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 most valuable feature is the web filter."
"It is user friendly, and has all the features you need."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The FortiGate controls the user's activities and maximizes my bandwidth use overall."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is URL filtering."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of configuration."
"The product is very stable, easy to troubleshoot, and configure, so it has reduced the time it takes for support."
"The stability of the solution is excellent, as it is with other Fortinet products."
"It's enabled us to move away from basic LAN to LAN segmentation to a more powerful user separation approach."
"I like the dashboard, redundancy, log analysis, threat prevention and ISP, and VPN."
"I rate the tool's stability a ten out of ten."
"The small business hardware device was powerful and easy to set up."
"One of the most valuable features is performance improvement, wherewith ClusterXL and CoreXL, you can improve performance."
"My favorite feature is the UTM piece and that was the main reason we bought it. It helps us to fine tune the network."
"My customers cite performance and ease of configuration as two of the solution's most valuable features."
"Check Point offers excellent security."
"The most valuable Cisco Secure Firewall features are options, features, and ease of deployment because it's an appliance."
"It's a flexible solution."
"Another benefit has been user integration. We try to integrate our policies so that we can create policies based on active users. We can create policies based on who is accessing a resource instead of just IP addresses and ports."
"Even in very big environments, Cisco comes in handy with configuration and offers reliability when it comes to managing multiple items on one platform."
"The most valuable features are the IPsec VPN and web filtering."
"One thing I like about the product is the logging features, the way it logs, the way it forwards the logs in Syslog."
"The IPS, as well as the malware features, are the two things that we use the most and they're very valuable."
"You can also put everything into a nice, neat, little package, as far as configuration goes. I was formerly a command-line guy with the ASA, and I was a little nervous about dealing with a GUI interface versus a command line, but after I did my first deployment, I got a lot more comfortable with doing it GUI based."
"We sometimes have issues with FortiGate's routing table in the latest firmware update. We had to downgrade the device because our customers complained about bugs."
"The support from Fortinet FortiGate could improve. They are not easily accessible when we need them. They could improve their response time."
"There are some cloud-based features that could be much more flexible than they currently are."
"The Wi-Fi controller needs a lot of improvement."
"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."
"I would like to have logs, monitoring, and reporting for a month without extra fees."
"It could use more templates for third-party site-to-site VPN setups other than FortiGate and Cisco."
"The process of configuring firewall rules appears excessively complex."
"It could be easier to manage the licenses on blades and contracts."
"Check Point's study materials should be provided by the company directly and be of very good quality. This is not provided right now and something that the company can improve."
"I feel the only thing that I see as a possible improvement in Check Point software is the lack of ability to create "static discard routes" which makes it difficult for NAT ranges to be advertised via BGP to neighbors."
"There is no email security."
"There are issues with stability while upgrading devices with hotfixes."
"The number of physical network ports on the device should be increased to allow for greater capacity."
"My customers complain that the interface isn't user-friendly."
"Sometimes debugging is a hassle."
"The user interface is too complex for people who are not trained to or certified to engage with the product. The interface should be easier to use."
"We are looking for software taxi capabilities."
"Bandwidth allocation needs improvement."
"The user interface isn't as good as it could be. They should work to improve it. It would make it easier for customer management if it was easier to use."
"If I want to activate IPS features on it, I have to buy another license. If I want Cisco AnyConnect, I have to buy another license. That's where we have challenges."
"The performance should be improved."
"They need a user-friendly interface that we could easily configure."
"One of the few things that are brought up is that for the overall management, it would be great to have a cloud instance of that. And not only just a cloud instance, but one of the areas that we've looked at is using an HA type of cloud. To have the ability to have a device file within a cloud. If we had an issue with one, the other one would pick up automatically."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 275 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.
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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.