FireMon Security Manager vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama comparison

FireMon and Palo Alto Networks are both solutions in the Firewall Security Management category. FireMon is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.0, while Palo Alto Networks is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.5. FireMon holds a 17.8% mindshare in Firewall Security Management, compared to Palo Alto Networks’s 7.1% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of FireMon users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Palo Alto Networks users who would recommend it.

FireMon Security Manager

Read 56 FireMon Security Manager reviews

3,429 Views
3,326 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Read 91 Palo Alto Networks Panorama reviews

3,598 Views
3,562 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

FireMon Security Manager

Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

FireMon Security Manager and Palo Alto Networks Panorama are competitive products in the domain of firewall management. FireMon has the advantage in detailed rule insights, while Panorama offers superior scalable and intuitive management for large networks.

Features: FireMon Security Manager is recognized for its comprehensive management of ACLs and proactive security intelligence. It excels in compliance and security policy validation, crucial for firewall auditing and traffic analysis. Users value its support for multiple domains and integration with ticketing systems. In contrast, Palo Alto Networks Panorama offers advanced real-time threat detection through a centralized management console. Its automation for policy deployments and strong integration capabilities make it ideal for large network management.

Room for Improvement: FireMon could benefit from improved network map customization and expanded support for more network devices. Enhancing reporting consistency and simplifying updates is also needed. Panorama users suggest reducing redundancy in status alerts and improving endpoint integration. Faster configuration responses and cost reduction would increase its attractiveness.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: FireMon Security Manager, used primarily on-premises, is praised for its responsive customer support and informative training sessions, though deployment can be challenging. Panorama is adaptable across on-premises and hybrid environments, appreciated for ease of centralized management. However, some users report slower support with complex issues. FireMon offers more direct support, while Panorama's broader applicability suits diverse deployments.

Pricing and ROI: FireMon is perceived as costly yet justified by its features, offering flexible licensing and potential savings. Despite not being the cheapest, it's considered valuable for security management. Palo Alto Networks Panorama, with higher costs, is justified by security capabilities and centralized management. Despite higher licensing costs, its robust features are seen as a worthy investment.

To learn more, read our detailed FireMon Security Manager vs. Palo Alto Networks Panorama Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

FireMon Security Manager vs. Palo Alto Networks Panorama

September 2025

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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

4th

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

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of FireMon Security Manager is 17.8%, up from 15.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Panorama is 7.1%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewall Security Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Palo Alto Networks Panorama	7.1%
FireMon Security Manager	17.8%
Other	75.1%

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

"The most valuable feature is the reporting capability because everything that we do is a result of our being able to query a report, based on our environment and our PCI compliance efforts."

"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."

"FireMon is nice and provides 360-degree user views."

"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."

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

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

"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 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

"All of the reports and events from different locations can be managed centrally."

"We use the solution for centralized monitoring."

"These features are instrumental in achieving effective results."

"The most valuable feature of Palo Alto Networks Panorama is its innovation and impressive capacity to handle network traffic efficiently."

"The solution is absolutely stable."

"Technical support is quite helpful."

"What's most valuable in Palo Alto Networks Panorama is that it allows us to see the status on the network side, particularly on the endpoint, because we also use it for the internal network."

"The ability to manage a large number of firewalls from a single point is most valuable."

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama pros

Cons

"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 support response time has room for improvement."

"We are looking for more integration with SIEM and other tools."

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

"Sometimes, there is a problem related to the sizing itself. If we have many devices added or if the firewall complexity is huge, we might experience some lag in processing. It may relate to the hardware specifications."

"FireMon could be made more user-friendly when it comes to creating filters or conducting traffic analysis."

"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."

"We have had some stability issues that are affecting operations. We rely heavily on this solution and if it isn't working then we have to create rules manually."

More FireMon Security Manager cons

"The current documentation is not detailed enough."

"It could be more secure."

"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."

"In the future, it would be beneficial if Panorama could include a firewall assurance feature similar to Skybox."

"It would be beneficial to improve the capabilities of Panorama to handle logs more efficiently, potentially reducing the need for additional local collectors. Adding more predefined dashboards as features would enhance the monitoring and reporting capabilities."

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

"Price is probably one of the biggest things that we struggle with, specifically with Palo, and that's across their whole portfolio."

"The price of Palo Alto Networks Panorama could be better."

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"Pricing model seems fair."

"FireMon is cheaper than AlgoSec."

"We pay for it yearly."

"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

"It is pretty reasonable as compared to other companies."

"The pricing is pretty average. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate it a five."

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

"The solution is expensive and could be cheaper."

"Palo Alto is expensive and there are many cheaper firewalls, but they do not work as well."

"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."

"It is not a cheap solution."

"Pricing is high compared to other vendors in the same space. Licensing is also fairly high for different functions to be added on."

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	44

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	32
Midsize Enterprise	14
Large Enterprise	47

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.

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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 ...

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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...

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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.

See all answers

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

If you go with the cloud-based deployment, it is pretty much affordable. If you go with the physical bare-metal hardware, then it is quite expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks Panorama?

I do see some disadvantages with Panorama. If your staff is not technical enough, you have to be very careful if you have production devices on Panorama because once you push any changes, those get...

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Comparisons

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 45% of the time

AlgoSec vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 38% of the time

Skybox Security Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 7% of the time

ManageEngine Firewall Analyzer vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 4% of the time

More FireMon Security Manager Competitors

AlgoSec vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 20% of the time

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 14% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate Cloud vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 12% 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 8% of the time

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

FireMon Security Manager

September 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Palo Alto Networks Panorama

August 2025

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

Buyer's Guide

FireMon Security Manager vs. Palo Alto Networks Panorama

September 2025

Free Report: FireMon Security Manager vs. Palo Alto Networks Panorama

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