Azure Firewall Manager vs FireMon Security Manager comparison

Azure Firewall Manager vs. FireMon Security Manager

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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

Azure Firewall Manager

Ranking in Firewall Security Management

11th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Microsoft Security Suite (28th)

FireMon Security Manager

Ranking in Firewall Security Management

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of Azure Firewall Manager is 1.7%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FireMon Security Manager is 17.5%, up from 15.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewall Security Management

Featured Reviews

MuhammadShakeel

Senior System Engineer at Confiz Solutions

Manages multiple firewalls effortlessly but faces challenges with cost efficiency

Azure Firewall Manager is good most of the time, but it could be improved regarding cost. The cost is a significant concern because we are in a region where the dollar is not our default currency, and converting to dollars makes it very expensive. Microsoft should calculate and show the products in local currencies, such as PKR or Bangladesh currency, and also introduce Indian currency similarly for Pakistan. The technical support could be improved. When a resource is assigned, that resource should follow the ticket and respond swiftly, including sending an email to inform me that an agent has been assigned. I still find myself waiting for an agent to connect with me and resolve my issues. I have not been integrating Azure Firewall Manager with Azure Virtual WAN.

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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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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is easy to install and does not require any plugins for your browser."

"The best feature of Azure Firewall Manager is that it is easy to maintain and configure."

"Azure Firewall Manager centralizes network security management with a hub and spoke architecture."

"The solution is very easy to set up."

"The most valuable feature of Azure Firewall Manager is the testing and configuration."

"The tool's support is good."

"Azure Firewall Manager centralizes network security management with a hub and spoke architecture."

"We are utilizing Azure Entra ID for group labeling, so Active Directory, or now it is Entra ID, securing our application for everyone who accesses it, and Azure Firewall Manager is definitely securing our projects and all its features are fine."

More Azure Firewall Manager pros

"The most effective feature is the general reporting on compliance."

"It is the single place where we go to review all of our firewall changes. The solution makes it easier for us to track all the changes made. It is a central place where we can look at all the firewall rules, because we have three different firewall vendors. It save us time and creates efficiencies by looking at the general picture."

"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."

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

"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."

"Compared to other applications, it is user-friendly. The appearance of the menus and titles is clear and they are easy to follow. Of course, it requires some experience through using it, to go through everything, but it is not very difficult. It is an easy application to use."

"The most valuable feature of FireMon is its ability to configure multiple devices and consolidate them into a single desktop, which allows us to manage all of our security devices, such as Palo Alto and Zscaler, from one place."

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

More FireMon Security Manager pros

Cons

"The solution can improve the integration with open-source tools."

"For Azure Firewall Manager, the learning curve for new people is a bit challenging, but the integration should be more straightforward for configuring a centralized system."

"The configuration and settings require substantial time for learning, particularly for new users. Improvements in ease of configuration would benefit users significantly."

"We could do only one-way NAT-ing, where the traffic comes from outside to internal, to Azure, which is fine. However, when we actually do NAT-ed traffic to hit the firewall, that way is not working."

"There should be a simple one-click deployment for a firewall, rather than a set of setup instructions that include steps such as the DNS configuration, et cetera."

"The configuration and settings require substantial time for learning, particularly for new users."

"The price is okay. This said, the solution is certainly expensive in comparison with other cloud services."

"The cost is a significant concern because we are in a region where the dollar is not our default currency, and converting to dollars makes it very expensive."

More Azure Firewall Manager cons

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

More FireMon Security Manager cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is certainly expensive in comparison with other cloud services."

"The price of the solution is reasonable but it is reasonable for the features."

"Pricing is reasonable."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More FireMon Security Manager pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

20%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Azure Firewall Manager?

The most valuable feature of Azure Firewall Manager is the testing and configuration.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Firewall Manager?

The pricing for Azure Firewall Manager seems okay compared to its good features. Although extra expenses are incurred for additional services, these are not directly related to the firewall, and th...

What needs improvement with Azure Firewall Manager?

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...

Azure Firewall vs Azure Firewall Manager

Comparisons

Compared 35% of the time

FortiGate Cloud-Native Firewall (FortiGate CNF) vs Azure Firewall Manager

Compared 29% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs Azure Firewall Manager

Compared 15% of the time

AlgoSec vs Azure Firewall Manager

Compared 12% of the time

AWS Firewall Manager vs Azure Firewall Manager

Compared 9% of the time

More Azure Firewall Manager Competitors

Tufin Orchestration Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 44% of the time

AlgoSec vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 37% of the time

Skybox Security Suite vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 9% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Panorama vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 4% of the time

ManageEngine Firewall Analyzer vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 3% of the time

More FireMon Security Manager Competitors

Product Reports

Firewall Security Management

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FireMon Security Manager

Download FireMon Security Manager product report

Overview

Azure Firewall Manager is a security management service that provides central security policy and route management for cloud-based security perimeters.

To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

Microsoft

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

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Convey, MGM Resorts International, Southwest Airlines, Alkami, Costco, Aetna, IBM, Verizon, Wells Fargo

Azure Firewall Manager vs. FireMon Security Manager