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.
"One of the valuable features is a standardized OS."
"The Intrusion Prevention System and the web filtering are both working well."
"Fortinet FortiGate is stable. It's used across all the countries, this is the way most multinationals run their system."
"It enables our organization to become more productive. Also, it protects our NEtWare from viruses and malware."
"I think that the UTM features are the most value, as it truly protects my infrastructure."
"FortiGate is on the cheaper end, and it offers good value."
"The next-gen features, the unified threat management capabilities are something that just about everybody is interested in at this point."
"The most important feature, normally for small business customers, is link load balancing."
"The comprehensiveness of the CloudGuard’s threat prevention security is great, especially once they integrate Dome9 in the whole thing. That really ties the whole thing together, so you can tie your entire cloud environment together into one central location, which is nice. Previously, we had three or four different tools that we were trying to leverage to do the same stuff that we are able to do with CloudGuard."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its scalability. You will only have to pay less for scaling up. Its notable benefit is deployment complexity. Regional deployment is simpler compared to on-premise setup."
"Advanced check prevention is a great feature that provides threat intelligence at speed."
"It's a high-performance device. The network performance is also really good. We check how much time it takes for the servers. Our network performance has increased since using this solution."
"It is dynamic and agile, and its features and utilities continuously improve and evolve."
"The 24/7 online customer support services enhance effective operations and provide quick services in case of a system failure."
"The easy management of the policies is great for us because we are a small team and having easy management is great and useful for us."
"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."
"Compared to other firewalls from Check Point, Fortinet, and Cisco, for example, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls use the most advanced techniques. They have sandbox integration and others in the orchestrator. Palo Alto's security features are at a higher level than those of the competitors at the moment."
"The user ID, Wildfire, UI, and management configuration are all great features."
"The centralization capability is the most valuable feature of this solution as it enables us to monitor our systems efficiently."
"Mechanically, all firewalls work in a similar fashion, but what makes Palo Alto different is that it also has some of the threat hunt capabilities. It is a little bit better than other vendors."
"The most significant benefit is threat protection. Anti-malware uses signatures, so dynamic analyzers like WildFire are the best way to protect the company. It is a firewall based on application control, user ID, and security policy. We can use it based on user and application ID without a stateless firewall or TCPIP ports."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the network protection."
"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls enable efficient application search, viewing, and configuration access across various services for different user groups within our company."
"The trackability is most valuable. When a port is open for a protocol, such as port 443 for HTTPS, it can look inside the traffic and identify or verify the applications that are using the port, which was previously not possible with traditional firewalls."
"There are some cloud-based features that could be much more flexible than they currently are."
"I would like to see better pricing in the next release, as well as a simplification of the installation."
"FortiGate should have a better way of detecting and managing the system memory because otherwise if the memory is too low, a system restart is required."
"Web security solutions can be improved."
"Reporting is limited to providing an external appliance for improving the reporting capabilities of the FortiAnalyzer. It does not offer a central management and is also sold separably as an appliance."
"I would like to see improvements in the support from Fortinet. Here in the Philippines, whenever we have problems with a Fortinet product, we mostly ask for support from distributors and resellers and not directly from Fortinet."
"There is one big configuration file with no separations for the unique VDOMs. Maybe they could separate individual VDOM configuration files with the root VDOM configuration file referencing the individual VDOM config files."
"There is a lot of improvement needed with SSL-VPN."
"The documentation has been rough. Being able to do it yourself can be hit or miss given the constraints of the documentation."
"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."
"The product needs to improve technical support."
"We utilize logging systems, and geolocation is crucial for us as some applications must only be accessible from our country. However, there have been occasional issues with this feature."
"It needs to cover additional kinds of infrastructure, like containers and serverless options. It's somewhat limited in that area."
"They can improve their security features to the next advanced level so that their efficiency in catching the malware can become 100%, and there is no scope for any data loss or leakage from the system due to any issue."
"It is somewhat problematic in the area of the cloud."
"Check Point could show us use cases that would help us in Czech and could help us with security threats in our specific country."
"There is a bit of limitation with its next-generation capabilities. They could be better. In terms of logs, I feel like I am a bit limited as an administrator. While I see a lot of logs, and that is good, it could be better."
"Its software updates can be improved. It sometimes becomes very slow with the software updates for different features. It should have an External Dynamic List of data. The malicious IP is not frequently getting updated in Palo Alto, and this should be done."
"The solution could be more cost-effective."
"Need improvement with their logs, especially the command line interface."
"We have not taken Palo Alto's firewall management solution because it's too expensive and we don't feel it delivers significant value."
"The cloud could be improved. I would like to have more visibility of the vulnerabilities of the network as well."
"From a documentation standpoint, there is room for improvement. Even Palo Alto says that their documentation is terrible."
"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 163 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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