IOS Security from Cisco is network security technology.
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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…
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
