We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and Palo Alto Networks VM-Series based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."It is a one box solution, which covers most of the edge device’s requirements."
"The network security and cloud security are most valuable."
"Their interface is very easy to use, it is without bugs."
"It's great for capturing the traffic and troubleshooting it."
"Fortinet FortiGate is scalable for our users. Right now, we have almost 70 users. We do not have any plan to increase our usage of FortiGate. For maintaining the firewall solution, one staff member is enough."
"I like Fortinet's cloud management. It allows me to manage all my devices in different branches for three cloud accounts. Even though I use on-prem devices, I can manage everything on the cloud."
"It's a user-friendly firewall. Most of the tasks are very simple. It's simple to configure and troubleshoot this firewall."
"I like that they have given me a solution at a fair price."
"We have all the features we want or need in this appliance. It's been good so far."
"One of the benefits that we have realized from using this product is that the user interface makes it easier to operate, compared to using the CLI."
"There are several ways to implement it."
"The central management console has helped with segregation, where planned interventions with management consoles do not have any impact on production or critical business traffic."
"Check Point NGFW is easy to use, flexible and provides good performance. The security of the product is excellent, we do not have to do a lot of patching or upgrades because of vulnerabilities."
"The performance has been very good."
"It has various features, like Threat Prevention and Antivirus. It is easier to use and have knowledge of a single device rather than multiple devices/technologies when doing an installation. It is also easy to use because of having Antivirus and Threat Prevention features within the same firewall."
"SmartCenter and SmartLog are the best platforms to manage firewall rules. SandBlast Zero-Day is very useful when encountering any security leaks."
"It offers a single pane of glass for all the different types of installations."
"The VM series has an advantage over the physical version because we are able to change the sources that the machine has, such as the amount of available RAM."
"The most valuable features are security and support."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"App-ID and User-ID have repeatedly shown value in securing business critical systems."
"They now know the details about their network traffic that they did not know before: Applications that they are using and some application they did not know they were using."
"With the improved visibility we now have, the traffic is being properly monitored, which means that we are better able to manage it. These are improvements that we saw very quickly."
"The most valuable feature is that you can launch it in a very short time. You don't have to wait for the hardware to arrive and get it staged and installed. From that perspective, it is easy to launch. It is also scalable."
"The user interface could be improved."
"It would be good if they had fewer updates."
"They are doing good, but they can improve the distributor assignment. The availability of the product and the timeline of delivery are the main things. The distribution should be swift, and the distributor should not reach out to end customers directly. They should work as a distributor. There should also be one more local distributor. Currently, there is only one distributor in Pakistan, and the rest of them are in UAE. It is difficult to work with only one distributor. Sometimes, you don't get along with the same distributor, and that's why they should have one more distributor. Their licensing should also be improved. The activation or renewal of the product should be done from the date of renewal, not from the date on which the license expired."
"I think that the infrastructure for the VPN could be improved. The way that it is bundled also made it difficult to use and sell as it is too expensive."
"The updates Fortinet provides are sometimes unstable."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve the user interface. There should be more functionality and options through the GUI."
"I don't like that anything more than very basic reporting is not included."
"The initial setup and configuration are not intuitive and require training."
"The Antivirus feature is something that could be improved. We don't get much from the Antivirus update in comparison to their competitor's firewalls. It needs to be more advanced because Check Point is nowadays sent all over the world. Therefore, the Antivirus feature should be of very good quality and cover all virus checks. I would also like the Antivirus updates to be more frequent."
"The price is middling. It's much more expensive than Fortinet, although not so expensive when compared with Palo Alto."
"Unfortunately, the API is not fully complete and also it is not an API which I would refer to as a RESTful API as there are different endpoints for the same entity."
"The current model is predominantly hardware appliance-based, which can incur substantial costs"
"The command line is very difficult to use, which is one of the biggest drawbacks of this solution."
"They should integrate all blades to use a single policy rather than multiple."
"It will be good if the product is rack-mounted."
"The study material for Check Point needs to be improved, as well as the cost for certification."
"In the next release, I would like to see better integration between the endpoints and the firewalls."
"The only minor issue we've faced is with the app's ID configuration, which requires specific matching for application filtering."
"The solution needs to have more easily searchable details or documentation about it online, so it's easier to Google if you have queries."
"It would be helpful if we had a direct number for the support manager or the supporting engineer. That would be better than having to email every time because there would be less wait."
"We feel that the setup was complex. So, we asked the tech team about the setup process. They explained how to deploy it in the right way, which made it very simple."
"I would like a way to do everything programmatically, or be able to copy the configs from different prices at different levels."
"The reporting part of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"There's room for improvement in terms of integration with the load balancer. It isn't like Fortinet, which has a load balancer built into its firewall. It is effortless to integrate within the load balancer-plus-firewall solution."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 275 reviews while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is ranked 10th in Firewalls with 52 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is rated 8.6. 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 Palo Alto Networks VM-Series writes "Many features are optimized for troubleshooting real-time scenarios, saving a lot of time". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Azure Firewall, whereas Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is most compared with Azure Firewall, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Netgate pfSense. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series report.
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