Check Point NGFW Reviews

Working in an MSP environment, there are more than a hundred firewalls and we use Check Point NGFW firewall which is mainly implemented as perimeter security and internal segmentation firewall. 

Due to our requirements, we implement site-to-site VPN between clients and cloud providers (AWS/Goggle/Azure). The centralized managed infrastructure makes it simple for the IT staff to operate and monitor the firewalls. 

The Smart Console provides a single pane of glass that allows the IT staff to easily manage the environment and troubleshoot issues.

The Smart Console provides a single pane of glass that allows the IT staff to easily manage the environment and troubleshoot issues. 

The UI decreases the hours required to complete a task. It also incorporates compliance and audit control validation into the system. 

IT staff can construct a single policy across all enforcement points in the Infinity architecture. 

There's a unified policy table that combines threat prevention and segmentation policies. 

SmartEvent allows consolidated event management and export.

The Identity-Based Inspection Control gives us the ability to leverage the organization’s Microsoft AD, LDAP, RADIUS, and Cisco pxGrid. 

The Terminal Servers group membership allows policies to automate typical processes (user moves/add/changes) and decrease configuration changes required on the firewall, which is tremendously beneficial. This limits the integration with the identity store to just one interface, and we still get broad security coverage based on a single set of identity policies. 

We leverage the combination of identity and application awareness, which is mandatory in order to build scalable security policies that protect the business without compromising user experience. This feature is extended to the SmartEvent console.

The SmartEvent blade has a huge number of security events/logs. We are trying to find correlation with the help of the SmartEvent blade, however, it may impact the performance of our Check Point management server. It requires additional licenses for Check Point management servers. It should be inbuilt within the management server.

With the increase of volume of traffic, the required resource/hardware to properly run goes up. Therefore, the hardware engineering to architecture flow has to be more efficient.

I've used the solution actively since 2008.

There were moments of where it did struggle when the rules were not properly maintained meaning that rules clean up exercise has to be performed annually to prune out rules no longer being use to allow the firewall to function more efficiently.

Overall, the product handles a production workload like a champ.

Customer service was pleasant.

Positive

Working in an MSP, we have multiple vendors/principals of NGFWs.

You have to work with a sales account manager to get the best price.

You need to work with a vendor that is overall quite knowledgeable. 

The solution should be evaluated and a trial run should be done in the lab as Check Point provides VM instances that can be installed on an open server box. Make sure to check with sales about the features and if they require additional licenses before purchasing.

Working in MSP, we have looked at various NGFWs. Check Point is one of them.

I protect customers and other types of data by ensuring a secure environment. Check Point allows me to deploy quickly and securely, along with using more advanced detection and prevention. By securing multiple sites and various infrastructure elements, I have reduced my overall workload.

I'm using a lot of permanent tunnels and protecting them to ensure that monitoring customer infrastructure is not compromised in any way, shape, or form.

Various hardware has been deployed at proper sizing for customers and the equipment is stable without the need for a lot of custom configuration

By deploying Check Point, it has made it easier to manage everything from a single interface. The management dashboard and policies are on its single pane of glass. This has allowed for faster resolution of problems during deployment.

Being able to look at log events and sort quickly for information in regards to problems with connectivity or traffic makes it easier to troubleshoot and gain other insights into traffic-related problems.

Overall, the insights provided also allow for data to be presented to customers to give them an overall perspective of their security.

The management interface is well designed and easy to understand. It reduces the time for deployment, changes, and onboarding new customers.

The logging facility is amazing and gives great insights into traffic. Although Event Management is also amazing, it can be cost-prohibitive for other companies to onboard.

The ability to deploy VPN communities makes onboarding new sites easy. Multi-site configurations can be deployed with very little oversight and with minimal additional work after the initial deployment is successful.

I would like to see better Data Leakage protection options and easier-to-understand deployment models for this. I have been working with DLP for a while now and find that other vendors seem to be doing better at this. That said, having to deploy another solution adds other costs.

Some error messages could be better and more specific. The days of generic error messages should be over by now to allow faster, better insights into fixes for any traffic-related problems.

Some of the sizings of firewalls for deployment seem not exact and require some tweaking based on real-world traffic and connectivity types (for example, PPPoE).

I have been deploying Check Point firewalls for about 12 years and still work with them on many projects. I trust them to protect my infrastructure along with other tools.

I will continue to use Check Point as long as they keep pace with the innovation currently in place without sacrificing customer service.

The product is very stable once deployed.

So far, no issues with scalability have been detected - other than hardware replacement on the growth of traffic

The initial setup has some come complexities, however, that is the nature with multiple types of connectivity and different customer requirements.

Check Point firewalls are/were deployed in various parts of our network to achieve perimeter defense and internal network segmentation. 

In addition to the firewall functionality, each appliance also leveraged Check Point's IPS blades. The perimeter Check Point appliances were also responsible for terminating any and all site-to-site VPN connections with third parties. 

All traffic from remote locations, remote VPN users, and egress traffic to the internet is filtered through the Check Point equipment at some point in our network.

Check Point has not improved our organization. We have observed a sharp decline in the quality of both products and support. 

Over the last several years, there has not been a single week where we have not had an outstanding issue open with Check Point support's advanced tier teams. 

Initially, we had incredibly impactful issues regarding their scalable platform hardware (which is being discontinued in favor of Maestro) to the point we were forced to rip them out due to them being completely unreliable. 

Check Point support has also seen a significant drop in quality, despite my organization even being a Diamond Support customer with Check Point. We fully believe it would be a wiser investment of time to call Geek Squad rather than Check Point.

The only area that Check Point still seems to excel in is their logging. Reviewing logs on Check Point is a snappy and intuitive process that allows the end-user to filter down traffic to specifically what they're looking for very easily and even with little knowledge of Check Point. 

The ability to create filters on the fly in the GUI with simple clicks to various areas of the log is fantastic and allows one to find exactly what they're looking for with very little effort. Note that this is probably the only thing Check Point still has going for it.

Check Point's support, at all levels, needs a complete overhaul. The Check Point support staff aren't even shy about telling you how understaffed, underpaid, and underappreciated they are. Any engineer with a hint of talent is pulled from general support to higher tiers, and then, once they reach a level of competency above that of your average acorn, they leave for better-paying jobs elsewhere. 

My organization witnessed this first hand fighting through the lower tiers of support and working frequently with the scalable platform team. When we switched to Diamond Support we saw no significant improvement in support save for shorter hold times.

I have personally used Check Point solutions for nearly ten years. My organization has used Check Point for 15+ years.

The solution is absolutely unstable. My organization follows vendor best practices exactly and has every deployment vetted by multiple levels within the vendor. Despite this, Check Point hardware has repeatedly proved unreliable at best, sometimes resulting in total outages for our company. 

My current organization has used Check Point for the relevant past and is only recently completely switching vendors to Palo Alto.

All current Check Point hardware is destined for the recycle bin. There is a pretty low ROI.

Most firewall vendors, Check Point included, make the selection of hardware easy enough based on projected usage. Likewise setup on many vendors in greenfield environments is simple enough and should not require professional services.

I was not involved with the initial deployment of Check Point in our environment as it was before my time. However, each subsequent deployment I have been involved in with Check Point was used based on the existing relationship. Once the issues became too impactful and we realized we had no hope of seeing any improvements we began efforts to rip out the existing Check Point equipment.

Do not let Check Point's past success lure you into their current state of bottom of the barrel.

We use the solution for a perimeter firewall, an internal segmentation firewall, and a routing device in our organization.

Check Point NGFW is easy to use, flexible and provides good performance. The security of the product is excellent, we do not have to do a lot of patching or upgrades because of vulnerabilities.

The solution could improve by keeping more up-to-date with technology. For example, if Amazon releases something in the security field, Check Point should have integration or adoption of this feature a bit faster than it is today. Sometimes we can hear a lot of the marketing information about an attractive feature, which we would like to have, but the feature will be released in two years. This timeframe should decrease.

I have been using Check Point NGFW for approximately nine years.

The solution is stable.

This solution provides service for 50,000 employees in my organization.

We have premium support which is different from regular support. We have had good experiences with the support.

We have used BitScaler previously and use Check Point CloudGuard Network Security.

The installation is easy. It can be installed through an image very quickly.

The solution has saved us a lot of costs from an operational perspective.

There is an annual license required for this solution.

I would recommend this solution. However, I would advise everyone to carefully evaluate their needs against this vendor and compare them with the competition. There is a lot of strong competition between Palo Alto and Fortinet. One could have an advantage over the other for a customer's specific use case.

I rate Check Point an eight out of ten.

We have deployed Check Point firewalls for perimeter security and also for filtering East-West traffic. 

Check Point helps in improving perimeter security along with giving insights into different kinds of traffic and attacks.

Isolation between different tiers of APPs is critical for us and Check Point is utilized for handling high traffic volumes of East-West traffic.

We are leveraging the VPN module on the perimeter firewall for users to access the VPNs. VPN authentication is integrated with RSA for multi-factor authentication.

We have reduced the number of firewalls using the VSX cluster from Check Point. This reduced management overhead to a great extent. Also, the stability of clustered firewall helps us in meeting SLAs with clients.

Check Point firewalls can be tuned for one-off cases like allowing out-of-sync packets for a source-destination pair, which is a feature that helped us tackle application issues. 

We have deployed VPN firewalls in multiple data centers, which help with load sharing and redundancy for the VPN traffic.

Managing all of our user VPNs, customer VPNs, and Cloud VPN tunnels' endpoint encryption from a single management portal is helping us.

VSX helps to reduce the physical footprint on datacenter racks.

The SmartView monitor and SmartReporter help us to monitor and report on traffic.

Centralized management and management high availability give the ability to manage firewalls in a DR scenario. 

Features such as the ability to simultaneously edit the rule base by multiple admins and revert to a previous rule base revision are very useful.

Having a separate appliance for logging helps us in meeting the security audit requirements, without having an overhead on management.

Configurations can be complex in some situations and need experienced engineers for managing the solution.

Integration with a third-party authentication mechanism is tricky and needs to be planned well.

SmartView monitor can be enhanced to display granular details of gateways with a single click. Also, having the ability to generate alerts from the Smart Monitor would be a nice feature.

We have been using Check Point firewalls for the last eight years.

Support might take a long time to resolve issues in rare scenarios.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to always keep an identical configuration, even interface statuses, in a VSX cluster before an upgrade to minimize upgrade failures.

The purpose of using the firewall is to protect the users from the external network, internet. Apart from that, we have set up IPsec tunnels between two different sites, and for internal usage, between two different zones, we use these firewalls as well.

Our environment consists of a 3-tier architecture, which is recommended by Check Point. We use the central management system to manage our 3-tier architecture, and we use the Smart Console as well.

This solution has improved the way our organization functions in multiple ways. For example, during the pandemic situation, things completely shifted. People who are working from the office are now working from home, and it is our responsibility, as network security engineers, to monitor the home users. We do not want them to access any blacklisted sites and we want to make sure that they are protected from threats and risks from the internet.

With the Office Mode VPN, it would not be possible to manage work from home because the security would not be in place. We have more granular security options with this firewall.

There are many useful features including the Office VPN, which provides us with a seamless connection for users who are working remotely. This is helpful for our employees that are working from home, as they get the same office environment as if they were on-premises. It is also helpful for us as an organization because we have good control and visibility over their data, including network traffic packets.

There are two major areas that need to be improved.

The study material for Check Point needs to be improved, as well as the cost for certification. One of my friends recently completed the certification and it was costlier than other firewall security certificates.

The reports are generally good but there is not much control. We would like to have more filters. Essentially, we want more granular reporting.

I have been using Check Point NGFW since 2018.

There are no issues with stability that we have found. It is a good brand, and it is one of the oldest and finest firewalls on the market right now.

Scalability is not a problem. It has both UI and CLI-based options to configure it, and it is not difficult to extend or scale. We have between four and six deployments and we plan to continue using it in the future. As we are growing, we will continue to expand its usage.

We have about 12 people working directly with Check Point NGFW. There are approximately 4,000 users who are indirectly using it, as their traffic passes through the firewall. It is used by the entire organization.

We have support available from the Check Point TAC team. Our experience with them has been pretty good. We haven't had any issues or problems communicating with them or getting a solution from them.

Prior to Check Point, we were using Cisco ASA.

The problem with Cisco ASA is that it is a purely CLl-based firewall. Check Point is not only UI and CLI-based, but it is also a next-generation firewall. It has many different and more advanced features, compared to Cisco ASA.

For example, in Cisco ASA, we can use only two gateways in active-active mode, but with this product, we can use five gateways at a time. Another difference is that the Cisco ASA policy configuration options are not as granular as Check Point.

The initial setup process was very straightforward.

Our deployment took between seven and eight months, which included replacing our Cisco ASA firewall. It began with the planning, then implementation, followed by validation, and then we replaced the existing firewall. It would have been a little complex for us, but we did it all in a very straightforward manner.

We have a very good in-house engineering team that does the setup and configuration. We did not require any third-party assistance because we have had full training on it.

Our deployment included seven or eight people who were working in different shifts. Similarly, we have three to four network security engineers working in shifts who maintain it. This includes things like dealing with tickets for updating policies.

We are happy with the return that we are getting from this firewall.

Rather than money, this product is saving the security of our organization. This is the first thing that we were looking for, before deploying this firewall in our organization. We know that ASA is cheaper than Check Point, but our concentration was making the environment more secure.

Cost-wise, it is more expensive than Cisco ASA, but the returns include better security and more granular options. We are happy with that. We were not looking to save money but rather, providing a safer environment for our users.

The price of this product is not too costly and you do not need to pay for all of the features. It is more expensive than Cisco ASA, yet cheaper than a similar product by Palo Alto. The cost varies, depending on the service. For example, we have opted for Geo Protection, which is something that costs extra, but we wanted that feature.

We did not evaluate other options. We only compared the differences between our existing Cisco ASA implementation and Check Point.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this product is that the TAC team is very knowledgeable and supportive. If I want to understand something or if I have doubts, then usually clear it up and make sure that I understand the logic. I have learned a lot from them.

This is a product that is rich in features and my advice for anybody who is deploying it for the first time is to learn about them in advance. It is a little bit different than a CLI-based firewall and I recommend learning about all of the features before deploying it.

At this point, we are happy with the results that we are getting from Check Point, and are not looking to replace it. It works as we were expecting before it was deployed.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

In our logistics setup, we employ Check Point NGFW across various critical areas. For instance, we use it to secure different database applications within our systems, ensuring robust protection for our operations. Whether it is managing updates, maintaining standby reliability, or enhancing system performance, Check Point NGFW plays a vital role in safeguarding our logistics infrastructure.

Using Check Point in our system has provided several benefits. Firstly, it ensures secure access for authorized users while preventing unauthorized access from public users. Secondly, it enables us to monitor application usage closely, identifying any suspicious activity such as repeated failed login attempts. 

Check Point NGFW provides essential security, featuring no-obligation access for secure connections, strong intrusion prevention, and comprehensive antivirus protection.

One area for improvement in Check Point NGFW is the support process. It can be challenging to open a technical support case through the customer portal, often requiring additional steps to open the case.

I have been working with Check Point NGFW since 2015.

We have not experienced any major stability issues with Check Point NGFW.

Check Point NGFW is fairly scalable.

The technical support is decent. I would rate them as an eight out of ten.

Positive

Setting up a new Check Point NGFW is generally straightforward for us. With our experience and familiarity with the process, we can handle it without encountering any significant issues. We are used to creating simulations and implementing improvements, which facilitates the setup process, even at an intermediary level. We usually require two engineers for the deployment process, along with additional resources like network switches, PCs, and testing equipment.

The pricing for Check Point NGFW tends to be higher compared to other options in the market, especially for high-end models. In comparison with enterprise-grade firewalls like Palo Alto, Check Point is among the more expensive choices.

My recommendation for organizations considering implementing Check Point NGFW is to prioritize selecting high-end models for optimal performance and security. Check Point NGFW offers robust protection for networks and data, allowing businesses to maintain their operations with confidence. Overall, I would rate Check Point NGFW as an eight out of ten.

I usually apply Check Point to protect my customer's environment as a main solution boundary gateway, DMZ gateway, LAN gateway, or VPN site-to-site with other Check Point appliances and other vendors. I do a Harmony Endpoint full integration. I use other tools such as threat prevention blades (like IPS and IDS), anti-virus, anti-bot, anti-malware, and the Sandblast solution.

I haven't had any data leaks or vulnerability situations. The NGFW has been working as it should! It's performing well and offers great security for me and my customers by protecting the environment. Administrators can easily follow and monitor security events, or the health status of the environment or appliance using Smarteview, SmartEvent, and the monitoring blade. We can look at CPU usage, disk space, and traffic and can see user history in real-time. 

The threat extraction is the most valuable aspect. It protects the final user and prevents them from falling into the trap of infected files. When a file needs to be downloaded by a machine user, this solution analyzes the file at the same time to send to the user a clean version of this file. If not infected, the real version is available. The threat emulation can scan the computer applications searching for malicious activities and block them according to policy.

It could be easier to manage the licenses on blades and contracts. If you have a large environment it will take too much time for your team to verify if all the licenses and contracts are correct and work well. Although it is possible to manage licenses using SmartUpate and SmartConsole, if there are issues, you can only fix them using an expert shell. Simplifying the process would help simplify the daily tasks of administrators.  

I've been using the solution for two years.

Technical support works well.

Positive

NGFW is not a cheap solution, however, it does guarantee security. If the goal is to protect assets, using NGFW by Check Point helps immensely.

I use this in my company environment. I did not evaluate other options.