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.
"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 feature I like most is the SD-WAN. It allows you to manage more than one ISP at the same time. And there is a high-availability mode, so if one of your ISPs is down, you still have a backup."
"The response is very quick and they can visually resolve our problems in a short period."
"We use the filtering feature the most. It has filtering and inbuilt securities. We can create customized rules to define which users can access a particular type of site. We can create policies inside the firewall."
"The reporting and monitoring are very good."
"I like that they have given me a solution at a fair price."
"It's super reliable. I don't think I've ever had a reliability issue with it."
"It's quite comfortable to handle the FortiGate firewall."
"The separate management feature of Check Point NGFW is very convenient."
"Policy configuration has been consistent over the years, so there is not much of a learning curve as upgrades are released."
"The firewall feature and DDoS Protector, when turned on, keep away attacks from the outside. They also prevent users from accessing things on the Internet that they are not supposed to access."
"HTTP forwarding is something I haven't seen elsewhere."
"Making configuring numerous layers of security policies easy to use was always one of the things I liked most about their firewall solution."
"The initial setup was very straightforward. You can customize it and change it as you need."
"Only allows authorized connections and prevents vulnerabilities in a network."
"The QoS blade is very good for controlling traffic such as Windows patches, mail traffic and other stuff."
"Cisco Secure Firewall is reliable, which is why we opted for it during the pandemic for our remote users."
"It is extremely stable I would say — at least after you deploy it."
"We have multiple secure internal networks linked with our plants. We are from a oil company, so we have multiple plant areas which need to have restricted network access. Therefore, we are using it for restricting access to the plant area."
"I have experience with URL filtering, and it is very good for URL filtering. You can filter URLs based on the categories, and it does a good job. It can also do deep packet inspection."
"The remote access, VPN, and ACL features are valuable. We are using role-based access for individuals."
"The most valuable features are the flexibility and level of security that this solution provides."
"Basic firewalling is obviously the most valuable. In addition to that, secure access and remote access are also very useful for us."
"Sourcefire has been a great addition. The visibility and control have been nice."
"One of the features that I would like to have is to do with endpoint production, it should be integrated. For example, the firewall gets notified of any kind of forensic event that needs to be done, such as if there is a ransomware attack and how it originated, all those records have to be available from the firewall, which is not."
"FortiGate is really good. We have been using it for quite some time. Initially, when we started off, we had around 70 plus devices of FortiGate, but then Check Point and Palo Alto took over the place. From the product perspective, there are no issues, but from the account perspective, we have had issues. Fortinet's presence in our company is very less. I don't see any Fortinet account managers talking to us, and that presence has diluted in the last two and a half or three years. We have close to 1,500 firewalls. Out of these, 60% of firewalls are from Palo Alto, and a few firewalls are from Check Point. FortiGate firewalls are very less now. It is not because of the product; it is because of the relationship. I don't think they had a good relationship with us, and there was some kind of disconnect for a very long time. The relationship between their accounts team and my leadership team seems to be the reason for phasing out FortiGate."
"I would like some automated custom reporting."
"They should improve the interface to make it more user-friendly."
"The product does need better support in the cloud environment. It's not exactly cloud-native right now."
"The monitor and the visibility, in this proxy, is very weak."
"The user interface could be improved."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having a frequent ask questions(FAQ) area for people to receive quick answers to popular questions. Additionally, it would be beneficial to have an SMS notification feature. For example, if you cannot access your email you could receive an SMS message."
"Sometimes when they bring on new upgrades, they affect something else."
"The only reasons we are looking at other solutions are price and integration."
"Check Point's support, at all levels, needs a complete overhaul."
"There needs to be more storage space for reporting."
"Pricing needs to be lowered from start, this would be more effective than lowering it during negotiations."
"Bug Fixes and enhancement requests should be remediated earlier, as we have multiple dependencies and auditors are forced to have the latest possible environments."
"The Antivirus feature is something that could be improved. We don't get much from the Antivirus update in comparison to their competitor's firewalls. It needs to be more advanced because Check Point is nowadays sent all over the world. Therefore, the Antivirus feature should be of very good quality and cover all virus checks. I would also like the Antivirus updates to be more frequent."
"It requires enhanced automation tools for regulatory compliance to ease the burden of compliance reporting and auditing."
"One of the challenges we've had with the Cisco ASA is the lack of a strong controller or central management console that is dependable and reliable all the time."
"We have to rely on Cisco ASDM to access the firewall interface. This needs improvement. Because we have a web-based interface, and it is a lot more user-friendly."
"Its configuration through GUI as well as CLI can be improved and made easier."
"Its interface is sometimes is a little bit slow, and it can be improved. When you need to put your appliance in failover mode, it is a little difficult to do it remotely because you need to turn off the appliance in Cisco mode. In terms of new features, it would be good to have AnyConnect VPN with Firepower. I am not sure if it is available at the moment."
"The usability of Cisco Firepower Threat Defense is an issue. The product is still under development, and the user interface is very difficult to deal with."
"I would like to see more integration with third-party devices in general. There is great integration with Cisco devices, but there's not much integration with third-party devices."
"In terms of next-generation capabilities, Cisco is a little behind, and it is way behind the market leaders."
"Security must be increased when a new user connects over the LAN and an alarm must be generated."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 277 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.
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.