Azure Firewall vs Check Point NGFW comparison

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81% willing to recommend
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27,863 views|17,209 comparisons
96% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Apr 6, 2022

We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall and Check Point NGFW based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: The majority of Azure Firewall users feel that it is simple and straightforward to set up and deploy. Users of Check Point NGFW are divided over whether or not it was simple to deploy. Some reviewers note that Check Point NGFW is simple to deploy when you already have experience with the product.

  • Features: Users of Azure Firewall find it to be both scalable and stable. They point out that it has other valuable features, including its threat intelligence and its auto-scaling features. However, its user interface could be improved.

    Users of Check Point NGFW feel that it is highly scalable and they point out that it has many other valuable features, including its threat detection and firewall features. However, users feel that its stability could be improved.
  • Pricing: Users of Azure Firewall feel that it is a pretty inexpensive product to use. In contrast, users of Check Point NGFW feel that it is expensive.
  • Service and Support: Most users of Azure Firewall feel that the technical support that it offers is good. However, one user notes that the documentation that they offer could be improved. Users of Check Point NGFW are divided over whether or not their technical support is effective. Some users felt that the training that they offer could be improved.

Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Azure Firewall seems to be a superior solution. All other things being more or less equal, our reviewers found Check Point NGFW to be rather expensive to purchase. Users of Check Point NGFW feel that the stability of the product could be improved. Additionally, some users are not so impressed by the technical support and training that it offers.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Firewall vs. Check Point NGFW Report (Updated: March 2024).
768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Q&A Highlights
Question: Which would you recommend - Azure Firewall or Check Point NGFW?
Answer: Azure Firewall is easy to use and provides excellent support. Valuable features include integration into the overall cloud platform, autoscaling, and the ability for users to create virtual IP addresses. The cost of the solution is also competitive. Check Point NGFW solution offers zero-day protection and provides absolute in-depth visibility with a multi-layer, multi-blade approach. This solution has a Smart Controller that allows you to manage all firewalls from one single location. It also has good antivirus protection and knowledgeable, responsive support. Check Point NGFW is cost-effective and provides valuable support to get through required compliance audits. For Azure Firewall you have to specify each IP address used. We also found Azure to be challenging to implement from region to region, as it does not currently offer a universal approach across regions. Support can be very slow to respond and has caused us some downtime, affecting productivity and overall satisfaction. Check Point NGFW VPN can be very complex to set up. The deployment can be more challenging than many other solutions on the market. Although once fully deployed, things do get easier. Debugging can also be very difficult and makes it seem less stable than other solutions out there. Training and support could be better overall. Conclusion Azure is great, especially since almost everyone is part of the Azure ecosystem. However, it may not be the best solution for larger enterprises, as stability is limited, and the scale-up scale-out approach needs improvement. Check Point can be very challenging to set up and deploy, but the unique multi-layer, multi-blade approach gives greater flexibility and transparency, which makes it a great option for larger enterprises with more complex, intricate needs.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"It's very easy to set up, it's very easy to make policies and, for an organization, that means you don't need IT expert in firewalls. You just need to have somebody who knows a little bit of IT, and that's it. With other products, you need someone with a "Masters" degree in firewalls.""It performs very well.""The most valuable feature is the ease of use.""From the firewall perspective, the rules and policies are very sufficient and easy to use.""Overall, the pricing of the solution is very good. The product offers good value.""The most valuable features are the enterprise modeling and the simple interface.""We purchased Fortinet because of the pricing, its functionality, because it met our requirements, and the total cost of ownership over five years was quite reasonable. In the market, Fortinet is rated quite well.""The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the rules and quality of service."

More Fortinet FortiGate Pros →

"Performance and stability are the key features of this product.""The SIEM that Azure Firewall provides us is very robust.""It is easy for me to protect certain ports or even the IP addresses, as well as do whitelisting, blacklisting, and the FQDN when we want virtual machines connected and to protect certain websites.""The firewall policy control, URL content control, and antivirus are all the most valuable aspects. Threat prevention is as well quite good.""I think that one of the best features is definitely the premium version, along with the IDPs in terms of the intrusion detection and prevention system.""Azure Firewall is a cloud-native solution that removes the pain of load balancers.""The solution can autoscale.""Among the most valuable features are the DDoS protection that protects your virtual machines, the threat intelligence, and traffic filtering."

More Azure Firewall Pros →

"As a system administrator my favourite part of Check Point is the smart view tracker. This alone is a must-have tool for tracking all traffic traversing the Check Point appliance.""Objects search and tracker logs are useful.""Check Point NGFW provides a bunch of different products or Blades, as they call it in Check Point. The firewall engine is what we use the most but we also use the IPS IDS and Anti-Bot features. The solution provides many features.""mart Console simplifies the management of current policies and objects, making it effortless to track an object's usage or identify unused objects, thus ensuring a tidy configuration.""The support offers the best services I have experienced. It's better than any other IT vendor.""There is modern protection against current threats.""The solution offers a good GUI.""I haven't had any data leaks or vulnerability situations."

More Check Point NGFW Pros →

Cons
"Compared to some other products, the DLP is not at par for the moment.""Its reporting and pricing need improvement.""One area for improvement is the performance on bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering.""Technical support is good but the response time could be faster.""There are some cloud-based features that could be much more flexible than they currently are.""The solution lacks sufficient filtering.""Fortinet should focus on enhancing the capabilities of FortiGate by consolidating its various products, such as FortiGate Cloud, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer.""The pricing could always be better."

More Fortinet FortiGate Cons →

"The tool needs to improve the onboarding and transition process for on-prem users.""Currently, it only supports IP addresses, so you have to be specific about the IPs that are in your environment.""There are a number of things that need to be simplified, but it's mostly costs. It needs to be simplified because it's pretty expensive.""Azure Firewall has limited visibility for IDPS, no TLS inspection, no app ID, no user ID, no content ID, no device ID. There is no antivirus or anti-spyware. Azure Firewall doesn't scan traffic for malware unless it triggers an IDPS signature. There is no sandbox or machine learning functionality, meaning we are not protected from Zero-day threats. There is no DNS security and limited web categories.""It has fewer features than you can get from other firewalls, like anti-spam and anti-phishing. Those kinds of things are not included. It only includes IDS and IDB.""For larger enterprises, they need to adjust the scalability.""Azure has new versions including a premium firewall. But I would like to see them not put the premium features on Azure Firewall Premium alone because it is quite expensive.""Azure should be able to work better as a balancer also, instead of just being a firewall. It should have a wider mandate."

More Azure Firewall Cons →

"It should allow more than two internet providers in its configuration of "ISP Redundancy".""The current reporting capability needs to be parsed and edited to be appreciated by leadership.""It could be easier to manage the licenses on blades and contracts.""The support team should be faster.""No product is perfect and there is always room for improvement.""There needs to be more storage space for reporting.""We need east/west Check Point firewalls in order to do micro-segmentation.""The SmartUpdate interface is a little bit crowded if your company has a lot of software items."

More Check Point NGFW Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Fortinet has one or two license types, and the VPN numbers are only limited by the hardware chassis make."
  • "These boxes are not that expensive compared to what they can do, their functionality, and the reporting you receive. Fortinet licensing is straightforward and less confusing compared to Cisco."
  • "Go for long term pricing negotiated at the time of purchase."
  • "Work through partners for the best pricing."
  • "The value is the capability of having multiple services with one unique license, not having the limitation per user licensing schema, like other vendors."
  • "Easy to understand licensing requirements."
  • "​We saved a bundle by not needing all the past appliances from an NGFW.​"
  • "The cost is too high... They have to focus on more features with less cost for the customer. If you see the market, where it's going, there are a lot of players offering more features for less cost."
  • More Fortinet FortiGate Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Azure Firewall is more expensive. If Microsoft can make Azure Firewall cheaper, I can see that all clients will think of using it. One client used FortiGate because it is much cheaper. Some clients ask me for Cisco, but in the cloud estimate, I found its cost is the same as Azure Firewall."
  • "Azure Firewall is quite an expensive product."
  • "The licensing module is good."
  • "The total cost of ownership is much less than Palo Alto, Cisco, or any other brand."
  • "It is pay-as-you-go. So, you pay based on the usage. If I remember it well, there is a basic fee, and there is a traffic fee. It is not per month. It is per hour or something like that. It is not so expensive."
  • "Azure Firewalls operate on a pay-as-you-go model, similar to cloud services."
  • "The solution is cheaper than other brands. My company has an enterprise contract and we finally got a good price with Azure."
  • "Azure Firewall comes with Azure native services. We did not buy any kind of license for it. Whether you have a free subscription or a pay-as-you-go model, you can deploy the Azure Firewall service... The amount that you use will determine how much you pay."
  • More Azure Firewall Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I don't think the product's pricing is a good value. I feel it's very overpriced. I feel a lot of the features for a next gen firewall are there. But I feel it's overpriced, because of the stability issues. As far as support goes, I really can't speak to direct Check Point support, but the third-party was pretty terrible... As far as the licensing goes, it's pretty complex. If anybody was to purchase the Check Point product, definitely make sure they have an account rep come on site, and explain it line by line, what each thing is. It's not straightforward. It's very convoluted. There's no way you could just figure it out by looking at it."
  • "Check Point solutions are very expensive here. They're good, but they're expensive... Check Point is only useful for customers that have a big IT budget."
  • "The price is high in comparison to other solutions."
  • "We pay $5,000-$6,000 a year."
  • "Maybe the pricing is a bit high but you get the durability and the duration."
  • "Licensing issues may be confusing at times."
  • "It is quite an expensive product, although security is a top priority."
  • "This product is not cheap and there are additional costs that depend on what model or package that you buy."
  • More Check Point NGFW Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Answers from the Community
    Netanya Carmi
    Anil Redekar - PeerSpot reviewerAnil Redekar (Infosys)
    Real User

    Check Point firewall does a deep inspection of packets till Layer 7 and is more compatible with the organizational environment. 


    The Azure firewall is also a cloud-based security solution that also provides Advance Threat Protection. 

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    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate
    Check Point NG Firewall, Check Point Next Generation Firewall
    Learn More
    Overview

    Fortinet FortiGate enhances network security, prevents unauthorized access, and offers robust firewall protection. Valued features include advanced threat protection, reliable performance, and a user-friendly interface. It improves efficiency, streamlines processes, and boosts collaboration, providing valuable insights for informed decision-making and growth.

    Azure Firewall is a user-friendly, intuitive, cloud-native firewall security solution that provides top-of-the-industry threat protection for all your Azure Virtual Network resources. Azure Firewall is constantly and thoroughly analyzing all traffic and data packets, making it a very valuable and secure fully stateful firewall as a service with built-in high availability and unrestricted cloud scalability. Azure Firewall allows users to create virtual IP addresses and provides for secure DDoS protection for the virtual machines on your network. It also provides fast and efficient east-west and north-south traffic security.

    Azure Firewall is a managed, cloud-based network security service built to protect your Azure Virtual Network resources. It is a fully stateful firewall as a service with built-in high availability and unrestricted cloud scalability.

    Azure Firewall has two significant offerings, Standard and Premium.

    Azure Firewall Standard works directly with Microsoft Cyber Security and supplies excellent L3-L7 filtering and threat awareness. The proactive real-time threat awareness will quickly alert you and immediately deny all traffic to and from any known problematic or suspicious domains or IP addresses. Microsoft Cyber Security is updated continually to protect against all new and known potential threats at all times. To learn more about Azure Firewall Standard, click here.

    Azure Firewall Premium provides everything the standard version does, and additionally adds extra levels of data encryption, network intrusion detection, extended URL filtering, and Web category filters. To learn more about the added features of Azure Firewall Premium, click here.

    Key Benefits and Features of Azure Firewall:

    • High availability - You do not need load balancers with Azure Firewall; it's already built in and ready to go.
    • Self-scalability - Azure Firewall is intuitive and will auto-scale as needed based on traffic flow to be ready for peak traffic times.
    • Threat awareness - Using Microsoft Cyber Security to filter traffic, Azure Firewall will deny any known problematic threats to keep your network safe.
    • Additional IP addresses - You can securely add up to 250 public IP addresses with Azure Firewall
    • Improved web category filtering - You can set up specific protocols to allow or deny categories within websites that are deemed inappropriate for use within your network. You have the ability to organize categories based on a defined set of descriptions.

    What our real users have to say:

    Many PeerSpot users found Azure Firewall to be very user-friendly and easy to use. They liked that it offers seamless integration to the cloud and were especially pleased with the threat filtering options.

    Regarding integration and threat intelligence, our users wrote:

    “The most valuable feature is the integration into the overall cloud platform.”

    The most valuable feature is threat intelligence. It is based on filtering and can identify multiple threats.”

    I think that one of the best features is definitely the premium version, along with the IDPs in terms of the intrusion detection and prevention system.”



    Check Point NGFW is a next generation firewall that enables safe usage of internet applications by blocking malicious applications and unblocking safe applications. Check Point NGFW, which uses deep packet inspection to identify and control applications, has features such as application and user control and integrated intrusion prevention (IPS), as well as more advanced malware prevention capabilities like sandboxing.

    Check Point NGFW includes 23 firewall models optimized for running all threat prevention technologies simultaneously, including full SSL traffic inspection, without compromising on security or performance.

    Benefits of Check Point's Next Generation Firewall

    • Robust security: Check Point NGFW delivers the best possible threat prevention with SandBlast Zero Day protection. The SandBlast protection agent constantly inspects passing network traffic for exploits and vulnerabilities. Suspicious files are then emulated in a virtual sandbox in order to detect and report malicious behavior.

    • Security at hyperscale: On-demand hyperscale threat prevention performance provides cloud level expansion and resiliency on premises.

    • Unified management: Check Point's SmartConsole makes it easy to manage and configure network security environments and policies. With the SmartConsole, users can manage all the firewall gateways and access logs and install databases from one location. Unified management control across the network increases the efficiency of security operations and reduces IT costs.
    • Continuous logging: Check Point NGFW’s Threat Management feature detects vulnerabilities and logs them. Using the logged data, users can easily create and implement efficient security policies.

    • Remote access: The remote access VPN provides a seamless connection for remote users.

    Check Point NGFW is suitable for organizations of all sizes, from small businesses to larger enterprises.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Check Point NGFW stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its intrusion prevention feature as well as its centralized management, which makes it very easy to deploy firewall policies to many firewalls with one click.

    Shivani J., a network security administrator, writes, "Check Point has a lot of features. The ones I love are the antivirus, intrusion prevention, and data loss prevention."

    G., a network administrator at Secretaría de Finanzas de Aguascalientes, writes, “Within the organization, the inspection of packages has given us great help in detecting traffic that may be a threat to the institution. The configuration of policies has allowed us to maintain control of access and users for each institution that is incorporated into our headquarters.”

    Arun J., a senior network engineer, notes, “The nicest feature is the centralized management of multiple firewalls. With the centralized management, we can easily use and operate multiple firewalls as well as create a diagram of them.”

    Sample Customers
    1. Amazon Web Services 2. Microsoft 3. IBM 4. Cisco 5. Dell 6. HP 7. Oracle 8. Verizon 9. AT&T 10. T-Mobile 11. Sprint 12. Vodafone 13. Orange 14. BT Group 15. Telstra 16. Deutsche Telekom 17. Comcast 18. Time Warner Cable 19. CenturyLink 20. NTT Communications 21. Tata Communications 22. SoftBank 23. China Mobile 24. Singtel 25. Telus 26. Rogers Communications 27. Bell Canada 28. Telkom Indonesia 29. Telkom South Africa 30. Telmex 31. Telia Company 32. Telkom Kenya
    Information Not Available
    Control Southern, Optimal Media
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider16%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization20%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company29%
    Financial Services Firm24%
    Government12%
    Manufacturing Company12%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Government8%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm22%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization49%
    Computer Software Company8%
    Financial Services Firm5%
    Comms Service Provider5%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business48%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise30%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise32%
    Large Enterprise41%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise26%
    Large Enterprise49%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise60%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise49%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise58%
    Large Enterprise28%
    Buyer's Guide
    Azure Firewall vs. Check Point NGFW
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Firewall vs. Check Point NGFW and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Azure Firewall is ranked 16th in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 275 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Check Point NGFW writes "Good antivirus protection and URL filtering with very good user identification capabilities". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and OPNsense. See our Azure Firewall vs. Check Point NGFW 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.