We performed a comparison between Check Point CloudGuard Network Security and Cisco Secure Firewall based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security provides useful features including VPN Blade, IPS Blade, URL filtering, and Applications Control Blade. Cisco Secure Firewall offers features such as threat defense, dashboard visibility, and application visibility and control.
For the Check Point CloudGuard Network Security, users suggest enhancing their support system, adding features like cluster creation on AWS and a managed web portal. They also recommend providing more visibility on data protection and improving documentation and support services. As for Cisco Secure Firewall, improvements are needed in network performance, policy administration, customization options, web filtering, user-friendly management interface, performance for IPS, and functionality in public clouds.
Service and Support: While some customers have praised the technical support of Check Point, others have faced response delays. Cisco Secure Firewall's customer service has garnered mixed review. Some customers appreciate the immediate solutions provided by their technical support, while others have mentioned delays and difficulties, particularly with Firepower.
Ease of Deployment: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is generally considered easy and user-friendly for setup. However, it can be complex for some users and may require technical expertise. The deployment time varies depending on the number of customers or websites. Cisco Secure Firewall's initial setup reviews are mixed. Some find it difficult, while others find it straightforward. Cisco offers resources and documentation for assistance, yet the complexity can vary depending on the user's experience.
Pricing: The cost of setting up Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is perceived as high by most. There are, however, flexible pricing options with various discount models. Opinions on the pricing of Cisco Secure Firewall differ, with some finding it expensive and others considering it moderate.
ROI: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security consistently delivers a strong ROI of 80% to 85%, offering improved advantages and simplified administration. Cisco Secure Firewall exhibits fluctuating ROI, with some positive returns observed.
Comparison Results: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is the preferred choice when compared to Cisco Secure Firewall. Users find the initial setup of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security to be easy, straightforward, and user-friendly. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is highly praised for its valuable features such as VPN Blade, IPS Blade, URL filtering, and Applications Control Blade.
"Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable solution."
"Centralized monitoring, policy management, and virtualized appliances allow us to take control over our public and private infrastructure."
"This is an easy solution to deploy."
"It works very well. It has a lot of different functionalities. Its cost is also fine for our customers."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a security device. It can optimize security on the networks of a company. It actually protects the company from attacks from outside. With FortiGate, you can categorize the users. You can create a group of users that can access all of the websites for their work. You can limit other users' access."
"It's very easy to configure."
"I really like the captive portal feature for our guest network. It has nice VLAN features in terms of separating our network. The anti-virus is also good."
"I like several features that this product has, such as antivirus and internet navigation inspection. It is also simple to use."
"Check Point CloudGuard is quick to deploy and easy for the customer to use."
"Customers appreciate the CME plugin for automatically understanding assets within the cloud. This information appears in the manager, allowing users to tag the assets and adjust policies and rules accordingly."
"We are using gateways, and I appreciate the high-availability gateways they have. They stand out more than the competitors."
"The capability to auto-scale in or out, depending on the resource demand is great."
"It improves the availability of engineers to carry out projects."
"The solution is easier to manage than an on-premise firewall. It is easy to manage. The use of dynamic objects for these gateways made it easy to create the right rules and the right policies. Integration with Azure is also easy where we have to just add the subnets. In an on-premise setup, we have to add everything from scratch. We can automate a lot of actions."
"One of the main characteristics that Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has given us is granularity and visibility."
"The SSL spectrum proved to be the most valuable for our incoming connections."
"I like that Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall is reliable. Support is also good."
"There are some hiccups here and there, but compared to the technical support from other vendors, I have had the best experience with Cisco's technical support. I would rate them at nine out of ten."
"If you compare the ASA and the FirePOWER, the best feature with FirePOWER is easy to use GUI. It has most of the same functionality in the Next-Generation FirePOWER, such as IPS, IPS policies, security intelligence, and integration and identification of all the devices or hardware you have in your network. Additionally, this solution is user-friendly."
"At this point, we find that this product has high productivity and high availability and there is no need for improvement."
"The technical support is excellent. I would rate it as 10 out of 10. When there has been an issue, we have had a good response from them."
"For us, the most valuable features are the IPX and the Sourcefire Defense Center module. That gives us visibility into the traffic coming in and going out, and gives us the heads-up if there is a potential outbreak or potential malicious user who is trying to access the site. It also helps us see traffic generated by an end device trying to reach out to the world."
"I like its integration with the AnyConnect client. I also like how modular it is. For example, I can easily integrate the Umbrella add-on into it. We are planning on adding Umbrella. We haven't added it yet, but we have researched."
"The features I have found most valuable are the ASA firewalls. I like to have features like most integrated systems in ACI."
"The cloud management and automation capability could be improved."
"I need user-behavior analytics, to find threat scenarios from inside the organization, insider attacks. That would be very helpful for us. In addition, I would like next-generation features for small and medium businesses. These businesses require UTM, all in one product. Fortinet must include it."
"The improvement is related to logs. Instead of the CLI, we should be able to have more insights into the logs of the firewall in the GUI."
"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."
"They should offer special pricing to premium partners and customers."
"The process of configuring firewall rules appears excessively complex."
"Some of the web policy reports could be improved."
"I have to say that the initial setup was complex. The deployment took a few days to get set up. Initially, we were using an IPVanish. We switched to this tool since we thought it would be easier. But it turns out it wasn't easier to set up and run."
"The solution is not that flexible when deploying on-prem."
"Clustering in Azure is a bit different, not using the Check Point cluster but relying on load balancing. It's not as instant as I'm used to; in Azure, it might take around half a minute to a minute, and during this time, services could be down. The delay is attributed to Azure using its load balancing mechanisms instead of the Check Point cluster."
"The initial setup is difficult. It took me three tries to get it right. The setup took two or three hours."
"The initial deployment using the ARM template in Azure was straightforward, but migrating to Terraform added complexity, although we managed to make it work."
"There is a limitation with the version upgrade. We are using version 81.10 and from what I understand, it is problematic to upgrade this version. I do not know if that is true."
"The relationship between AWS and Check Point could be better. We had issues related to the type of instance and how it interconnects with AWS or cloud-native solutions. We overcame the pain points that we had, and now, AWS is evolving in a way that will facilitate how Check Point works. Our pain points were minimized, but they were there."
"In future releases, I would like to see the data loss prevention (DLP) feature could scale along with the virtual machine scale sets."
"What I would like for future updates would be faster updates to apply, and perhaps a greater presence in the local language for the regions of Latin America."
"One feature lacking is superior anti-virus protection, which must be added."
"A memory leakage issue which literally freeze the nodes (we have an HA environment). The issue is still not solved and the only recommendation from Cisco is to reboot the node."
"Cisco makes horrible UIs, so the interface is something that should be improved."
"We are still running the original ASAs. The software that you are running for the ASDM software and Java application has never been a lot of fun to operate. It would have been nice to see that change update be redesigned with modern systems, which don't play nicely with Java sometimes. Cybersecurity doesn't seem to love how that operates. For us, a fresher application, taking advantage of the hardware, would have been a better approach."
"At times the product is sluggish and slow"
"The policies module in FMC specifically isn't the most user-friendly. Coming from Cisco ASA, Cisco ASA is a little bit easier to use. When you get into particularly complex deployments where you have a lot of different interfaces and all that kind of stuff, it's a little bit tricky. Some usability improvements there would be nice."
"The worst part of the entire solution, and this is kind of trivial at times, is that management of the solution is difficult. You manage FireSIGHT through an internet browser. I've had Cisco tell me to manage it through Firefox because that's how they develop it. The problem is, depending on the page you're on, they don't function in the same way. The pages can be very buggy, or you can't resize columns in this one, or you can't do certain things in that one. It causes a headache in managing it."
"The stability and the product features have to really be worked on."
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Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is ranked 8th in Firewalls with 121 reviews while Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is rated 8.6, while Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security writes "Highly reliable, great visibility, and centralized management". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is most compared with Azure Firewall, VMware NSX, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Fortinet FortiGate-VM and Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, whereas Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. See our Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. Cisco Secure Firewall report.
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