Azure Firewall vs Check Point NGFW comparison

Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
Fortinet Logo
120,425 views|88,209 comparisons
90% willing to recommend
Microsoft Logo
21,264 views|16,904 comparisons
81% willing to recommend
Check Point Software Technologies Logo
27,173 views|16,714 comparisons
96% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Apr 6, 2022

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.

  • Ease of Deployment: The majority of Azure Firewall users feel that it is simple and straightforward to set up and deploy. Users of Check Point NGFW are divided over whether or not it was simple to deploy. Some reviewers note that Check Point NGFW is simple to deploy when you already have experience with the product.

  • Features: Users of Azure Firewall find it to be both scalable and stable. They point out that it has other valuable features, including its threat intelligence and its auto-scaling features. However, its user interface could be improved.

    Users of Check Point NGFW feel that it is highly scalable and they point out that it has many other valuable features, including its threat detection and firewall features. However, users feel that its stability could be improved.
  • Pricing: Users of Azure Firewall feel that it is a pretty inexpensive product to use. In contrast, users of Check Point NGFW feel that it is expensive.
  • Service and Support: Most users of Azure Firewall feel that the technical support that it offers is good. However, one user notes that the documentation that they offer could be improved. Users of Check Point NGFW are divided over whether or not their technical support is effective. Some users felt that the training that they offer could be improved.

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.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Firewall vs. Check Point NGFW Report (Updated: May 2024).
770,141 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Q&A Highlights
Question: Which would you recommend - Azure Firewall or Check Point NGFW?
Answer: Azure Firewall is easy to use and provides excellent support. Valuable features include integration into the overall cloud platform, autoscaling, and the ability for users to create virtual IP addresses. The cost of the solution is also competitive. Check Point NGFW solution offers zero-day protection and provides absolute in-depth visibility with a multi-layer, multi-blade approach. This solution has a Smart Controller that allows you to manage all firewalls from one single location. It also has good antivirus protection and knowledgeable, responsive support. Check Point NGFW is cost-effective and provides valuable support to get through required compliance audits. For Azure Firewall you have to specify each IP address used. We also found Azure to be challenging to implement from region to region, as it does not currently offer a universal approach across regions. Support can be very slow to respond and has caused us some downtime, affecting productivity and overall satisfaction. Check Point NGFW VPN can be very complex to set up. The deployment can be more challenging than many other solutions on the market. Although once fully deployed, things do get easier. Debugging can also be very difficult and makes it seem less stable than other solutions out there. Training and support could be better overall. Conclusion Azure is great, especially since almost everyone is part of the Azure ecosystem. However, it may not be the best solution for larger enterprises, as stability is limited, and the scale-up scale-out approach needs improvement. Check Point can be very challenging to set up and deploy, but the unique multi-layer, multi-blade approach gives greater flexibility and transparency, which makes it a great option for larger enterprises with more complex, intricate needs.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"FortiGate has a very strong unified threat management system.""The most important features of Fortinet FortiGate are the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and firewall control applications.""The most valuable features are SD-WAN, application control, IPS control, and FortiSandbox.""All of the features of Fortinet FortiGate are useful and the security protection is good.""The most valuable features are that it is very simple to configure and to manage.""It is easy to use and performs very well.""Anti-Spam web content filterinG.""Customers want to load balance more than eight lines or six internet lines. FortiGate is the only solution that can accomplish this."

More Fortinet FortiGate Pros →

"All its features are good. That's why we recommend it.""It's helped us improve our security posture.""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.""I like its order management feature. It doesn't have the kind of threat intelligence that Palo Alto has, but the order management makes it much simpler to know the difference.""The Layer four features are okay and meet my business needs.""The most valuable feature is the integration into the overall cloud platform.""It's auto-scalable, which is a great feature.""In terms of the reporting, it's beautiful. It integrates with Azure monitoring and with Azure policies. That piece is a big help. You can set governing policies and you can use the application firewall, as well as the Azure Firewall, to enforce those policies."

More Azure Firewall Pros →

"It's enabled us to move away from basic LAN to LAN segmentation to a more powerful user separation approach.""The Next Generation Firewalls, the 64000 and 44000 series, provide us with support for large data centers and telco environments. They're quite reliable and provide great performance.""The solution is easy to administer thanks to its dashboards. The monitoring is really useful.""Policy configuration has been consistent over the years, so there is not much of a learning curve as upgrades are released.""Check Point is able to satisfy almost any security tool for enterprise clients. This allows us to deploy complex changes from a single management interface, get better visibility, and significantly reduce operational complexity.""My customers cite performance and ease of configuration as two of the solution's most valuable features.""The most valuable feature of Check Point NGFW is the unparalleled distribution of the network traffic. The central management station they have allows you to manage everything from one place.""mart Console simplifies the management of current policies and objects, making it effortless to track an object's usage or identify unused objects, thus ensuring a tidy configuration."

More Check Point NGFW Pros →

Cons
"The reports are very basic.""Fortinet currently has many products bundled with FortiGate including the basic firewall and load balancer, and I think that that they need to have separate product portfolios for each of these specialized services.""Some of the filtering is not robust, you can escape it with a VPN. Some of the users bypass some of the filters. It catches some but it also misses some, that area could be improved. It's functioning reasonably but there's room for improvement in that area.""Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding enhancements to FortiMail, FortiSOAR, and FortiDeceptor.""One area for improvement is the performance on the bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering.""Fortinet already improved FortiGate, but in the current market, many brands of security devices have improved together. Fortinet still needs to catch up with market standards. Fortinet is lacking in features in comparison to competitors.""We sometimes have issues with FortiGate's routing table in the latest firmware update. We had to downgrade the device because our customers complained about bugs.""There are SD-WAN network monitoring, SD-WAN features, Industrial Databases, Internet of Things, Detection, etc., however, we do have not licenses for those features. We thought that if you bought a product, you should have all of the features it offers. Why should you need to make so many extra purchases to enable features? They should have one price for the entire offering."

More Fortinet FortiGate Cons →

"The tool needs to improve the onboarding and transition process for on-prem users.""Azure Firewall should have a free trial version for new users so that they can evaluate it before deploying it.""It needs a lot of improvement, especially on intruder detection. They are working hard on that.""It's a little heavy compared to a FortiGate or other firewalls.""It would be nice to be able to create groupings for servers and offer groups of IP addresses.""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.""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.""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."

More Azure Firewall Cons →

"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.""The presentation of the reports need to be more user-friendly.""The tool’s architecture could be improved a bit.""I still don't have access to the reporting service.""The API support is good. However, Check Point needs to focus on more prepared scripts for some tiresome actions.""Check Point products have many places that need to be improved, but they are constantly upgrading.""For the next release, we would like to have better ruleset cleanup tools that are already included.""The whole solution has room for improvement."

More Check Point NGFW 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 →

  • "Azure Firewall is more expensive. If Microsoft can make Azure Firewall cheaper, I can see that all clients will think of using it. One client used FortiGate because it is much cheaper. Some clients ask me for Cisco, but in the cloud estimate, I found its cost is the same as Azure Firewall."
  • "Azure Firewall is quite an expensive product."
  • "The licensing module is good."
  • "The total cost of ownership is much less than Palo Alto, Cisco, or any other brand."
  • "It is pay-as-you-go. So, you pay based on the usage. If I remember it well, there is a basic fee, and there is a traffic fee. It is not per month. It is per hour or something like that. It is not so expensive."
  • "Azure Firewalls operate on a pay-as-you-go model, similar to cloud services."
  • "The solution is cheaper than other brands. My company has an enterprise contract and we finally got a good price with Azure."
  • "Azure Firewall comes with Azure native services. We did not buy any kind of license for it. Whether you have a free subscription or a pay-as-you-go model, you can deploy the Azure Firewall service... The amount that you use will determine how much you pay."
  • More Azure Firewall 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 →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Firewalls solutions are best for your needs.
    770,141 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Answers from the Community
    Netanya Carmi
    Anil Redekar - PeerSpot reviewerAnil Redekar (Infosys)
    Real User

    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. 

    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer: When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage at… more »
    Top Answer:From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know… more »
    Top Answer:As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite… more »
    Top Answer:Azure Firewall Vs. Palo Alto Network NG Firewalls Both solutions provide stellar stability and security. Azure… more »
    Top Answer:Both products are very stable and easily scalable The setup of Azure Firewall is easy and very user-friendly and the… more »
    Top Answer:Both of these solutions are excellent options that provide flexible scalability and solid security Fortinet Fortigate… more »
    Top Answer:I have experience on both from Disti and channel experience. Please find below my comments (nothing new as such)… more »
    Top Answer:Azure Firewall is easy to use and provides excellent support. Valuable features include integration into the overall… more »
    Top Answer:Check Point NGFW provides essential security, featuring no-obligation access for secure connections, strong intrusion… more »
    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.

    Azure Firewall is a user-friendly, intuitive, cloud-native firewall security solution that provides top-of-the-industry threat protection for all your Azure Virtual Network resources. Azure Firewall is constantly and thoroughly analyzing all traffic and data packets, making it a very valuable and secure fully stateful firewall as a service with built-in high availability and unrestricted cloud scalability. Azure Firewall allows users to create virtual IP addresses and provides for secure DDoS protection for the virtual machines on your network. It also provides fast and efficient east-west and north-south traffic security.

    Azure Firewall is a managed, cloud-based network security service built to protect your Azure Virtual Network resources. It is a fully stateful firewall as a service with built-in high availability and unrestricted cloud scalability.

    Azure Firewall has two significant offerings, Standard and Premium.

    Azure Firewall Standard works directly with Microsoft Cyber Security and supplies excellent L3-L7 filtering and threat awareness. The proactive real-time threat awareness will quickly alert you and immediately deny all traffic to and from any known problematic or suspicious domains or IP addresses. Microsoft Cyber Security is updated continually to protect against all new and known potential threats at all times. To learn more about Azure Firewall Standard, click here.

    Azure Firewall Premium provides everything the standard version does, and additionally adds extra levels of data encryption, network intrusion detection, extended URL filtering, and Web category filters. To learn more about the added features of Azure Firewall Premium, click here.

    Key Benefits and Features of Azure Firewall:

    • High availability - You do not need load balancers with Azure Firewall; it's already built in and ready to go.
    • Self-scalability - Azure Firewall is intuitive and will auto-scale as needed based on traffic flow to be ready for peak traffic times.
    • Threat awareness - Using Microsoft Cyber Security to filter traffic, Azure Firewall will deny any known problematic threats to keep your network safe.
    • Additional IP addresses - You can securely add up to 250 public IP addresses with Azure Firewall
    • Improved web category filtering - You can set up specific protocols to allow or deny categories within websites that are deemed inappropriate for use within your network. You have the ability to organize categories based on a defined set of descriptions.

    What our real users have to say:

    Many PeerSpot users found Azure Firewall to be very user-friendly and easy to use. They liked that it offers seamless integration to the cloud and were especially pleased with the threat filtering options.

    Regarding integration and threat intelligence, our users wrote:

    “The most valuable feature is the integration into the overall cloud platform.”

    The most valuable feature is threat intelligence. It is based on filtering and can identify multiple threats.”

    I think that one of the best features is definitely the premium version, along with the IDPs in terms of the intrusion detection and prevention system.”



    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.”

    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
    Information Not Available
    Control Southern, Optimal Media
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider16%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization20%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company29%
    Financial Services Firm24%
    Government12%
    Manufacturing Company12%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Government8%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm22%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization50%
    Computer Software Company8%
    Financial Services Firm5%
    Comms Service Provider4%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business48%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise30%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise32%
    Large Enterprise41%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise26%
    Large Enterprise49%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise59%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise49%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise58%
    Large Enterprise28%
    Buyer's Guide
    Azure Firewall vs. Check Point NGFW
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Firewall vs. Check Point NGFW and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    770,141 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    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.

    See our list of best Firewalls vendors.

    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.