FireMon adds NVIDIA Cumulus support for unified policy control

FireMon has announced native support for NVIDIA Cumulus within its Policy Manager to provide unified policy visibility, change automation, and compliance assurance for data centres operating Cumulus Linux–based switching infrastructure.

NVIDIA Cumulus forms a significant element in networking for data centres supporting artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads. The Cumulus platform became part of the NVIDIA ecosystem following the technology company's acquisition, leading to its integration with NVIDIA's accelerated computing hardware to create infrastructure dedicated to AI and HPC environments.

The latest update to FireMon Policy Manager aims to address long-standing challenges for enterprises that have standardised on open networking. By introducing native support for NVIDIA Cumulus, FireMon seeks to enable a single, comprehensive view and governance of network security policy, spanning firewalls, cloud platforms, and data centre fabrics within mixed-vendor environments.

AI and HPC networking needs

As organisations scale up their AI and high-performance workloads, open networking solutions like NVIDIA Cumulus are becoming increasingly prevalent. According to FireMon, a key concern has been the lag in policy and compliance oversight, which could introduce governance blind spots vulnerable to adversarial exploitation. The new Cumulus support in FireMon Policy Manager is designed to allow customers to discover, standardise, and analyse security policy data from Cumulus-managed networks alongside other existing systems, thereby aiming to streamline risk assessments and simplify change management procedures.

"Adding NVIDIA Cumulus support is a major milestone for FireMon and for our customers modernizing around open networking," said Jody Brazil, CEO of FireMon. "Policy sprawl didn't stop at the firewall; it followed workloads into the fabric, the cloud, and now AI interaction layers. By adding NVIDIA Cumulus support, we're giving customers one place to govern policy from ground to cloud to data center. The result is continuous visibility, faster time-to-remediate, and audit-ready compliance proof, outcomes CISOs now demand as AI adoption accelerates."

Feature highlights

The updated solution delivers several core capabilities to data centre teams working with NVIDIA Cumulus environments:

• Unified visibility: Cumulus-managed networks can be managed in the same Policy Manager workspace as traditional firewalls and cloud-based controls. This is accomplished through object and topology normalisation for consistent analysis across all platforms.
• Change automation: FireMon's established workflow processes can be applied to Cumulus networks, letting users design, simulate, and verify policy changes before they are implemented. This aims to cut down on rework and reduce audit-related risks.
• Continuous compliance: Automated assessments of policies against regulatory baselines are provided, with evidence generation and tracking capabilities for time-to-remediate any policy findings across the managed estate.

FireMon has implemented support for NVIDIA Cumulus at Levels 1 to 4 within its device support model. This facilitates incremental capabilities, ranging from basic inventory and visibility features to advanced and automated workflow management for policy changes.

Addressing policy governance gaps

The company highlights data from FireMon Insights indicating ongoing issues with policy governance in large organisations. FireMon's data shows that 60% of enterprise firewalls do not pass high-severity control checks during their first evaluation, with an additional 34% failing at critical risk levels. These patterns, according to FireMon, point to underlying governance issues that extend beyond simple configuration mistakes.

"Security teams don't have the luxury of separate playbooks for each control plane. They need one governance model that spans firewalls, clouds, and fabrics, and they need evidence it's working every day," said Brazil.

Technical approach

The Cumulus integration utilises the NVIDIA Cumulus Linux management interfaces, specifically the NVUE model and REST API, to match deployment and management workflows used by contemporary network operations teams. This approach maintains FireMon's vendor-neutral stance, ensuring that organisations standardising on Cumulus can retain their preferred operational methods while benefiting from more robust, enterprise-grade policy oversight.

Policy Manager already brings security policy management together for on-premises firewalls and major cloud providers, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. The platform also integrates with supplementary networking and security systems, such as Zscaler and Cisco ACI/NSX. With the addition of Cumulus Linux support, data centre and audit teams can now manage policies for open networking fabrics within the same centralised interface.

Existing FireMon customers can enable support for NVIDIA Cumulus by updating to the 2025.2.6 feature release using standard upgrade procedures.