Check Point NGFW Reviews

We use the solution to protect our organization and workers from the outside Internet or any untrusted network.

We have the three-tier architecture of Check Point. We use its consoles, central management system, and firewall device for managing it. This three-tier architecture is recommended by the Check Point Community.

We protect our internal customers using Check Point Firewalls by providing them security as well as detecting vulnerabilities. 

The most valuable feature would be the central management system of Check Point because we can manage multiple firewalls through it at the same time. It doesn't matter the location.

I also like the advanced Antivirus feature of Check Point.

The Threat Management feature makes it very easy to detect the vulnerabilities and other factors. We can make new policy according to it. Policy creation is very simple in Check Point. Because the logs are very good in Check Point Firewall, this reduces our work with the reports that we are getting from the Threat Management. It is very convenient for us to use the reports to make new policies for security and other things.

It is very user-friendly.

The training for Check Point Firewall should increase, including the number of Training Centers. For most new people in our organization, we have to provide them training from our end, as they are not trained in Check Point Firewalls. So, we have to do the training, from our point of view, to make our engineers able to use Check Point Firewalls. However, with other firewalls, they are already trained, so we are not require to provide them training. This could be improved by the Check Point Community.

I have been using it for the past six years.

The Check Point Firewall is stable. 

The updates that we get are also very stable. We haven't found any stability issues in the updates at all. Features, like the Antivirus, are updated with almost every release and done on a frequent basis.

The scalability is very good for Check Point Firewall. It is very easy to increase. For example, during the COVID-19 period, we increased our deployment on an emergency basis, and it was very easy.

My organization has around 4,000 people. 

For Check Point, we have a team of around eight people who manage it. We are basically a team of senior network engineers.

The tech support is very good for Check Point. We get straightforward solutions for it every time, and they do not take a lot of time since we have to resolve the cases quickly in a live environment. So, they are very helpful and capable.

We are also using Cisco ASA, and we have been thinking that we need to go with Cisco or Check Point. At last, we have decided to go with Check Point because of its advanced features.

The initial setup was very straightforward. We didn't have many problems.

The deployment part took around nine to 10 months. We completely planned the deployment before doing it. Since we already installed Check Point Firewall in multiple branches earlier, we used those same plans to configure it.

We didn't require any external help for the deployment. Our R&D and tech were capable of doing it. Our deployment team consisted of six to eight people, working in different shifts, to configure it.

Overall, it is a good cost saving product. We do not have to purchase additional hardware for it, which is a good. This saves us 10 percent in costs compared to Cisco.

The solution saves us about 20 percent in our time, which is substantial.

The price could be decreased, because the competitors of Check Point Firewall are giving lower prices in comparison.

The licensing part is something that is very easy to do in Check Point Firewall. We just need to purchase the license, then we have to write the keys in while installing it. The good thing is that it is an easy process to update the license.

We are also using Cisco ASA and FTD. The problem with Cisco ASA is the GUI is missing, while the GUI is good for Check Point Firewall. Apart from that, in Check Point, there are advanced features, like Antivirus and Threat Management, for which we do not require other hardware, where it is required for Cisco ASA Firewall. So, Check Point provides us a cost savings in that way.

The central management system of Check Point is missing in Cisco ASA. This is a good feature because it saves time. We can use it to manage multiple firewalls through one central management device. It is also easy to use.

We are slowly eliminating Cisco ASA and using more Check Point Firewalls, bringing more Check Point Firewalls into our environment.

I have also used Palo Alto, but the organization is using Check Point because they have more confidence in things like Check Point's stability factor. However, more people are trained to use Palo Alto.

Get good training on Check Point, which is very rare to obtain at this point of time. Before implementing or deploy the product, you should be trained properly so you know all the features. It has heavy features in terms of quantity. You should know about each feature before using or deploying it.

I would rate the solution as an eight out of 10. 

We use it for VSX virtualization and we use it for normal firewall functions as well as NAT. And we use it for VPN. We don't use a mobile client, we just use the VPN for mobile users.

We are able to virtualize about four firewalls on one machine. Before, we needed to have four firewall hardware devices, physical devices, from Cisco. We had four appliances, but now, with Check Point, we just have one. We can manage them, we can integrate them, and we can increase connections using one and the other. It has broken down connection complexities into just a GUI.

Also, previously we had downtime due to memory saturation with our old firewalls. We were using Cisco ASA before. During peak periods, CPU utilization was high. Immediately, when we switched to Check Point, that was the first thing we started monitoring. What is the CPU utilization on the device? We observed that CPU utilization stayed around 30 percent, as compared to 70 percent with the Cisco we had before, although it was an old-generation Cisco. Now, at worst, CPU utilization goes to 35 percent. That gives us confidence in the device. 

In addition, the way Check Point built their solution, there is a Management Server that you do your administration on. You have the main security gateway, so it's like they broke them down into two devices. Previously, on the Cisco, everything was in one box: both the management and the gateway were in one box. With Check Point breaking it into two boxes, if there's a failure point, you know it's either in the management or the security gateway. The management is segmented from the main security gateway. If the security gateway is not functioning properly, we know that we have to isolate the security gateway and find out what the problem is. Or if the management is not coming up or is not sending the rules to the security gateway, we know there's something wrong with it so we isolate it and treat it differently. Just that ability to break them down into different parts, isolating them and isolating problems, is a really nice concept.

And with the security gateway there are two devices, so there's also a failover.

• The most valuable feature for us is the VSX, the virtualization.
• The GUI is also better than what we had previously.
• The third feature is basic IP rules, which are more straightforward.
• And let's not forget the VPN.

The way we use the VPN is usually for partners to connect with. We want a secure connection between our bank and other enterprises so we use the VPN for them. Also, when we want to secure a connection to our staff workstations, when employees want to work from home, we use a VPN. That has been a very crucial feature because of COVID-19. A lot of our people needed to work remotely.

The VPN part was actually one of the most complex parts for us. It was not easy for us to switch from Cisco, because of one particular part of the integration: connecting the Check Point device to an Entrust server. Entrust is a solution that provides two-factor authentication. We got around it by using another server, a solution called RADIUS.

It was very difficult to integrate the VPN. Until now, we still don't know why it didn't work. With our previous environment, Cisco, it worked seamlessly. We could connect an Active Directory server to a two-factor authentication server, and that to the firewall. But when we came onboard with Check Point, the point-of-sale said it's possible for you to use what you have on your old infrastructure. We tried with the same configurations, and we even invited the vendor that provided the stuff for us, but we were not able to go about it. At the end of day they had to use a different two-FA solution. I don't if Check Point has a limitation in connecting with other two-FAs. Maybe it only connects with Microsoft two-FA or Google two-FA or some proprietary two-FA. They could work on this issue to make it easier.

Apart from that, we are coming from something that was not so good to something that is much better.

I have been using the Check Point Next Generation Firewall for 10 months.

The stability of Check Point's firewall, for what we use it for now, is pretty good. Especially, with the licensing of blades and the way they script it down into different managers. You have a part that manages blades, you have the part that manages NAT, and you have the part that manages identity. The VSX is another one on its own. So it is very stable for us.

When we add more load to it, when we go full-blown with what we want to use the device for, that will be a really good test of strength for the device. But for now the stability is top-notch.

They scale well.

All information passes through the firewall. We have about 8,000-plus users, including communicating with third-party or the networks of other enterprises that we do business with.

We've not used technical support. We asked our questions of the vendor that deployed and he was quite free and open in providing solutions. Anytime we call him we can ask. He was like our own local support.

There is also a Check Point community, although we've not really been active there, but you can go and ask questions there too, apart from support.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

It took a while about a month, but it was not because of the complexity. It was because we gave them what we already have on the ground. We were on Cisco before and they had to come up with a replica of the configurations for Check Point. When they got back to us we had to make some corrections, and there was some back-and-forth before everything finally stabilized.

Four our day-to-day administrative work, we have about four people involved.

We used a Check Point partner for the installation. I was involved in the deployment, meaning that while they were deploying I was there. They even took us through some training.

We have surely seen ROI compared to the other vendors I mentioned, in terms of costs. And we tested all the firewall features to see if it is doing what it says can do. And so far so good, it's excellent. It's a good return.

Check Point offers good solutions, but it won't kill your budget.

Going into Next-Generation firewalls, you should know what the different blades are for, and when you want to buy a solution, know what you want to use that solution for. If it's for your normal IP rule set, for identity awareness, content awareness, for VPN, or for NAT, know the blades you want. Every solution or every feature of the firewall has license blades. If you want to activate a feature to see how that feature handles the kind of work you give, and it handles it pretty well, you can then move to other features.

We evaluated Palo Alto, Fortinet FortiGate, and Cisco FirePOWER.

Check Point was new to the market so we had to ask questions among other users. "How is this solution? Is it fine?" We got some top users, some top enterprises, that said, "Yes, we've been using it for a while and it's not bad. It's actually great." So we said, "Okay, let's go ahead."

I would recommend going into Check Point solutions. Although Check Point has the option of implementing your firewall on a server, I would advise implementing it on a perimeter device because servers have latency. So deploy it on a dedicated device. Carry out a survey to find out if the device can handle the kind of workload you need to put through it.

Also, make it a redundant solution, apart from the Management Server, which can be just one device. Although I should note that up until now, we have not had anything like that.

We use the product for safeguarding our office network on a routine basis. These firewalls protect against external threats, manage VPN access for remote users, and address various security scenarios. 

Our primary focus involves malware prevention, intrusion detection, and ensuring robust security measures to shield our office network from potential cyber threats originating from the internet. 

It serves as a traditional yet effective security system, providing comprehensive protection against hackers and potential risks associated with internet usage.

A lot of things need to be improved in Check Point NGFW. For example, their support team isn't very efficient and useful. The solution itself isn't easy to learn, making it hard for support to provide solutions. The design makes it so pockets (specific teams) have to work together when there's an issue, which creates a mess. 

Also, Check Point lacks competitive capabilities like SD-WAN and CGM app integration. And visibility needs improvement. For example, Fortinet shows all connected devices with IP addresses, Mac addresses, and sometimes usernames. More granular detail is crucial for security. 

Support efficiency, visibility, and adding competitive capabilities are key areas for improvement.

The product offers a robust and intuitive experience, catering to the essential needs of users. 

The Cleanup Rule's ability to discard unwanted traffic and the inclusion of default Autonomous Threat Prevention Profiles simplifies security measures, catering to various deployment scenarios. I was impressed by how easy it was to activate blades and implement them on a security gateway, with the process taking less than five minutes. 

Additionally, the Smart Console's clear and efficient user interface ensures that the changes to the policy are swiftly made, with the added benefit of maintaining proper audit logs.

Places for improvement include:

• Having a Zone Alarm and the standalone endpoint VPN that become compatible products.
• Having a Smart Console in-place upgrades with IP/fingerprint retention.
• Offering a Mac version of Smart Console.
• Integration of CPview and things like fw accel stat in the monitoring blade.
• No more legacy SmartDashboard for some features.
• Streamlining of the endpoint solution and deployment options and also offering the possibility to convert shared policy to unified policy when you run R80.X via some sort of wizard in a layer or so. This is a classical case for people who upgraded their R77 management.
• Offering a fixed deployment schedule for accumulator hotfixes. This would help us foresee maintenance windows in organizations with rigid change management procedures.
• Finding a way to restore the object search like in R77, where you could find any part of an object name and not a word in the object.
• Scheduling policy pushes in Smart Console.

I've used the solution for ten years.

We are resellers, and our customers need a robust and well-performing NGFW. The Check Point NGFW tool was acquired since they needed collaborators to have secure access to the company's resources and applications. This tool provides us with the alerts and corrections that must be made when finding a security breach in their environment. 

Check Point NGFW also provides a great capacity of features and helps us apply them to the organization. It has web filtering limited to third parties and SSL encryption. The application's administration is very simple and centralized since it helps them a lot in reporting and generating alerts.

The organization needed a tool that would provide various security functionalities in the organization, and so far, Check Point NGFW has helped them a lot. 

It has helped the company by applying access control policies and limiting access to third parties and only those who must enter the organization to use resources and applications. 

The application behaved very well with the current resources in the company network; it helped us to prevent several security holes found with web filtering and internal DDoS attacks. 

Check Point NGFW can quickly identify where the attacks are coming from, provide detailed and complete information on the attacks, and provide zero-day attacks in real-time.

One of the valuable characteristics of Check Point NGFW is that it presents very centralized management. Due to this, their security throughout and outside of the organization has improved. 

Many collaborators work from their homes or different places and help them filter and limit access to packet inspection with flexibility and speed that was not previously possible. 

The records that it shows and generates (depending on its configuration) make everything very visible to be able to adjust and correct in time. When superiors ask for administrative information, it provides great value. 

Its management web interface is very easy and user-friendly.

The tool provides what is expected in its security functionality. However, some points must be improved, such as the latency in the GUI entry. It takes a while to register and allow access to the administrative panel.

Customer service should be improved, both in the administrative and technical fields. Support cases have been generated several times, and it takes time to resolve the case. Finding support is a little bit hard. This needs to be improved.

I've used the solution for one and a half years.

We use the solution to configure sandboxing features for enterprises. We also use it for policy-level configurations and VPNs.

Sandboxing is the most valuable feature. A majority of the configurations are very accurate. We can find what an organization's user is downloading from the internet.

The support team should be faster.

I have been using the solution since 2016.

All products have some bugs. However, we had a minimum bug experience with Check Point. I rate the tool’s stability an eight out of ten.

The product is scalable. Everyone in our company uses the product. We are 100 users. We have an on-premise firewall. We use it every day.

I have contacted the support team. I have had good conversations with the engineers. Sometimes, it takes a little bit of time to solve some issues. If it's a complex issue, we need to start from scratch and escalate to a bigger tier of support.

Positive

The initial setup is very easy.

The product is not that expensive for what it is offering, but it could be cheaper. Nowadays, all the vendors are increasing their prices. Suggesting the product to the customers will be easier if it is a little cheaper. The tool offers good attributes.

Palo Alto is also a good vendor. We chose to go with Check Point as well for our enterprise solution as distributors, and we suggest it to our customers.

I was an engineer for AT&T. I helped customers with configurations. The vendor is taking care of the user side of security with Check Point Harmony. It is a very good product. Check Point Harmony must provide administrators the ability to manage external programs remotely. Some customers want such features, and other vendors provide them. I would recommend the solution to others. The vendor has been investing a lot of money and effort to prevent zero-day attacks. Overall, I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

We use it for our core firewall and also for VPN.

It can be managed by many people. I have a team, and any of them can manage this firewall and make some changes. All the changes are combined into one policy.

Its usability is the best for me. As compared to Palo Alto, Juniper, or Cisco firewalls, Check Point firewall has the best user interface for management, reading logs, looking for some objects, and looking for policies.

It's expensive.

We have been using this solution for more than 15 years.

It's stable.

I don't know about its scalability because I haven't had to scale. I have a flat traffic rate.

I have 500 users. It's deployed across two data centers.

I contacted them sometimes but not very often. It was a good experience. I have contacts with the engineers in Check Point. They provide the right solution every time. I also use the Check Point support portal. They have many descriptions and solutions for some of the problems.

I have previously used Palo Alto, Juniper, and Cisco. Check Point NGFW is better than all of them. 

I changed from Cisco ASA. It was a long time ago. Cisco ASA was an old technology, whereas Check Point NGFW has better performance and better knowledge about applications.

It was easy for me because I have many years of experience. I could see its benefits within two or three months of deployment.

In terms of maintenance, it requires normal maintenance. Its maintenance is similar to other devices.

It's expensive, but its price is reasonable looking at its functionality and power.

Try many solutions and then choose the best one for you.

I'd rate Check Point NGFW a ten out of ten.

We use the solution for full-scale integration and end-to-end management at the organization. The Check Point NGFW implementation took place quite smoothly.

Check Point NGFW is the best in terms of comprehensive protection against network threats and security against malware and phishing attacks. It smoothly restricts these via anti-phishing algorithms.

Check Point NGFW source package covers all the bases - application control, NAT, DLP, routing, content awareness, VPN, desktop security, and much more.

It is scalable, provides end-to-end resolution and customized productive services like providing a complete solution for perimeter protection that
blocks the traffic based on an IP address or on applications
and content. This makes Check Point NGFW highly promising and makes it a complete solution.

Check Point NGFW is the best in terms of comprehensive protection against network threats, malware, and phishing and smoothly restricts these via anti-phishing algorithms.

The source package covers all the bases - application control, NAT, DLP, routing, content awareness, VPN, desktop security, et cetera.

It provides end-to-end resolution. It is a customized productive service and a complete solution for perimeter protection that blocks traffic based on IPs, applications, and content.

The most valuable services it provides are end-to-end resolution and perimeter protection; It blocks traffic based on IP address, applications, and content.

Check Point NGFW is best in terms of comprehensive protection against network threats, malware, and phishing. It has great anti-phishing algorithms.

They could improve by lowering prices. The source package is a bit more expensive than its competitors. 

We've had some downtime issues.

It could be more generalized and user-friendly in terms of its support portal for raising tickets. Ads management should all just be on a single click.

Overall Check Point NGFW is highly scalable and provides end-to-end resolution and a wide range of customized productive services with a huge community and team behind it.

I've used the solution for about 1.5 years or so.

I hadn't gone through any such solution earlier. I just tried in-built system solutions.

Check Point NGFW integration is quite smooth in terms of licensing. They are a bit more expensive, yet they are overall a strong product and a must-have for professionals.

No, I did not go through software review websites for recommendations and software services outlooks.

Check Point NGFW is highly scalable. It has a wide range of customized productive services with a huge community and team behind its technology.

We have deployed this software to provide comprehensive security beyond the Next Generation Firewall (NGFW). 

This software provides advanced analytics on any security measures that can have a great impact on our applications. 

It blocks malware attacks that can destroy data and leak confidential information to unauthorized parties. Check Point NGFW has helped the company to set up security policies that enhance the effective transfer of files and secure browsing strategies. There is improved prevention of external threats to data and increased production across the networking infrastructure.

Check Point NGFW has helped the company in the prevention of cyber attacks that could affect operations and slow down production. 

The intelligence reports from the real-time insights have helped members to avoid risks and plan efficiently for the future. 

Security threats that we used to experience before we deployed this product have been reduced, and the networking channels are ever safe. 

Sharing documents under secure infrastructure has increased the confidence of employees and enhanced faster implementation of tasks and projects.

The software provision of uncompromising security models across all the company applications has stimulated increased production. 

It has given the IT team full control and setup authority to scale down and deploy security to the most demanding platforms. 

The solution is safeguarding our financial databases and always has prevented fraud while giving employees peace of mind. 

The software has enabled us to come up with a unified dashboard that can monitor all accounting operations and investigate when there are security loopholes that can lead to data mismanagement.

The current features have a full set of security models that can protect any organization's information from ransomware attacks. 

When installed on Windows, the system with low storage space slows down. It is not compatible with all mobile devices and this may be unfair to some users. The next release can be more compatible with Windows and mobile devices for increased efficiency. 

I have experienced the best environment while working with this platform. All the data across the transactional records is ever secure under Check Point NGFW and I am proud of that great step ahead.

I've used the solution for nine months.

This platform is stable in the prevention of ransomware attacks.

I have been impressed by the performance of this software since we deployed it.

The customer support team has been always been responsive and interactive with our members.

Positive

I have not used a similar solution.

The setup was straightforward.

The deployment was done through the vendor team.

The current ROI is 35%.

The setup cost is good and the solution is affordable.

I evaluated other options. However, the company settled on Check Point NGFW due to its performance.

This is a great solution for many organizations that require stable data security.