Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) Reviews

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is the main manager that provides network security in different forms in my organization. The primary task that Check Point solves is serving as the main means of network security.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) has several classes of modules. The main modules include Firewall, Antivirus, Anti-Bot, URL Filtering, the IPS module, and Identity Awareness, which is tightly integrated into our organization and ensures connectivity of corporate users with the corporate network, allowing us to create dynamic sessions and policies.

In our practice, we use a single common profile for all gateways in Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security), which allows us to unify all policies and, with the help of sections, display what accesses exist for particular services.

The Identity Awareness module helps our company by allowing us to have approximately fifty Active Directory controllers. We have deployed three Identity Awareness controllers, which are connected to all our security gateways. It works on the principle that when a user logs into their device, data about their current IP address and login is written to the Active Directory logs. The Identity Awareness controller integration reads them and sends them to the security gateway. Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) then queries the Active Directory controller, pulls in all the user's groups, and allows access for each user based on their Active Directory groups, which makes it possible to create dynamic policies and dynamic accesses.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is also used to provide VPN access for engineers. At the moment, we are no longer using Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) together with other Check Point solutions. Previously, we had approximately five projects integrated with Check Point. We used their IA (Identity and Access) solutions, their analyzers, and also their endpoint client at the workstation level.

The main benefit and main advantage of using Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is that we use unified security approaches both on on-premises segments and in the cloud. We have the same set of policies applied to different types of gateways—both physical and virtual. A unified approach greatly simplifies the administration of the entire network.

By default, most companies do not use separate firewalling solutions in the cloud at all. They use basic functions such as security groups, NACLs, target evaluation, and similar tools. This is sufficient for them. However, all these solutions do not allow the network to be protected from more advanced attacks above standard firewalling. Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) or any NGFW solution makes it possible to protect against a large number of attacks at the IPS, antivirus, and anti-bot level. If there is a sandbox—SandBlast—then the solution can also inspect what is inside the packets themselves to maximally protect the corporate network. By default, cloud-native solutions do not provide this capability.

The main limitations of Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) are not in Check Point itself but in the cloud platforms on which it is deployed. Because not all clouds have L2 infrastructure, you cannot build a unified clustering system everywhere. As a result, the problem usually is not with Check Point, but with the cloud.

The main problem with Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is that it uses a separate thick client instead of a browser. A browser-based SmartConsole exists, but it still has a number of limitations, while the thick client, the so-called SmartConsole, often works unstably, freezes, and has to be restarted.

I do not recommend using Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) as a VPN hub for site-to-site VPN because it is inconvenient to monitor the state of its tunnels, especially visually. It does not have a convenient snap-in and everything can be checked only via the console, which is very inconvenient. Check Point is not the most universal solution as a device that provides routing and administration capabilities in addition to security. It is an excellent firewall, but it has a number of limitations in terms of routing and in creating VPN sessions, especially in terms of displaying their states.

I have been in my current position for more than seven years.

Regarding the firewall of Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security), I would rate it an eight because of its not always stable operation. As a universal device that provides both security and some routing functions, I would rate it a seven.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is an excellent central firewall. At the same time, it has some limitations in terms of optimization at the level of displaying VPN-tunnel operation. It also has a more complicated approach to building clusters. Unlike Fortinet, for example, it does not allow you to simply make an active-passive configuration using a shared config. Its clustering approach uses the presence of two IP addresses on each node and necessarily one shared virtual IP address using a VRRP-like architecture. I consider this inconvenient, especially when you need to swap nodes or when the role of each node changes.

I handled the entire technical part of Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security); a separate manager was responsible for licensing and handled all licensing issues for all products, so that was not my area of responsibility.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) still has many additional tools that are not fully integrated into SmartConsole. To get to some specific Check Point functions, you have to open additional consoles, which is very inconvenient. The thick client, SmartConsole, is not maximally stable. It often freezes and requires a lot of resources.

I do consider Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) to be a stable solution, but I also believe that Check Point requires constant monitoring and timely reaction to possible failures.

Check Point has two solutions: cluster and Maestro. ClusterXL is initially intended for a certain volume of traffic. Maestro technology allows you to scale out the firewall group and expand the capabilities of the logical group.

The work of Check Point's customer support for Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) varies. We had a large number of cases with Check Point. There were cases that were solved fairly quickly. There were very long ones. There are still cases that we have not closed, but we are no longer actively dealing with them—we have found workarounds to temporarily close certain problems.

In my practice, I have also used Fortinet's solution, which is also very stable. Fortinet uses the same approaches as Check Point; it has one and the same operating system across its devices. Unlike Check Point, Fortinet has a number of advantages and a number of limitations. The main advantage is its versatility: it acts as both a firewall and a router, works perfectly with VPN, but in terms of security class, it has limitations. Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security), as a firewall, has a number of advantages. If you analyze the datasheets provided by Check Point and Fortinet, Fortinet greatly inflates its performance figures.

I have also used solutions from Fortinet and Cisco ASA before moving to Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) because it provides more capabilities in terms of security and deeper analysis, as well as more detailed troubleshooting options. At the same time, it has some limitations in terms of performance and stability, which I have already mentioned.

We have had all possible options for deploying Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security). Approximately sixty percent are solutions represented as Quantum (CloudGuard) in configurations like VSX and standalone. We had solutions integrated with VMware NSX, but we have already abandoned them because VMware no longer supports such architectures. Forty percent of our current firewalls are firewalls deployed in public clouds—Azure and AWS.

We initially purchased Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) with licenses from AWS, and later we switched to purchasing licenses from an integrator and changed the licensing approach from pure cloud to external licensing.

The main investment effect and everything I can say is that for all the time of my personal work at companies, our services have never been hacked with Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security). There were many attempts, they were all logged, but there were no successful hacks. This is the main benefit we gained from working with this product.

Since we use a unified standard for using policies and modules in Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security), we can clearly plan which modules we need to activate on a particular gateway for its maximum effective use and cost savings. It does not make sense to activate all blades on all gateways. In our architecture, we have two types of gateways: external and corporate. The corporate ones are more heavily loaded, so they have slightly weaker protection. The external ones are less loaded; therefore, they are maximally protected, and almost all possible Check Point blades are activated for them.

By default, most companies do not use separate firewalling solutions in the cloud at all. They use basic functions such as security groups, NACLs, target evaluation, and similar tools. This is sufficient for them. However, all these solutions do not allow the network to be protected from more advanced attacks above standard firewalling. Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) or any NGFW solution makes it possible to protect against a large number of attacks at the IPS, antivirus, and anti-bot level. If there is a sandbox—SandBlast—then the solution can also inspect what is inside the packets themselves to maximally protect the corporate network. By default, cloud-native solutions do not provide this capability.

My advice to other professionals who are considering using Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is to treat it exactly as a firewall. It is an excellent fit for some central nodes, data centers, and core levels. As a universal device, especially a small universal device, I would not recommend it because of the complex cluster configuration and also, in some cases, more complex troubleshooting. In particular, it has issues with role changes at the cluster level when older Check Point versions, the so-called R80.x and earlier, are used.

I really hope that in the future, Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) will abandon the thick client and be able to fully switch to working only via the web interface, and also improve the operation of site-to-site VPN in terms of displaying tunnel states. This is the main problem I have encountered. At the same time, the logging system is excellent, and the troubleshooting system is also very good, but the client's operation definitely has room for improvement. I would rate this review an eight overall.

My usual use cases for Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) involve onboarding as an energy company, where it acts as the cloud-native security platform that extends the traditional firewall and threat prevention capabilities into public cloud environments like AWS, Azure, or GCP. We set up a virtual security gateway inside our cloud network to provide unified policy management, advanced threat prevention, segmentation for the network, and visibility across the cloud and system. From an administrator standpoint, it protects the workload, inspects traffic, and enforces the necessary rules. Day-to-day, my responsibilities include logging, monitoring, and policy control for Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security), making it a strong fit for our organization, especially in the energy sector where we need critical systems to stay up to date throughout twenty-four seven.

For secure cloud migration, Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) integrates seamlessly across AWS, Azure, and GCP, supporting auto-scaling, native logging, and automation, making it a strong fit for our organization while modernizing our infrastructure and maintaining strict compliance requirements. Using this tool helps us avoid complications like needing to prove compliance for SOC 1 or SOC 2, as these platforms are already compliant.

I would say Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is valuable due to its hybrid cloud security features. It offers granular policy management across the on-premises and cloud environments, giving administrators consistent control for configuration drift. We need to change the policy and the inbound and outbound traffic settings, indicating what traffic must be blocked or allowed, and this capability with Check Point provides significant input into our security strategy.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) provides unified security management across both hybrid clouds and on-premises environments. Unified security management affects my security operations positively, as we maintain critical systems on the cloud that require strong security and air gap networks. This cloud-native routing and policy installation helps close gaps in protecting critical applications and environments from exposure to the public cloud.

From an administrator's perspective, Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) enhances our organization with clearer and more intuitive logging, making decisions easier to understand without deep investigation. In the CloudGuard UI, I can see which threats have triggered alerts, and this information is available on the unified dashboard that provides details of the threat analysis upon alert. As a small team, we log into the console to check specific alerts for high or low network usage or machine shutdowns. If needed, I tune the configuration policy, and the visualizing tools with reporting functionality simplify tracking changes made on the firewall, including the relevant source IP or device names. We ingest logs into our SIEM for detailed oversight, which allows us to monitor any administrative changes.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) has significantly reduced our organizational risk. We clearly understand our threat landscape and the associated risks. Onboarding the CloudGuard solution directly into our cloud environment has significantly lowered the risks throughout the network and it is easy to launch. When we assess our security posture with third-party assessments, we gain granular visibility into our network pre- and post-CloudGuard installation, showing how we have addressed significant risks and secured vulnerabilities.

I find troubleshooting a bit challenging with Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security); one area needing improvement is log clarity, as sometimes policy installation takes longer than expected, and resolving cloud-native routing conflicts requires advanced knowledge due to the differences in how AWS and GCP operate.

The UI is significantly good and user-friendly, but adding more advanced features to the reporting perspective, especially concerning administrative changes, would be beneficial. However, these points are not deal-breaking feedback; they would just be beneficial for future releases.

I have been experienced with Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) for five to seven years throughout my career because I need to check the logs for what is coming in, setting up the policy, and I have been experienced with the firewall on my current job as well. Any traffic that needs to be allowed or any application that needs to be allowed is configured through the firewall. The inbound and outbound traffic to the network is configured through the firewall.

Specifically, I have been working with Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) for four to five years.

For reliability, I note that Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) maintains ninety-nine point nine percent uptime and availability, providing us nearly a hundred percent uptime with constant traffic monitoring. Although it may occasionally experience downtime, it remains strong in both reliability and scalability.

Regarding improvements in reliability and stability, I do not see any need as everything performs well. No improvements are necessary in the areas of reliability and stability; they have been consistently good.

Regarding scalability, Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) proves efficient; I find no issues scaling up as our growing company sees increased traffic. It is capable of managing the increased load and performs well as our needs expand.

I have opened a troubleshooting ticket for Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security), and so far, I have had a positive experience; the support team usually responds within twenty-four hours, and they escalate cases, providing instant feedback for priority issues. In urgent situations, I can call and receive support promptly, receiving recommendations or guidance for the issues we encounter.

I would rate the technical support of Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) as eight out of ten.

On the POC, I looked at SonicWall and Palo Alto firewalls as competitors. We found Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) to be better because it has a robust threat prevention system, and onboarding is straightforward compared to SonicWall. We are a small security team, and we prefer not to rely on a security operation center that would help narrow down issues. It takes just a few clicks to bring the firewall up and running, allowing us to set up policies without requiring complicated knowledge or extensive training. In contrast, using Palo Alto and SonicWall requires specific training for policy creation.

I have worked with Palo Alto and SonicWall firewalls but we found that Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) offers a better pricing standpoint and security solution overall.

I participated in the initial setup of Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security). The initial setup of Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security), from an integration standpoint, is straightforward. We began with vendor searches, narrowing down to three candidates, including SonicWall and Check Point.

After moving forward with Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security), we contacted them to set up a cloud VM installation, which is quite straightforward. Coordination with their representative involves scheduling calls for setting up policies and traffic management, and we test it in the QA environment before moving to production with all necessary policy modifications.

I continue to collaborate with the Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) team to ensure everything runs smoothly, and there is always room for improvement, especially as we reach out to them for support or new features.

We have encountered a few subscription-based licensing models for the virtual gateway and security enablement. We have opted for a three-year contract with fixed pricing for the CloudGuard cost structure, which has enterprise-grade capabilities. Although the pricing is slightly high for smaller organizations, it offers enterprise-level security, indicating a need for improvement in the pricing model.

In making the choice between the three products, we prioritize managing risk and the threat landscape, along with compliance and reporting capabilities. Pricing is the first consideration, followed by how well each solution meets our compliance needs, and finally, the reporting capabilities to match enterprise-level requirements.

I have given Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) an overall review rating of ten out of ten.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is a cloud-native application protection platform and a suite of multiple products. We primarily use it for our hybrid multi-cloud environment, primarily around cloud environments. The deployments for different clients were a bit different. For one of the clients, it was just a single cloud vendor, which I believe was AWS, and then multi-organizations with hierarchical architecture.

The intent was to manage hundreds or perhaps thousands of EC2 instances and Kubernetes workloads, EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service), and a lot of PaaS applications, Infrastructure as a Service, container registries, and ECR. The end result was to understand the overall security posture of the cloud, figure out if there are any deviations, and make sure that there is no zero-day and all the detections are in place. Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is a typical CNAPP suite that comprises cloud workload protection, runtime security, and code quality checks, not just your typical SonarQube or SAST, but definitely something that can integrate with your VCS.

The advantages of Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) as a service provider include the platformization story that every single major security provider is doing, something similar to what Palo Alto does.

Check Point had lacked this particular capability in their product stack, so they brought in CloudGuard, integrated it, and used many of the Check Point next-gen firewalls capabilities, along with threat intelligence. This typically brings a lot of other security solutions together, gearing it primarily for the cloud and multi-cloud environment.

With regards to capabilities, it helps detect any attacks that typically fall under the zero-day category. I would not focus on signature-based scanning because that is something everyone can do practically. You can build policies to avoid unintended exposure of storage buckets, sensitive data disclosure, and manage misconfigured policies or privileges that are quite extensive, not following the least privilege principle. It also takes care of that.

Check Point has augmented many API security capabilities as well. If you are hosting any APIs using AWS PaaS services, such as API Gateway Lambda, even on-premises, it can fairly detect standard web vulnerabilities, OWASP Top 10, and all of that. I think that is decent as well. We have pretty much got most of them.

Regarding organizational risk, Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is definitely meant for improved visibility and risk mitigation. If you have got multi-cloud environments, you cannot use cloud-native services efficiently and effectively because you look at two or three different clouds with controls scattered across them. You do not have a centralized pane of glass, and you do not know what happens to a particular traffic flow if it is moving from one cloud to another. This product is not just Check Point that does this; Palo Alto and Wiz also provide similar solutions to an extent. You get an entire view of it, knowing what controls already exist, which helps build additional policies and definitely aids in risk mitigation.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is definitely lagging behind its peers. I am not sure what the reason is. Compared to Palo Alto, they are not there in terms of capabilities and feature set. I do not think there are any obvious misses, but there is mostly lesser adoption in the industry.

Regarding the negatives, sometimes we encounter challenges, especially if a feature may not be working, but that is typical of any vendor. There is no glaring gap; it is a solid product, but based on my experience, the adoption has not been on par with what its peers are doing.

From time to time, we do face challenges with some features, especially if you need to configure a policy where you may need false positive fine-tuning. Sometimes, you have these anomaly detections, which are crucial from a zero-day attack perspective, but they can create a lot of false positives. When you have to tweak, you sometimes need to bring in technical assistance or professional services to achieve what you want. The documentation may not be quite sufficient. There were instances in the past, but I am not sure if they have ramped it up quite significantly recently.

I have been dealing with the product for about three and a half to four years, starting after COVID for sure. It happened sometime back in 2022, which was the first time that we saw and used that as a comparison with Palo Alto and other firewall products, Cisco Secure Firewall. Check Point ramped up a lot of its capabilities, including CNAPP and all the additional detections that it can bring in, threat prevention, and then adding on visibility, deep packet inspection, and things of that nature. So it has been about four to four and a half years now.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) was stable; we never had any outages because of it, so definitely stable. We had a couple of instances, but I would not count that against Check Point since that is typical for most vendors. We raised a couple of feature requests that they introduced in later releases, which made us happy. Nothing glaringly bad; it was mostly stable. Because it is more of a CNAPP solution, it will not disrupt significantly, and we had a very conservative configuration, especially regarding preventive controls.

The product is super easy to scale; just talk to PS. If you do it on day zero, then that is really great. Wanting to do it afterward is possible, but you have to plan it well.

The technical support is great. When working with an EMEA client, the majority of the TAC was based out of Israel, and they are fantastic with quick resolutions and turnaround times.

I would rate Check Point's support nine out of ten; they are really good.

I have tried both Check Point Cloud and other providers such as AWS. If I were not under strict regulatory jurisdiction, I would prefer Check Point Cloud itself, as you get better support and they own the infrastructure. Troubleshooting becomes simple, and they seamlessly take care of the pre-provisioning of the underlying infrastructure. However, for a few clients in financial services with strict regulatory requirements, we had to create it on our infrastructure.

The deployment of Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is very seamless. It learns when you operate in monitoring mode on day zero and day one, understanding the lay of the land, checking what services you have, tweaking them, and applying policy compliance templates like PCI DSS or HIPAA. You can use all those templates to start configuring your policies, so it is pretty robust. Day zero is smooth, just API integration, service principal, and API keys. If you need to integrate with GitHub or other platforms, there are additional integrations, but it serves the purpose by default.

The deployment procedure for Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is straightforward and takes only a couple of minutes for initial integrations. Fine-tuning takes some time because every environment is different, and you must first understand what the product does and its capabilities before tailoring the configuration. But it is really straightforward, and they have it well documented. If you are using very unusual SaaS applications or non-standard configurations, that might take a bit more time, but that is the same for most others.

You cannot compare ROI from one vendor to another definitively, but if I compare against capabilities that I never had before bringing in Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security), then there is quite a decent ROI. The product itself is cheap; whatever capabilities that you get are significant. Low cost significantly brings a decent ROI. Additionally, because you have a centralized pane of glass to manage the entire infrastructure, the cloud security piece reduces the workforce needed for management, which definitely contributes to ROI.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is comparatively conservative in terms of pricing; it is not a very expensive product. If you are a Check Point shop with multiple products throughout your infrastructure and have a good relationship with a decent reseller, then I think their pricing is much more conservative compared to Palo Alto and a couple of other vendors.

If you look at adoption, if you have got ten clients, then seven or eight of them go with Palo Alto, and the remainder get scattered between Cisco and Check Point.

If you are a Check Point shop, then it integrates really well. The basic integrations that you have with identity and access management and SIEM solutions or SOAR platforms work well. All decent vendors have playbooks that center around Check Point, so I think those are decent and not a challenge. There are a lot of out-of-the-box integrations available, and if you want to build custom integrations, you can work with the TAC or professional services and get that done. If you are a Check Point shop in its entirety, if you have got CloudGuard, Harmony, and the old Check Point UTMs or next-gen firewalls, all of them stitch seamlessly together.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is available through the AWS marketplace, and if you have got a committed spend, you can use that toward purchasing via the marketplace. While I have not used it personally, it was communicated as an option available by our resellers.

I would rate Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) somewhere around seven or eight overall. The adoption is a bit low, which makes me curious about the roadmap; if you have a great market share, you typically see a very decent number of feature releases coming out all the time. Considering stability, ROI, and other factors, I think seven is a fair rating.

We are the system integrator for Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security).

We work with the BFSI, Bank and Finance domain, government segment, as well as corporate industry. In the BFSI and bank and finance sectors, we have deployed this solution to multiple customers including many corporate banks, financial institutes, and trading companies. Most trading companies are using Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) from our side, and we have deployed it for multiple customers.

For application control, intrusion prevention, IPS, anti-bot, sandboxing, zero-day attacks, Zero Trust Network, ZTNA, and multiple features including remote access, encryption communication, and secure integration with Active Directory and LDAP, our customers typically use this solution.

Smart console and centralized policy management are the most valuable and useful features of Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security). This is the best feature in Check Point along with logging, monitoring, and event monitoring features.

Customers are using it for multiple users, multiple applications, multiple sites, URLs, and many other things. Therefore, they need complete visibility. When logs are collected centrally, a central administrator and central log manager can pull all the details and use them whenever an audit occurs or any kind of compliance is required; they can pull those details easily.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) has multiple models available based on user base and user count, including 1530, 1570, and 1590. These are all Quantum Cloud Firewall models, and the Quantum series and 7000 series are also available.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) has features that other products do not have, including a very good email security solution. Customers want to switch from those products to Check Point because it has comprehensive email security solutions, and Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) covers that as well. Check Point Harmony Collaboration is the best solution for email security.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is already good in the enterprise segment and corporate industries. However, they should have some smaller appliances for some small SMB customers.

I have been working with this product specifically for the last 12 years.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is a really stable firewall from both hardware and application perspectives, so I do not anticipate finding any challenges with power fluctuations or anything else that might go wrong. Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is rugged and does not crash.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) has multiple models available based on user base and user count, including 1530, 1570, and 1590. These are all Quantum Cloud Firewall models, and the Quantum series and 7000 series are also available.

I do not often communicate with the technical support of Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) because we have our expert team that implements those solutions themselves.

Customers were using other solutions such as Sophos and Fortinet before they migrated to Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security). The transition was very easy for them as they received all the details in a single dashboard, in a single pane of situation, and all the details are available in log event management solutions.

Customers typically used Fortinet, Sophos, and SonicWall before using Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security).

I do participate in the initial setup of Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security).

There is no complexity in the implementation for Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security); it is easy to configure.

I have not faced many challenges during the initial setup; it has always been straightforward and simple.

We are the system integrator for Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security).

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is definitely a cost-effective solution. When customers buy it and when they expand on this technology, it definitely gives them ROI, return on investment.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is easy to implement, easy to use, easy to install, and easy to configure, especially compared to other competitors such as Palo Alto, Fortinet, Sophos, and SonicWall. Therefore, Check Point is pretty comfortable and easy to use.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) can be integrated with other firewalls, other network switches, and other network devices with the same solutions. There is nothing hard to implement; it is easy to integrate with other technologies.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is a good solution for organizational prospects helping to reduce risk. Customers are using multiple features such as malware detection, ransomware, zero-day attacks with ZTNA. All the features are available as blade technologies, while others have UTM features; Check Point has blade security solutions, and that is the main use case.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) comes under MPLS, SD-WAN, VLAN, and all those features. Moreover, all bundled solutions are available in Check Point, so I do not see that many additional features are needed.

Regarding the documentation I usually use, it is in a presentation type of document focused on customer presentation. I use different types of documents, and if anything is readily available for customer presentations, that is very helpful. Every detail I need is already in the documentation, and I can find it easily.

I give this solution a rating of 9 out of 10.

The main use case of using Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is to secure all of our cloud infrastructures while they are browsing the internet and scanning everything.

We use Check Point CloudGuard Network Security for HTTPS inspection as well as URL filtering and providing only a certain limited access for the VMs to certain websites.

The best features Check Point CloudGuard Network Security offers are its threat emulation and threat extraction blade as well as bring your own license where you can use the on-prem Check Point CloudGuard and decommission it to use in the cloud.

I believe Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has impacted our organization positively because it is one of the stable products that I have used till now, and we do not have to upgrade Check Point CloudGuard Network Security for any sort of CVE or bug in its OS and it is very stable.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has decreased the organizational risk because it provides compliance with HIPAA as well as PCI DSS by means of its compliance blade. It makes it easier for us to determine if we are compliant or not.

It made me more secure because when you talk about security, Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is on top of the list with 99.8 in blocking malware according to the Miercom list. I believe it has had a positive effect and we have not had any incidents.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security needs to focus more on the VPN side by being more flexible with configuring the VPN with route-based VPN and having a failover with it.

I have been using Check Point CloudGuard Network Security for about five to six months, and we are still in the evaluation phase.

We have not faced any incident to date when using Check Point CloudGuard Network Security. We have faced zero downtime, and we have not been compromised.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is one of the stable products I have used.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is very scalable. It depends upon your license, and if you purchase the right kind of license, then it is very scalable.

The customer support for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is on point. If you raise a case, they will reply within half an hour. I would rate the customer support for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security at a 10.

Positive

We did not use a different solution previously.

The setup was acceptable. We got a good deal.

We only need fewer employees because Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is easier to use in the cloud and we do not have to tweak every setting. However, we are yet to see a good return on investment.

We do not need as many employees because Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is easier to use in the cloud and we do not have to tweak every setting. However, we are yet to see a good return on investment.

We are a partner with Check Point CloudGuard Network Security.

We did not evaluate any other options.

Currently, we have not used Check Point CloudGuard Network Security alongside with any other Check Point products.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security does provide unified management access. Currently, we do not have any on-prem devices, but you can use the CloudGuard management system to onboard both cloud as well as on-prem gateways, where you can see the logs for both the devices. Currently, we have not used it on-prem, so we do not have this capability.

If you are looking at the value and security and you do not want to compromise, then Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is one of the best solutions you could have in your organization. I would give this review an overall rating of 9.

My main use case for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has been securing cloud network traffic, and I mainly rely on it to protect workloads in the cloud and enforce consistent security policies across cloud environments.

A quick example of how I use Check Point CloudGuard Network Security to protect my cloud workloads is by inspecting inbound traffic to public-facing services; recently, it blocked suspicious scans and unauthorized access attempts before they could reach my cloud applications.

The best features Check Point CloudGuard Network Security offers include cloud-native threat prevention that inspects traffic in real time, consistent policy enforcement across multi-cloud environments, and automation and integration with cloud platforms for easier deployment.

The feature that made the biggest difference for me is the real-time threat prevention because it stops malicious traffic and risky behavior before it ever reaches my cloud workloads. This has significantly reduced actual incidents and false positives that I need to chase.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has positively impacted my organization by reducing successful attacks and risky cloud traffic, meaning fewer incidents reach production systems. It has also cut down the time my team spends troubleshooting threats, letting us focus more on proactive cloud security, which has freed up my time.

Since deploying Check Point CloudGuard Network Security, I have seen about a 40% drop in cloud network alerts, which has cut down noise and false positives, helping my team save roughly 25% of time previously spent on manual investigation and threat cleanup.

I think the initial setup of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security can be simpler; onboarding could be more intuitive for new cloud teams, and it could also have more flexible custom reporting and better documentation examples.

I have been using Check Point CloudGuard Network Security for about a year.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is stable.

The scalability of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has been very good; it handles growth in workloads and traffic smoothly, and the policies scale across accounts without performance issues.

I think the customer support for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has been responsive and helpful.

Positive

I previously relied mainly on AWS Native security controls, and I switched to Check Point CloudGuard Network Security because I needed stronger threat prevention, better visibility, and centralized policy management, as the AWS Native security controls were too limited for me, necessitating a solution with greater visibility.

I think the initial setup of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security can be simpler; onboarding could be more intuitive for new cloud teams, and it could also have more flexible custom reporting and better documentation examples.

I have seen a return on investment from Check Point CloudGuard Network Security, with a clear impact reflected in a 40% reduction in cloud network alerts and about 25% less time spent by my team on manual investigations and threat analysis. This means less operational overhead and more time for proactive cloud projects, translating to measurable cost savings and better efficiency overall.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security was a bit complex to map out at first; the setup cost was fair, especially through the AWS Marketplace, though planning the right license levels took some initial effort, so overall, it feels like good value for the level of cloud protection I get.

I evaluated other solutions, including Palo Alto, the AWS Native Controls, and Fortinet.

Compared to Palo Alto, AWS Native Controls, and Fortinet, Check Point CloudGuard Network Security was easier to integrate with my AWS environment and roll out consistent policies across accounts, so the day-to-day ops felt quicker. Compared to AWS Native, it is more feature-rich, and versus Palo Alto, it is similar in capability but slightly friendlier for multi-cloud automation.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security provides me with unified security management across my cloud and hybrid environments, and having a single console for policies and visibility simplifies operations, reduces errors, and makes it much easier to manage security consistently as I scale.

I utilize Check Point CloudGuard Network Security alongside other Check Point products like Check Point Quantum Force and Harmony Endpoints, which integrate through a shared management and threat intelligence layer, giving me consistent visibility and protection across cloud, network, and endpoints.

My advice to others looking into using Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is to plan your cloud architecture and policies early and start with a phased rollout.

I would rate Check Point CloudGuard Network Security an eight on a scale of one to ten because I think there is always room to be better.

I am no longer working with Barracuda products and have shifted to Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security). Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is used within my company.

The features I find most valuable include the reporting, detection rate of the firewall, and automatic blocking of content in inbound traffic.

I utilize only the Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) firewall and am not using any other Check Point products alongside it.

The features I find most valuable include the reporting, detection rate of the firewall, and automatic blocking of content in inbound traffic.

The benefits I have seen using it include reporting, the dashboard, and how it catches the logs. This is particularly valuable for a manager who has to deal with multiple things.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) has impacted my organization positively so far.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) can be improved by bundling more products. As a consumer in the market, I would appreciate at least one or two extra features within the box.

Competitors in the market such as Palo Alto or Fortinet offer more features within their ecosystem. Palo Alto offers extra features within their offering, though it is expensive. If Check Point is not bidding competitively, people may let go of Check Point. The offerings and the price being paid sometimes make Check Point difficult to justify during the initial purchase.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is not very user-friendly. The UI is complex to understand initially, but once I became familiar with it, it became easier.

Exploring the full capabilities by just browsing the website is not possible. Visiting the website regularly is necessary if you are new to Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security).

I have been working with Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) for almost a year.

The initial setup was somewhat challenging. Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) offers versatility and elasticity for expansion. In case of major workloads, I can vertically stack and grow by adding new hardware. The old and new hardware work in harmony together.

The technical support is quite good so far, particularly the local support.

Before finally choosing Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security), I evaluated other options including Fortinet and Palo Alto.

I finally chose Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) because of everything it offers. In my country, the pricing falls in the middle range. Palo Alto is the most expensive option, and Fortinet is the cheapest. I do not prefer Fortinet because I feel they are not very strong with detection. Palo Alto was too expensive for my budget.

The initial setup was somewhat challenging. Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) offers versatility and elasticity for expansion. In case of major workloads, I can vertically stack and grow by adding new hardware. The old and new hardware work in harmony together.

It is very difficult to determine any return on investment with Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) within a very short span of time. It has only been a year, so I may be able to assess this after another year or so.

Before finally choosing Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security), I evaluated other options including Fortinet and Palo Alto.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) has a nominal impact on my organization. Currently, the landscape is mainly relying on identity. Based on the identity side, Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) does not have much responsibility within my premise or within my system architecture.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) has impacted my confidence in secure cloud deployments and migrations. The product is not very user-friendly, and the UI is complex to understand initially, but once I became familiar with it, it became easier. Exploring the full capabilities by just browsing the website is not possible. Visiting the website regularly is necessary if you are new to Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security).

I use Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) to protect my network assets on the firewall front, managing the inbound and outbound traffic for my cloud workload.

The biggest advantage of Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) for me is routing my traffic and whitelisting my outbound traffic to my vendors, partners, and clients. I am using it for both outbound and inbound traffic purposes. Whenever there was an inspection on the network front, I used network IPS. When whitelisting our applications on the inbound part, I whitelist the application control to my cloud users to connect those particular applications.

Integrating with other Check Point products is easy because Check Point offers a platform-based approach rather than a tool-based solution. Within one platform, I can integrate the tools so that I get the visibility.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) has a significant impact on my confidence in secure cloud deployments and migrations. The experience is good. For providing internet access across my cloud platform, using Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) means I can push the policy from a single console. Check Point has a gateway and a policy manager, so across unified policy, I can push it. An important feature with Check Point is object-level whitelisting. For example, I whitelist Office 365. I do not want to whitelist their IP. If I am whitelisting their object in the FQDN piece, there is no need to modify the IP. Sometimes Microsoft changes IPs, and we do not want to whitelist again and again. By whitelisting the object, life is simpler. We do not want to continuously whitelist the IPs.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) helps to reduce my organizational risk significantly. I would say that unified AI threat prevention is good. Compared to other solutions, it definitely reduces our threat prevention. I cannot specify a number because all products have different solutions, but I would say that the product detects the threat expectation at double nine.

The only negative aspect is that they have to improve the UI. The UI is very slow, and getting the graph details on the security performance metrics is lagging. That is the only thing I feel is not currently available in Check Point.

I would like to see improvements in the graphical aspect of the UI. They definitely have to enhance that.

I have been using Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) for six months since I started.

Since I have been using Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) for six months, I have not seen any glitches or downtime at all. The advantage with them is stability.

In terms of scalability, it is very easy to scale up or scale out based on my license and traffic pattern. If I do not size the proper traffic, then I have to buy the sizing. We have not come across any such situations.

Support is helpful and very responsive.

If I were to rate support from zero to ten points, I could give it eight point five or nine.

In terms of the installation procedure, the initial setup was complicated, but after that, the implementation is fine.

I am able to observe ROI with Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security), and I see some savings in terms of time or money.

If I were to quantify the ROI, I would say it is around fifteen to twenty percent.

In terms of price and license, I would say Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is not expensive. The pricing is moderate.

Check Point stands out, and I can confidently say it stands out.

My biggest challenge while deploying Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is arriving at the right architecture in the right place. I give this review an overall rating of nine.

My main use case for Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is to secure my Amazon Web Services, also known as AWS environment.

I use Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) to secure my AWS environment by configuring it to be the main entry point for any web request that comes into our EC2 servers. It is in the public subnet and has been configured to communicate with the private subnet.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) has positively impacted my organization by mainly helping us secure our cloud environment at the network base. It was a bit cheaper than whatever AWS was offering. Being a network level of security, it was more aligned with what we were thinking as a use case.

The best features Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) offers for me are its Threat Protection and Check Point VPN facilities.

The Threat Protection feature helps me in my day-to-day work by actually protecting us from malicious requests getting in by itself. It has machine learning rules deployed on their end, which helps us identify and automatically block malicious requests coming in from the web.

Additionally, I was using RADIUS VPN and it is quite stable for providing site-to-site connectivity between my endpoints to my cloud environment.

The only thing I think can be improved about Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is their syslog logging facility. Currently, the logs that come into our SIEM platform via syslog are creating a lot of noise. If something had to be improved, I would suggest it improves its logging facility and provides more contextualized logs so that it is easier for security analysts to understand and make queries around it.

I have been using Check Point Cloud Firewall about three years.

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is stable.

The scalability of Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is pretty good and automated.

The customer support for Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is pretty good.

I would rate the customer support a 10 out of 10 because it provides a lot of information and it quickly helps in resolving the issue.

I did not use any different solution than Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security).

I was not a part of pricing, setup cost, or licensing.

I did not evaluate any other options before choosing Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security).

I have not compared Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) to any other solutions.

I would suggest that if your budget allows it and you know how to configure it properly, do go for Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) as it is a very good product to be used. I would rate this product a 9 out of 10 overall.

I normally use Check Point CloudGuard Network Security to protect cloud workloads and control traffic between cloud resources. It is mostly for enforcing segmentation and managing security policies across different cloud environments.

A recent example of how I use Check Point CloudGuard Network Security to enforce segmentation or manage policies was when we deployed a new application tier in the cloud. I used CloudGuard to segment it from the rest of the environment and apply stricter threat prevention rules.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is deployed in the public cloud setup in my case.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security does provide unified security management across hybrid clouds as well as on-premises. Having policies and visibility centralized in one place makes operations much smoother. Instead of managing separate rule sets for cloud and on-premises, I can apply consistent policies across both and see all traffic flows in a single dashboard. That cuts down on configuration risk and makes troubleshooting faster.

I do utilize Check Point CloudGuard Network Security alongside other Check Point products. In my case, I use it alongside Quantum and Harmony Endpoint.

The best features in Check Point CloudGuard Network Security are the centralized cloud-native policy management, strong threat prevention for cloud traffic, and automatic discovery of cloud assets.

The most valuable feature of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security in my day-to-day work is the centralized cloud-native policy management. I can control all the clouds, which is very beneficial.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has helped us reduce misconfigurations and improve how quickly we can secure new cloud workloads. We have also had fewer issues with unexpected traffic because the visibility tools make it easier to spot problems.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has helped me reduce my organizational risk. The clear visibility into cloud traffic and the automatic adaptation to cloud changes reduced the chance of misconfigurations, which were one of our biggest risks. The number of policy-related issues we had to fix dropped noticeably once we started using it.

It has increased my confidence in secure cloud deployments and migrations quite a bit. Knowing that policy adjusts automatically when new resources come online makes migration less stressful. The consistent visibility across environments also helps because I can verify traffic flows.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security could be improved with faster policy propagation across large multi-cloud environments and more intuitive dashboards for complex rule sets.

I have been using Check Point CloudGuard Network Security for about one year and a half.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is stable.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security scales well as our cloud footprint grows. It handled adding more workloads and environments without major issues.

The customer support for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is very good and very helpful, but I think it could be better on higher complexity issues.

Negative

We used a mix of native cloud controls and some older firewall setups before Check Point CloudGuard Network Security. We switched because they did not give us the same level of unified visibility or consistent policies across environments.

Securing a new workload with Check Point CloudGuard Network Security now could take a few hours before because I had to map out network paths and build policies manually. Now, it usually takes under an hour. The automatic asset discovery and clear visibility shave off a good chunk of the setup time.

I purchased Check Point CloudGuard Network Security through the AWS Marketplace.

I cannot give a percentage for money, but we have seen a return mainly through time savings and fewer configuration-related issues with Check Point CloudGuard Network Security.

I have evaluated solutions that compete with Check Point CloudGuard Network Security. We evaluated solutions from Palo Alto Networks, Prisma Cloud, and also Azure. However, AWS with Check Point CloudGuard Network Security was much easier to implement, and that is why we prefer it.

We did evaluate other options before choosing Check Point CloudGuard Network Security. The main alternatives we evaluated were Palo Alto's Prisma Cloud and some of the native security tools from Azure. They work for certain use cases, but Check Point CloudGuard Network Security gave us a stronger unified policy management.

The core security features of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security work really well, but a few usability areas hold it back: the policy propagation speed and parts of the interface. I would give Check Point CloudGuard Network Security a rating of seven out of ten.

I would advise others looking into using Check Point CloudGuard Network Security to first plan ahead. I recommend starting with a small pilot across one or two tiers, defining policy and segmentation baselines upfront.