Cisco IOS Security vs. FireMon

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco IOS Security
Score 7.1 out of 10
N/A
IOS Security from Cisco is network security technology.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 IOS SecurityFireMon
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco IOS SecurityFireMon
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco IOS SecurityFireMon
Considered Both Products
Cisco IOS Security
Chose Cisco IOS Security
IOS Security is a bonus feature when you purchase Cisco devices. It is great to have a vendor provide equipment to go above and beyond the minimal needs for business operation. Having security at the downstream edge of our organization provides a sense of ease from potential …
Chose Cisco IOS Security
Cisco IOS Security is more simple in use than Juniper devices, and they have a lot of documentations and blogs to design, implement and troubleshooting steps to use, also Cisco support keeps communication with us during any problem to fix it and learn the root cause and fix all …
Chose Cisco IOS Security
It’s not a secret for anyone that Cisco provides the best routers with the most reliable software on the market. Although we considered using a PC running Linux for the same purpose, we realized that to keep things simple it would be best if we use a brand that we already know …
Chose Cisco IOS Security
I also like HP Procurve. It is my choice when the customer cannot afford Cisco. Cisco is better all round but HP is the only other [product] I will use if I have a choice.
FireMon
Chose FireMon
FireMon gives us more flexibility when deploying the solution. Integrates with cutting-edge security solutions
Chose FireMon
We have only used firemon and there hasn't been a need to consider other products as we are satisfied with what Firemon can do.
Chose FireMon
Firewall Rule analyzer was used before I joined the company, but I have no experience with it.
Chose FireMon
OSSEC is open source and FM is much better from GUI and supportability stand points. Tufin and FireMon are very comparable
Chose FireMon
Best Compliance and Auditing tool to to identify the traffic that is hitting this rule.
Chose FireMon
I was not involved on the decision but having multiple brands in the company make sense to use a tool such as Firemon because it integrates easily with multiple vendors.
Chose FireMon
Infoblox DDI (BloxOne), Palo Alto Networks Prisma Cloud, Palo Alto Panorama, Palo Alto Networks Threat Protection, Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series and Fortinet FortiGate
Chose FireMon
Algosec and Tufin both are good tools but the cost involved for what they offer as services led us to go with Firemon.
Chose FireMon
i was not involved in the selection however i am quite happy with FireMon as the replacement of our aging product.
Chose FireMon
We have stuck with FireMon, and there is no reason to leave.
Chose FireMon
The Dell product ran on its own hardware, which failed often. The reports were not available to us in real-time, we had to request them. Many false detections of issues.
Chose FireMon
Both perform admirably with regards to providing that single pane of glass and visibility in a normalized view. They both provide great insight into where your organization stands in terms of compliance controls. In terms of upgrading and scalability, I would have to give the …
Chose 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 …
Chose FireMon
FireMon has the most supported devices.
The UI is easy to use and intuitive.
There is a comprehensive list of built in compliance controls that are missing in the competition.
Chose FireMon
To be blunt, at the time of purchase most of these products appeared to do the same things in the same ways. What really brought us to the table with FireMon six years ago was their willingness to earn our business, and to this day they remain just as committed to keeping our …
Chose FireMon
FireMon is way more flexible and the interface is tremendously better than any existing ones.
Chose FireMon
Algosec is a great tool, lower in cost as well.

FireMon has alot of capabilites, but our organization is not ready or have a use case yet for those features.
Chose FireMon
Tufin works much better with CheckPoint.
Chose FireMon
They are two very well done tools, FireMon is better suited for firewall rules evaluation, configuration and review, Tenable.io is better suited for CIS benchmarking. We ended up using both of them in the end, it really depends of your needs and what you are looking for, the …
Chose FireMon
Nothing like FireMon. We have other tools but 99% of them are looking at specific areas and not the enterprise security on a dashboard.
Chose FireMon
We performed a head-to-head PoC between FireMon and AlgoSec several years ago. Both platforms were well developed, but FireMon had the upper hand in three areas:
  1. Its UI was more unified and intuitive across the different components and products
  2. The reporting was better suited …
Chose FireMon
AlgoSec and Tufin both have initial issues during the POC stage, and FireMon even though with the changes they have made still works better and is more user friendly.
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User Ratings
Cisco IOS SecurityFireMon
Likelihood to Recommend
9.1
(0 ratings)
7.9
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
6.8
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
7.7
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco IOS SecurityFireMon
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco IOS Security is great when there isn't enough budget to acquire advanced security solutions like ISE. We can use the Cisco IOS security features to secure our network as much as we can, we can do authentication using Radius, Port Security, and access lists to secure our traffic while eliminating the attacker from accessing our network.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Pros
  • QoS. Cisco Quality of Service is top notch and handles prioritization of voice and video without issue.
  • Ease of implementation and configuration. Once you have a device configured, it is easy to use that configuration as a template for the rest. Export your config, update, the IP Address and Name at a minimum, then deploy to the next device.
  • Longevity! Sometimes it can be difficult to upsell a current Cisco client due to aging hardware. I have gone into a network that has 12 year old switches still running strong. I have only seen this with the Cisco brand. At that point, the upsell is the newer features and not the age of the device.
Read full review
  • 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
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Cons
  • Needs many lines to configure a detailed access list.
  • No seamless integration between Cisco IOS and LDAP for authentication and need something in middle like Radius.
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  • 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
No answers on this topic
Once all the customization has been completed, the business is starting to see the return on investment. The visibility it provides into the network gear that is owned by other IT groups is immeasurable and has allowed us to apply standards across the board. The only thing I have concern with is their support documentation.
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Usability
No answers on this topic
It save me time and I'm able to have the review - review the rule independently with using my time.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
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
No answers on this topic
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 has the biggest and most trustful partner network in the world. Besides that, you can buy a service contract with the hardware and use the Cisco TAC to help to solve problems. That’s a key differential for Cisco comparing to other vendors.
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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
No answers on this topic
Implementation is fairly simple. Most issues can be resolved by referencing manuals.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
IOS Security is a bonus feature when you purchase Cisco devices. It is great to have a vendor provide equipment to go above and beyond the minimal needs for business operation. Having security at the downstream edge of our organization provides a sense of ease from potential attacks.
Read full review
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
Read full review
Scalability
No answers on this topic
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 iOS security helped our business deploy a relatively safe solution for a small amount of money.
  • If you don’t have enough budget to invest in a robust and expensive firewall solution, you can safely use Cisco iOS security to protect your branch or remote office without compromise your network.
  • Because Cisco iOS security uses a simple command-line based interface, you can deploy standardized scripts and keep the operational costs low.
Read full review
  • It helps us save us time in determining what change was made and by whom.
  • Real time alerting is a great convenience in helping us know if something went wrong, we can immediately review the last report to determine what has changed.
  • Allows us to determine what rules are not used and if said rules are still required.
Read full review
ScreenShots