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.
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution."
"The solution can scale well."
"The user interface (UI) is very, very good."
"The notable features that I have found most valuable are that it includes the antivirus, and also IPS, and even SD-WAN."
"The main benefit is the grouping of our security monitoring."
"Fortinet FortiGate is stable. It's used across all the countries, this is the way most multinationals run their system."
"The scalability of Fortinet FortiGate is good."
"It's super reliable. I don't think I've ever had a reliability issue with it."
"The platform helps our organization to save working hours."
"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."
"The packet inspection capabilities are great."
"It is easy to configure and it is a valuable antivirus protection. I especially like the IPS feature of this product."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"The management interface is easy to operate and is a standardized way of managing different firewall modules in the same client application."
"The product is very scalable."
"I think that the most valuable feature is the prevention of known and zero-day threats because they are constantly trying to access your company and compromise its data."
"The architecture of FTD is great because it has an in-depth coverage and because it uses the AVC, (Application, Visibility, and Control) and also rate limits. Also, the architecture of fast paths is great."
"The feature that I found most valuable is the overall stability of the product."
"With the FMC and the FirePOWERs, the ability to quickly replace a piece of hardware without having to have a network outage is useful. Also, the ability to replace a piece of equipment and deploy the config that the previous piece of equipment had is pretty useful."
"The most valuable feature is zone segmentation, which we utilize through the Firepower management console."
"Netting is one of the best features. We can modify it in different ways. Site-to-site VPN is also an awesome feature of Cisco ASA. The biggest advantage of Cisco products is technical support. They provide the best technical support."
"The management aspect of the product is very straightforward."
"The IPS (In-plane switching) is the most valuable feature."
"The best features are stability and scalability."
"Its reporting and pricing need improvement."
"Sometimes you do need to know some CLI commands, so it's a bit harder for technicians or new people that don't know it."
"The solution lacks sufficient filtering."
"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."
"The central management for the FortiGate Fortinet Firewall needs improvement. They have the manager to do the essential management for both SD-WAN and for the security policy. They should also improve the SD-WAN function."
"For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial."
"It should provide better visibility over the network and more information in the form of reports for the end users. Its installation should also be easier."
"There is room for improvement related to the logging and reporting aspect."
"Check Point Smart Dashboard does not support my Apple MacBook Air. It only supports Windows versions."
"It depends whether the problem is known to Check Point. If they are aware there is a problem, quite often it will then depend on which tech you finally land on if it's easier or harder to get to the root cause. The last issue was in India so that was pretty bad. It's easier if you get directly through to Tel Aviv or Ottawa, but you can't choose. Once they know what the issue is, it's pretty good. It pretty much depends on the engineer that you get. There are pretty good engineers and there are many engineers who are at just the starter level at Check Point who are not really into the stuff. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's easy, depending on the problem and the tech engineer you get."
"It would be nice to have comprehensive documentation and training resources that can help users and administrators to better understand and utilize the full range of Check Point's capabilities."
"VMware is not supported by the platform."
"I still don't have access to the reporting service."
"It would be best if the security management server console access is simpler for ease of management."
"The biggest improvement they could make is having one software to install on all three levels of their products, so that the SMBs, the normal models, and the chassis would all run the same software. Now, while there is central management, everything that has to be configured on the gateway itself works differently on the three kinds of devices."
"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."
"Cisco ASA is starting to get old and Firepower is taking over. All the good things happening are with Firepower."
"It is hard to collaborate with our filtered environment."
"It's mainly the UI and the management parts that need improvement. The most impactful feature when you're using it is the user interface and the user experience."
"Its interface is sometimes is a little bit slow, and it can be improved. When you need to put your appliance in failover mode, it is a little difficult to do it remotely because you need to turn off the appliance in Cisco mode. In terms of new features, it would be good to have AnyConnect VPN with Firepower. I am not sure if it is available at the moment."
"Even on a smaller scale, people are finding you need HA pairs, and there's no way that the ASA can do that, at least in the virtual version."
"It needs more tunneling capabilities."
"FirePOWER does a good job when it comes to providing us with visibility into threats, but I would like to see a more proactive stance to it."
"Third-party integrations could be improved."
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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