We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls based on our users’ reviews in four categories. Our conclusion is presented below.
Comparison Results: Our users feel Check Point NGFW is the better choice for NG Firewalls. Users appreciate its unique multi-layer, multi-blade approach. Additionally, the central management station allows users to manage everything in one place, helping to improve overall performance. The great price, support, and performance make this a great choice.
"A strong point of FortiGate is that the graphical interface is complete and easy to use, especially if we think there is a list of operations that we are able to perform inside."
"There is an easy process for configuring it, and it is straightforward to implement the device from scratch."
"The simplicity of the product is great. It's very easy to use, which is a compliment we get all the time in terms of feedback."
"FortiGate has a very strong unified threat management system."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is the simple configuration."
"The stability and scalability of this solution are satisfactory. Its SD-WAN, VPN, and URL filtering features are very useful."
"Initial setup is easy to configure."
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"We can also run policies with two or more people simultaneously without problems or the risk of developing the wrong policy."
"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."
"Check Point has a really cool GUI."
"It is easy to administrate and maintain."
"The solution can scale."
"All of the features are very valuable, but the most valuable features are the sandboxing and the advanced IPS/IDS."
"The solution provides better stability and some interesting features such as the ease of throughput expansion."
"Even though Check Point NGFW provides a set of security features that enforce protection on the network, the most valuable aspect is also the most used feature: the plain and simple firewall component. This is the core of the product and works to a great extent without the need for all other available bells and whistles."
"The stability of the product has been good over the years."
"The GUI is simple and the solution is straightforward."
"In general, its performance and ease of use are the most valuable. Its performance is good, stable, and reliable. The user interface is friendly and easy to use. Customers find it easy to work with and easy to learn."
"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls saves us time."
"The application IDs, application controls, URL filtering, visibility, monitoring, and reporting are the most valuable features."
"The machine learning in the core of the firewalls, for inline, real-time attack prevention, is very important to us. With the malware and ransomware threats that are out there, to keep abreast of and ahead of those types of attacks, it's important for our devices to be able to use AI to distinguish when there is malicious traffic or abnormal traffic within our environment, and then notify us."
"Flexible and integrates well with apps and other security tools."
"The key aspect of this solution that provides the most value is its next-gen capabilities, which represented a significant change for us."
"Bandwidth usage in reporting could be improved for Fortinet FortiGate."
"They should offer special pricing to premium partners and customers."
"With the addition of some features, it is possible that FortiGate can be used in all verticals."
"Some features of Fortinet FortiGate are actually fee enabled that are inconvenient for deploying in production. Other issues relate to isolation with Cisco products and your server."
"The improvement is related to logs. Instead of the CLI, we should be able to have more insights into the logs of the firewall in the GUI."
"The way everything is set up could be easier. Currently, people need a lot of experience and knowledge to administer it and to link it to devices."
"Fortinet FortiGate should improve the VPN tokens."
"Palo Alto has a feature called WildFire Analysis that is unavailable in FortiGate. WildFire is better than a sandbox because it can address zero-day threats and vulnerabilities. It can immediately identify zero-day threats from the cloud."
"The virtual environment is not stable at all. We have some customers who are using the virtual environment feature, and sometimes it crashes. We have many tickets open and the response is not as good as expected. We have to wait months for a resolution."
"The area where Check Point can improve is the antivirus, as it only provides a small number of updates for it. Updates should be more frequent."
"It depends whether the problem is known to Check Point. If they are aware there is a problem, quite often it will then depend on which tech you finally land on if it's easier or harder to get to the root cause. The last issue was in India so that was pretty bad. It's easier if you get directly through to Tel Aviv or Ottawa, but you can't choose. Once they know what the issue is, it's pretty good. It pretty much depends on the engineer that you get. There are pretty good engineers and there are many engineers who are at just the starter level at Check Point who are not really into the stuff. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's easy, depending on the problem and the tech engineer you get."
"The command line is very difficult to use, which is one of the biggest drawbacks of this solution."
"Support for customers really needs to improve."
"The policy installation module should be improved."
"VMware is not supported by the platform."
"All the advanced features of automation, especially the first installation of tunnels, need improvement."
"I like the reports, but I wish the reporting was a little better. When I set up the automatic reports to come in, they're pretty basic. I would like them to be a little more advanced at the ACC monitoring and things like that. I still enjoy all the daily alerts that I get and all the daily PDFs and reports, but I just feel that it could expand upon the visualization of the reports."
"The only real drawback to this product is that it is expensive. But you get what you pay for and there is no way to put a price on top-notch security."
"The support could be improved."
"Its reporting can definitely be improved. I would like to have better graphical dashboards and more widgets for more clarity in the reporting area. In a third-generation firewall, you can generate some dashboards. It provides the information that we need, but from the C-level or a higher-level perspective, it is kind of rough and incomplete. Its data loss prevention (DLP) feature is not good enough. Currently, this feature is very basic and not suitable for enterprises. It would be nice if they can include a better DLP feature like Fortinet. We would like to have a local depot of Palo Alto in Latin America. Competitors such as Cisco and Check Point have a local depot here. If there is an issue with their hardware, you can go to the depot, and in about four hours, you can get a replacement device, but that's not the case with Palo Alto Networks because we need to import from Miami. It takes about two to three weeks."
"We would like to see improvement in the web interface for this solution, so that it can handle updates without manual intervention to put the data in order."
"I would like to see it provide us with intelligent information from the data that it captures, within the same cost."
"Unfortunately, Palo Alto Networks products aren't cheap, but you have to pay the price for good security technology. I don't know the exact price, but it's about $10,000 to $15,000 without a subscription. Cisco is priced similarly. FortiGate is inexpensive in Poland, so a lot of customers prefer that."
"Palo Alto could do better with integrating the Palo Alto Next-Gen Firewall with SD-WAN. The biggest issue with Palo Alto is that they are expensive. They are very expensive for what they offer. They should improve their pricing."
More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Pricing and Cost Advice →
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 276 reviews while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 162 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6. 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 Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls writes "We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Azure Firewall and OPNsense, whereas Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls report.
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Hi, I would suggest going for Checkpoint, the suitability depends on your specific security needs, budget constraints, network infrastructure, Integration capabilities, cloud integration, compliance and reporting, user-friendly interface but the support and the specific behavior for some solutions for routing, networking balance or specific connectivity is better known constraints, Checkpoint Multiplatform support (Open Servers Solutions) The advantages in Palo Alto (SSL Decryption, Wildfire SandBox Integration, Scalability)
Hi, I would suggest going for Check Point.
I'm with Check Point now, for more than 2 years. IPS, threat prevention, antibot identification, and antivirus notification are up to the mark. Moreover, it has a friendly user interface where anyone can create policies and work on it.