We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall and Check Point NGFW based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Azure Firewall seems to be a superior solution. All other things being more or less equal, our reviewers found Check Point NGFW to be rather expensive to purchase. Users of Check Point NGFW feel that the stability of the product could be improved. Additionally, some users are not so impressed by the technical support and training that it offers.
"The flexibility and ease of configuration are the most valuable features."
"It enables our organization to become more productive. Also, it protects our NEtWare from viruses and malware."
"Initial setup is easy to configure."
"I only deal with it from a security analyst's point of view. I don't really get into the features of the actual FortiGate. From the security point of view, it works, and it does its job."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is good to use, and most importantly, the pricing. The customer especially likes the discount when they trade up or something like that."
"Easy to use support and licensing portal as well as activation process."
"It's very easy to set up, it's very easy to make policies and, for an organization, that means you don't need IT expert in firewalls. You just need to have somebody who knows a little bit of IT, and that's it. With other products, you need someone with a "Masters" degree in firewalls."
"I'm pretty happy with its reliability. It is also very scalable."
"The most valuable feature is threat intelligence. It is based on filtering and can identify multiple threats."
"Network filtering is valuable. The scalability capability from the cloud-native service helps us a lot because it simplifies our day-to-day maintenance activity."
"It's auto-scalable, which is a great feature."
"The initial setup is straightforward; Azure Firewall does not have a complex implementation process. It is very simple; you just need to enable the service within Azure. It does not require any maintenance because it is managed by Microsoft, that is, it is a fully managed service."
"It is easy for me to protect certain ports or even the IP addresses, as well as do whitelisting, blacklisting, and the FQDN when we want virtual machines connected and to protect certain websites."
"The most valuable feature is the integration into the overall cloud platform."
"Azure Firewall's feature that I have found most valuable is its scalability."
"One of the best features is that it natively integrates with Azure Services and tools. When you have a third-party offering, that is not the case. But Azure Firewall provides a comprehensive and seamless security solution for your Azure resources."
"Check Point is awesome from a security standpoint. Based on our experience and also the experience of the other customers, it is a very stable appliance."
"It's a lightweight solution, requiring minimal storage, resources, and memory to operate effectively."
"The most valuable feature is the highly integrated NGFW features such as the IPS or Check Point Identity Awareness, which makes Check Point the best choice on the market."
"Its auditing features are good for checking who did what changes and when."
"The fact that these can be separated and made in different layers provides excellent convenience for the administrators who regulate the rules."
"Log storage gives us insights when required."
"The information stored in the logs is very descriptive and includes a lot of details."
"Check Point NGFW has helped us to significantly reduce our risk of cyberattacks by providing comprehensive protection against a wide range of threats, including malware, viruses, ransomware, phishing attacks, and zero-day threats."
"The UTM filtering needs improvement."
"One issue that I have had is that sometimes I need to monitor the traffic, so I need to filter it according to the user and which user is using it the most. I experience a bottleneck most of the time, particularly at the peak time when the number of contracts and users are at maximum."
"It could use better throughput on some of the smaller boxes for the branch offices."
"The UI could be improved."
"The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware."
"There are some cloud-based features that could be much more flexible than they currently are."
"Fortinet FortiGate should improve the VPN tokens."
"The room for improvement is about the global delivery time period. Usually I need to wait for almost one month to deliver it overseas. So if you can shorten the deliver time it'd be great."
"The solution doesn't offer the same capabilities of Fortinet. It should offer intrusion prevention and advance filtering. These are two very useful features offered on Fortinet that Azure lacks."
"Azure should be able to work better as a balancer also, instead of just being a firewall. It should have a wider mandate."
"It is a cloud service, but the lending speed for each region is not always the same. For example, in China, the speed is slow. They need to think about how to make sure that the service pace or speed is always the same in all regions. It would be a great improvement if they can provide the same pace worldwide."
"It has fewer features than you can get from other firewalls, like anti-spam and anti-phishing. Those kinds of things are not included. It only includes IDS and IDB."
"Azure Firewall definitely needs a broader feature base. It should be able to go all the way up to layer 7 when looking at applications and things like that."
"The solution should incorporate features similar to competitors like split tunneling."
"You have to have a defined IP range within your network to associate it with your network. The problem is you have to plan ahead of time if you expect to use the firewall in the future so that you don't have to reconfigure your subnets or that specific IP range. Other than that, I don't any issues. I use it for basic configuration for a single application, so I really don't try to leverage it for multiple applications where I might find some complexity or challenges."
"The threat intelligence aspect of this particular firewall is not at par with other providers."
"With the increase of volume of traffic, the required resource/hardware to properly run goes up. Therefore, the hardware engineering to architecture flow has to be more efficient."
"VMware is not supported by the platform."
"My customers complain that the interface isn't user-friendly."
"The current reporting capability needs to be parsed and edited to be appreciated by leadership."
"Check Point should add additional management choices."
"The antivirus is less effective than its competitors' antivirus. The antivirus is good, but in other firewalls, such as Palo Alto, it's quite effective. Check Point should provide more output. Sometimes it provides comprehensive information and sometimes it doesn't."
"Something worth mentioning is the need for Spanish support and better representation for teams in the Latin American area."
"I would like there to be a way to run packets that capture more easily in the GUI environment. Right now, if we want to read packet captures, we have to do so from the command line."
Azure Firewall is ranked 21st in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 275 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Check Point NGFW writes "Good antivirus protection and URL filtering with very good user identification capabilities". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and OPNsense. See our Azure Firewall vs. Check Point NGFW report.
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Check Point firewall does a deep inspection of packets till Layer 7 and is more compatible with the organizational environment.
The Azure firewall is also a cloud-based security solution that also provides Advance Threat Protection.