Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center vs FireMon

Cisco Secure FMC is great for managing firewalls but not so great for troubleshooting firewalls. It makes setting up VPNs between devices easy, and makes creating ACLs a breeze, but it is tough to grasp how to actually view the troubleshooting logs.

The networking team needed insight into traffic for a particular application and had reached out to see if FireMon could provide insight into the traffic flow to help with troubleshooting. It simply made a traffic report that was auto emailed to the team about the issue, and it gave great insight on how often it was being used.

• Great protection and security against the multiple digital virus attacks.
• Provides detailed logs to track any threat and helps to secure the network promptly.
• VPN service for remote access of important organizational applications.
• Best management tool for controlling data and bandwidth resources.

• PCI Reporting - After identifying which firewalls and rulesets are in scope, producing a report artifact to satisfy PCI requirements on Firewall reviews is literally a two-click operation.
• Storing Rule Metadata - FireMon stores metadata (prefilled fields, standard fields, and custom fields) for each rule in each policy which is valuable for context during firewall reviews in particular
• API - FireMon exposes most if not all of its functionality via REST API

• Stability when managing firewalls, we're having issues with Firewall 01 and Firewall 02 remaining in sync
• Reporting when it comes to access control policy rules - there is no way to export a report of the rules easily. Using a custom Python script on the Cisco forums is the only way to easily export a CSV.
• Support for policy and route-based site-to-site VPN was not available until 6.6.0 and later. This forced us to purchase ASAs to bridge that gap.
• Dashboard reporting - when clicking a link for more information, nothing displays. Currently working with Cisco on the support case, which has been escalated.

• 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

We are very satisfied with SecureX and it's adaptive, active nature in protecting or data and systems. It's easy to administer, update, review notifications and update when necessary. Cisco's security practice fits into our needs and continues to evolve as global cyber events change. SecureX is easy to migrate to new cisco gear as we upgrade to newer models when supports ends on older gear. Enabling fast ROI during these capital expenditure projects.

I would give a 10 but if for some crazy reason Firemon does not add support for Firepower (without using FMC) before renewal then we'd have a major problem but I have absolute confidence this will not be an issue

Overall usability is an eight for me because it is easy to manage the firewall policies and monitor the devices' health. The configurations are all done in the GUI which makes it more convenient and hassle free. You can also see the devices' health and the progress of the task thru its taskbar.

It save me time and I'm able to have the review - review the rule independently with using my time.

Since moving to Cisco secure management center from firepower management center we've had no application issues, outages or any other problems. It's always been there for us and always provides us the necessary protection and notification when we need it. Been very happy with all of our Cisco systems over our tenure to date.

We have the direct support of the manufacturer through its service channels, the attention is 24/7, and the response time is acceptable. The support for this tool is almost nil. It all depends on the level of implementation is carried out so that it can fail and request collaboration. Anyway, the manufacturer backs the entire Cisco Firepower Management Center (FMC series appliances) solution.

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.

Cisco secure firewall management center is easy to install, moderate to setup in conjunction with firewall hardware, and administration of policy changes afterwards is pretty straight forward. And flexible to add more advanced security configurations as needed. Cisco support website is pretty good for researching how to documentation too. Cisco secure firewall management center enables integration to SecureX - the cloud security protection service. And AMP which protects packet flow with real time analysis. Cisco secure fmc is the evolved name for cisco firepower management center so for those customers who have firepower this is a simple migration.

Implementation is fairly simple. Most issues can be resolved by referencing manuals.

We are managing multiple customers having a large number of Cisco devices that need to be managed by a single platform. For that reason, we have selected the Cisco Firewall Management Center than checkpoint firewall management. It simplifies and automates newly bought cisco firewalls at remote branch offices to manage, configure and troubleshoot them.

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

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.

• It's a very straightforward and user-friendly tool that has enhanced the total detection of malware and other threats t from intrusion into our network.
• Provides stable deep network scanning, security visibility, and protection from unauthorized access.
• The platform modular allows us to deploy across multiple budget cycles.

• The use of FireMon has eliminated the backlog in firewall policy changes, approval, and implementation.
• FireMon has greatly increased the accuracy of changes, and reduced the risk of planned changes (3 incidents in over 27000 change tickets--most with multiple policy changes in each, is a stellar record)