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.
"Their proxy-based inspection is responsive and secure."
"It increases security posture and is helpful for firewall reporting, intrusion protection, web filtering, and SD-WAN implementation."
"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."
"The product offers very good security."
"Consolidated our network environment at all locations, but mainly at our datacenter."
"The most important features of Fortinet FortiGate are the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and firewall control applications."
"User-friendly and affordable security solution that's recommended for SMB customers. This solution has good technical support."
"It's super reliable. I don't think I've ever had a reliability issue with it."
"Remote access with a secure workspace provides a clear separation between the client and corporate network."
"The biggest thing is the central management. It is quite good and allows us to manage the different firewalls from it. We can implement and configure many firewalls and push our policies to them as well."
"HTTP forwarding is something I haven't seen elsewhere."
"Check Point helps a lot with automatization which definitely reduces the effort to maintain the environment."
"The most valuable feature for us is the VSX, the virtualization."
"Its management web interface is very easy and user-friendly."
"Check Point NGFW has helped the company in the prevention of cyber attacks that could affect operations and slow down production."
"The interface and the IPS intrusion prevention are the most valuable features of this solution."
"I like all of the features."
"It's very scalable. You can go to different models of the ASAs and they scale up to as big as you want to go."
"Their performance is most valuable."
"Previously, our customers had to always utilize hand-to-hand delivery. Now, they are able to move completely to a secure digital method. They use a strictly dark fiber optics connection from a central location to the endpoint."
"The most valuable features for my client are the ASDM and monitoring."
"With the FMC and the FirePOWERs, the ability to quickly replace a piece of hardware without having to have a network outage is useful. Also, the ability to replace a piece of equipment and deploy the config that the previous piece of equipment had is pretty useful."
"Very good as a stateful inspection firewall."
"The most valuable feature is that it's secure."
"The support we receive when we need to upgrade is not satisfactory and has room for improvement."
"It should be more stable. There should be full integration within Fortinet products themselves as well as with other third-party products. Especially when you're not dealing with SIEM and the correlation of the security box, we want Fortinet to be able to share that information with as many other products as it can."
"It needs to improve its ISP load balancing."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"Lacks sufficient security options."
"Cisco Meraki products are rising very quickly in the cloud and the connected era. Meraki products offer much better ROI, upgradability, and manageability."
"I don't really have anything negative to say as far as Fortinet firewalls are concerned. If anything, they can support a user a little bit better. They can stop being so time-sensitive about how much time the support call has taken, and they can help you do it yourself."
"The feedback that I have received is that the performance could be better, and the user experience is not as good compared to a previous solution we used. It could be more user-friendly. Of course, it still works fine for our operations."
"It would be great if the access management, the user management features, were improved in terms of the number of users that can be connected, and how users can access the various resources with the help of firewall authentication."
"Lacks some integration with other solutions."
"The pricing could be better."
"The exterior of the physical device can be improved with the use of a display and not just simple lights."
"The upgrading process takes too much time."
"The firewall can improved to make it more user-friendly."
"The API support is good. However, Check Point needs to focus on more prepared scripts for some tiresome actions."
"The current model is predominantly hardware appliance-based, which can incur substantial costs"
"In terms of next-generation capabilities, Cisco is a little behind, and it is way behind the market leaders."
"Security generally requires integration with many devices, and the management side of that process could be enhanced somewhat. It would help if there was a clear view of the integrations and what the easiest way to do them is."
"The Cisco ASA device needs overall improvement, as configurations alone do not completely secure my network."
"Antivirus features must be integrated for end user security."
"The GUI interface could be improved when compared to other solutions."
"The Sandbox and the Web Censoring in this solution need to be improved."
"The overall licensing structure could improve to make the solution better."
"Initial setup can be complex. It is complex. We have to set up ASA, SFR module, and FMC separately, which sometimes requires extensive troubleshooting, even for smaller issues."
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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