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

3,262 Views
3,164 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Read 91 Palo Alto Networks Panorama reviews

3,420 Views
3,352 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 most valuable features are Policy Optimizer and Firewall Manager for different brands of firewall."

"When it comes to real-time compliance management, it is very good because it is able to compare changes in the configuration as well as giving us a timestamp. It also sends email alerts to our environment so we know if someone has made a change on the network. It gives us the whole picture of that change. Whether it is a configuration change or just a small comment, it gives us the before and after snapshot."

"The firewall assessment feature is great."

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

"FireMon Security Manager is a fast and intelligent device that delivers results in under ten seconds, even with thousands of policies."

"I've been using the reports to see what is going on, and that is a helpful feature. We can track down unused rules, which helps with compliance. We can see rules that have not been used or that are duplicates or overly permissive."

"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."

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

More FireMon Security Manager pros

"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."

"Panorama enables you to provision all your firewalls and other things as a cluster. It is quite useful for that."

"The solution is very stable. It's reliable. We don't experience bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash. It works as expected."

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

"I found it easy to learn how to pull information from the logs."

"The solution is absolutely stable."

"You don't need an overly experienced workforce to handle Palo Alto. It's very easy to use."

"It's a reliable solution."

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama pros

Cons

"I ran a report and FireMon suggested that certain tools were not used. When I removed them, while it didn't bring our environment down completely, a lot of our environment started malfunctioning. Our backup system did not work, nor did other things that involve internal and external communication. We are not comfortable with what it did."

"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."

"I don't like that it comes with bugs, constant issues, and limited functionality."

"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."

"The training for configuring new users or operators is confusing because the UI is not user-friendly and has room for improvement."

"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'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."

"Our firewalls have multiple paths through them and FireMon falls short a little bit because it's not Palo Alto-centric. I don't think FireMon has kept up with where Palo Alto is at. They started out being Check Point-centric for years and they've never really fully embraced the nuances others, like Palo Alto or Fortinet, have. They don't handle a lot of the capabilities and attributes that Palo Alto does yet. They're working on it. They're getting there."

More FireMon Security Manager cons

"A bottleneck in Palo Alto Networks Panorama is the licensing. The licensing model for the product is complicated. Another area for improvement is the PDF report generation because you'll notice that it's missing some details."

"The solution is quite expensive."

"Aside from pricing, I don't have any issues with Panorama."

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

"The dual WAN functionality is missing in this solution."

"Lacking in speed and reliability."

"In our version, there is no feature to transfer or upload a database of third-party vulnerabilities or signatures so that Panorama can convert them into its own database. This kind of feature might already have come in version 10."

"The ability to add scheduled jobs would be a significant improvement. Panorama has the ability to push out OS updates, but it would be nice to be able to schedule those updates so not to affect the site during normal business hours."

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Pricing model seems fair."

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

"Pricing is reasonable."

"FireMon is cheaper than AlgoSec."

"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 pay for it yearly."

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

More FireMon Security Manager pricing and cost advice

"With the URL filtering, we probably went down from around four hours in response time to about five minutes."

"It is very affordable when compared to more expensive firewalls."

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

"Sometimes the company prefers to give a license to test the product in our environment before we go to the customer. But the customer should buy his own license, and that's the system here. The system is different between one country and another. Some countries say that the IT solutions provider should provide the license."

"You only pay for the license and there are no additional costs."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

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

"The pricing is considered a little bit expensive, but depending on the client, it's worth it."

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

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.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

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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

RedSeal vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 3% 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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