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 #3 with an average rating of 8.0, while Palo Alto Networks is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.3. FireMon holds a 17.9% mindshare in Firewall Security Management, compared to Palo Alto Networks’s 7.1% 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

3,486 Views
3,381 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Read 91 Palo Alto Networks Panorama reviews

3,715 Views
3,678 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: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

FireMon Security Manager vs. Palo Alto Networks Panorama

July 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

3rd

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

5th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Firewall Security Management category, the mindshare of FireMon Security Manager is 17.9%, up from 16.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Panorama is 7.1%, down from 10.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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

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

"The SQL language is convenient to use. It allows us to process a bunch of criteria very quickly and narrows things down if there is an issue with the firewall. It's easy to do that with SQL queries."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"The most valuable features are the security assessments and the ability to identify unused rules or objects."

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

More FireMon Security Manager pros

"This solution is user-friendly. It is centrally managed and provides role optimization, without the need for additional tools."

"It has shared profiles for all gateways. If I do not have Panorama, I need to create a separate profile for each and every gateway by logging into that particular gateway, but with Panorama, I can create a shared profile and just push it down to each and every gateway connected to it."

"The granular control of Palo Alto Networks Panorama stands out for me, as you have centralized management or a centralized view for all the firewalls."

"We are attracted to Palo Alto because it is stable."

"The initial setup isn't very complex, it's user-friendly."

"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."

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

"Panorama has improved the organization by enabling log collection, administration, and optimization of firewall policies. It supports policy migration and offers platform stability and decent uptime."

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama pros

Cons

"The support response time 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."

"A feature that could be improved is support for more devices, not just the firewall."

"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."

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

"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."

"A phone app would be nice. This is the reason why it is not perfect yet."

"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."

More FireMon Security Manager cons

"It is an expensive product."

"The solution is extremely expensive. You can integrate it with other Palo Alto products, however, it ends up being too much."

"Sometimes in Palo Alto Networks Panorama, we receive issues where it is overloaded and unresponsive. We have issues with accessing the devices due to a slow response from Panorama."

"It could be more secure."

"The general customer feedback is when saving the configuration, it takes a long time. That needs to be fixed. The troubleshooting, the debugging part is also a little bit of a pain. It's not user-friendly on the interface to do our debugging when comparing it with other firewalls, like Forcepoint."

"My pain point is the automation process is not well-documented. There are some things that they could improve on there."

"We have had some issues in the past because integrating a new device is not intuitive."

"A potential improvement for Palo Alto Networks Panorama could be a more competitive pricing structure."

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is reasonable."

"Pricing model seems fair."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

More FireMon Security Manager pricing and cost advice

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

"Cost-wise, it's very expensive."

"It is not a cheap solution."

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

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

"If I were to rate the pricing of Palo on a scale of one to five, with one being really high and five being a good, reasonable price, I would rate Palo as a three."

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

"The solution is priced well and there is a license for this solution that we pay annually for."

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks Panorama?

Palo Alto Networks Panorama is expensive but provides good value for money. For the higher end, the cost is justified. However, for the lower end, a reduction in cost could improve competitiveness.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks Panorama?

From the reporting side, naming the reports properly so that they can be easily identified would be an improvement. Other than that, it works well. There was a bug causing us to not get the latest ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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 8% of the time

RedSeal vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 3% of the time

ManageEngine Firewall Analyzer vs FireMon Security Manager

Compared 3% of the time

More FireMon Security Manager Competitors

AlgoSec vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 20% 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 12% of the time

AWS Firewall Manager vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 10% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center vs Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Compared 7% of the time

More Palo Alto Networks Panorama Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

FireMon Security Manager

August 2025

Download FireMon Security Manager product report

Buyer's Guide

Palo Alto Networks Panorama

August 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

July 2025

Free Report: FireMon Security Manager vs. Palo Alto Networks Panorama

Find out what your peers are saying about FireMon Security Manager vs. Palo Alto Networks Panorama and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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