We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and Cisco Secure Firewall based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Check Point users are happier with its VPN and with its pricing. However, Cisco Secure users are happier with its service and support.
"We are using the FortiGate 100D series. VPN, firewall, anti-malware, OTM, and intrusion prevention are useful features."
"The response is very quick and they can visually resolve our problems in a short period."
"The IPS is good. It protect my network from attackers."
"Fortinet FortiGate is easy to use. Anyone can easily maintain it."
"The next-gen features, the unified threat management capabilities are something that just about everybody is interested in at this point."
"LinkGreat firewall capabilities"
"The web filtering feature and the intrusion protection system are the most valuable. It is a resilient appliance. I never had an issue with it in terms of any security breaches."
"Good anti-malware and web filtering features."
"It offers services like navigation, control, and filtering, which ensure that all users stay connected to business applications."
"They utilize various gateway features, including Identity as a Service (IDaaS), anti-spam, antivirus, and other security measures, effectively creating a robust defense against a wide range of potential risks."
"After introducing this NGFW, we have improved our security posture, and now, have peace of mind."
"The platform helps our organization to save working hours."
"Its functionality is highly satisfactory."
"Provides very good performance."
"The solution offers very good central management, which saves time and is hassle-free."
"It is easy to control from the central management system. For example, if we have 10 firewalls, and we want to push that same configuration among them, we can use this solution's central management system to do that simultaneously. So, there is time saving in that way. The time savings does depend on the situation. For example, if I am running half an hour of work on each firewall, that will take around 300 minutes. However, if I do this work from the central management system, then it will only take 30 minutes to push the same configuration to those same 10 devices."
"Netting is one of the best features. We can modify it in different ways. Site-to-site VPN is also an awesome feature of Cisco ASA. The biggest advantage of Cisco products is technical support. They provide the best technical support."
"It is extremely stable I would say — at least after you deploy it."
"We are using the Cisco AnyConnect for our end-user VPN with the ASA."
"Cisco ASA NGFW significantly improves our bank. It protects any high-value products that we use from hackers, viruses, malware, and script-bots. It gives us metrics on network traffic as well as what kind of attacks we are getting from the outside."
"ASA 5505 and ASA 5506 are very powerful tools to use in a business environment, and provide a lot of security."
"Firepower NGFW has improved my organization in several ways. Before, we were trying to stamp out security threats and issues, it was a one-off type of way to attack it. I spent a lot of manpower trying to track down the individual issues or flare-ups that we would see. With Cisco's Firepower Management, we're able to have that push up to basically one monitor and one UI and be able to track that and stop threats immediately. It also gives us a little more granularity on what those threats might be."
"Clustering architecture which offers zero downtime upgrades, keeping uptime close to 99.999%."
"The most important features are the intrusion prevention engine and the application visibility and control. The Snort feature in Firepower is also valuable."
"The setup is pretty complex and not easy to implement."
"Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"The support we receive when we need to upgrade is not satisfactory and has room for improvement."
"Technical support could be better. You don't always get the level of help you need right away."
"It could use better throughput on some of the smaller boxes for the branch offices."
"The central management for the FortiGate Fortinet Firewall needs improvement. They have the manager to do the essential management for both SD-WAN and for the security policy. They should also improve the SD-WAN function."
"Backup can be improved."
"They need faster serviceability and more security features."
"Right now, with a larger user database and a high number of rules, it takes a bit of time for policy installation."
"We need east/west Check Point firewalls in order to do micro-segmentation."
"The pricing could always be more competitive."
"The support team should be faster."
"Pricing for the gateways is too high as compared to the other vendors."
"The product or services can be improved from the cost and the pricing perspective."
"Improvement regarding the expansion of the SMS's compatibility to include various virtualization environments would be beneficial."
"When I was creating the VPN on it and the client side through the portal, that feature was very annoying. I could not use it. It was much more usable after downloading it to the laptop. That was very good compared to using it directly from the browser."
"There are always vulnerabilities that come up and there was one in early 2018 but this was patched with software updates."
"The solution needs to have better logging features."
"These firewalls are not for beginners."
"Cisco Secure Firewall's integration with cloud providers has room for improvement. We could do more in terms of integration, for example, if we had a tag on an instance."
"The management of the firewalls could be improved because there are a lot of bugs."
"In Firepower, there is an ability to search and dig into a search, which is nice. However, I'm not a super fan of the way it scrolls. If you want to look at something live, it's a lot different. You're almost waiting. With the ASDM, where it just flows, you can really see it. The second someone clicks something or does something, you'll see it. The refresh rate on the events in Firepower is not as smooth."
"Even on a smaller scale, people are finding you need HA pairs, and there's no way that the ASA can do that, at least in the virtual version."
"REST API stability needs improvement in order for customizing resource allocation available to the user rather than just being there transparently. This way users can customize REST API and tailor it to their needs."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 275 reviews while Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2. 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 Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Azure Firewall and OPNsense, whereas Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and OPNsense. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Cisco Secure Firewall report.
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