Check Point NGFW Reviews

We use Check Point NGFW to secure the perimeter of our customers. It is a great solution that enables us to prevent any type of attack from external threats by securing our infrastructure up to level seven of the ISO OSI stack. We implement blades like IPS, anti-bot, and antivirus. We deploy different solutions such as physical Check Point or VSX, and we have also deployed on VMware and on physical appliances. The deployment is very easy, and after deploying the firewall and enabling all the blades, we just need to manage it.

The best feature of Check Point NGFW is the Threat Prevention blade, specifically EPS. In recent months, Check Point has offered automation to automate threat prevention, making it a very strong blade to secure our perimeter. This blade has blocked many external attacks that could have led to data loss or server compromise for our customers. Additionally, Check Point NGFW can be used in cloud environments like Azure and AWS. It's a great solution, easy to deploy due to templates in cloud environments. Other valuable features include Identity Awareness, which allows us to manage access to resources by user rather than by IP address.

We use Check Point NGFW for security purposes. Our clients use it for security reasons, as mentioned during the call.

The most valuable feature is the availability of two consoles. In the normal GA login, I can create interfaces and configure interface IPs, while in the SmartConsole, I manage the NAT quality and firewall access. This allows me to effectively configure the Check Point firewall.

Historically, the primary uses for these gateways were perimeter security and internet filtering. However, we now push all our internal traffic through the gateways for LAN segregation and to isolate obsolete operating systems.

Our isolated operating systems and LANs only allow specific traffic from a specific source to access them, making these critical production/business systems more secure. It's not a simple case of just replacing these legacy operating systems but replacing the industrial machinery that they control - which would require an investment of tens of millions of pounds.

Isolating obsolete operating systems wasn't in the scope when implementing the gateways originally. However, it has enabled us to secure Windows XP/Windows 7/2003/2008 machines which are end of support yet are still required to run industrial software and interface with large machines, which are not easy to replace.

Isolating machines and networks, along with SSL inspection, wasn't in scope when the gateways were spec'd. That said, five years later, they are still rock solid, and along with the Threat Cloud intelligence service, this ensures that our firewall is equipped with up-to-date threat intelligence, enhancing its ability to detect and mitigate emerging threats.

In my previous company, one of the clients was a big chocolate company. They had this payment card infrastructure (PCI), where they needed to have auditors from PCI check the firewalls to see if everything was okay. So, they had web-based authentication. 

I'm working with the 5800, 5600, and 5200 models. I work with the UTMs as well. These are physical appliances as well as open servers.

It helped clients get through big audits for PCI, which has been very cost-effective for them. In one hour, they make 30,000 to 40,000 pounds worth of sales. A PCI audit has actually threatened them, "If you don't do it by this date, you will have to stop taking payments." Even if the audit is delayed about an one hour or so, they'll have thousands of pounds worth of losses. The previous company may have spent a lot of money on Check Point, but they save a lot as well. So, they were quite happy with that. 

I use it for UTM [Unified Threat Management]. I use a gateway firewall at the office.

Next Generation Firewall, along with Threat Emulation and Threat Extraction, is what I use. Real-time prevention is there to protect against zero-day malware and Check Point Sandbox.

And then, the CPU-based emulation is a better feature than any technologies not having that. Check Point has a CPU-based emulation. Normally, Fortinet and others, they do it differently. But these people work on a technology called CPU-based emulation. 

This CPU-based emulation is a unique CPU-level technology that catches malware before it has an opportunity to deploy or evade detection. They call it SandBlast. Check Point SandBlast Threat Emulation. That is a great feature, which they are using. It controls attempts to bypass OS security controls also. And then it avoids deep security.

I use our Check Point firewall for all the NATing of my applications. I use it for external traffic monitoring where my Internet links are connected, and I use it as a gateway.

We use Check Point NGFW for enterprise firewalling, VPN, data loss prevention (DLP), user authentication, and zero-trust connectivity. All the functions of Check Point NGFW are utilized.

The most valuable features in my experience include perimeter firewalling, cloud and mobile security, application control, URL filtering, DLP, threat prevention, intrusion protection, and safeguarding against malware, botnets, and zero-day attacks. Check Point NGFW's multi-layered security architecture enhances data protection strategies by unifying security management, which is crucial in environments with too many separate products. The application and identity-based inspection are critical for understanding the data packets within the network.

We're using Check Point NGFW for network security, intrusion detection, intrusion prevention, application control, DDoS attack protection, sandblast, mobile device management, identity-based access control, reporting, access control policy, scalability, state-of-the-art security gateway, support, threat prevention, accelerated policy installation, concurrent security policy installation, advanced routing, easy upgrading, logging and monitoring, smart events, and smart console.

Check Point has improved our organization's security posture, especially the IBAC, application control, IPS, and IDS. It's easy to set policies on the firewall, which has greatly simplified cleanup and management.

We recently upgraded from R80.10 to R40, and we've had an overwhelmingly positive experience with this version. Our visibility of threats and vulnerabilities has improved. Check Point added new features and revamped its reporting and analysis.