Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Reviews

We are integrators and implemented this product for a customer to monitor traffic and secure a network on cloud. This is a threat prevention solution and I'm the enterprise security lead. Our company is based in the Philippines and we are customers of Check Point. 

Deploying this solution has made it easier for our security analysts to monitor the network on cloud. Based on compliance, we can easily give evidence to different auditors or regulators on how to protect our cloud infrastructure. 

Advanced check prevention is a great feature that provides threat intelligence at speed. We can easily identify malicious activity and check for any vulnerabilities. The solution has great functionality and we can see the movement of data. If there's any malicious activity, we can easily stitch or make a story out of that data. I think when it comes to functionality, it's a good monitoring tool. 

The cost is a little high, it doesn't suit every budget. I'd like to see the ability to integrate with other security solutions which is not currently possible. If you need to integrate, you have to buy a Check Point product as well so you're paying for features. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable and I think they might increase their scope on different virtual, private clouds or private subnets. Monitoring involves anywhere from three to five people. 

When it comes to Check Point support, we just file a ticket on the portal. They respond based on the severity of the problem. They've been very responsive on inquiries and issues that we encountered although we haven't had any major issues.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. It's like running our VM on cloud, just speeding it up. When it comes to implementation strategy, we need to list all the assets or the traffic VLANs or network segmentation we want to monitor. From there, we assess how many nodes CloudGuard Network Security needs to monitor all those VLANs. It then takes two to three weeks to implement, given the likelihood of some challenges along the way. Deployment is carried out using a mix of Check Point engineers and in-house IT people. 

In terms of security solutions and return on investment, it's really about the total assets you're protecting.

If you're managing a large cloud infrastructure this is an expensive solution. Check Point has different bundles when it comes to CloudGuard and it's a modular system.

Before purchasing it's important to assess the size of your cloud infrastructure. You need to have a concrete plan for which virtual or private network or clouds you have to scope and to do that before deciding which solution you want and what functionality you need. 

I rate this solution eight out of 10 since there has been some improvement with regard to integrations.

I manage the delivery team of a tech services company. We implement and manage security systems for our clients. CloudGuard is a solution we deploy for larger enterprise clients.

CloudGuard's intelligent tools help us automate many manual security tasks, guaranteeing our customers' environments will be secure. It saves a lot of time because jobs that might require five or six people can be handled with one or two. 

Check Point solutions are not easy to use if you don't have experience. We have some Check Point specialists, so it's not difficult for us. The user experience might suffer if we don't have the time to follow up with our clients and ensure they are using the right options. Clients also want more local support in Portuguese and Spanish during their normal business hours. That's something I hear from my customers and my team, too. 

I have used CloudGuard for two years.

CloudGuard is stable. 

CloudGuard is scalable.

Check Point's support isn't the best, but it's good. 

We also use solutions by FireMon, AlgoSec, and Akamai. We're constantly comparing products and looking for ways to get more features with less money. Akamai has more solutions, whereas Check Point is more specialized. 

Our clients are large and complex, so it is complicated to deploy CloudGuard in their environments.

We had a reseller and use IBM as an integrator. Our experience was positive. 

CloudGuard is reasonable. 

I rate Check Point CloudGuard Network Security an eight out of ten. 

Our need was to be able to provide centralized security governance and control of our "Microsoft Azure" public cloud environment as well as wanting all of the new security checkpoint capabilities that are included in this solution.

With checkpoint Cloud Guard Network security we have been able to provide our infrastructure with many improvements and good practices in network architecture, automatic deployments and alerts to ensure that our infrastructure is without vulnerabilities and with all the best practices.

Checkpoint CloudGuard Network security is a network enhancement capability of our public cloud, which has given us recommendations, implementations in new subscriptions to avoid many of the most modern vulnerabilities in an infrastructure.

In addition to the fact that this solution brings us closer to having a better security score, which helps us a lot in complying with information regulations based on security.

It also provides a fairly complete and easy to use dashboard environment that has helped us a lot with the administration of the security department.

We really liked almost everything about checkpoint CloudGuard network security, for example the ease of managing this service through the checkpoint infinity portal is a great relief, it is accessible from anywhere, MFA can be enabled to provide security in the administrative identity to avoid problems of loss of credentials.

In addition, this tool is complemented by the other checkpoint cloud security features, making it a very robust tool.

Also its reports, its recommendations and its automatic applications for architectures with the best practices provide the help that is required to improve an existing subscription or to start one with all the best practices.

Points of improvement for checkpoint cloudguard network security would be partly the cost, which is currently quite expensive.

The documentation to be able to implement the multicloud or link it with Azure is difficult to do or it is not always as indicated, for this you must ask support or the partner for help.

The support for all the checkpoint functions is not the best, since it provides too slow a response to inconveniences, or the support service hours are not the same as in Latin America, which generates latency in the contact between the client and support.

This is an excellent Check Point cloud tool, we have been using it since the beginning of 2022. It is a really good tool for cloud environments.

We evaluated using the Microsoft Defender for Cloud tool for a while, however we needed to centralize our security environment and not have portals for different sites.

My recommendation is to try to always look for the best practices of implementation and administration of the product.

In addition to correctly validating the costs before purchasing.

Of course, we always make evaluations of existing tools, we verify Microsoft Defender for Cloud, we also carry out research with Fortinet solutions, however we wanted Checkpoint for all the improvements, virtues and prestige.

This is an expensive but recommended tool, it is very good for cloud environments.

My experience with the solution has mainly been implementing it with an auto-scaling on behalf of my clients. My job was to migrate an on-prem firewall to AWS cloud. I'm a senior security architect. 

I think one of the valuable features is the auto-scaling, which is based on traffic and  automatically spins one more firewall and adds it to the management server. The zero touch is also a valuable feature. After re-tagging the next internal load balancer within Check Point, it automatically writes up a mac rule and an access rule. As long as you're adding a server into the internal load balancer, you won't need to touch anything. In a Check Point firewall, the mac rules and access rules are automatically written up. Zero touch means there is no need to insert rules again when you're adding servers internally. 

There is definitely some improvement required. We currently use a deployment template provided by AWS each time. If I want to clean up the IaaS I have to use the IaaS template which should not be necessary. Secondly, because it's zero touch, I cannot write up any rules in the firewall. I understand these features might have been built particularly for zero-touch but from the perspective of a network and firewall engineer, some independence to configure something on the firewall would be appreciated. 

An additional feature that could improve the solution would be to enable both automatic and manual control that would allow the engineer complete control over the firewall.

The solution is generally stable although it crashed one time while I was implementing. 

The solution is absolutely scalable. 

The technical support is excellent.

My advice to anyone wanting to implement this solution would be to religiously follow the guidelines. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We primarily use the solution as firewall security for our clients.

The IPS, application and URL filtering, as well as Identity Awareness, are all very valuable features.

Reporting needs improvement. It's difficult to utilize properly. Currently, I'm in a situation whereby a client of ours is looking for reporting on their organizational unit. Check Point has failed to do that. We've been trying to do it for the past month and we haven't been able to. We've also gotten techs from Check Point to call us to help and we just can't get the solution to do what we need it to do.

Sometimes, if you aren't familiar with the solution, it can be a bit complex, but it does become easier to use with time. However, every time they launch a new version, it becomes more complex and you need to take time to get familiar with all the changes. For every version that they upgrade, you need to upskill yourself. 

The stability of the solution is fantastic.

The scalability potential of the solution is great. We use the solution quite extensively. We do plan to increase usage in the future.

If I were rating technical support out of ten, I would give it a seven. They're inconsistent. Sometimes you do get guys from Check Point to help you out and then sometimes you don't. Sometimes it's hard getting a hold of them.

We didn't previously use a different solution.

The initial setup is straightforward. The time it takes to deploy depends on the organization.

We handled the implementation ourselves.

I am familiar with Fortinet, although I didn't do a direct comparison. I did compare other solutions as well.

For those who want to implement the solution, they should make sure they have a very strong networking background.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

Our primary use case is for major cloud vendors: AWS and Azure. 

Moving into the cloud without having to change a lot of our internal processes and retrain staff is one of the biggest benefits of this solution. 

It is what we use mainly for on-premise. That is really what has us using the product, as it is sort of our standard for data centers.

I would like to see more focus on east-west traffic inspection and AWS.

Things are changing very quickly in the cloud. There is a lot more maturing that needs to happen as far as CloudGuard goes, specifically more around some cloud native type situations where everything is being shoehorned through one or multiple VMs is not optimal.

We definitely have to watch new versions and deploy them in a smart way, but that is the way with any type of software.

The scalability depends on the situation. Some situations are not very scalable. High scalability, in AWS, without matting is just not there. It's more of an AWS problem than it is a Check Point problem.

We are receiving our technical support through a partner. Therefore, we do not really engage directly with Check Point that much. We use the partner for technical support matters, who is great.

We did not use anything previously. Going to the cloud was a new requirement for us.

The initial setup was just as straightforward as setting up a physical Check Point box would have been.

We implemented in-house by deploying it ourselves.

We don't really track the ROI on this.

We also considered Fortinet. Check Point has better overall integration with Azure.

I was part of the decision-making process.

I would rate it a six out of ten. 

Other vendors typically are working with hardware acceleration and various other products, which you can't get in the cloud. One of the key things that made us more comfortable with Check Point is this is only thing that they do. It's the same exact thing as they are doing on-premise for the most part.

My clients were different small businesses, and they were migrating to the cloud. We've been using it as a general cloud security tool. 

The interface in terms of being able to have access for myself and the client so that we can easily observe and watch what is going on, has really improved the organization. 

We have seen time to value with this solution. We will continue to use more Check Point solutions in the future.

The versatility is the solution's most valuable feature. 

There are some usability issues we'd like to see improved. 

We're going to be switching to XDR and would like integration with XDR. 

I've used the solution for only about a year. 

The solution is good. I'd rate the stability a nine out of ten. 

I'd rate the scalability a nine out of ten. 

The support is good. 

Positive

We did not previously use a different solution. 

I'm involved with the integration and was involved in the setup of specific areas.

The initial setup was alright. I wasn't the architect of the whole thing. In my area, the implementation seemed to be pretty straightforward.

We did not use an integrator, reseller, or consultant for the deployment. 

We do not yet have enough of a baseline to calculate ROI. 

The pricing is fair. It's the client who is paying for it, not me directly. However, they seem satisfied. 

We previously evaluated a few other options. 

The usability is moderate. 

The product has helped us free up some time. It's a complicated situation, however. 

I'd rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

Our primary use case for this solution is for basic cloud network security, posture management and threat hunting. The solution is deployed on cloud.

The solution assures protection on cloud and ensures the workload is protected in the same manner when deployed on-premises.

The threat prevention capabilities are very valuable.

The product's support team, the UI, and the user interface can be improved.

We have been using this solution for four years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. However, we have not needed to scale yet.

Our experience with technical support can be improved in terms of response time.

The initial setup was straightforward. Some processes were easy click-through processes which needed some configurations and technical expertise to set up. Hence, some technical expertise is required.

The solution is reasonably priced in comparison with other products.

I rate the solution seven out of ten. The solution is reliable and would fulfil what it is marketed to achieve. It provides very good security protection, but the customer support response times could be improved.