We performed a comparison between Check Point CloudGuard Network Security and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls 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 a range of valuable features including VPN Blade, IPS Blade, URL filtering, and Applications Control Blade. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls excel in areas such as embedded machine learning, robust security capabilities, and a unified platform.
Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has room for improvement in its support system, cluster creation on AWS, data protection visibility, DLP feature, user interface, integration, cost reduction, documentation, and flexibility in deployment. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls could benefit from improvements in customization, network performance in the Middle East, advanced features, integration, usability, GUI interface, training materials, SSL inspection, and external dynamic list feature.
Service and Support: While some customers appreciate the technical support provided by Check Point, others are dissatisfied with the response time. Palo Alto Networks has customers who praise their knowledgeable support team, but there are also complaints about long wait times and issues with their support ticketing system. In summary, the customer service quality for both products differs among users.
Ease of Deployment: While some find it easy, simple, and straightforward, others mention that it may be complex and require technical expertise. Users generally consider the initial setup of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls to be straightforward and not complex. They find it easy and user-friendly.
Pricing: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is known for its higher setup cost, however, it provides strong security measures and good value. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls may have higher pricing compared to other options, yet it is regarded as dependable and offers high-performance capabilities.
ROI: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security delivers a significant return on investment, ranging from 80-85%. Users have experienced the advantages of this solution within a short timeframe. Palo Alto NG Firewalls provide enhanced visibility, reporting capabilities, and overall security measures, leading to a robust return on investment.
Comparison Results: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is the preferred option when comparing it to Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. Users appreciate its user-friendly interface, centralized management, and ability to scale. It also focuses on cloud security and offers advanced threat prevention and detection. Additionally, it provides auto-scaling, malware prevention, and exploit resistance.
"We have found it to be very reliable and that's why our teams and various users in our company use it as our main firewall every day."
"This solution has solid UTM features combined with a nice GUI."
"The user interface (UI) is very, very good."
"What's most important is the ease of use."
"The solution is very user friendly. The user interface in particular is quite nice."
"We purchased Fortinet because of the pricing, its functionality, because it met our requirements, and the total cost of ownership over five years was quite reasonable. In the market, Fortinet is rated quite well."
"It has improved our security capabilities."
"It is quite easy to handle."
"The solution helps protect network security by offering threat prevention, addressing vulnerabilities, and utilizing blades."
"CloudGuard Network Security provides unified security management across hybrid clouds as well as on-prem. It's very important because when I have unified security, I have better control of the situation. If there's an attack or something like that, we can react faster. It's easier for everyone in the organization to work with the Infinity platform."
"It was very easy to install the solution, and the architecture meant we didn't have to worry about exceeding the solution's capacity."
"The solution's most valuable feature is scalability. We can increase the number of CPUs, memory, and firewall throughput easily. Using CloudGuard Network Security for managing cloud firewall rules is considered easier than using the normal security groups provided by Azure or AWS."
"As per the solution's blade design, there are many options. For example, you have to buy a UTM blade and an advanced malware blade, etc. If the blade license is there, we can configure from the firewall GUI."
"A unique architecture makes this product stand out from other solutions."
"When browsing, it scans sites to ensure that they are safe and that no harm can be caused."
"The program is very stable."
"The interface is very nice. We generally like the UI the product offers."
"It's one of the best products I've worked with. It's typically a market leader on Gartner. It's a very respected brand."
"You can easily integrate it with Active Directory, and you can use the GlobalProtect VPN for internal and external purposes. The URL Filtering is also clear and the application filtering is a plus. The application filtering is much better when you compare it to FortiGate or other firewall vendors."
"I like the firewall's vulnerability management features, which give you reminders to update your system and update your OS."
"We standardized on the product and got rid of several other types of firewalls from different vendors."
"The technology's very good. We have had a lot of good experience with this solution."
"Palo Alto NGFW’s unified platform has helped our customers eliminate security holes. With a unified platform, customers can deploy the NG Firewall both in the data center edge, inside the data center, and in the product/public cloud environments. They have the same user interfaces and platform, so they can be maintained by a single unified platform called Panorama. Customers can use Palo Alto Network NG Firewalls in all the places where they need to protect their environments. This helps to decrease security holes."
"Provision of quality training material and the reporting is very good."
"I think the only issue that needs improvement is the interface."
"The customization could be improved. Cisco, for example, is much better at this. They need to work to be at least as good as they are."
"MTBF: Hardware failure is more common when compared to SonicWall or Cisco ASA."
"Technical support for this solution can be improved."
"Bandwidth usage in reporting could be improved for Fortinet FortiGate."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve the integration with Active Directory. Additionally, I would like to have a Cloud Controller, such as they do in the Cisco Meraki solution."
"The ease of use could be improved."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more capabilities for troubleshooting VPN connections. For example, I do get some feedback about the current status, but I could use some history and logging of important events. The information is logged in our Syslog server, but I could use that information from the device. If they could provide a GUI to have some more insight on what's going with my VPN would be useful."
"Regarding CloudGuard Network Security's integration with various resources like application gateways and application-based security groups, there's room for exploring dynamic access in those areas. A significant concern is the upgrade process. Unlike an in-place upgrade, upgrading the tool in Azure requires deploying a new resource, which can be hectic and less reliable. We have to spend something new to have the tool's latest version."
"The initial setup was a bit complex."
"I would like to see more focus on east-west traffic inspection and AWS."
"The cost needs improvement as it is currently quite expensive."
"We faced issues while upgrading our CloudGuard Network Gateway. When we tried to use the template that Check Point offers on their site, it was not available for the second to the latest version, so I was forced to upgrade my management server. That was very challenging for us."
"The solution needs to improve the interruptions that happen during gateway upgrades."
"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."
"The product needs to improve technical support."
"We have a lot of the older firewall models, i.e., the PA-220. It seems that with newer operating systems the PA-220 is becoming slower than when I first bought it. It is not really an issue for users who are passing traffic through the firewall, but more from the management access of it."
"We are not happy with Palo Alto at all. It would be better if they provided more support for the firewall. We have a few pending issues with the configuration for each application. We cannot deploy them yet due to some support-related problems in the firewall. We have deployed a few policies for DNS spoofing and DNS attacks, but we could only block a few IP addresses through the policy. That's DNS security, and we have configured a few policies for DNS spoofing and more. URL categorization and URL filtering are not yet adequately maintained. For example, if you created a few rules in the rule-based configuration and made some rules downstairs, you will lose some of them if you give access upstairs. It's not giving us a proper solution for which route it is using. We need to apply the application-based policies and URL filtering-based policies. It creates more issues because we are not getting good support from the team."
"The initial configuration is complicated to set up."
"I don't deal with it from a day-to-day perspective, but I can say that the evidence that I typically need is there, but sometimes, it's a task to actually get it and pull it out. They can make it easier to gather that evidence."
"Palo Alto can do a little bit better when it comes to the User-ID part. I've been facing problems related to double authentication. You have a computer user, but you also have a VPN user, and when you do a single sign-on to another page, these logs can sometimes generate a problem notification. It doesn't happen a lot, but in some networks, it could be a problem. It would be very helpful to have the ability to restrict the connections that you can have in your VPN. For example, if you have the credentials, you can connect with the same user account from different computers or devices. If you have the domain information, you can connect from different devices. That's a problem that they need to address and resolve. They should ensure that at any moment, only one person is connected through a specific user account."
"Palo Alto needs to improve their training. They do not invest in their partners. I have been a partner for seven years, and it is very expensive for me to certify my engineers."
"I think they need to have a proper hardware version for a smaller enterprise. We had to go to a very high-end version which is very expensive. If we chose the lower-end version, it would not meet our goals. A middle-end is missing in its portfolio."
"Currently, they don't have email protection. They can maybe add it in the future. Currently, if you want to do so, you need to go with another solution."
More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Pricing and Cost Advice →
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Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is ranked 8th in Firewalls with 121 reviews while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 162 reviews. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is rated 8.6, while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6. 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 Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls writes "We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis". Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is most compared with Azure Firewall, VMware NSX, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Cisco Secure Firewall and Cisco Secure Workload, whereas Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Netgate pfSense. See our Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls report.
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