Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs Cisco Secure Workload comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jul 26, 2023

We compared Check Point CloudGuard Network Security and Cisco Secure Workload based on our users' reviews in six categories. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:

  • Ease of Deployment: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security's initial setup that is described as straightforward, although implementation may be complex and require technical expertise. Cisco Secure Workload has a moderate initial setup in terms of ease. It usually takes one to two days and can be managed by one person.
  • Features: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security provides essential functionalities like VPN, IPS, URL filtering, and Applications Control. It prioritizes compliance, regulations, cloud security, threat prevention, and data protection. In contrast, Cisco Secure Workload is recognized for its easy-to-use interface, stability, scalability, and comprehensive offerings from Cisco. 
  • Room for Improvement: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security's areas for improvement include cluster creation and DLP features, data protection visibility, user interface, and on-prem deployment flexibility. In contrast, Cisco Secure Workload could benefit from better integration, a more intuitive dashboard, and the restoration of previous functionality.
  • Pricing: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security's setup cost is considered pricey but competitive, and it is advised to conduct a tool trial before implementation. Conversely, it is reported that Cisco Secure Workload entails a hardware cost of around 300k.
  • ROI: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has demonstrated a favorable return on investment, with significant percentages ranging from 80% to 85%. On the other hand, Cisco Secure Workload does not prioritize ROI and does not offer similar benefits.
  • Service and Support: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security and Cisco Secure Workload have differing customer service experiences. Some customers appreciate the technical support provided by Check Point, while others are dissatisfied with the response time. On the other hand, Cisco Secure Workload is renowned for its responsive and high-quality technical support, particularly for networking products. However, it may not excel in customer service for higher-layer products.

Comparison Results: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is commended for its easy and direct initial setup, valuable features including VPN and IPS blades, and solid security and value. On the other hand, Cisco Secure Workload has a moderate initial setup, user-friendly interface, and robust technical assistance. In general, Check Point CloudGuard Network Security may have an edge in terms of ease of setup and valuable features, while Cisco Secure Workload may excel in user-friendliness and technical support.

To learn more, read our detailed Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. Cisco Secure Workload Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The scalability is very good; again, very user-friendly. I wouldn't even say "user-friendly" because, as long as you deploy it properly, you can kill an EC2 and it will spin up another one right away, within about a minute and a half. And it will be ready for production right away.""The most valuable feature is the monitoring. We can easily monitor what kind of stuff comes over to our network and we can then check the dashboard and work accordingly.""It matches what we have on-prem. We kept the same management and the same functionality that we were having on-prem. It has simplified things for us because there is no new dashboard to touch.""The initial setup is pretty easy.""The SSL spectrum proved to be the most valuable for our incoming connections.""The most valuable feature of this solution is that you can start off with a simple firewall and expand it to UTM.""The tool's most valuable features for us are threat prevention, HTTPS inspection, and the Anti-Bot blade. Threat prevention helps to protect our assets from threats. HTTPS inspection ensures secure communication, and the Anti-Bot blade is particularly helpful in detecting C2 servers, enhancing our ability to identify malicious activities and protect our network.""The solution is easier to manage than an on-premise firewall. It is easy to manage. The use of dynamic objects for these gateways made it easy to create the right rules and the right policies. Integration with Azure is also easy where we have to just add the subnets. In an on-premise setup, we have to add everything from scratch. We can automate a lot of actions."

More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Pros →

"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution.""Scalability is its most valuable feature.""The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network.""The most valuable feature of this solution is security.""The product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures.""Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco.""By using Tetration insight, we are able to get the latency on our level accounts and we can determine whatever the issue is with the application latency itself.""It's stable."

More Cisco Secure Workload Pros →

Cons
"Most clients nowadays tend to move to the cloud and their data security is key. If CloudGuard could be able to give the client that full visibility of how their data is protected on the cloud, then that would be a great selling point for Check Point.""Check Point support, beyond CloudGuard, does need some improvement.""The costs are high.""The relationship between AWS and Check Point could be better. We had issues related to the type of instance and how it interconnects with AWS or cloud-native solutions. We overcame the pain points that we had, and now, AWS is evolving in a way that will facilitate how Check Point works. Our pain points were minimized, but they were there.""Zero touch removes any independence for configuring.""Clustering in Azure is a bit different, not using the Check Point cluster but relying on load balancing. It's not as instant as I'm used to; in Azure, it might take around half a minute to a minute, and during this time, services could be down. The delay is attributed to Azure using its load balancing mechanisms instead of the Check Point cluster.""Micro-Segmentation functionality for EAST-WEST traffic is not native and requires integration with a third-party OEM.""The business and product development team should introduce a high-end feedback collection mechanism and analyze the customer requirements constructively."

More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Cons →

"Secure Workload is a little complicated to use, and the dashboard isn't intuitive, so it takes a while to learn how to use it.""There was a controversy when Cisco reduced the amount of data they kept, and the solution became quite cost-intensive, which made its adoption challenging….Although they have modified it now, I preferred the previous version, and I wish all the functionality were back under the same product.""The multi-tenancy, redundancy, backup and restore functionalities, as well as the monitoring aspects of the solution, need improvement. The solution offers virtually no enterprise-grade possibility for monitoring.""I'd like to see better documentation for advanced features. The documentation is fairly basic. I would also like to see better integration with other applications.""It is not so easy to use and configure. It needs a bunch of further resources to work, which is mainly the biggest downside of it. The deployment is huge.""It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices.""The product must be integrated with the cloud.""The interface is really helpful for technical people, but it is not user-friendly."

More Cisco Secure Workload Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "On average, it is normally on the lower end, being less expensive than Palo Alto or Cisco."
  • "It is more expensive than other solutions and would be more competetive in the market if it came down in price."
  • "We pay approximately ‎€150,000 ($166,000 USD) per year."
  • "Licensing is simply by the number of hosts that you are looking to protect within your environment. It makes it much easier to ensure that you are covering your environment."
  • "There is flexibility in the different licensing models that are offered."
  • "The pricing is pretty high, not just for your capital, for what you have to pay upfront, but for what you pay for your annual software renewals as well, compared to a lot of other vendors. Check Point is near the top, as far as how much it's going to cost you."
  • "Pricing of CloudGuard is pretty fair when you have a single account. It's comparable with other cloud providers. But for our use case, it got really pricey when we had to deploy multiple CloudGuards on multiple accounts in different regions, because you can't have CloudGuard protecting multiple regions. That's the big thing."
  • "The pricing and licensing have been good. We just had to do a license increase for our portion of it. We had that done within a couple of days. Given the fact that it's purely a software-based license, it ends up being even quicker than doing it for an on-prem firewall."
  • More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."
  • "The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."
  • "Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."
  • "It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."
  • "The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."
  • "The cost for the hardware is around 300k."
  • More Cisco Secure Workload Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The central management feature is a big plus, allowing us to manage both local and cloud gateways from one platform.
    Top Answer:The pricing is okay. I know the cost for the competitors and CloudGuard pricing is fine. It is cheaper than other firewalls.
    Top Answer:There is room for improvement in addressing bugs and support issues. Communication with support, particularly with certain teams, can sometimes be challenging and slow, impacting problem resolution.
    Top Answer:The product provides multiple-device integration.
    Top Answer:The product must be integrated with the cloud.
    Ranking
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    Rating
    8.5
    Views
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    Rating
    7.0
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    CloudGuard IaaS, Check Point vSEC, CloudGuard IaaS, Check Point Virtual Systems, Check Point CloudGuard Network Security
    Cisco Tetration
    Learn More
    Overview

    CloudGuard Network Security is a firewall solution that provides network security for cloud environments. It protects against cyber threats with multi-layered security for public, private, and hybrid clouds. 

    CloudGuard Network Security offers advanced threat prevention, firewall, VPN, and application security services, designed to secure cloud infrastructure, virtual networks, and cloud-based applications and workloads.

    CloudGuard Network Security Features

    CloudGuard Network Security has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Advanced threat prevention: The solution Includes anti-virus, anti-bot, and intrusion prevention to defend against known and unknown threats.
    • Firewall: It has a stateful inspection firewall and network address translation (NAT) to secure traffic flow between cloud resources and the internet.
    • VPN: CloudGuard Network Security offers secure and encrypted connectivity for remote users and between cloud resources.
    • Application security: It includes a web application firewall (WAF) and SSL inspection to secure web applications and protect against cyber attacks.
    • Cloud-native architecture: The solution is designed specifically for cloud environments and integrates with cloud-native services like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
    • Compliance and governance: It helps organizations comply with regulations such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR by providing detailed reporting and auditing capabilities.
    • Multi-layered security: CloudGuard Network Security provides a comprehensive security solution with multiple layers of defense for maximum protection.

    CloudGuard Network Security Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing CloudGuard Network Security. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Scalability and flexibility: The solution supports dynamic scaling and flexible deployment options to meet the changing needs of cloud environments.
    • Automated deployment and management: CloudGuard Network Security enables fast and efficient deployment and management of security services through a centralized, cloud-based management console.
    • Future-proof: Designed for the cloud and integrated with cloud-native services, CloudGuard Network Security helps organizations prepare for future cloud requirements and advancements.

    Reviews from Real Users

    CloudGuard Network Security is a solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Some of its major advantages are that it has good cloud security, is cost-effective, has no false positives, improves productivity, and much more.

    Bernard O., Technical Engineer at Harnssen Group Limited, says, "Check Point is one of the few solutions that pay attention to cloud security. Many others mostly focus on providing on-premises solutions."

    Another PeerSpot reviewer, Shrinkhala S., Senior Manager at Agriculture Skill Council of India appreciates the solution for many reasons: “There are no security lapses and 100% restriction of threat entrants in the system or server. It's a cost-effective solution with no false positive cases. The product helps in bringing productivity and enhanced customer experience for users.

    We have a happy workforce and more workforce retention and increased IT environment sustainability. There is 100% proactive detection of root causes and root sources. It is dynamic and agile, and its features and utilities continuously improve and evolve. It's the best-unified endpoint management solution for IT systems globally. The product is available for all kinds of business users.”

    "One of the main characteristics that CloudGuard Network Security has given us isgranularity and visibility,” explains Adriamcam, Consultant at ITQS.

    Cisco Secure Workload is a cloud and data security solution that offers a zero-trust policy of keeping an organization’s application workloads safe and secure throughout the entire on-premise and cloud data center ecosystems.

    Cisco Secure Workload will consistently provide protection by discovering workload process anomalies, stopping threats immediately, minimizing the risk threat surface, and aborting any lateral movement.

    Today’s ecosystems are very elastic, and in the application-focused dynamic of today’s aggressive marketplace, Cisco Secure Workload delivers a robust security solution that works effectively with today’s most popular applications. The solution uniquely surrounds each and every workload to ensure organizations are able to keep their data, network, and applications safe and secure at all times. Cisco Secure Workload ensures that enterprise organizations can maintain secure applications by consistently building firewalls around every workload level throughout the entire ecosystem. The solution can manage applications that are deployed on containers, virtual machines, or bare-metal servers.

    Cisco Secure workload is able to meet an organization's busy needs and offers flexible options such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and on-premises options. Using the Secure Workload SaaS options, users receive all the benefits of Cisco Secure Workload protection without the hassle of having to deploy and maintain the platform on premises. Users are responsible for acquiring the necessary software licensing and deploying software agents. Using SaaS, Secure Workload runs in the cloud and is operated and maintained by Cisco. This option offers the ability to scale easily and is a popular choice for SaaS-first and SaaS-only clients. Many organizations find they get the best TCO and achieve the best productivity and profitability using the SaaS options.

    When choosing on-premises options, organizations choose between hardware-based appliance models (large or small form factors). Platform selection is dependent on scalability goals, the desired fidelity level of flow telemetry, and the actual number of workloads. When a user chooses to configure Cisco Secure Workload for a conversation-only flow telemetry for all workloads, each platform has the capability to scale up vertically twice the default platform scale. Additionally, with Secure Workload, it is possible for the platform to be scaled horizontally in order to satisfy the demands of extra large widely distributed enterprise environments using federation capabilities.

    Cisco Secure Workload also provides a robust disaster recovery (DR) tool, which helps to make it a complete, comprehensive solution. The DR allows for continuous restore and backup capabilities that enable users to quickly remediate operations and data to a standby cluster in the event of a drastic failure or disaster.

    Reviews from Real Users

    The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage. The telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent. It's complete. You see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network. Other valuable features include vast support for annotations, flexible user applications, machine learning, automatic classification, and hierarchical policies.” - CTO at a tech vendor

    Sample Customers
    Physicians Choice Laboratory Services, Helvetica Insurance
    ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Manufacturing Company14%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Security Firm10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Comms Service Provider7%
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    Comms Service Provider44%
    Media Company11%
    Energy/Utilities Company11%
    Computer Software Company11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company28%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Government6%
    Insurance Company5%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise20%
    Large Enterprise44%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise59%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise50%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise69%
    Buyer's Guide
    Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. Cisco Secure Workload
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. Cisco Secure Workload and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is ranked 7th in Cloud and Data Center Security with 112 reviews while Cisco Secure Workload is ranked 10th in Cloud and Data Center Security with 13 reviews. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is rated 8.6, while Cisco Secure Workload is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security writes "The solution has good threat emulation, threat extraction, and reporting features". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Secure Workload writes "A solution that provides good technical support but its high cost makes it challenging for users to adopt it". Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is most compared with Azure Firewall, VMware NSX, Fortinet FortiGate and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Cisco Secure Workload is most compared with Illumio, VMware NSX, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and Cisco ACI. See our Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. Cisco Secure Workload report.

    See our list of best Cloud and Data Center Security vendors.

    We monitor all Cloud and Data Center Security 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.