Lately, I've been engaged in numerous discussions surrounding cloud-native firewall solutions like AWS Firewall or Azure Firewall, as well as offerings such as Palo Alto's SaaS firewall and CloudGuard NGFW.

CloudGuard compares favorably, offering a familiar and user-friendly experience akin to Check Point's traditional products. The trend towards cloud-native solutions is evident, particularly among non-security-focused individuals. The flexibility to assist in migrating customers who are embracing cloud-native approaches, integrating seamlessly with platforms like Azure WolfStack and AWS real stack, is a significant advantage. This ease of migration is a notable strength of competitors like Palo Alto.

We looked at other options and checked if the firewalls had all the security and compliance features required by the organization.

I wasn't that high in the chain to be able to make that decision. Corporate pushed it down to our site, and that's what we had to go with.

We looked at cloud-native firewalls. They were not able to meet the security standards that we were able to get by using CloudGuard.

We looked at their IPS solutions with the cloud-native firewalls, but we could not go as granular. With CloudGuard Network Security, we could see the individual protection and fine-tune it.

CloudGuard Network Security is also easier to use than other solutions.

I am not aware of any solutions that we have evaluated. Check Point is our firewall vendor, so we went with them. We were able to have just one partner and one point of contact for any issues. Having a bunch of different products creates problems of its own. You do not know whom to call and whom not to call for an issue. Having one single contact to oversee all that is beneficial to us.

Before deploying it, we did compare it with other vendors. We looked at the major players in the market, such as Palo Alto and Fortinet.

We did not go for a cloud-native solution because they could not provide the same security as Check Point. We deployed CloudGuard in all of our cloud environments because we felt that their native solutions could not satisfy our requirements. We were also able to add selective threat prevention features, which native-gateway solutions might not have had. This is a value-add when we deploy CloudGuard in a cloud.

CloudGuard Network Security is easy to use for us. Because we have been using Check Point, it is easier for us to integrate new features, rather than deploying a new environment.

We tested the native solution of AWS, but we decided to go ahead with our own existing solution on-prem being reflected in the cloud environment. We already had the knowledge and expertise internally. The central management platform and logging were already there. A multitude of features that we were already using were common.

In terms of ease of use, everything in the cloud is new, so there is a learning curve. They are adjusting the layer features in AWS native tools, but Check Point has the advantage of knowledge. We already had familiarity with it, and Check Point itself has a good knowledge of the market. They are experienced in security solutions.

We have not been that exposed to AWS. We are very happy with the availability of Check Point and so forth. So far, when the biggest threats came, Check Point always reacted faster than any other.

In the past, we have evaluated other solutions. When we tested them, they did not have the same feature set or functionality that CloudGuard had. When I initially tested years ago, the scaling probably was not as efficient. The support was also a big factor. The support that we got from those vendors was not as good as from our account team with Check Point. 

When we looked at the cloud provider firewalls, they did not match up to what Check Point could do with the various deep packet features and functions like IPS. The feature set was the main difference. At the time, the cloud providers could not provide IPS or deep packet features. That was a big driver for us with Check Point. The fact that we could not integrate policy with our on-prem firewalls, which were from Check Point, was another big driver because we wanted a unified policy. Our existing relationship with Check Point helped as well.

I have not evaluated other solutions.

In terms of features, FortiGate has more features in terms of routing.

We analyzed and did trials for Cisco Secure Firewall and other security solutions like Trend Micro, etc.

Overall, I would rate it ten out of ten.

I have not evaluated other similar options.

We landed straight to CloudGuard Network Security due to the positive comments made by our partners.

We evaluated Fortinet and Barracuda, but Check Point CloudGuard Network Security was better. I found it uses very few resources.

We evaluated Microsoft's security suite. The thing that made us decide on Check Point was that Check Point had the least zero-day attack score. We have a lot of solutions from Check Point, and we stayed with Check Point.

We are now not evaluating other solutions because, since 2020, we have chosen Check Point as our partner. It continues to be the best solution for us to improve our score. We are not looking for software solutions from other vendors.

We always keep track of the service and the score, and with Check Point, there has always been the highest score.

We had evaluated Barracuda before CloudGuard Network Security. We chose CloudGuard Network Security since Check Point knowledge was available in-house. 

We evaluated FireBox, SRX Series, Sonic Wall, Cisco firewalls, etc.

We looked into the same vendors that we already had onsite. We looked at Cisco, WatchGuard, and Palo Alto, in addition to Check Point.

Some of them were actually quicker, in terms of mouse clicks, but they were less intuitive. With some of them you could just write a couple commands on a command-line and it would spit out the data for you, instead of having to click around with a bunch of mouse clicks. But that would have required some of the staff being comfortable with scripting, coding, and command-line stuff.

All of these solutions have their own unique perspectives. Most of them are pretty much market leaders. They're all very effective in their own ways, especially in threat protection. They all have very extensive databases on their protections and know what they're doing, and that's why they're all market leaders.

We evaluated solutions from Forcepoint, Cisco, and Fortinet. We went for it because of its security effectiveness and operational efficiency.

Other options were not evaluated as we like to keep the same brand across solutions.

I evaluated other software. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security offered the best performance.

I wanted to try Palo Alto at first, but because my entire setup was already in Check Point, I did not go in that direction. I wanted unified management. I also consulted my team, and they said that they do not want to come and manage another firewall because of the management and knowledge it requires. The advantage of this solution was unified management.

We tried to use Azure Firewall for one application as a proof of concept. However, Check Point is easier for us. 

We did not evaluate other options before choosing this solution, although we are currently considering alternative solutions from Forcepoint and Fortinet.

The other tools in the market are not as powerful as this solution.

I started working with this platform, and I have no intention of leaving it soon.

We did not evaluate other options.

The cloud security provided by public cloud providers is great because it's cloud-native. Sometimes it comes without an additional cost or as part of a basic license, but it's definitely not enough for an enterprise environment. Everything comes back to operational complexity. I could incorporate a new, simple tool from a public provider, but on my side it would mean I would need to up-skill team members and manage an additional layer of security, and it could be hard for troubleshooting. To integrate these tools into the peripheral systems, like sending logs, and analyzing these logs, and maintaining additional rule sets from additional dashboards, would require additional efforts.

So cloud-native security has its own disadvantages. Many companies try to stick with the simplicity whenever they define the operational flows, but I prefer choosing Check Point everywhere in a hybrid environment to make my life easier from all perspectives.

We did evaluate other solutions. We evaluated other web application firewalls (WAFs). 

The ease of use is great. Creating firewalls within templates is straightforward. 

The overall depth of features within the solution is one of the key reasons why we chose Check Point as a long-term partner.

We got discounts on pricing. 

Of course, we always make evaluations of existing tools, we verify Microsoft Defender for Cloud, we also carry out research with Fortinet solutions, however we wanted Checkpoint for all the improvements, virtues and prestige.

One significant difference between CloudGuard Network Security and other solutions is the lack of VRF support. This means that when dealing with customers who have multiple segments and exchange points, deploying new firewalls becomes necessary. Competitors' solutions typically include VRF support, making scaling much easier and eliminating the need for additional firewall purchases.

We chose CloudGuard over other vendors because it allows us to provide unified security across multiple cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Unlike native cloud firewalls, CloudGuard offers scalability and the ability to expand across different platforms, meeting our customers' needs for consistent security across diverse cloud environments.

We kind of always knew it was going to be Check Point because of our extensive on-prem deployment. It just seemed easier for us to just stay with them instead of having multiple firewall providers. The only other real option for us at the time was just going with native AWS firewalls, but we would rather keep that managed ourselves with Check Point.

The only thing that we ever looked at or compared CloudGuard to is just native AWS tools and whether it makes more sense to use them than CloudGuard. By and large, we just kind of stuck with CloudGuard for the most part. There are definitely more menus that you can navigate over than AWS. Check Point's tools are good and powerful, but given what our deployment looks like, that just complicates things.

Favorable results of its security effectiveness score from third-party lab tests were very important to us. We didn't evaluate too many other options. Just knowing that it wasn't a piece of garbage was a good indicator upfront that it was worth sticking with Check Point down the road. If you are given more things that you have to look at, then there are more possible threats capable of penetrating an environment. So, if you're able to centralize things as much as possible, then you're on the right foot to catch any issues.

With the integrated nature of the Check Point suite, you can have everything under a single pane of glass, which is huge. You can do a lot of the things that you can do with Check Point if you had four or five different other vendors, but being able to do it all in one place is convenient and cost-effective.

In our decision to go with this solution, it was absolutely important that Check Point has been a leader for many years in industry reviews of network firewalls.

We looked at offerings from Cisco (ACI), Illumio and Gigamon. This was about three-and-a-half years ago.

The main differentiator, and the reason we selected Check Point, is how it integrated with our virtualization platforms. It lived there natively. It had the least amount of overhead to interrogate the traffic within our environment. It also aligned well with our consolidated reporting and management solutions that we have come to rely on from our Check Point physical UTM devices.

Previously we checked to see if we could stay with Microsoft Defender for Cloud. However, we opted for a centralized environment with more security muscle of its own.

Since we have already had the Check Point NGFWs purchased, we just proceeded with the configuration of the Virtual Systems.

Before picking Check Point, I checked Cisco, Fortinet, and Palo Alto. At that moment, when we were doing a PoC, Check Point was ahead of them when it comes to implementation, deployment, and ease of use.

Deployment was the big thing for us because we knew that we were going to be deploying this multiple times. We wanted redundancy, and ease of use and deployment. Check Point nailed those top-three requirements, so it was the clear choice for us. The others didn't have the robust capabilities of Check Point or CloudGuard, to do the things that we wanted. Those included ease of deployment using CloudFormation, scalability using Auto Scaling and the auto-provisioning within CloudGuard.

We value tools such as Defender for cloud, among others, however, this solution is the most complete, and we trust Check Point.

We did look at bring in other alternate vendors before settling on CloudGuard. We did a POC of Fortinet.

We previously evaluated a few other options. 

No, since we decided to have a unified firewalling solution across all the infrastructure, and we already had the Check Point firewalls in the on-premises data centers.

I am familiar with Fortinet, although I didn't do a direct comparison. I did compare other solutions as well.

We also considered Fortinet. Check Point has better overall integration with Azure.

I was part of the decision-making process.

Typically, our clients will also look at Palo Alto as an option. However, typically, it is more expensive.

Clients may also look at Fortinet products, which are a bit less. Check Point tends to sit in between the two in terms of pricing.

Our clients also evaluate Palo Alto and Cisco. Palo Alto, Check Point, and Cisco are the top solutions at the moment. In terms of performance, all three are pretty much the same, but it is much easier to check logs on the firewall in Check Point than Cisco or Palo Alto. Check Point is also quicker and more intuitive. Its view is also better than others.

We didn't evaluate other solutions because it was a good fit for us and not worth evaluating other solutions.

We were clear on our options – no we did not choose any other options save for the most important ones.

We did not evaluate other products.

We did not evaluate other solutions. It was decided we would stay with Check Point.

We also looked at Cisco's cloud products since we have a lot of Cisco products.

We researched the top firewall solutions and settled on Check Point and Palo Alto. Comparatively, both are good. 

We did not evaluate any alternative products.

We evaluated two or three competing products like Huawei. Check Point and Fortinet is quality, but the prices vary. Huawei is very easy to use, and it's common. The main difference between all is the cost.