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 #5 with an average rating of 8.3, while Palo Alto Networks is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.5. FireMon holds a 17.6% mindshare in Firewall Security Management, compared to Palo Alto Networks’s 6.8% 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

3,283 Views
3,185 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Read 91 Palo Alto Networks Panorama reviews

3,347 Views
3,280 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

FireMon Security Manager

Palo Alto Networks Panorama

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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

5th

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 November 2025, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of FireMon Security Manager is 17.6%, up from 16.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Panorama is 6.8%, down from 9.3% 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	6.8%
FireMon Security Manager	17.6%
Other	75.6%

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 unused objects is another nice feature, where it digs a little bit deeper into comparing the logs that it sees versus the configurations that it sees... The unused objects feature will go through in a pretty detailed way and show us which ones aren't being used. Or, if they are used, it will show us how often they're used."

"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."

"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 effective feature is the general reporting on compliance."

"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."

"The Security Manager part of FireMon... gives me an eye on everything that's out there, everything that I cannot see. Because I'm not a network admin, I cannot go to a firewall itself, but at least I have FireMon so that I can go in and view everything that I want to view. And I can eliminate whatever I see that is wrong,"

"The most valuable feature is the Firewall reviews for our company compliance."

"We also use the solution’s SASE integration capabilities to extend security policy management for cloud firewall management. It helps in creating one consistent rule across multiple platforms and it improves accuracy."

More FireMon Security Manager pros

"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."

"Palo Alto Networks Panorama is stable."

"This is an efficient solution."

"The reporting is great."

"It provides a quicker response time to vulnerabilities and more visibility into traffic flows."

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

"One valuable feature is centralized management. We are able to manage it centrally for two to three remote offices, our head office and our data centers. So, it is very simple to manage."

"Especially for big, worldwide clients, one of the most valuable features is being able to create some rules to place on the security groups."

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama pros

Cons

"When it comes to real-time compliance management, something that is missing is alerting on certain, predefined controls. It would be good to have a predefined set of controls which, if not complied with in a newly set up rule, would create an alert for us. That is something that is missing, out-of-the-box."

"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."

"It comes as a Linux appliance on a server and we're not a Linux shop, we're more of a Windows shop. It would be great if they could automate or integrate the backups into it and other things through their GUI interface, just to make the management of Linux a little more transparent."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More FireMon Security Manager cons

"Clients need to have an alarm and alert system from which they can forward the trigger. The product needs to improve its integration as well."

"The pricing of the solution could be considered an area of improvement, as it is a comprehensive and feature-rich product that may include features that are not needed by some companies."

"From a storage perspective, I would like to see an improvement where logs can be compressed to make some space available."

"Lacking in speed and reliability."

"Reporting might be an area to improve. It can provide reporting or some sort of graphical representation of your environment."

"I would like to have better analytics."

"The ease of use of Palo Alto Networks Panorama is an area for improvement. Another downside is that you need a lot of comprehension to understand what it is."

"The product does need a bit of configuration. It's not quite ready to go out of the box."

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay for it yearly."

"Regarding additional costs, if you want things like Policy Optimizer, extra features, that's extra."

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

"FireMon is cheaper than AlgoSec."

"Pricing is reasonable."

"Pricing model seems 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."

"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."

More FireMon Security Manager pricing and cost advice

"The price of Palo Alto Networks Panorama is high. There is a pay-per-use model."

"The solution is expensive and could be cheaper."

"The price of Palo Alto Networks Panorama should be reduced. We pay for the solution annually."

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

"We're a reseller, and we're an MSSP. So, we get some extreme discounts."

"There is a license needed to use Palo Alto Networks Panorama. The cost is not that important, what is important is meeting all the requirements and security features."

"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."

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

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

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	33
Midsize Enterprise	14
Large Enterprise	46

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

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AlgoSec vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 20% of the time

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 13% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate Cloud vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 12% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 9% of the time

AWS Firewall Manager vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 7% of the time

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

FireMon Security Manager

November 2025

Download FireMon Security Manager product report

Buyer's Guide

Palo Alto Networks Panorama

October 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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