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.
"Easy to implement, and it is also reliable."
"The most valuable features are the enterprise modeling and the simple interface."
"Fortinet FortiGate's reliability is valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the policy routing and application control."
"This is an easy solution to deploy."
"It's very fast and easy to configure."
"The CLI and GUI do a good job of putting a lot at your fingertips."
"The next-generation firewall is great."
"Its blades and VSLS (Virtual System Load Sharing) work fine."
"Moving into the cloud without having to change a lot of our internal processes and retrain staff is one of the biggest benefits of this solution."
"This software is great in overall performance since it can locate any trouble across the networking system and provide solutions before it affects workflows."
"Monitoring using SmartConsole and all its features is extremely easy, and I find SmartEvent an excellent monitoring tool for spotting threats and user behaviour."
"We find Check Point valuable because they are 100% focused on security. It totally closes the potential vulnerability channel. We can check our mail and our attachments and we can scan everything easily. We get an immediate report about the situation of the attachments. We can discover if the target's security attack was started from phishing, etc. We also enjoy using the additional features that protect our internal customer from targeted attacks."
"SSL/TLS traffic inspection features are used for advanced threat prevention against secure SSL traffic."
"The most valuable feature is the centralized dashboard, which is used for managing all of the Check Point Security Gateways."
"The most valuable feature is that we can use the same manager server that we use on our own Check Point firewalls. We integrated CloudGuard on that manager and we can use the same kind of protections that we use on the on-prem firewalls, like the IPS and antivirus policy. We can have the same kind of protection on the Cloud environment that we have on-premise."
"The high-availability features, the VPN and the IPSec, are our top three features."
"It's pretty reliable and allows for isolation capabilities within the network."
"You can also put everything into a nice, neat, little package, as far as configuration goes. I was formerly a command-line guy with the ASA, and I was a little nervous about dealing with a GUI interface versus a command line, but after I did my first deployment, I got a lot more comfortable with doing it GUI based."
"Cisco Secure Firewall improved our organization. We have it in every one of our French offices."
"ASA is stable and with a low level of work required on the maintenance side."
"Its ability to work with the traffic."
"The monitoring dashboard is valuable to us for troubleshooting."
"ASDM provides GUI for configurations. The ASDM has made configuring ASA easy. No need to memorize CLI commands."
"The graphical user interface of Fortinet's FortiGate product does not function well with text-based interfaces."
"There is room for improvement related to the logging and reporting aspect."
"In the next release, I would like to see the interface simplified to be more user-friendly."
"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."
"I would like to see more advanced developments of a wireless controller in the future."
"The sniffing packets or packet captures, can be simplified and improved because it's a little confusing."
"The solution could be more secure and stable."
"I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution."
"I hope that Check Point continues to improve its technical documentation regarding the Check Point CloudGuard IaaS gateway and management system."
"In case the device is inaccessible due to some issue such as CPU or memory, there is no separate port or hardware partition provided for troubleshooting purposes."
"It's meeting our needs at this time. If I could make it better, it would be by making it more standalone. That would be beneficial to us. I say that because our current platform for virtualization is VMware. The issue isn't any fault of Check Point, it's more how the virtualization platform partners allow for that partnership and integration. There has to be close ties and partnerships between the vendors to ensure interoperability and sup-portability. There is only so far that Check Point, or any security vendor technology can go without the partnership and enablement of the virtualization platform vendor as it relies on "Service Insertion" to maintain optimal performance."
"The product can still grow."
"Check Point could show us use cases that would help us in Czech and could help us with security threats in our specific country."
"The initial deployment using the ARM template in Azure was straightforward, but migrating to Terraform added complexity, although we managed to make it work."
"This application can be more integrated with web application firewalls. Better integrations would provide more granularity, which would be helpful for focusing on the application itself and preventing attacks. It would be good to include the cross-domain search. If you have multiple firewalls that are managed on the same platform and you want to check who is using some particular objects or where a specific ID is being used, it should provide an option for this kind of search instead of having to check one by one on each firewall."
"While today we can manage some scopes, there are still some segments in the OSI layer we cannot manage."
"I'm working on a slightly older version, but what it needs is a better alert management. It's pretty standard, but there's no real advanced features involved around it."
"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."
"The stability could be better because we have a lot of issues with the stability of Cisco Firepower."
"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."
"ASDM needs to be able to customize applets."
"The product's user interface is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"The ASA needs to incorporate the different modules you have to integrate to achieve UTM functions, especially for small businesses."
"In terms of next-generation capabilities, Cisco is a little behind, and it is way behind the market leaders."
More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Pricing and Cost Advice →
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 VMware NSX, Azure Firewall, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Fortinet FortiGate-VM and Illumio, 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.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.