We performed a comparison between Check Point CloudGuard Network Security 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.
Features: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security provides useful features including VPN Blade, IPS Blade, URL filtering, and Applications Control Blade. Cisco Secure Firewall offers features such as threat defense, dashboard visibility, and application visibility and control.
For the Check Point CloudGuard Network Security, users suggest enhancing their support system, adding features like cluster creation on AWS and a managed web portal. They also recommend providing more visibility on data protection and improving documentation and support services. As for Cisco Secure Firewall, improvements are needed in network performance, policy administration, customization options, web filtering, user-friendly management interface, performance for IPS, and functionality in public clouds.
Service and Support: While some customers have praised the technical support of Check Point, others have faced response delays. Cisco Secure Firewall's customer service has garnered mixed review. Some customers appreciate the immediate solutions provided by their technical support, while others have mentioned delays and difficulties, particularly with Firepower.
Ease of Deployment: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is generally considered easy and user-friendly for setup. However, it can be complex for some users and may require technical expertise. The deployment time varies depending on the number of customers or websites. Cisco Secure Firewall's initial setup reviews are mixed. Some find it difficult, while others find it straightforward. Cisco offers resources and documentation for assistance, yet the complexity can vary depending on the user's experience.
Pricing: The cost of setting up Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is perceived as high by most. There are, however, flexible pricing options with various discount models. Opinions on the pricing of Cisco Secure Firewall differ, with some finding it expensive and others considering it moderate.
ROI: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security consistently delivers a strong ROI of 80% to 85%, offering improved advantages and simplified administration. Cisco Secure Firewall exhibits fluctuating ROI, with some positive returns observed.
Comparison Results: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is the preferred choice when compared to Cisco Secure Firewall. Users find the initial setup of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security to be easy, straightforward, and user-friendly. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is highly praised for its valuable features such as VPN Blade, IPS Blade, URL filtering, and Applications Control Blade.
"The stability and scalability of this solution are satisfactory. Its SD-WAN, VPN, and URL filtering features are very useful."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ability to work in proxy mode, which other solutions, such as Palo Alto cannot. There are some features that are better that come at no extra license or subscriptions cost, such as basic SD-WAN. The DLT is useful, other solutions have the same feature too, such as Palo Alto."
"Fortinet has a very good solution for Secure SD-WAN. One very good feature is that they have robust and simple FortiOS through which they provide all solutions. That's their strength. There's not much complexity involved with the Secure SD-WAN solution of Fortinet as compared to Cisco's solution, which has a lot of flexibility but complexity also comes with that flexibility."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is load balancing. It can provide central management and VPNA. Additionally, it has enhanced our security environment."
"The most valuable feature is the web filter."
"Fortigate represents a really scalable way of delivering perimeter network security, some level of layer 7 security, WAF, and also a way to create a meshed ADVPN solution."
"The main benefit is the grouping of our security monitoring."
"The most valuable features are the enterprise modeling and the simple interface."
"The tool's most valuable features are threat prevention and protection mechanisms."
"The most valuable feature of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is the increased mail protection including spam."
"The solution has been quite stable."
"It is a good-to-use tool that is also flexible."
"Our clients choose CloudGuard as a natural progression of their solutions. They understand Microsoft and CloudGuard fits."
"The most valuable feature for us is the scale set, which allows us to scale horizontally, vertically and dynamically depending on the traffic load."
"The feature most valuable to me is the NDTX blade that Check Point provides, and I like how the solution is not vulnerable."
"It matches what we have on-prem. We kept the same management and the same functionality that we were having on-prem. It has simplified things for us because there is no new dashboard to touch."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is AMP (Advanced Malware Protection), as this is really needed to protect against cyber threats."
"The interface is user-friendly."
"The user interface is easy to navigate."
"Its efficiency and security are the most important. We are more efficient and more secure."
"The dashboard is the most important thing. It provides good visibility and makes management easy. Firepower also provides us with good application visibility and control."
"The firewall and policy side are easy to use."
"The ASA 55-x range is a solid and reliable firewall. It secures the traffic for normal purposes."
"It's pretty reliable and allows for isolation capabilities within the network."
"There are SD-WAN network monitoring, SD-WAN features, Industrial Databases, Internet of Things, Detection, etc., however, we do have not licenses for those features. We thought that if you bought a product, you should have all of the features it offers. Why should you need to make so many extra purchases to enable features? They should have one price for the entire offering."
"I would like to have logs, monitoring, and reporting for a month without extra fees."
"The reports are very basic."
"Some configuration elements cannot be easily altered once created."
"There is room for improvement related to the logging and reporting aspect."
"The performance and speed are aspects of the solution that could always be improved upon."
"The solution could be more evenly structured."
"The user interface could be improved."
"The biggest room for improvement is that, for a long time now, they've moved everything over to R80 but they still maintain some of the stuff in the old dashboard. They need to "buy in" and move everything to the modern dashboard so that you don't have to go to one place and to another place, at times, to configure the environment. It's time they just finish what they started and put everything in the new, modern dashboard."
"In the next release, including VRF support would be highly beneficial."
"In future releases, I would like to see the data loss prevention (DLP) feature could scale along with the virtual machine scale sets."
"Documentation might become too complex or too spread out, especially for newcomers."
"In case the device is inaccessible due to some issue such as CPU or memory, there is no separate port or hardware partition provided for troubleshooting purposes."
"The API integration is complex, which is an area that should be improved."
"We are at the place where we are looking at better integration with the management system. We use an MDS today, and it is self-deployed. We want to get to the Smart-1 Cloud, but we do not know what that looks like today because it does not support a multi-domain setup. Smart-1 should either be able to do multi-domain or there should be some form of taking a multi-domain environment and putting it in Smart-1."
"Having a web UI in the VSX (or something similar) would be nice."
"Intrusion prevention, we currently need to apply deep bracket inspection manually to use web filtering."
"It is a good firewall, though not NextGen."
"Security generally requires integration with many devices, and the management side of that process could be enhanced somewhat. It would help if there was a clear view of the integrations and what the easiest way to do them is."
"The relatively new Firepower Threat Defense image (mix of ASA and Sourcefire network security) fills a lot of gaps and features that were missing on ASA."
"I don't have to see all the object groups that have been created on that firewall. That's just something that I would really appreciate on the CLA, even though it already exists on the GUI."
"The central management tool is not comfortable to use. You need to have a specific skill set. This is an important improvement for management because I would like to log into Firepower, see the dashboard, and generate a real-time report, then I question my team."
"I have found that Cisco reporting capabilities are not as rich as other products, so the reporting could be improved."
"We are replacing ASA with FTD which offers many new features not available using ASA."
More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Pricing and Cost Advice →
Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is ranked 8th in Firewalls with 119 reviews while Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is rated 8.6, while Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2. 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 Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is most compared with Azure Firewall, VMware NSX, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and Illumio, whereas Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. See our Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. Cisco Secure Firewall report.
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