We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and Fortinet FortiGate-VM based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Check Point NGFW is praised for its extensive security features, centralized management, and virtualization capabilities. Fortinet FortiGate-VM receives appreciation for its stability, reliability, and user-friendly interface.
Check Point NGFW needs enhancements in integration, hardware upgrades, cost and pricing, stability and security, setup process, load balancing capabilities, technical support, and reporting. Fortinet FortiGate-VM requires improvements in key activation, log management, cloud management, IPsec failover, monitoring tool, setup and configuration, performance, firmware updates, log settings, GUI capabilities, costs, technical support, and integration.
Service and Support: The customer service for Check Point NGFW has garnered varying opinions, with some customers appreciating its helpfulness and responsiveness, while others believe there is room for improvement. Fortinet FortiGate-VM's support has received a mix of feedback. Certain customers commend its prompt response times and expertise, while others highlight concerns regarding delayed responses.
Ease of Deployment: Check Point NGFW's initial setup can be complex and may require expertise and experience for certain configurations and migrations. Fortinet FortiGate-VM offers a generally straightforward and easy setup process, aided by Fortinet's support and assistance.
Pricing: Check Point NGFW has a high setup cost, yet offers flexible licensing options. Fortinet FortiGate-VM has competitive pricing and includes support without extra charges.
ROI: Check Point NGFW provides cost savings, simplicity, and strong security enforcement, resulting in a favorable ROI. Fortinet FortiGate-VM offers stability and enhanced security, guaranteeing a positive ROI when purchased initially.
Comparison Results: Check Point NGFW is the preferred choice when comparing it to Fortinet FortiGate-VM. Check Point NGFW stands out for its extensive security features, such as URL filtering, intrusion prevention systems, identity and access management, and application control capabilities. Additionally, it offers centralized management and virtualization options, as well as stability, user-friendliness, and scalability.
"This is an easy solution to deploy."
"The web filtering facility and application control are the most valuable features from the point of view of our clients. The VPN feature is also quite popular amongst our clients. Two-factor authentication is one of the good features in Fortinet. These features are important for the current scenario of security. Security has become a necessity nowadays. With cyber-attacks becoming more common, protecting an organization's data is one of the major tasks. It is also very stable and scalable, and it is very straightforward to configure. Their technical support is also good."
"I appreciate FortiGate's flexibility, which allows for centralized management through FortiManager."
"Provides good firewall security and has great VPN features."
"The next-gen features, the unified threat management capabilities are something that just about everybody is interested in at this point."
"We use a southern institution that's audited for IT security and the reporting that automatically comes off the unit makes it much easier to meet compliance standards and makes it easier as far as the amount of time that has to be spent to compile that information. If you get your reporting set up correctly when you initially set it up, you just select the one you want and hit print. The auditing trail on it is the best feature."
"It's very easy to configure."
"It is very flexible to use."
"It is easy to deploy or upgrade. There is no need to do this manually with commands. This solution can be set up online."
"It's enabled us to move away from basic LAN to LAN segmentation to a more powerful user separation approach."
"It's scalable and provides end-to-end resolution."
"Apart from it having very good features, I personally like the vulnerability assistance via report management which detects host and network vulnerability."
"We can build the new firewalls with minimum efforts."
"The Check Point API let me make 100 net rules in just 10 minutes, which saved us time."
"Extracting data from the logs and utilizing the log analyzer tool provides valuable insights and enhances the product's overall effectiveness."
"It is easy to control from the central management system. For example, if we have 10 firewalls, and we want to push that same configuration among them, we can use this solution's central management system to do that simultaneously. So, there is time saving in that way. The time savings does depend on the situation. For example, if I am running half an hour of work on each firewall, that will take around 300 minutes. However, if I do this work from the central management system, then it will only take 30 minutes to push the same configuration to those same 10 devices."
"It's a very simple solution to manage."
"The policies are very valuable. They allow me to secure and manage future traffic effectively."
"The setup is simple."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the integration within the environment, with centralized reporting."
"Initial setup was quite straightforward, as we can simply head to the required sections to apply the planned network."
"I really like that it's internationally deployable."
"It is very useful to make lists for rules and prepare firewall rules."
"The reporting is good."
"Its filtering is sometimes too precise or strict. We sometimes have to bypass and authorize some of the sites, but they get blocked. We know that they are trusted sites, but they are blocked, and we don't know why."
"The support we receive when we need to upgrade is not satisfactory and has room for improvement."
"I think there could be more QoS features"
"Its reporting and pricing need improvement."
"Fortinet currently has many products bundled with FortiGate including the basic firewall and load balancer, and I think that that they need to have separate product portfolios for each of these specialized services."
"The way everything is set up could be easier. Currently, people need a lot of experience and knowledge to administer it and to link it to devices."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. However, my issue is the performance only. When I use all the profiles, this affects the performance. From the beginning, I should have had a better sizing of the box."
"I don't really have anything negative to say as far as Fortinet firewalls are concerned. If anything, they can support a user a little bit better. They can stop being so time-sensitive about how much time the support call has taken, and they can help you do it yourself."
"I feel the only thing that I see as a possible improvement in Check Point software is the lack of ability to create "static discard routes" which makes it difficult for NAT ranges to be advertised via BGP to neighbors."
"One feature that could be improved is the internet object in the application control/URL filtering blade."
"There are some issues compared to other products. Ease of use is one."
"The management of memory in the hardware needs to improve. They have had a lot of issues with memory leakage."
"Check Point can scale but at times we have experienced some issues."
"The presentation of the reports need to be more user-friendly."
"The SmartUpdate interface is a little bit crowded if your company has a lot of software items."
"One of the main features that need improvement is the rule filter export."
"We have lost some information and we do not know how that happened through the solution. So that needs improvement."
"The interface of the solution could be improved."
"If I could add one feature, it would be free security profiles."
"The operating system isn't stable, so it goes to memory counters every night."
"Fortinet support needs improvement. The response times are lackluster. Fortunately, the product is stable and we seldom have issues. Also, it takes months for them to deliver hardware when we order it."
"In the first two releases of FortiOS 5.6, we had some trouble with the SSL VPN service. Sometimes it stopped working, and the IPS daemon too."
"Deployment can be difficult and they could dispense with reliance on FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer."
"The product needs to focus on cloud-nativeness and pricing."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 277 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 9th in Firewalls with 113 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Fortinet FortiGate-VM is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Check Point NGFW writes "Good antivirus protection and URL filtering with very good user identification capabilities". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate-VM writes "An easy-to-manage and configure tool that provides ample documentation to help with the setup phase". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Azure Firewall, whereas Fortinet FortiGate-VM is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Fortinet FortiGate-VM report.
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