Check Point NGFW vs Palo Alto Networks VM-Series comparison

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Fortinet Logo
120,425 views|88,209 comparisons
90% willing to recommend
Check Point Software Technologies Logo
27,173 views|16,714 comparisons
96% willing to recommend
Palo Alto Networks Logo
7,117 views|4,612 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and Palo Alto Networks VM-Series based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Check Point NGFW vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Report (Updated: May 2024).
772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The next-gen features, the unified threat management capabilities are something that just about everybody is interested in at this point.""Offers good security and filtering.""The Intrusion Prevention System and the web filtering are both working well.""The payment function for applications is good.""Initial setup is easy to configure.""The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are remote access, web filtering, and IPS.""It is easy to use and performs very well.""The most valuable feature of this solution is Quota."

More Fortinet FortiGate Pros →

"The activation of additional features is very easy and well documented.""On the firewall side, the security efficacy is good.""I think that the most valuable feature is the prevention of known and zero-day threats because they are constantly trying to access your company and compromise its data.""The best feature is the ability to increase the capacity of the solution by exactly what you add, not losing anything for High Availability.""The only area that Check Point still seems to excel in is their logging.""If there is a critical issue observed, the Check Point support team can create a custom package that we can deploy on the gateway to mitigate critical issues/bug fixes.""Check Point NGFW has helped the company in the prevention of cyber attacks that could affect operations and slow down production.""Being able to access almost everything in one location manage all your gateways and get all your logs is great."

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"The Palo Alto VM-Series is nice because I can move the firewalls easily.""In Palo Alto the most important feature is the App-ID.""The most valuable feature is the Posture Assessment.""We now know a lot more detail about what our users are doing on the network.""A solid operating system with all the necessary data center security features.""Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is easy to maintain...From a security point of view, I find Palo Alto Networks VM-Series to be a better product compared to the other solutions in the market.""The most valuable feature is that you can control your traffic flowing out and coming it, allowing you to apply malware and threat protection, as well as vulnerability checks.""It ensures that every interaction, pre and post-loan processing, undergoes a thorough inspection, leveraging VPN features and comprehensive security protocols."

More Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Pros →

Cons
"Improvement is needed in the Web Filter quotas to restrict users with allocated quotas.""I would like to see improvements with the antivirus and IPS as they are not working properly all the time.""Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding FortiAnalyzer to its solution, we should not have to use another solution. FortiAnalyzer can provide more detailed information.""Vulnerability scanning could be improved.""To the best of my knowledge, Fortinet does not have a CASB solution and Fortinet does not have a Zero trust solution.""The web-cache feature which was previously on the FortiGate device, but was deleted with the recent upgrade should be returned. It was a very valuable feature for us.""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 solution's framework needs to be frequently updated in order to have a stable solution."

More Fortinet FortiGate Cons →

"No product is perfect and there is always room for improvement.""There is a huge amount of revenue lost in the financial/banking sector due to cyber attacks, so we need to have something that can highly concentrate on future cyber attacks.""Sometimes debugging is a hassle.""They should integrate all blades to use a single policy rather than multiple.""The support team should be faster.""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.""Something worth mentioning is the need for Spanish support and better representation for teams in the Latin American area."

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"The disadvantage with Palo Alto is that they don't have a cloud-based solution that includes a secure web gateway.""Integrative capabilities with other solutions should be addressed.""I would like to see a more thorough QA process. We have had some difficulties from bugs in releases.""There's room for improvement in terms of integration with the load balancer. It isn't like Fortinet, which has a load balancer built into its firewall. It is effortless to integrate within the load balancer-plus-firewall solution.""With Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, it is hard for me to manage its network configuration part.""On the cloud side, they need to come up with more HA solutions to support the multi-region.""Its web interface is a bit outdated, and it needs to be updated. They can also improve the NAT functionality. We have had issues with the NAT setup.""The only minor issue we've faced is with the app's ID configuration, which requires specific matching for application filtering."

More Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Fortinet has one or two license types, and the VPN numbers are only limited by the hardware chassis make."
  • "These boxes are not that expensive compared to what they can do, their functionality, and the reporting you receive. Fortinet licensing is straightforward and less confusing compared to Cisco."
  • "Go for long term pricing negotiated at the time of purchase."
  • "Work through partners for the best pricing."
  • "The value is the capability of having multiple services with one unique license, not having the limitation per user licensing schema, like other vendors."
  • "Easy to understand licensing requirements."
  • "​We saved a bundle by not needing all the past appliances from an NGFW.​"
  • "The cost is too high... They have to focus on more features with less cost for the customer. If you see the market, where it's going, there are a lot of players offering more features for less cost."
  • More Fortinet FortiGate Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I don't think the product's pricing is a good value. I feel it's very overpriced. I feel a lot of the features for a next gen firewall are there. But I feel it's overpriced, because of the stability issues. As far as support goes, I really can't speak to direct Check Point support, but the third-party was pretty terrible... As far as the licensing goes, it's pretty complex. If anybody was to purchase the Check Point product, definitely make sure they have an account rep come on site, and explain it line by line, what each thing is. It's not straightforward. It's very convoluted. There's no way you could just figure it out by looking at it."
  • "Check Point solutions are very expensive here. They're good, but they're expensive... Check Point is only useful for customers that have a big IT budget."
  • "The price is high in comparison to other solutions."
  • "We pay $5,000-$6,000 a year."
  • "Maybe the pricing is a bit high but you get the durability and the duration."
  • "Licensing issues may be confusing at times."
  • "It is quite an expensive product, although security is a top priority."
  • "This product is not cheap and there are additional costs that depend on what model or package that you buy."
  • More Check Point NGFW Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "For what you get, it does do what it says. It is a good value for an enterprise firewall.​"
  • "​The licensing is pretty much like everyone else."
  • "When you have a client compare box against box, a lot of times Palo Alto is a bit more expensive, but its network firewalls have a very rich ratio."
  • "Do not buy larges box if you do not need them. Rightsizing is a great task to do before​hand."
  • "I know Palo Alto is not cheap. They have been telling me, the members of the finance team, it is not a cheap solution. It is a solution whose target is that no matter how big your organization is, small, medium, or large, it is about the maturity of your security team or infrastructure team whom you want to work with."
  • "It is a little bit of crazy if you compare it to Vanguard, Sophos, or even Cisco. The newest version of Cisco, the Next-Generation Firewall of Cisco, is less expensive than Palo Alto. It is more comparable to Check Point."
  • "For licensing, It depends how they want to use the firewall. The firewall can be used only for IPS purposes. If you only want that firewall IPSs, you will only need a license that is called threat prevention. That license, threat prevention, includes vulnerabilities, antivirus signatures and one additional measure (that I can't remember), but it includes three measures and security updates."
  • "The box, if you do not want to buy the threat prevention license in the box, you can buy it only with the support license. It is for the support of the hardware. It works like a simple firewall. It integrates what it calls user IDs and application IDs. If you do not buy any other license, only the firewall, Palo Alto will also help you improve a lot of your security."
  • More Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate
    Check Point NG Firewall, Check Point Next Generation Firewall
    Learn More
    Overview

    Fortinet FortiGate enhances network security, prevents unauthorized access, and offers robust firewall protection. Valued features include advanced threat protection, reliable performance, and a user-friendly interface. It improves efficiency, streamlines processes, and boosts collaboration, providing valuable insights for informed decision-making and growth.

    Check Point NGFW is a next generation firewall that enables safe usage of internet applications by blocking malicious applications and unblocking safe applications. Check Point NGFW, which uses deep packet inspection to identify and control applications, has features such as application and user control and integrated intrusion prevention (IPS), as well as more advanced malware prevention capabilities like sandboxing.

    Check Point NGFW includes 23 firewall models optimized for running all threat prevention technologies simultaneously, including full SSL traffic inspection, without compromising on security or performance.

    Benefits of Check Point's Next Generation Firewall

    • Robust security: Check Point NGFW delivers the best possible threat prevention with SandBlast Zero Day protection. The SandBlast protection agent constantly inspects passing network traffic for exploits and vulnerabilities. Suspicious files are then emulated in a virtual sandbox in order to detect and report malicious behavior.

    • Security at hyperscale: On-demand hyperscale threat prevention performance provides cloud level expansion and resiliency on premises.

    • Unified management: Check Point's SmartConsole makes it easy to manage and configure network security environments and policies. With the SmartConsole, users can manage all the firewall gateways and access logs and install databases from one location. Unified management control across the network increases the efficiency of security operations and reduces IT costs.
    • Continuous logging: Check Point NGFW’s Threat Management feature detects vulnerabilities and logs them. Using the logged data, users can easily create and implement efficient security policies.

    • Remote access: The remote access VPN provides a seamless connection for remote users.

    Check Point NGFW is suitable for organizations of all sizes, from small businesses to larger enterprises.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Check Point NGFW stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its intrusion prevention feature as well as its centralized management, which makes it very easy to deploy firewall policies to many firewalls with one click.

    Shivani J., a network security administrator, writes, "Check Point has a lot of features. The ones I love are the antivirus, intrusion prevention, and data loss prevention."

    G., a network administrator at Secretaría de Finanzas de Aguascalientes, writes, “Within the organization, the inspection of packages has given us great help in detecting traffic that may be a threat to the institution. The configuration of policies has allowed us to maintain control of access and users for each institution that is incorporated into our headquarters.”

    Arun J., a senior network engineer, notes, “The nicest feature is the centralized management of multiple firewalls. With the centralized management, we can easily use and operate multiple firewalls as well as create a diagram of them.”

    Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is a highly effective advanced threat protection (ATP) solution and firewall that can be hosted on cloud computing technologies designed by many different companies. It decreases the amount of time that it will take administrators to respond to threats. Users that deploy VM-series have 70% less downtime than those who use similar firewalls. Neither protection nor efficiency are concerns when this next-generation firewall is in play.

    VM-Series is being deployed to protect both public and private cloud environments. This level of flexibility empowers organizations to run the environment or environments that best meet their needs without worrying that they are going to be exposed to digital threats due to the environment that they choose.

    In the public cloud, users of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series can automate their deployment and dynamically scale up their environment while experiencing a consistent level of protection. This dynamic scalability means that they also integrate their security into their DevOps workflows so that their security can keep up with their activities and requirements. Users of private cloud environments can set up security policies that can be automated to be provisioned as the need arises. Organizations don’t need to slow down when they deploy VM-Series because it makes the task of defending them so simple that they can set their defenses and forget that they are even there.

    Users gain a deep level of visibility when they deploy Palo Alto Networks VM-Series. App-ID technology enables organizations to see their network traffic on the application level and spot threats that might be trying to sneak in through vulnerable points in their defenses. It also leverages Palo Alto Networks WildFire and advanced threat protection to block the threats before they can escalate.

      Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Features:

      • Central management system - It has a central management system that enables users to set up and control their security operations from one location. Users don’t need to search for the tools that they need. This system allows for security consistency and complete control without requiring businesses to spend large periods of time to do so.
      • Blacklisting and whitelisting - Organizations can utilize blacklisting and whitelisting tools to ensure that their network traffic only contains the type of traffic that they want to be present. These tools make it possible for them to set specific web traffic sources as being either undesirable and thus blocked from entering their network or desirable and thus allowed to enter. 
      • Automation feature - The product’s automation feature can automate many critical functions that users would otherwise have to handle manually. Security policy updates are an example of a function that users can automate.

      Reviews from Real Users:

      Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is a solution that stands out when compared to other similar solutions. Two major advantages that it offers are its ability to protect users without degrading the efficiency with which their networks perform and its centralized management system. 

      Jason H., the director of information technology at Tavoca Inc, writes, “There is no noticeable trade-off between security and network performance. In fact, so far, we've not seen any negative network performance with it. We're very impressed in that regard.”

      An information technology manager at a tech services company says, “We use Palo Alto’s Panorama centralized management system. We have an on-prem firewall where Panorama is very good for pulling logs in from the cloud so we can see what is going on. It gives us visibility into that as well as shows us what attacks are coming in. Palo Alto’s Panorama centralized management system simplifies our security posture based on our requirements. Instead of manually pulling logs, then generating them into readable formats, it gives us the console in a readable format to view.”

      Sample Customers
      1. Amazon Web Services 2. Microsoft 3. IBM 4. Cisco 5. Dell 6. HP 7. Oracle 8. Verizon 9. AT&T 10. T-Mobile 11. Sprint 12. Vodafone 13. Orange 14. BT Group 15. Telstra 16. Deutsche Telekom 17. Comcast 18. Time Warner Cable 19. CenturyLink 20. NTT Communications 21. Tata Communications 22. SoftBank 23. China Mobile 24. Singtel 25. Telus 26. Rogers Communications 27. Bell Canada 28. Telkom Indonesia 29. Telkom South Africa 30. Telmex 31. Telia Company 32. Telkom Kenya
      Control Southern, Optimal Media
      Warren Rogers Associates
      Top Industries
      REVIEWERS
      Comms Service Provider16%
      Computer Software Company9%
      Financial Services Firm8%
      Manufacturing Company7%
      VISITORS READING REVIEWS
      Educational Organization20%
      Computer Software Company15%
      Comms Service Provider7%
      Manufacturing Company6%
      REVIEWERS
      Financial Services Firm22%
      Computer Software Company15%
      Comms Service Provider7%
      Manufacturing Company6%
      VISITORS READING REVIEWS
      Educational Organization51%
      Computer Software Company7%
      Financial Services Firm5%
      Government4%
      REVIEWERS
      Computer Software Company26%
      Manufacturing Company16%
      Financial Services Firm13%
      Government10%
      VISITORS READING REVIEWS
      Computer Software Company16%
      Financial Services Firm11%
      Manufacturing Company7%
      Government6%
      Company Size
      REVIEWERS
      Small Business48%
      Midsize Enterprise23%
      Large Enterprise30%
      VISITORS READING REVIEWS
      Small Business28%
      Midsize Enterprise32%
      Large Enterprise40%
      REVIEWERS
      Small Business32%
      Midsize Enterprise18%
      Large Enterprise49%
      VISITORS READING REVIEWS
      Small Business14%
      Midsize Enterprise59%
      Large Enterprise27%
      REVIEWERS
      Small Business41%
      Midsize Enterprise26%
      Large Enterprise33%
      VISITORS READING REVIEWS
      Small Business23%
      Midsize Enterprise16%
      Large Enterprise61%
      Buyer's Guide
      Check Point NGFW vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series
      May 2024
      Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point NGFW vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
      772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

      Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 279 reviews while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is ranked 10th in Firewalls with 53 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series 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 VM-Series writes "Many features are optimized for troubleshooting real-time scenarios, saving a lot of time". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Azure Firewall, whereas Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is most compared with Azure Firewall, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and KerioControl. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series report.

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      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.