We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW 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.
Comparison Results: Check Point users are happier with its VPN and with its pricing. However, Cisco Secure users are happier with its service and support.
"Initial setup is easy to configure."
"Using this product makes the VPN seamless and almost invisible to me in the sense that I don't have to think about it."
"The CLI and GUI do a good job of putting a lot at your fingertips."
"The pipe filter application is an outstanding feature."
"The initial installation is very straightforward."
"The solution is very user friendly. The user interface in particular is quite nice."
"The user interface is relatively easy. The devices are easy to deploy and figure out when you have experience with other security appliances."
"It is easy to manage, and it doesn't need much knowledge from the team. It is a stable device, and there are many features that are included out of the box."
"I was impressed by how easy it was to activate blades and implement them on a security gateway, with the process taking less than five minutes."
"Everything is easily managed through their Smart Console dashboard. It's a very easy-to-understand dashboard that provides a detailed view."
"It filters unwanted traffic."
"Provides very good performance."
"The information stored in the logs is very descriptive and includes a lot of details."
"One of the most valuable features is the data center object integration with Azure. We are using Azure a lot and there is very nice synchronization between the objects in Azure, and it's very easy to implement rules using this feature."
"Check Point has a lot of features. The ones I love are the antivirus, intrusion prevention, and data loss prevention. Apart from that, there is central management through which we can integrate all the firewalls and support them. It makes it easy to manage all the firewalls."
"The only area that Check Point still seems to excel in is their logging."
"The Firepower+ISE+AMP for endpoint integration is something that really stands it out with other vendor solutions. They have something called pxGrid and i think it is already endorsed by IETF. This allows all devices on the network to communicate."
"This product is pretty stable."
"My confidence continues to build upon using Cisco firewalls."
"An eight because it's a good security solution. It's more mature than its competitors."
"We found the initial setup to be easy."
"It brings us the ability to work from anywhere and has allowed us to work remotely without having to incur a lot of other costs. If we didn't have this type of solution, since we have so many on-prem services that are required, we would have likely lost money and been unable to deliver. We have a video services team who helped build the content for our sporting events. When you are watching a Leaf game and those swipes come by as well as the clips and things, those are all generated in-house. Without the ability to access our on-premise resources, we would have been dead in the water. So, the return on that is pretty impressive."
"The ASDM (Adaptive Security Device Manager) which is the graphical user interface, works out, and Cisco keeps it current."
"We have been using a 5520 for seven years in our datacenter and we are satisfied by this version."
"Its reporting and pricing need improvement."
"Some of the software stability could improve."
"Price, of course, can always be more competitive or better."
"We have an issue with hotel guest vouchers."
"I would like to see improvements in the product's application rules."
"In the future, I would like to see improvements made to cloud-based management."
"One area for improvement is the performance on the bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"The user interface could be improved."
"Reporting has to be improved."
"There are some GUI features in Check Point's SmartConsole that are still from the old versions and are in separate/duplicated interfaces; it would be most useful if it is integrated and not on different menus."
"The user interface should be user-friendly"
"It would be best if the security management server console access is simpler for ease of management."
"The smart console is heavy."
"Although there is a lot of automation and pattern that can be classified automatically, the IPS systems are sometimes a little bit complicated, and doing the fine-tuning in over 20,000 patterns is hard to do."
"The product could provide an easier user interface and management, by combining all functions (network and policy configuration) into one single application rather than split it into different applications."
"The price of this product could be improved."
"Sometimes my customers say that Cisco Firewalls are a bit more difficult compared to Fortigate or Palo Alto. There is complexity in the configuration and the GUI could be improved."
"The visibility for VPN is one big part. The policy administration could be improved in terms of customizations and flexibility for changing it to our needs."
"Technical support takes a long time to respond."
"The virtual firewalls don't work very well with Cisco AnyConnect."
"Usually, the customers are satisfied, but I am going to recommend that all clients upgrade to FirePOWER management. I want Cisco to improve the feature called anti-spam. We use a Cisco only email solution, that's why we need the anti-spam on email facility."
"The product's user interface is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"We use the FTD management platform for the boxes. The GUI that manages multiple Firepower boxes could be improved so that the user experience is better."
"This product is managed using the Firepower Management Center (FMC), but it would be better if it also supported the command-line interface (CLI)."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 276 reviews while Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2. 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 Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Azure Firewall and OPNsense, whereas Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and OPNsense. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Cisco Secure Firewall report.
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