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 17.8% mindshare in Firewall Security Management, compared to Palo Alto Networks’s 6.9% 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 October 2025, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of FireMon Security Manager is 17.8%, up from 15.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Panorama is 6.9%, down from 9.7% 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	6.9%
FireMon Security Manager	17.8%
Other	75.3%

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 Firewall reviews for our company compliance."

"The technical support is very good. They've always been helpful."

"For the cleanup of firewall rules, it performs really well for us. We utilize it in our regular rule cleanup tasks, several times a year. FireMon is our primary tool when doing that, either by going through its out-of-the-box compliance rules or using it to search for certain things in our rules that we want to prune from our firewalls."

"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."

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

"The most valuable features are Policy Optimizer and Firewall Manager for different brands of firewall."

"FireMon decreases errors and misconfigurations by 10% that increase risk in our environment. That has to do a lot with the change reporting that is in place, but also with the built-in controls and custom controls that we have made. Those all decrease the errors that people naturally make on a day-to-day basis for firewall administration."

"The firewall assessment feature is great."

More FireMon Security Manager pros

"In Panorama, installing the policy, and pushing the policy, it's quite seamless."

"I find this solution valuable for full monitoring, centralized control for reporting, and centralized management."

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

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

"It is really useful for big deployments."

"The product features allow the capacity to take effective, advanced security measures."

"The interface is very easy to use. You can do most jobs from one single console."

"The solution, especially the latest versions, is very stable."

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama pros

Cons

"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 improve its end-user practices. As an end user, I am just trying to catch up on all the alerts. There are so many, and you still have to go through them and document what was found."

"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."

"The cost of the solution is pretty expensive. It would be ideal if they could work on their pricing."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More FireMon Security Manager cons

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

"The solution is quite expensive."

"They need to do less bug-related releases and create versions that are stable for at least six months at a time. I don't find this issue in other solutions like Cisco, Check Point, FortiGate, or others. Those just provide a patch if there is a bug and we don't have to worry about downtime."

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

"It communicates with remote devices, and sometimes, there is a little bit of delay during its communication with remote devices. There should be real-time communication or updates from the manager to devices."

"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."

"Lacking in speed and reliability."

"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."

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is very good, very straightforward. It also came in cheaper than AlgoSec and Tufin."

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

"Pricing model seems fair."

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

"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."

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

"FireMon is cheaper than AlgoSec."

"FireMon is very expensive. I think that they charge a premium. In general, they are very pricey. Compared to their competitors, they cost a little more than the other solutions that we evaluated."

More FireMon Security Manager pricing and cost advice

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

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

"It has freed up staff time, which is where we are seeing ROI."

"Its cost is quite high."

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

"The licensing is not cheap. There are always hidden costs. You have support costs, or maybe you need to buy more optics on how the solution fits into the rest of your environment. It is possible some of the rest of your environment will need to change too."

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

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

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

14%

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	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.

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 ...

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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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

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 4% of the time

More FireMon Security Manager Competitors

AlgoSec vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 21% 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 11% of the time

AWS Firewall Manager vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 9% 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

October 2025

Download FireMon Security Manager product report

Buyer's Guide

Palo Alto Networks Panorama

September 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

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