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 interface is very user-friendly and I like it very much."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is load balancing. It can provide central management and VPNA. Additionally, it has enhanced our security environment."
"It is a good source for firewall protection."
"The most valuable features are that it is very simple to configure and to manage."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the SD-WAN and their IP4 policy."
"Overall security features and performance routing is good."
"The multi-tenancy feature is most valuable. It integrates very well with FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer."
"The management console is pretty simple, so anyone who understands networking can initially deploy the solution."
"Monitoring using SmartConsole and all its features is extremely easy, and I find SmartEvent an excellent monitoring tool for spotting threats and user behaviour."
"The visibility is most valuable. It allows us to see all of our devices from one place, and it gives us the ability to manage push updates and things like that from one place."
"We consolidated from three management consoles and three clusters to only one, which is a big improvement."
"I find it really useful that CloudGuard supports all the main players on the Public Clouds market including AWS, GCP, and Azure, as well as some exotic ones like Alibaba Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and IBM Cloud."
"Its integration and use of features, such as advanced threat prevention, have helped us a lot with malware prevention and also with avoiding exposure to false positives."
"The most valuable feature for us is the cluster support."
"We have found the overall functionality of the product to be exactly similar to the physical product. The one good advantage is that it is cloud-based and can be deployed either as a part of a scale set or one can shut down the virtual machine and adjust the physical parameters of the virtual machine easily and bring it right back up."
"The security configuration features have enhanced the reliable coordination of programs and data safety."
"The management platform and the dashboard, the graphical user interface, is one of the best, if not the best, in the business. It's the most intuitive and it's really user-friendly in day-to-day operations."
"As with any firewall, IPSEC VPN is the critical functionality. Not every organization has the budget to implement MPLS or SD-WAN, which makes IPSEC the go-to for site-to-site connectivity."
"I like the Next-Generation Firewall."
"The Threat Management feature makes it very easy to detect the vulnerabilities and other factors. We can make new policy according to it. Policy creation is very simple in Check Point. Because the logs are very good in Check Point Firewall, this reduces our work with the reports that we are getting from the Threat Management. It is very convenient for us to use the reports to make new policies for security and other things."
"Extracting data from the logs and utilizing the log analyzer tool provides valuable insights and enhances the product's overall effectiveness."
"The packet inspection capabilities are great."
"The packet inspections have been a strong point. Our identity collectors have also been helpful. In many ways, Check Point has been a step up from our SonicWalls that we had in-house before that. There's a lot of additional flexibility that we didn't have before."
"There are several ways to implement it."
"The license renewal process, annual renewal price, and the web application firewall features should be improved."
"There are some complex administration tasks in their administration portal. That needs to be improved."
"There are some problems that support cannot give you a logical reason as to why it happened. For example, I had a case where I was dealing with a WhatsApp application that was giving issues. Technical support gave more than one reason it could be giving issues, but none of them solved the problem. Eventually I solved the problem, but it was far from the solutions that support had given."
"While FortiGate is cheaper than most other solutions, we're seeing increased license renewal costs. Most of our clients are asking for more significant discounts because the price is going up."
"The solution lacks sufficient filtering."
"The firewall engine is not so strong as of now, in my opinion... My second concern is that, while they have Zero-day vulnerability and anti-malware features, the threat engine needs to be strengthened, its efficiency can be increased."
"In some cases, its initial setup could be hard for customers."
"I don't really have anything negative to say as far as Fortinet firewalls are concerned. If anything, they can support a user a little bit better. They can stop being so time-sensitive about how much time the support call has taken, and they can help you do it yourself."
"For major upgrades, it's still necessary to destroy the VMs and re-create them again. Doing that would mean new public IPs as well."
"The cost needs improvement as it is currently quite expensive."
"Zero touch removes any independence for configuring."
"Greater automation would reduce the need for manual configuration and management."
"Its price is fair, but it can be more favorable."
"I would like to see more focus on east-west traffic inspection and AWS."
"The solution needs to improve the interruptions that happen during gateway upgrades."
"The SD-WAN could be better."
"The price is middling. It's much more expensive than Fortinet, although not so expensive when compared with Palo Alto."
"The predefined reports are few and it would be nice to increase them since the logs are excellent."
"The initial setup is a bit complex."
"In terms of what could be improved, we have a cluster with two nodes and usually we have some problems when process gets really high and it has to choose which services it keeps going. I would like to have a better solution here, like if instead of just one we could use both at the same time. It would be good if it could work together. Then when one has a failure or something like that, the other one is there to transfer, to take all the services and keep working."
"In a VPN setup, we have Internet connection via Check Point. The connectivity is not turnkey like competing devices. We have not yet terminated our site-to-site VPN because things are fluctuating right now and Check Point needs to be upgraded. Also, their troubleshooting needs to be improved for this."
"Check Point NGFW needs to run marketing events. They have also to set up a support center in India."
"The management of memory in the hardware needs to improve. They have had a lot of issues with memory leakage."
"I would like there to be a way to run packet captures more easily in the GUI environment. Right now, if we want to read packet captures, we have to do so from the command line."
More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Pricing and Cost Advice →
Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is ranked 8th in Firewalls with 119 reviews while Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 275 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 "The solution has good threat emulation, threat extraction, and reporting features". 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, Cisco Secure Firewall, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation and Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, 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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