Cisco Secure Firewall vs. FireMon

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Secure Firewall
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Secure Firewall delivers comprehensive threat protection for modern, distributed networks. Built to support hybrid workforces and multicloud environments, it enables Zero Trust access, application visibility, and secure remote connectivity. With integration across the Cisco Secure portfolio, including SecureX and Talos threat intelligence, the firewall powers organizations to detect and stop more sophisticated threats. Centralized management simplifies policy enforcement, orchestration,…N/A
FireMon
Score 7.9 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 Secure FirewallFireMon
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Secure FirewallFireMon
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Secure FirewallFireMon
Features
Cisco Secure FirewallFireMon
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Secure Firewall
8.0
139 Ratings
8% below category average
FireMon
-
Ratings
Identification Technologies8.3123 Ratings00 Ratings
Visualization Tools7.4125 Ratings00 Ratings
Content Inspection8.0122 Ratings00 Ratings
Policy-based Controls8.5130 Ratings00 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP8.3113 Ratings00 Ratings
Firewall Management Console7.6129 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting and Logging7.7131 Ratings00 Ratings
VPN8.0116 Ratings00 Ratings
High Availability8.6125 Ratings00 Ratings
Stateful Inspection8.5121 Ratings00 Ratings
Proxy Server7.369 Ratings00 Ratings
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Cisco Secure FirewallFireMon
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User Ratings
Cisco Secure FirewallFireMon
Likelihood to Recommend
7.9
(144 ratings)
7.9
(69 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.5
(4 ratings)
6.8
(7 ratings)
Usability
6.4
(3 ratings)
7.3
(3 ratings)
Availability
8.7
(4 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Performance
5.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
7.3
(79 ratings)
7.7
(17 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.8
(4 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.9
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
5.0
(1 ratings)
7.9
(48 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Secure FirewallFireMon
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
This security solution is well-suited for a complex environment that requires a scalable and secure solution with granular control. It is also recommended that it be implemented with other Cisco security solutions. Requirements are Security-First. It is less appropriate in a small business scenario where advanced configurations are not required. It should be well-trained on this solution.
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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
  • It's good at segregating networks and ensuring that you only give the access that you need to give. Especially with medical devices, you want to only give the access that they need and keep them in their own separate areas so that they can't just communicate with the rest of the network. It's also good at the border for keeping attackers out of the network.
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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
  • I wish that the deployment of the updates to the sensors from the FMC was faster.
  • Cisco ASA firewall did a great job of authentication and authorization on the local firewall. FTD does not authorize users well in terms that an AAA must be setup to provide the granular tools that the ASA did.
  • Cisco's method of licensing the firewall can be improved. The FMC and the FTD are licensed through the Cisco software manager and there are instances where the devices are licensed but the firewall still displays and error due to licensing.
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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 works really well. We can do most anything we want or need to with it, and you don’t have to have a doctorate or multiple certs to necessarily figure it out. The thing that would probably have to happen to make us switch would be if we just got priced out - Cisco’s more powerful and higher bandwidth models cost a pretty penny.
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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
i think overall after ALOT of tac cases it works allright now. But still have alot of issues if you use cloud based mangement. fx, if you open 2 windows of access policys, both of the pages, rules starte to jump form side to side. if you then open one more list, its start to jump even faster. if you close the 2 of them, its back to normal. ALSO the extended access lists for VPN, SUCKS. Its the tiniest window when opening the editor, and you are not able to give the rules names, Which means finding and editing rules SUCKS, its a horrible experience, and eveytime we have to we want to yell :P
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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
would rate Cisco Secure Firewall’s availability a 9 out of 10.
In our production environments at Rackspace, the platform has been consistently reliable. We’ve deployed it in high-availability pairs, and failover works as expected with minimal disruption. Over the past several quarters, we’ve had no major unplanned outages directly attributable to the firewall itself.
The software has been stable
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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
no slowing down, vpn is working fast
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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
Firewall support is professional just like any other technology Cisco sells. From answering simple questions to bringing out outages affecting a large population of our workforce, Cisco support is always courteous, professional, and communicates with our team to keep our request on their radar. Some of the brightest people I've met are from Cisco support both in IQ and EQ which shows the talent Cisco is able to onboard to their team.
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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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In-Person Training
Cisco
very good
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FireMon
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Cisco
was a good training but questions was answered not so good. Training was "Fundamentals of Cisco Firewall Threat Defense and Intrusion Prevention (SFWIPF)".
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FireMon
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Cisco
Our initial implementation was aided by Cisco's professional services and was excellent. The engineer was very knowledgeable and helped us work through issues while building out our new internet security edge Part of this involved tools to migrate the firewall configuration from old to new.
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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 Secure Firewall works better with the Cisco ecosystem when we can utilize it and feels beefy enough when we utilize it in the data center. The Fortinet we have found are great, small cost boxes for remote offices with a better UI then Cisco Secure Firewalls. The feature set included with the firewalls feels similar from a security point of view.
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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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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Cisco
was not involved
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FireMon
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Cisco
you can choose up to 50 devices i think thats enough for our organization
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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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Professional Services
Cisco
was not involved
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FireMon
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Cisco
  • Positive impact. Cisco is a big player in IT environment. It is future stuff, everything, what you learn today, maybe something can be tomorrow. And yes, it's quite important to learn the new stuff every day. And yes, that's it. Yes, I'm happy with Cisco.
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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

Cisco Secure Firewall Screenshots

Screenshot of Cisco Secure 1200 Series Firewall FamilyScreenshot of Cisco Secure 4200 SeriesScreenshot of Cisco Secure 4200 SeriesScreenshot of Cisco Secure Firewall 1200 Stack FamilyScreenshot of Cisco Secure Firewall 200 SeriesScreenshot of Cisco Secure Firewall 200 Series