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AlgoSec vs FireMon Security Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

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

AlgoSec
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
1st
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
183
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
FireMon Security Manager
Ranking in Firewall Security Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of AlgoSec is 22.8%, up from 20.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FireMon Security Manager is 16.6%, up from 16.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewall Security Management
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user1292127 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 27, 2020
 

Featured Reviews

Shameerudheen Kp - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to setup with good auto-implementation and good rule reviews
AlgoSec is slow when it is loaded with too many firewalls and policies. A plan to take care of heavy usage is to be considered. Support of all firewalls and policy features to be enabled. AlgoSec should support in identifying most hit rules and re-ordering existing firewall rules - this is a very key to manage firewall CPU. A clustering of AlgoSec can also be considered. A group of AlgoSec servers managing large client bases geographically or datacenter-wise or function-wise. A head reporting unit and child processing units.
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.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"AlgoSec has helped us save time by having one central location to view firewall policies, especially when crossing multiple vendors."
"It improves audibility and security by having instant access to firewall configurations."
"For us, as well as for our customers, firewall management and change management are the most important features."
"The automation of the firewall rule deployment, working together with our ticketing system, is the most valuable feature of this solution. The needs as required by a user request are automatically validated and configured in the specified firewalls without any human action."
"Setup is easy. ​Just run the script and all seems fine."
"It lowers the burden of the security department."
"Traffic Analyzer provided the centralized view for our IT SOC operations to focus mainly on high-risk firewall rules exposing with explicit any rules."
"There are some important and really nice features that I want to mention about AlgoSec. The most useful feature is instantaneous AFA reports, that you do not have to wait (at least one week or even more for a more accurate one) to get optimization recommendations about policy as many other vendors."
"The technical support is very good. They've always been helpful."
"The most valuable feature for me is its capability for cleanup and managing the complexity of security products."
"Overall, I would rate this solution a nine out of ten."
"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."
"What I like about FireMon is the ability to track changes made by network engineers on the network."
"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 features are Policy Optimizer and Firewall Manager for different brands of firewall."
"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."
 

Cons

"There are sometimes issues with the Risky Rules reports where the number of hits is registering zero, but we know that this is incorrect because we have checked the rules and see that they are indeed registering traffic."
"The customization of dashboards should be simplified and more user-friendly."
"Due to the fact that AlgoSec's user interface is less friendly than that of other programs, it might not be appropriate for persons with little experience in security or IT."
"A vulnerability management module might be interesting, though not integrated with a third-party vendor. It should be an AlgoSec VM module."
"The interface needs to be more user-friendly for low-profile users so that we can give some kind of access to specific people around the company for self-configuration of specific rules."
"ABF is not very mature compare to AFA and AFF, but the module and concepts are quite good. I would suggest more concentration on ABF, especially on object and application permissions."
"I would like more documents and support for the cloud firewall."
"It would be nice if it was more variable when checking virtual domain baseline in the same way as Fortigate's firewalls do."
"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."
"To my knowledge, there's no cloud component to FireMon whatsoever. We're on the hook for any updates to versioning of the operating system or the application that runs on the operating system. It would be nice if it was a little bit more automated."
"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."
"The issue for me started with Fortinet not being able to see things correctly. It lost its appeal in terms of what it could do for me from a security standpoint, so I do not pay as much attention to it."
"The support response time has room for improvement."
"We're working on implementing FireMon with our ticketing system service now. Having that would be an improvement."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing for this solution is not cheap, but we get good value for what we pay."
"The pricing for this solution seems to be reasonable for the functionality."
"It is fair."
"I find the price too expensive. It looks a bit like SAP, so it does have standard functionality out of the box, but you will spend a lot of money if you want to customize it. However, the price is not as extreme as SAP or Oracle, but the actual implementation does turn out to be expensive."
"I would suggest that you start with a VM, get a PoC with a temp license, and try it out. You will love it."
"Pricing is easy to grasp."
"It seems we have recovered our money on this appliance, so it is money well spent."
"For cloud environments, it can be expensive. The model adopted to use as licensing for the cloud environment should be reviewed since it sometimes can increase the value of the service/product in an unexpected way. For example, they should instead use the amount of instances, which should just take into consideration the number of Security Groups and ACLs."
"This is an expensive solution. The cost of three modules for three years was approximately one million."
"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."
"Its pricing is good. Compared to others, it is not so expensive."
"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."
"We pay for it yearly."
"FireMon is cheaper than AlgoSec."
"Relative to what it offers, the price is fair."
"Pricing is reasonable."
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Answers from the Community

it_user1292127 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 27, 2020
Feb 27, 2020
Well before both the products have their own pros and cons. But the criteria you mention, I would say you can go with AlgoSec with the following reasons: 1. It's less expensive compared to FireMon. 2. Need very less amount of resources as compare to FireMon who need a huge amount of resources with their basic level VM as well. 3. Easy to manage and configure. 4. I found AlgoSec bette...
2 out of 4 answers
CG
Feb 24, 2020
Unfortunately we chose Tufin over both those products, sorry I cannot give you a comparison on either. For us, Tufin simplifies the needs we have for Risks/Cleanup/Violations in our FW policies. We also leverage compliance policy for best practices. You can also take advantage of the reporting functionally which suites your environment or infrastructure such as: - New Revision - Advance Change - FW Modul Change - Object Change - Expired Rules - Rule and Object Usage - Policy Analysis - Security Risk - Rule Documentation.
Sunil Kumar. - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 25, 2020
Well before both the products have their own pros and cons. But the criteria you mention, I would say you can go with AlgoSec with the following reasons: 1. It's less expensive compared to FireMon. 2. Need very less amount of resources as compare to FireMon who need a huge amount of resources with their basic level VM as well. 3. Easy to manage and configure. 4. I found AlgoSec better than FireMon in terms of reporting. But the biggest drawback with AlgoSec is their tech support which takes a huge amount of time to respond and investigate the issue. And in the end, they will always provide you one solution which is a known bug in the product and they will release an HA for that.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
5%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AlgoSec?
AlgoSec's ability to integrate with various security and networking solutions enhances its overall value.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AlgoSec?
Pricing for AlgoSec is fairly competitive. Rating the pricing on a scale from one being high to ten being low, the price is considered competitive without being specified absolutely.
What needs improvement with AlgoSec?
The user interface for AlgoSec has remained unchanged for the last ten years and could benefit from being more interactive and informative. Additionally, a cloud offering as a SaaS would relieve th...
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...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Maersk, Delta Airlines, Chevron, General Motors, T-Mobile, Chevron, AT&T, BP, Bell Canada, HCA Healthcare, Morgan Stanley, Unilever, Nationwide Insurance Enterprise, US Bank, Microsoft 
Convey, MGM Resorts International, Southwest Airlines, Alkami, Costco, Aetna, IBM, Verizon, Wells Fargo
Find out what your peers are saying about AlgoSec vs. FireMon Security Manager and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.