We performed a comparison between Check Point CloudGuard Network Security and Check Point NGFW 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 essential features like VPN, IPS, URL filtering, and Applications Control. It emphasizes compliance, regulations, cloud security, and advanced threat prevention. Check Point NGFW is commended for its comprehensive security features, including URL filtering, intrusion prevention, identity and access management, and application control capabilities.
Check Point CloudGuard Network Security could benefit from enhancements in the support system, cluster creation on AWS, data protection visibility, DLP feature, user interface, and cost reduction. Check Point NGFW needs enhancements in integration, hardware performance, pricing, load balancing, technical support, reporting capabilities, UI design, VPN solutions, management, licensing model, and memory management.
Service and Support: The opinions on the customer service for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vary, with positive feedback on technical assistance and negative comments on delays in responses. Check Point NGFW has differing reviews, as some users appreciate the helpful and responsive support, while others consider it inferior to Cisco's support.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is considered to be straightforward and user-friendly, although some technical expertise and guidance may be needed. The setup for Check Point NGFW can range in difficulty, with opinions differing. Some users find it to be simple, while others perceive it as somewhat complex. Certain configurations and migrations may require expertise and experience.
Pricing: The cost of setting up Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is perceived as pricey by some while others find it justifiable and cost-effective. There are various discount models available for pricing flexibility. Check Point NGFW is generally considered to have a higher cost compared to other products. However, users believe that the enhanced security and reliability make the price worthwhile.
ROI: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has demonstrated a significant return on investment, with estimated returns ranging from 80% to 85%. Check Point NGFW offers a favorable return on investment, particularly after comprehending the level of protection it provides.
Comparison Results: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is preferred over Check Point NGFW. Users found CloudGuard's initial setup to be easy, straightforward, and user-friendly. CloudGuard offers valuable features such as VPN, IPS, URL filtering, and an Applications Control Blade, which received high praise.
"I like Fortinet FortiGate's antispam filter, SPN, and clustering features."
"I think that the UTM features are the most value, as it truly protects my infrastructure."
"It increases security posture and is helpful for firewall reporting, intrusion protection, web filtering, and SD-WAN implementation."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are remote access, web filtering, and IPS."
"Its stability is the most valuable."
"The simplicity of the configuration and the stability of the product are most valuable. The VPN concentrator is very useful."
"Its administrative panel is very intuitive and simple. It is simpler than the other solutions that we had. As an administrator, we are always looking for the easiest solution to manage network policies. We are able to filter everything on our network and also use the VPN feature, which is important these days when people are working remotely during COVID."
"Its performance in fulfilling our requirements has been satisfactory."
"The most valuable feature of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is the increased mail protection including spam."
"The tool's most valuable features for us are threat prevention, HTTPS inspection, and the Anti-Bot blade. Threat prevention helps to protect our assets from threats. HTTPS inspection ensures secure communication, and the Anti-Bot blade is particularly helpful in detecting C2 servers, enhancing our ability to identify malicious activities and protect our network."
"The solution provides a centralized management console for easy administration and monitoring of security policies and events, making it easy for the security team."
"The tool's most valuable features are firewalls and IPS."
"The endpoint VPN is super stable. The routing is also very good. We tried a competing product first, but we could not make it work. We came across CloudGuard. The network routing across different virtual networks in Azure and AWS was way ahead of any of the other technologies. That helped us be able to cover the whole network using one single cluster."
"Workflows across the company ecosystem have can flow smoothly without experiencing any challenges."
"The tool's most valuable features are the REST APIs that help to automate the deployment and maintenance process. It helps us to reduce time to 15-25 minutes compared to the manual process which used to take around two to three hours."
"It is scalable. It's a cloud solution, so it's easy to implement and manage."
"It's really simple to set up."
"The configuration is one of the best features of this product."
"Check Point has strong security features as well as some decent monitoring and management capabilities."
"The information stored in the logs is very descriptive and includes a lot of details."
"We can build the new firewalls with minimum efforts."
"Remote access with a secure workspace provides a clear separation between the client and corporate network."
"We have between five and ten firewalls on-premises, and if we want to configure or push the same configuration to all of the firewalls, then the centralized management system is very helpful."
"The console or the single interface on the blades is most valuable."
"While FortiGate is cheaper than most other solutions, we're seeing increased license renewal costs. Most of our clients are asking for more significant discounts because the price is going up."
"This product needs to have an analysis feature, rather than having the analysis done through the integration of a different product."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding enhancements to FortiMail, FortiSOAR, and FortiDeceptor."
"Due to its higher cost, Fortinet FortiGate can lead to increased operational expenses."
"It should come integrated or have its own type of network monitor tool in a module. There should just be one package, and you are good to go."
"The routing capability on the FortiGate devices has room for improvement."
"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."
"The support costs and licensing are sometimes so expensive."
"The main issue that I have noticed is that for deployment, it still requires a dedicated management server, and the gateway is completely different. That sometimes can cause issues."
"We miss full blade support for all blades that are compatible with the cluster. Especially notable is the lack of support for Identity Awareness in active standby environments for customers. In our setup, transitioning to Connective clusters would be preferable for maintaining connections during failover situations."
"While today we can manage some scopes, there are still some segments in the OSI layer we cannot manage."
"I hope that Check Point continues to improve its technical documentation regarding the Check Point CloudGuard IaaS gateway and management system."
"When upgrading the firewall, the old VPC containing the firewalls needs to be destroyed. After that, a new firewall is redeployed in the setup. Additionally, there's a need to separate the routing, and the routing from the old VPC has to be recreated in the new one."
"While Check Point does offer some VWAN offerings, they appear to be more static and less tailored to cloud-native environments compared to Palo Alto's dynamic and flexible approach."
"The deployment phase takes too much time."
"CloudGuard Network Security needs to include new features. One specific feature I would like to see is the ability to protect external resources using single sign-on integration with various identity providers, including custom identity providers. Its pricing could also be cheaper."
"The exterior of the physical device can be improved with the use of a display and not just simple lights."
"Check Point needs to work on hardware problems also."
"Check Point solutions have always been more complex to deploy than their competitors."
"The technical support is really poor. We have to wait for approximately 48 hours sometimes for a simple solution."
"I would like there to be a way to run packet captures more easily in the GUI environment. Right now, if we want to read packet captures, we have to do so from the command line."
"When we hit a bug, the support team recommends some hotfix, and if we upgrade to that, we have to uninstall it before we apply some newer jumbo hotfix."
"Check Point products have many places that need to be improved, but they are constantly upgrading."
"They could improve by lowering prices."
More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Pricing and Cost Advice →
Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is ranked 8th in Firewalls with 121 reviews while Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 276 reviews. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is rated 8.6, while Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8. 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 Check Point NGFW writes "Good antivirus protection and URL filtering with very good user identification capabilities". Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is most compared with Azure Firewall, VMware NSX, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Cisco Secure Firewall and Fortinet FortiGate-VM, whereas Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Azure Firewall. See our Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. Check Point NGFW report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors and best Unified Threat Management (UTM) vendors.
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