see that if it was giving true-positive results or false-positive results. In some cases, we were not able to get true-positive results. There was some kind of bug in that version. Its interface is not user-friendly and needs to be improved. It takes time to understand the interface and various options. Skybox has quite a user-friendly interface. They could provide a feature for compliance audit policy if it is already not there. A compliance audit policy ensures that all configurations are based on the best practices standards, such as CIS benchmarks standard or other similar standards. It provides visibility about whether your device configuration is based on best practices or not. Usually, such a feature is provided by other solutions such as Meteor or Tenable Nessus."
"One of the areas of concern is the GUI. It is important to our customers that the GUI looks beautiful. It's a Java Client, so you have a Java dependency."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay for it yearly."
"This is an expensive solution. The cost of three modules for three years was approximately one million."
"It's a good value. From a licensing standpoint... it's very simple to understand, and gives us a good bang for the buck."
"FireMon is cheaper than AlgoSec."
"The pricing is very good, very straightforward. It also came in cheaper than AlgoSec and Tufin."
"Its pricing is good. Compared to others, it is not so expensive."
"Pricing is reasonable."
"Relative to what it offers, the price is fair."
"The pricing is based on the number of endpoints and devices, and we have seen it range from mid-five figures to low six figures."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Government
24%
Computer Software Company
11%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
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?
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 needs improvement with RedSeal?
There is room for improvement in integrating the OT security part and the private 5G security part in RedSeal.
What is your primary use case for RedSeal?
The primary use cases for RedSeal are lifecycle management, vulnerabilities, and change management. Customers might look up or use these solutions for these areas.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Convey, MGM Resorts International, Southwest Airlines, Alkami, Costco, Aetna, IBM, Verizon, Wells Fargo
United States Postal Service, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., Interval International
Find out what your peers are saying about AlgoSec, Tufin, FireMon and others in Firewall Security Management. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.