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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    FireMon

    Score7.9 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

    pfSense

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/ApfSense is a firewall and load management product available through the open source pfSense Community Edition, as well as a the licensed edition, pfSense Plus (formerly known as pfSense Enterprise). The solution provides combined firewall, VPN, and router functionality, and can be deployed through the cloud (AWS or Azure), or on-premises with a Netgate appliance. It as scalable capacities, with functionality for SMBs. As a firewall, pfSense offers Stateful packet inspection, concurrent…

    $179

    per appliance

    Pricing
    FireMonpfSense
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    SG-1100
    $179
    per appliance
    SG-2100
    $229
    per appliance
    SG-3100
    $399
    per appliance
    SG-5100
    $699
    per appliance
    XG-7100-DT
    $899
    per appliance
    XG-7100-1U
    $999
    per appliance
    XG-1537
    $1,949
    per appliance
    XG-1541
    $2,649
    per appliance
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    FireMonpfSense
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    FireMonpfSense
    Considered Both Products
    FireMon
    No answer on this topic
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    94%
    Would buy again
    16 Answers
    94%
    Would buy again
    16 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    13 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    17 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    16 Answers
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    16 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    14 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    15 Answers
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    16 Answers
    Features
    FireMonpfSense
    Firewall
    Comparison of Firewall features of FireMon and pfSense
    Feature
    FireMon
    -
    Ratings
    pfSense
    8.9
    17 Ratings
    4% above category average
    Identification Technologies00 Ratings8.714 Ratings
    Visualization Tools00 Ratings8.714 Ratings
    Content Inspection00 Ratings9.216 Ratings
    Policy-based Controls00 Ratings8.717 Ratings
    Active Directory and LDAP00 Ratings7.913 Ratings
    Firewall Management Console00 Ratings9.516 Ratings
    Reporting and Logging00 Ratings8.417 Ratings
    VPN00 Ratings9.117 Ratings
    High Availability00 Ratings9.416 Ratings
    Stateful Inspection00 Ratings10.015 Ratings
    Proxy Server00 Ratings8.415 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    FireMonpfSense
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    SonicWall NSA Series
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)
    Score9 out of 10
    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco IOS Security
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    FireMonpfSense
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.9
    (69 ratings)
    9.3
    (30 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    6.8
    (7 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    7.3
    (3 ratings)
    9.7
    (8 ratings)
    Availability
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.7
    (17 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    7.9
    (48 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    FireMonpfSense
    Likelihood to Recommend
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    I believe PFSense is well suited for both home lab environments as well as up to small to mid-size business environments on a tight budget. However, I would implore that anything in production requires the use of the authorized hardware that PFSense sells to receive support. However, in my experience, PFSense is a solid set-and-forget firewall solution.
    Read full review
    Pros
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    • Easy to use. Good user interface design! Easy to understand and easy to set up.
    • Lower hardware requirement. 3 years ago, we used an old PC to run it. Now, we have changed to a router device with Celeron CPU and 8GB RAM. It runs smoothly with a 1000G commercial broadband.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    • I did kind of mention a Con in the Pro section with OpenVPN.
    • When I create a config for an employee other employees are able to login to that config.
    • I could be doing something wrong when I am making it - I am not afraid to admit that as I am pretty new to all of this, but it seems like it builds a key and I would think the key would be unique in some way to each employee, but I could be wrong.
    • I actually do not have a lot of Con's for this software - I did not get to set this up on our work network so I am not sure of any downfalls when installing.
    • I installed this on my personal machine in a Hyper-V environment to get a feel for it before I started working on it at work and it seemed pretty smooth. I didn't run into any issues.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    FireMon
    It save me time and I'm able to have the review - review the rule independently with using my time.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    The pfSense UI is easy to navigate and pretty go look at. It is much better than some high dollar firewalls that just throw menus you you. The pfSense UI is quick and responsive and makes sense 99% of the time. Changes are committed quickly and the hardware rarely requires a reboot. It just runs.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    pfSense+ basic provides "As Available" email support. pfSense+ Pro offers 24 hr turn around email support. pfSense+ Enterprise offers 24/7 phone support.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    FireMon
    Implementation is fairly simple. Most issues can be resolved by referencing manuals.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    Meraki has a unified management login for all devices, which is nice. It also has decent content filtering, both areas where pfSense is weaker. Where pfSense far ouclasses Meraki is in the ease of use and the other width of features. These include features such as better VPN interoperability, non-subscription based pricing, auditability, not relying on the infrastructure of a third party, more transparency of what's actually going on, easier to deploy replacements if hardware fails. Additionally, the NAT management for pfSense seems to be a bit better, as you can NAT between any network segment and not just the LAN segments out the WAN interfaces.
    Read full review
    Scalability
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    • pfSense can be installed on commodity hardware with no licensing fees. With a simple less than 10 minute restore time, on most hardware, it's an extremely inexpensive way to achieve the same results that some of the more expensive vendors provide.
    • The easy to use interface has allowed configuration management to be preformed by lower level technicians with quick and easy training.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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