FireMon Delivers 60% Reduction in Manual Rule Review Time After NSPM Platform Failure

A large US-based not-for-profit healthcare system operating hospitals and care sites nationwide, formed through the merger of two major health organisations and serving communities across the United States.

The results

60%

Reduction in manual rule review time

1,000+

Devices managed across Palo Alto and Cisco

100%

NIST, PCI, HIPAA and HITRUST compliance

The challenge

A large US-based healthcare organisation was operating a complex, multi-vendor firewall environment with more than 1,000 devices, driven by years of growth and acquisitions that created sprawling rulebases and manual governance processes. A failed upgrade rendered its existing NSPM platform unusable, eliminating visibility, reporting and reliable rule review across the environment. Without a functional solution, routine tasks such as rule clean-up, recertification and compliance reporting became error-prone and resource-intensive, increasing operational strain and audit risk.

The company sought to:

Restore centralised visibility and control across more than 1,000 multi-vendor firewalls
Replace broken, manual rule review processes with reliable automation
Reduce policy sprawl and clean up unused, expired and overly permissive rules
Reestablish audit-ready compliance reporting without ongoing professional services

The solution

The organisation selected FireMon to replace its failed NSPM platform and implement a centralised, scalable approach to firewall policy management. FireMon delivered immediate multi-vendor visibility through a single normalised policy model and automated rule review workflows, reducing manual effort and technical debt. Built-in compliance reporting and workflow integrations enabled audit-ready alignment with frameworks such as NIST, PCI, HIPAA and HITRUST without ongoing professional services.

Centralised, multi-vendor firewall visibility by normalising all policies into a single rulebase
Automated rule review, recertification and clean-up to eliminate manual, error-prone processes
Embedded risk and usage analysis to identify unused, expired and overly permissive rules before changes were made
Built-in compliance reporting and audit-ready frameworks (NIST, PCI, HIPAA, HITRUST) without reliance on ongoing professional services

Results

60% reduction in manual rule review time through automated recertification and clean-up
Faster, more reliable policy changes by replacing broken and manual processes
Improved visibility and governance across more than 1,000 firewalls
Lower audit preparation effort with continuous, audit-ready compliance reporting

After our previous platform failed, FireMon gave us immediate visibility and a reliable way to clean up and govern firewall policy at scale, without adding more manual work.

System Director, Cyber Engineering Services, managing the selection and deployment of FireMon