Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Reviews

We use it to protect Internet access from our AWS environment.

Before we implemented CloudGuard, we had no filtering on what was accessed on the internet from our AWS environment. 

Now, we can filter which websites users can access and block categories that are a risk. For example, we can block social media and gambling sites. This has helped to decrease the risk of access to malicious content on the internet.

It allows us to filter what the servers on AWS can access on the Internet and allows us to filter in terms of IPS, antivirus, and so on, for the contents that are accessed on the Internet.

The complexity to deploy should be decreased. 

I have been using this solution for about five years. 

It is a stable solution. It has been pretty stable for us. We haven't faced any problems since it rolled out. 

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. We have around 200 end users using this solution in our company. 

The customer service and support from the vendor take a lot of time. 

The first line of support is not very good. They usually start with junior engineers when you open a case, which can be time-consuming.

Neutral

I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, where one is easy and ten is difficult to setup. 

For the deployment, we work with the vendor. So, the deployment took two weeks.

We need to provision the firewall, deploy the manager, and understand where the firewall needs to connect, which AWS area, and so on.

We just needed more than two people for the deployment. We worked with the security network security architect and called them engineers.

With ten being very expensive, I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten. 

It is expensive.

It's worth it in the sense that it can protect your network, and it's very scalable.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We are a small consulting company. We have around 100 employees. We don't use advanced firewalls because we don't really have important data that can be hacked. Nobody is going to care about our data because it's only the HR department's timesheet data on our on-premise systems. The firewall is protecting remote access, allowing the employees to access our office environment. So sometimes employees connect to our systems which have some test systems on it. They run some tests about the consulting we've given to clients. That's all. We just have basic things on our firewall. Just two things are important for us - the site to site VPN, which we have with some customers, and the government site. That is important. That's why I want to change the firewall to a new and up-to-date one so maybe it will be an improvement to prevent some hackers.

After I made up my mind to migrate it to another solution, I was kind of checking all the other firewalls, the FortiGate, Check Point, pfSense and OPNsense, and Check Point has pretty simple solutions, like the virtual appliance which you just download and it is imported into VMware and you just start using it. You just have to know Check Point's GUI so you can manage your IP addresses and access rules and stuff. But as I said, Check Point is really advanced and the GUI is kind of advanced, which the customer reports actually prove.

In terms of what could be improved, we have no support with the current Check Point environment. It ended maybe three or four years ago. Because it's an appliance you have to have support. That's a problem for us because I cannot update it at the moment. We have to have another support. We have to subscribe to another support so I can update it. I think it's a good amount of money and our boss does not want to pay that kind of money for firewall solutions. It's not a hardware solution, which by the way, if it would be up to me, I would migrate it to a hardware FortiGate system because all our customers at the moment are migrating their environments to FortiGate hardware solutions. They say it's a really good improvement from their previous firewall solution because it's easy to manage and they're very happy with it.

But as I said before, my boss does not want to pay a lot of money for a firewall solution since we don't have much data to protect and the data is not very important. It's not a big use for us. So we will just probably try pfSense or OPNsense. I can patch it to an up-to-date version, like the 2021 patch. We have the open source solution because my boss does not want to pay for it. It's my approach to migrate the firewall, actually. If it was up to me, I'd probably migrate it to a FortiGate system.

I'm not very experienced with Check Point. But what I would like to see is a step-by-step initial installation of the firewall. That would be really helpful. Like in Oracle appliances, when you start it asks you, what's your current IP address? An initial setup should be a step by step and intuitive process. You click on "begin," it asks you some simple questions. You fill in the blanks - your current IP address, what you want to do, if you want to set up a site to site VPN, for example, that kind of thing. That would be the smartest thing to have.

I can't give it any review about Check Point technical support because I am only working here for about three years and by the time I started at the company it already did not have support.

I have no idea about the initial setup, but it seems like it's not so complex. The initial set up is probably not that hard, but not that easy, either. If I were to delegate the firewall system to a junior guy, I think that he's not going to manage Check Point, but he'll probably manage FortiGate.

In the past, my clients were all using Check Point Systems. When I reviewed it at that time, back 10 years ago, Check Point was number one, as far as I remember, meaning FortiGate wasn't a major solution in Turkey. Nobody was talking about FortiGate then. Now FortiGate, is a major player in the firewall industry in Turkey. Most of our clients are migrating to FortiGate because they say it's cheaper than Check Point. So when I see the Check Point's GUI, it's really complicated. My recommendation would be for Check Point customers to first learn about Check Point's GUI, which is pretty advanced, for me at least.

But when I talk to my friends who are managing IT, they are migrating to FortiGate. They say, FortiGate is very easy to manage and I should really think about it now. When I was first introduced to Check Point it was really advanced. I didn't understand when I first looked into it. I just wanted a solution. pfSense has the same problem. By the way, according to your report, some customers said that pfSense needs improvement on the management and the GUI and aspects like that, so maybe I'll need another review of OPNsense versus Check Point and FortiGate etc...

We didn't have any problems at all. Just in one case, actually. We have a rule that pops up from nowhere which we didn't create. When we restart our Virtual System firewall, it creates a rule which messes up all our internet connection. So if I were to give a number from one to 10, I would probably say Check Point is a nine out of 10. Other than that, we haven't had any problems. Check Point is pretty reliable. I think it's our company's problem that we couldn't patch it after it froze. Maybe an up to date, patched version doesn't have this problem. 

Overall, it's really working for us. I don't have any problems other than it's just outdated.

We primarily use the solution as a firewall. It is for the perimeter protection of our products. We use it as a UTM kind of environment.

The solution has good features.

It has good antivirus protection.

The solution has been quite stable.

The installation was straightforward and pretty easy to execute.

The solution lacks the capability to scale effectively.

We had been using the solution for five years. However, we are currently migrating off of it.

We found the solution to be stable when we were using it. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's not buggy and it doesn't have glitches.

The solution isn't scalable. In fact, it cannot be upgraded at all. This is the main reason why we are switching over to a different firewall under a different brand.

We have many users at the perimeter currently. 

The technical support on offer was very good. We were largely satisfied with the level of service provided. We found them to be helpful and responsive when we had issues.

We are currently moving from Check Point to Fortinet. We haven't yet started to use Fortinet, however. It's a work in progress.

The solution is pretty easy to set up. It's not complex. It's rather straightforward. It shouldn't give a company any trouble.

You need two to three people to manage the deployment process. You don't need a big team.

We handled the implementation ourselves using in-house personnel. We didn't need the outside assistance of integrators or consultants.

We're just a customer and an end-user. We aren't a vendor, consultant, or integrator.

I'm not sure if I would recommend the solution to other organizations. It would likely be 50/50. It really depends on the company's requirements. For us, for example, we needed to scale, and that ended up not being possible and so we have to move away from it.

Overall, I would rate the solution six out of ten. Although it has some good aspects, for us, the lack of scalability was impossible to overcome.

We have an AWS environment with servers and resources. We also have a Cloud environment and CloudGuard is our solution to protect the internet access to and from the database environment. For example, servers on the AWS that need to do upgrades go to the internet and cross the CloudGuard solution. People that need to connect to the AWS environment, to a server are protected by CloudGuard. The environment is protected by CloudGuard. It's our perimeter firewall on the AWS environment.

We were already used to Check Point products and we needed to protect the AWS environment. It was very straightforward. We could use the same policies that we use on-prem. We were already used to the logs, for the kinds of things Check Point shows in terms of what is crossing to the internet. We didn't need to get used to a new kind of log that we were not used to. It saved us a lot of time. We were able to seamlessly extend our on-premise protection to Cloud and didn't require any effort.

Two years ago, we didn't know what the best way was to protect the environment but we found out that we could use the same kind of protection that we use on-prem. It helped our security team to be confident that the cloud environment is protected. 

The use of unified security management has freed up security engineers to perform more important tasks. We saved a lot of time, especially managing the threat prevention profiles because when we want to do some kind of exception or enable a new kind of protection, we can enable it on all our firewalls, not only the AWS but also on the on-prem firewalls at the same time using the same profile. That helps us a lot and saves us a lot of time because we don't need to go to the AWS protection to do stuff and then to the other premise. It saves at least four hours a week.

Compared to the security provided by AWS, CloudGuard is very easy to understand why something is being blocked. We can see it on the SmartConsole for Check Point, which is one of our favorite products for security. It's much easier to understand what and why something is happening. 

The most valuable feature is that we can use the same manager server that we use on our own Check Point firewalls. We integrated CloudGuard on that manager and we can use the same kind of protections that we use on the on-prem firewalls, like the IPS and antivirus policy. We can have the same kind of protection on the Cloud environment that we have on-premise.

• The block rate is good. It's what we used on-prem. We feel protected by the Check Point threat prevention that we used for many years. We are confident that it blocks everything that needs to be blocked.
• Malware prevention is also a good feature. It's the same kind of malware prevention we use on-prem and we never had any issues. We have used on-prem prevention for many years. 
• Exploit resistance rate - we never had any problems with it. We never had any security issues due to exploits on our diverse infrastructure.

In terms of the comprehensiveness of its threat prevention security, it was very easy for us to start working with because it's the same. Check Point has a very wide group of protections, dozens of protections. It's very good in terms of protection.

CloudGuard is very good in terms of ease of use, especially because it's very easy to understand the blocks and why something was blocked. You can see in a log why something was blocked, if it was identified as some kind of malware or suspicious activity. You can immediately see on the log the rule or the threat prevention policy that was blocking it if you want to do some kind of exception, or if you want to verify why. And it's very well documented with the description of the threat and why it should be blocked.

CloudGuard functions just like any other firewall. It functions very well. The only thing that could maybe be improved would be to integrate some tools that are not integrated with the SmartConsole, like the SmartView Monitor that we need to open on a different application to access.

I have been using CloudGuard IaaS for two years. 

It was always very stable, so we deployed it and now we only manage the policy, the application control, and the IPS. In terms of stability, it's very stable.

Its scalability is one of the best features because of the auto-scaling groups.

There are three users in the company who are all network security engineers.

It's has a 100% adoption rate. Our Cloud environment goes to the internet through the CloudGuard solution.

Support is good. We never had anything that they couldn't help us with.

We did the deployment with vendor support. It's not straightforward, especially because the solution was fairly new when we started to deploy. There wasn't a lot of the commutation that there is now. We had help through remote sessions and the vendor. We managed to do it, but it's not very straightforward.

We had to get used to the concept. We use the auto-scaling groups, which is when there is low internet access needs, we only have one gateway. And when a lot of people access the internet, the product automatically generates more visual firewalls. This was a different concept than what we have on-premises, of course, because this is not what's on-prem. The concept of auto-scaling groups was something we needed to get used to.

It saves us money because if for example, we have three firewalls running but at night, no one is working, the internet access is very low. The solution automatically reduces the number of instances to one, which is the minimum. Then, if someone is doing a lot of things that need internet access, it automatically spins more instances. This saves us money.

The deployment took one week.

The implementation strategy was to first do a proof of concept, only for our Dev VPC. Only the Dev VPC was using the internet through this solution, and then when we were confident that it worked as we thought it should work. We deployed it in all our accounts, production, and corporate.

We are aware of the overall perspective of the Check Point security products and the rates. We were already aware that it meets the ones that we use on-prem. So we are always aware of those results. 

The fact that CloudGuard has been a leader for many years in industry reviews of network firewalls was also important, but the most important thing was that we can also use it on-prem and we are satisfied with it. 

The consultants were very helpful. 

Pricing for these kinds of products is always expensive but I would say that it's in line with the competition.

We didn't evaluate other solutions because it was a good fit for us and not worth evaluating other solutions.

If you are already a Check Point customer, this is the perfect solution. If you are not used to Check Point products, you should also analyze other solutions and compare them before you buy.

The biggest lesson I have learned is that with this product, you can secure the Cloud environment the same way that you secure the on-prem, which helps a lot with people that are new to the Cloud security environment.

I would rate Check Point CloudGuard IaaS a ten out of ten. 

Our primary use case of this solution is cloud protection for MC65 Operating System, AWS, and Microsoft.

Right now, we have a hybrid infrastructure. We needed security on the cloud, and this solution has provided the security that we were lacking.

• Traps prevention
• Security on the cloud

The product can still grow.

It is fast. It provides what we need at the moment, and it's still growing.

It is scalable. It's a cloud solution, so it's easy to implement and manage.

Technical support is fair. I have had some good support technicians when I call in. 

We were not on the cloud before. We're a big Check Point customer. Our secure perimeter is checkpoint, so we needed security for the cloud. So, it was a pretty easy decision right there. We evaluated other vendors, but it was easy decision.

The initial setup was straightforward, not complex.

We did our own deployment. We used a reseller for buying the product, but not for the implementation.

We also looked at Cisco's cloud products since we have a lot of Cisco products.

Look into it. I like how straightforward it is and simple it is to implement in the cloud. 

The security features of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security are very good.

The solution could improve to have a DLP feature.

I have been using Check Point CloudGuard Network Security for approximately three years.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is stable.

The scalability is good.

The initial deployment is easy. However, the implementation can be complex.

My advice to others is to evaluate the products first and then proceed.

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

We use this solution to secure networks. We block unwanted malware. 

We have a development team who asked us to open reports. We asked that they initiate traffic to see what is blocking them. We then give them reports and after that, they ask to open the report for the traffic application and we work accordingly.

The most valuable feature is the monitoring. We can easily monitor what kind of stuff comes over to our network and we can then check the dashboard and work accordingly.

I would like for them to develop guides. If you compare it with Cisco, you can just type out any problem you're having regarding Cisco and you will easily get a solution. With Check Point, it's not easy to get a solution.

We maxed out scalability. 

The initial setup was a bit complex. Is take two or three months to implement and we have to continuously work on it. We needed two to three engineers for deployment. 

We researched the top firewall solutions and settled on Check Point and Palo Alto. Comparatively, both are good. 

Ultimately Palo Alto is a very advanced firewall. This firewall can easily identify what application is running behind the network.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.