We performed a comparison between Check Point CloudGuard Network Security and Check Point NGFW 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 essential features like VPN, IPS, URL filtering, and Applications Control. It emphasizes compliance, regulations, cloud security, and advanced threat prevention. Check Point NGFW is commended for its comprehensive security features, including URL filtering, intrusion prevention, identity and access management, and application control capabilities.
Check Point CloudGuard Network Security could benefit from enhancements in the support system, cluster creation on AWS, data protection visibility, DLP feature, user interface, and cost reduction. Check Point NGFW needs enhancements in integration, hardware performance, pricing, load balancing, technical support, reporting capabilities, UI design, VPN solutions, management, licensing model, and memory management.
Service and Support: The opinions on the customer service for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vary, with positive feedback on technical assistance and negative comments on delays in responses. Check Point NGFW has differing reviews, as some users appreciate the helpful and responsive support, while others consider it inferior to Cisco's support.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is considered to be straightforward and user-friendly, although some technical expertise and guidance may be needed. The setup for Check Point NGFW can range in difficulty, with opinions differing. Some users find it to be simple, while others perceive it as somewhat complex. Certain configurations and migrations may require expertise and experience.
Pricing: The cost of setting up Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is perceived as pricey by some while others find it justifiable and cost-effective. There are various discount models available for pricing flexibility. Check Point NGFW is generally considered to have a higher cost compared to other products. However, users believe that the enhanced security and reliability make the price worthwhile.
ROI: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has demonstrated a significant return on investment, with estimated returns ranging from 80% to 85%. Check Point NGFW offers a favorable return on investment, particularly after comprehending the level of protection it provides.
Comparison Results: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is preferred over Check Point NGFW. Users found CloudGuard's initial setup to be easy, straightforward, and user-friendly. CloudGuard offers valuable features such as VPN, IPS, URL filtering, and an Applications Control Blade, which received high praise.
"The next-generation firewall is great."
"Their proxy-based inspection is responsive and secure."
"The features that prevent internet connections, the filtering are the most valuable because we did not have any internet protection before."
"Using this product makes the VPN seamless and almost invisible to me in the sense that I don't have to think about it."
"The solution is easy to configure and maintain remotely."
"Fortinet FortiGate protects against internet-based threats, both internal and external. It is scalable, stable, easy to use, and easy to install."
"A strong point of FortiGate is the graphical interface is complete and easy to use."
"The ability to set up remote systems is the most valuable feature."
"The tool's most valuable features are IPS and blades. These features are valuable for security."
"The main benefit of the Check Point Virtual Systems solution is its ability to split up the hardware appliances that we have into several logical, virtual devices with separate traffic handling policies, as well as the switching and routing."
"We primarily secure our network using CloudGuard Network Security's next-generation firewall features, including anti-spam, IPS, and URL filtering. Our chosen package for the go-to-market strategy is NGTP. For customers seeking more features, we provide options to upgrade to the tool's advanced packages."
"Check Point CloudGuard technical support is good."
"CloudGuard Network Security provides unified security management across hybrid clouds as well as on-prem. It's very important because when I have unified security, I have better control of the situation. If there's an attack or something like that, we can react faster. It's easier for everyone in the organization to work with the Infinity platform."
"Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has a beautiful threat emulation different from the market."
"One of the main characteristics that Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has given us is granularity and visibility."
"The feature most valuable to me is the NDTX blade that Check Point provides, and I like how the solution is not vulnerable."
"It has various features, like Threat Prevention and Antivirus. It is easier to use and have knowledge of a single device rather than multiple devices/technologies when doing an installation. It is also easy to use because of having Antivirus and Threat Prevention features within the same firewall."
"The solution is scalable."
"The most valuable feature is the Stateful Inspection, which was developed by Check Point."
"The management interface is easy to operate and is a standardized way of managing different firewall modules in the same client application."
"Check Point NGFW generates very helpful reports based on the logs of the activated features."
"The most valuable feature of the firewall is the packet inspection. That is an amazing feature from Check Point."
"It is easy to use, and its management is the best. Check Point has a great unified management solution for firewalls and security products."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The solution is very expensive."
"Improvement is needed in the Web Filter quotas to restrict users with allocated quotas."
"This product could be improved with Active directory integration and better handling in IPsec and GRE Tunnels."
"Fortinet FortiGate can be integrated with different platforms. They have integrations in place, but I can't say they're 100%."
"The main aspect of FortiGate that could be improved is load balancing. Our management team does not want to buy another appliance for only load balancing."
"I would prefer to have more detailed logs within the FortiGate products themselves rather than relying on a separate tool."
"The pricing could be reduced or include the first year warranty."
"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 costs are high."
"We did not use the AWS Transit Gateway, and that's one of the things that we're currently using. I believe we will be working with Check Point again, in the near future, to implement it, once they start having proper support for a single customer with multiple accounts. When we were using them, we had to install Check Point on each and every single account."
"I haven't used CloudGuard Network Security in the past couple of years as I moved out of the network security role. However, based on my previous experience, there were improvements, especially in in-place upgrades. Regarding cost, it might be potentially cheaper considering resource utilization in Azure and VM costs, but licensing could be improved, possibly moving towards a simpler model."
"The product needs to improve support. They don't consider my case the number one priority even though I want a quick resolution."
"While Check Point does offer some VWAN offerings, they appear to be more static and less tailored to cloud-native environments compared to Palo Alto's dynamic and flexible approach."
"It's meeting our needs at this time. If I could make it better, it would be by making it more standalone. That would be beneficial to us. I say that because our current platform for virtualization is VMware. The issue isn't any fault of Check Point, it's more how the virtualization platform partners allow for that partnership and integration. There has to be close ties and partnerships between the vendors to ensure interoperability and sup-portability. There is only so far that Check Point, or any security vendor technology can go without the partnership and enablement of the virtualization platform vendor as it relies on "Service Insertion" to maintain optimal performance."
"There is a limitation with the version upgrade. We are using version 81.10 and from what I understand, it is problematic to upgrade this version. I do not know if that is true."
"The only pain points we have had with it were when we did major version upgrades. Rather than being able to do incremental upgrades on those, we had to completely redeploy. I know that has changed recently, but we had some hiccups when we did the upgrades. This is the only issue we have had."
"To enhance the user experience, Check Point should consider adopting an incremental upgrade approach, similar to competitors like Palo Alto or Fortinet, as it would help minimize downtime and streamline the upgrade process, making it more efficient and user-friendly."
"Without any training, it is very hard to administrate the whole Check Point NGFW."
"You need to merge all the old consoles into one new one and make the interface more convenient for the novice administrator."
"Check Point products have many places that need to be improved, but they are constantly upgrading."
"I would like to see better Data Leakage protection options and easier-to-understand deployment models for this."
"The URL objects take significant time in processing compared to other products like Cisco FTD; it would be better if they could improve it."
"It could be easier to access the installation of the Hostfix for VSX solutions. The CLI commands help us understand how virtual firewalls behave in terms of processor, memory, and other aspects. More graphic visualizations of CPUSE commands would be a welcome improvement, and Check Point could expand scripts to run within the solution for multiple tasks."
"One area that they should prioritize is enhancing security gateways for protection against cyberattacks."
More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Pricing and Cost Advice →
Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is ranked 8th in Firewalls with 121 reviews while Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 277 reviews. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is rated 8.6, while Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8. 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 Check Point NGFW writes "Good antivirus protection and URL filtering with very good user identification capabilities". Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is most compared with Azure Firewall, VMware NSX, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Cisco Secure Firewall and Fortinet FortiGate-VM, whereas Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Azure Firewall. See our Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. Check Point NGFW report.
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