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.
"I only deal with it from a security analyst's point of view. I don't really get into the features of the actual FortiGate. From the security point of view, it works, and it does its job."
"Customers are more inclined towards FortiGate because of application control, web filtering, and anti-spam features. The support from the FortiGate team is good, and price-wise, it is affordable."
"What I like the most is the configuration and that it's simple, and straightforward to maintain."
"Fortigate's most valuable feature is that it doesn't need a push policy when writing rules."
"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."
"The integration with Active Directory is one of the good features. Most of the customers are now looking for the Single Sign-on feature. So, being able to integrate Active Directory with the firewall is useful. It is also easy."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the analytics."
"The user interface (UI) is very, very good."
"The product is very scalable."
"Everything is easily managed through their Smart Console dashboard. It's a very easy-to-understand dashboard that provides a detailed view."
"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."
"The packet inspections have been a strong point."
"My favorite feature is the UTM piece and that was the main reason we bought it. It helps us to fine tune the network."
"They utilize various gateway features, including Identity as a Service (IDaaS), anti-spam, antivirus, and other security measures, effectively creating a robust defense against a wide range of potential risks."
"The features that I have found most valuable are its flexibility and user interface. This is already a well-established product in the market for quite a long time, more than 20 years. They've got a huge customer base."
"If you want to share traffic loads to both cluster members you can use the active-active feature, if you don't want to share traffic loads you can prefer active standby."
"Clustering architecture which offers zero downtime upgrades, keeping uptime close to 99.999%."
"The firewall and policy side are easy to use."
"The technical support is excellent. I would rate it as 10 out of 10. When there has been an issue, we have had a good response from them."
"The feature my customers find the most valuable is the exportability."
"Provides good integrations and reporting."
"I have not contacted technical support. There is a lot of information on the internet for troubleshooting. All you need to do is use a search engine and you will find the information you are looking for easily."
"The transparency of the single UI to ensure security. A product has to be simple so that an administrator can use it."
"Filtering is the best feature."
"Stability and technical support are the two major issues I have found with Fortinet."
"I would like to see a more intuitive dashboard."
"Fortinet FortiGate can be integrated with different platforms. They have integrations in place, but I can't say they're 100%."
"My only complaint about FortiGate is a lack of QinQ VLAN tunneling. I haven't found this feature in any Fortinet product. You can do this on all Cisco routers, including the smaller models. However, QinQ isn't available on the biggest, most expensive Fortinet units. They still don't have that. I think now we're on software version 6.0, and they still haven't found a solution for QinQ. It isn't a dealbreaker, but that's my main complaint."
"The search tool needs improvement. It's very difficult to search for policies right now."
"In some cases, its initial setup could be hard for customers."
"Difficult to add or define, and not that easy to configure and manage."
"To the best of my knowledge, Fortinet does not have a CASB solution and Fortinet does not have a Zero trust solution."
"One of the most complicated aspects is the VPN Configuration, which should be simplified in future releases."
"We'd like an option that can convert other vendors' NGFW configurations to supported Check Point NGFW config for ease of migration."
"Sometimes when they bring on new upgrades, they affect something else."
"The virtual infrastructure of the central management requires a huge amount of resources to work properly and manage all the logs without problems."
"It could greatly improve our customer experience by centralizing management."
"The management of memory in the hardware needs to improve. They have had a lot of issues with memory leakage."
"Right now, with a larger user database and a high number of rules, it takes a bit of time for policy installation."
"The antivirus Check Point offers could be better when compared to competitors' firewalls. Updates should be more frequent."
"One of the challenges we've had with the Cisco ASA is the lack of a strong controller or central management console that is dependable and reliable all the time."
"While this applies to all vendors, pricing can be always lower. In my opinion, Cisco is the most expensive. The pricing can be reduced."
"It is confusing to have two management interfaces, e.g., ASDM and Firepower Management Center."
"There is no support here in Georgia. If something goes wrong, support is not always very helpful with the other firewalls or other products."
"We are Cisco partners, and when we recommend Cisco FirePower to customers, they always think that FirePower is bad. For a single installation of FirePower, if I have to write about 18 tickets to Cisco, it's a big problem. There was an issue was related to Azure. We had Active Directory in Azure. The clients had to connect to FirePower through Azure. We had a lot of group policies. After two group policies, we had to make groups in Azure, and they had to sign in and sign back. It was a triple-layer authentication, and there was a big problem, so we didn't use it."
"Most users do not have awareness of this product's functionality and features. Cisco should do something to make them aware of them. That would be quite excellent and useful to organizations that are still using legacy data-center-security products."
"If the implementation was easier, it would be a lot better for us."
"Firepower's user experience should be a little bit better."
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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