Cisco Firepower 1000 Series vs. FireMon

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Firepower 1000 Series
Score 7.5 out of 10
N/A
The Cisco Firepower® 1000 Series for small to medium-size businesses and branch offices is a family of four threat-focused Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) security platforms designed to deliver business resiliency through superior threat defense. The vendor provides that they offers exceptional sustained performance when advanced threat functions are enabled. The 1000 Series’ throughput range addresses use cases from the small office, home office, remote branch office to the Internet edge. The…N/A
FireMon
Score 7.8 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
FireMon is a real-time security policy management solution built for today’s complex multi-vendor, enterprise environments. Supporting the latest firewall and policy enforcement technologies spanning on-premises networks to the cloud, FireMon delivers visibility and control across the entire IT landscape to automate policy changes, meet compliance standards, to minimize policy-related risk. Since creating their policy management solution in 2004, FireMon states they've helped…N/A
Pricing
Cisco Firepower 1000 SeriesFireMon
Editions & Modules
Firepower 1000
1,000-5,000
per appliance
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Firepower 1000 SeriesFireMon
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Features
Cisco Firepower 1000 SeriesFireMon
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Firepower 1000 Series
8.4
33 Ratings
2% below category average
FireMon
-
Ratings
Identification Technologies8.031 Ratings00 Ratings
Visualization Tools7.230 Ratings00 Ratings
Content Inspection8.330 Ratings00 Ratings
Policy-based Controls8.733 Ratings00 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP8.529 Ratings00 Ratings
Firewall Management Console7.232 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting and Logging8.333 Ratings00 Ratings
VPN9.228 Ratings00 Ratings
High Availability9.232 Ratings00 Ratings
Stateful Inspection8.928 Ratings00 Ratings
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Cisco Firepower 1000 SeriesFireMon
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User Ratings
Cisco Firepower 1000 SeriesFireMon
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(34 ratings)
7.8
(69 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.0
(2 ratings)
6.8
(7 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(5 ratings)
7.3
(3 ratings)
Availability
8.1
(2 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Performance
8.3
(29 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(34 ratings)
7.7
(17 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
7.8
(48 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Firepower 1000 SeriesFireMon
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
I think it is well suited for smaller companies or (as in our case) extension to a central system with higher performance. My personal guess is, that it can be quite annoying with those delays in bigger environments, when 20 or more devices needed to be managed. From the point of security, support and updates it works quite good and seem to have no downsides.
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FireMon
FireMon is best used in a large environment (for example, I have >100
firewalls in my environment). It's best used when trying to improve
security posture and showing changes in firewall security over time. It
might not be the best choice for smaller environments or those that aren't concerned about security management.
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Pros
Cisco
  • My organization is all Cisco and wants to stay in the Cisco life cycle, Firepower 1000 series is great for small to medium-size office.
  • Very robust enterprise-grade security solution with updated threat features to handle any current and upcoming threats. The solution is backed by Cisco to ensure constant security updates. Integrated AnyConnect remote client VPN is a big plus to allow for secure remote workers access. Easier to set up a site to site VPN due to the large user base and case studies published on integrating to other manufacturer solutions.
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FireMon
  • Give good real time reporting for anyone making a change to any of our firewalls
  • Provides good reporting tools that are out of box
  • Provide good customization tools that is specific to our needs
  • Upgrades are a simple process and support does relatively well with assisting us.
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Cons
Cisco
  • ACLS in gui are PIA cant see object details
  • Objects in ACLs dont show IP addresses
  • Have to renames every object to name+ip to make acl GUI useable
  • Speed to data can use improvement.
  • Health warnings should allow you to resolve you have to dig n search in some cases.
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FireMon
  • Some features could be added to the existing functionality which include NAT rules usage
  • Rule expiration normalization from firewalls rather than entering them in rule documentation
  • .csv exports of the files from the firewall pane only gives usage for 30 days by default and that should be increased
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Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
It is quite good, robust and reliable but not always so easy to manage and configure. The tools could be improved and the price is not low for an entry level firewall
Read full review
FireMon
The shell is locked out and we can't run any general centos commands. The implementation and maintainence of the arch is very complex. Even with the right identifiers on log messages the log collection keeps failing. The warning messages on the device are ambiguous. The log messages on firemon are a bit confusing and don't show the exact issue.
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Usability
Cisco
Firepowers are secure, reliable, central management and configuration is easy and they fit in well with our existing Cisco infrastructure. Good feature set and support. Good management and control with chassis manager and central control with additional Firepower Management Centre.
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FireMon
It save me time and I'm able to have the review - review the rule independently with using my time.
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Reliability and Availability
Cisco
Has not let me down yet.
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FireMon
FireMon has been relatively stable overall. However, there have been a handful of times where we had issues with the console. For example, we couldn't update which devices to include in a security assessment. The initial suggestion from support was to just reboot it. It seems like there weren't many other options available such as to restart services before going to the extreme of a complete reboot.
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Performance
Cisco
Great performance even on the lower end model of the series. You can push a lot of traffic through these devices without much performance impact. If you decide you want to inspect encrypted traffic however, you may take a big hit on the cpu and memory of the box, but they still manage to keep up even with all the bells and whistles turned on.
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FireMon
I'm not sure we have the largest implementation of FireMon out there but we do have a few 1000 devices being probed by FireMon. Overall, the system's performance has been rock solid. The console refreshes quickly and reports are generated within an expected timeframe.
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Support Rating
Cisco
I have had troubles with Firepower Management Center and the FTD's in the past. Sticking to a Gold Star image and upgrading when the "bugs" are fixed is great. That still doesn't mean you are left vulnerable though. The extra features are just not enabled yet. Great product and calling support is readily available for any issue.
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FireMon
FireMon technical support is awesome! They respond quickly to our requests and they are well trained and very knowledgeable about the tool. Some issues have to be referred to the development team, but technical support largely provides solutions for any issues that we may have.
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Implementation Rating
Cisco
Utilize the new FMC cloud which is available in Cisco Defense Orchestrator.
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FireMon
Implementation is fairly simple. Most issues can be resolved by referencing manuals.
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Alternatives Considered
Cisco
Cisco Meraki MX is much more simple to configure it if you compare to Cisco Firepower 1000, but it is more limited to pur some complex configurations. The Cisco Firepower 1000 Series is typically deployed as a physical appliance, while the Meraki MX can be deployed as a physical or virtual appliance.The Firepower 1000 Series has a more complex user interface, with a steeper learning curve, but offers more customization and configuration options. The Meraki MX has a simpler, more intuitive interface,
Read full review
FireMon
I has worked with AlgoSec and while they are very similar product, I find the FireMon is easier to understand and get rolling with. While both require some learning, FireMon is by far the easier one. Once you have an understanding of how things are arranged and labeled you can easily import firewalls and begin to work on them to improve them
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Scalability
Cisco
No answers on this topic
FireMon
Firemon Is easily scalable and maintainable with any size team. Although it requires some tech debt, it is well worth the time to invest to ensure compliance is visible and reports are accurate. Although our environment is very large we do not fully utilize the scalability of the Firemon product.
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Return on Investment
Cisco
  • We have seen improved throughput on our internet.
  • It took several attempts with Cisco engineers to configure the device; it requires a deep set of knowledge to set up in a more complicated environment.
  • This will allow us to move forward with a more stable and configurable environment with security available we didn't have before.
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FireMon
  • FireMon's Compliance Reporting provided an immediate and tangible benefit
  • FireMon helps identify egregious or erroneous rules quickly across multiple platforms
  • FireMon took our audit process from an Excel spreadsheet into a far more advanced process with readily available context for reviewers
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ScreenShots