Check Point NGFW Reviews

Our primary use case is to secure the perimeter and users in our network.

We use IPS/IDS, deep packet inspection, and VPN.

Our network performance and safety have improved. The reporting also gives us more information about our network, including cost and risk reduction.

This solution helps to keep our network safe and secure, protecting our investment.

The most valuable feature is the powerful, deep packet inspection engine.

The management console and diagnostic tools are powerful and we are happy with them.

The reporting is detailed and helpful.

There should be better integration with our current NAC solution to increase the granularity of policies that we implement.

We have been using the Check Point NGFW for two years.

Overall, this is a very complete tool.

In my company, we use the Check Point NG Firewall solution to secure the perimeter and user network. We use IPS/IDS, deep packet inspection, and VPN. We have implemented routing rules based on the destination of the traffic, and the performance of the global solution is satisfactory.

We use the solution, too, as the firewall in a core node, which is very important to the business. It secures the network equipment and service integrity.

We are delighted with the powerful management console and diagnostic tools.

The Check Point Next Generation Firewall has improved the performance of our network, bringing the IT administrator a lot of information and data to make decisions about security, vulnerability, strengths, and weaknesses in our deployed projects.

It provides a lot of information to help better understand our users. Now we feel more confident with our network and know what happens on it, as well as what kind of traffic we have.

In addition, we have many reports that include data to help with decision-making and information about how the solution reduces cost and risk.

The most valuable feature in my opinion is the powerful deep packet inspection engine. This engine provides me with a great capacity to control the traffic generated by my users and provides our company with a very real vision of the use that users make of the network.

The reporting capability is very important as we are able to show the company management the benefits and the return on investment, in terms of securing our network.

The number of physical network ports on the device should be increased to allow for greater capacity.

Another point of improvement would be to continue improving the integration line with our current NAC solution in order to exchange more attributes and increase the granularity of the implemented policies.

We have been using the Check Point NGFW for three years.

Compared to other similar solutions on the market, this product is quite complete.

In my opinion, this solution is already quite complete with respect to our requirements.

Nowadays, there are many threats and it's necessary to have an automatic process to defend your organization. The Check Point NGFW is a good solution for this use case.

For my organization, CheckPoint NGFW helped us with enforcing threat prevention.

Threat prevention capabilities are a natural extension of next-generation firewalls' deep packet inspection capabilities. As the traffic passes through the device, they also inspect the traffic for known exploits of existing vulnerabilities (IPS).

Files can be sent off-device to be emulated in a virtual sandbox to detect malicious behavior, named sandbox security.

I think that the main benefit of an NGFW is the ability to safely enable the use of Internet applications that empower users to be more productive while blocking less desirable applications.

I think that the most valuable feature is the prevention of known and zero-day threats because they are constantly trying to access your company and compromise its data. It is very important to have your solution always update for this.

I think that another important feature is that it is a cloud solution. More and more companies have all of their systems in the cloud and the threats are pointing here.

The features that a next-generation firewall includes are application and user control, integrated intrusion prevention, advanced malware detection such as sandboxing, and leverages threat intelligence feeds.

Check Point products have many places that need to be improved, but they are constantly upgrading.

I have been using Check Point NGFW since 2015.

Check Point has a good support department and they are always ready to help you.

Previously, I used Fortinet but Check Point provides us with more features.

I used this solution for the first time in 2015 when I worked for a local Internet Service Provider. At that point, I used the R77.30 console and I saw all of the good features that it provided.

Now, I use R80.30 in my current company and these products are the best in the market. This company is going to be at the forefront and you can complete your solution with other products in their portfolio.

Today’s next-generation network firewall can be found deployed on-premises at the edge of enterprises and branch offices, on-premises at internal segment boundaries, in public clouds such as Amazon (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and the Google Cloud Platform. They are also deployed in private clouds.

The licensing includes the cost of support.

We evaluated many others options including solutions by Fortinet, Palo Alto, SonicWall, etc.

We think that Check Point is the best because they are at the forefront.

We support various clients in the government sector in Mexico. We provide different solutions in terms of network security, data security, and perimeter security. The NGFM Firewall is available locally and different offices and/or institutions of the government sector pass through a more secure and controlled infrastructure.

This type of infrastructure has different zones or areas that are managed and keeping them centralized has helped us to maintain and control them. In addition, we are generating fast and safe solutions for our users on each site.

Check Point has provided us with an easier way to control all of the access traffic for more than 50 segments that we have within the organization. In addition, we have been able to maintain stricter control of the users and/or equipment that are had in all the institutions that make up the government sector of the entity.

Check Point technology has allowed us to keep the organization and distribution of the network in order within the institution. In addition, the VPN service we have has worked correctly for users who want to work remotely from their homes, which was of great help during the pandemic.

Within the organization, the inspection of packages has given us great help in detecting traffic that may be a threat to the institution.

The configuration of policies has allowed us to maintain control of access and users for each institution that is incorporated into our headquarters. It is well organized.

Some other of the services that have worked well for us are antivirus, anti-bot, and URL filtering. Together, these have allowed us to maintain control and organization amongst the users.

Another one of the pluses that have helped us a lot has been the IPsec VPN, especially in these times of pandemic.

Using the tool is somewhat complex when teaching new staff, although after practice it is quite easy to get used to this technology.

One of the improvements that could be included is to have a help menu to obtain advice or help for the different options that are presented in the application.

The equipment is complex, so you need guidance from specialized people or those who constantly work with Check Point. Better forums and information manuals could be provided so that users from different institutions can have more access to the information.

The company has been using the Check Point NGFW for more than four years.

Compared to other networking equipment I have used, I would say that Check Point's NGFW is just as stable. We rarely have problems, and they can all be properly fixed without affecting productive or critical network elements.

There are currently more than 5,000 users within government facilities in Mexico. This team has provided us with the necessary resources to provide services to users in record time.

With the teams that we currently have, we have not considered increasing the number of technicians. If the need should arise then Check Point is still a very good option.

Technical support has been available when we have problems, and they are always there to help us get back up and running as quickly as possible. In addition, the equipment is kept up-to-date with the latest versions, or alternatively, those recommended by the provider.

This solution was deployed before I entered this governmental organization. What I have heard is that prior to this, the security and segmentation control was not ideal and they wanted to improve it. With the implementation of Check Point, great improvements have been provided to the infrastructure, maintaining order within the organization.

When I entered the company, the equipment was already installed. With the passage of time, some configurations have been improved and some extra services have also been achieved for mobile users.

It was implemented through a provider that has been guiding us towards the correct use of the equipment and the best practices to keep it updated. The service has been excellent, both in common day-to-day ticketing situations, including the most serious incidents.

It has been well worth the investment, as the Check Point technology is there to help when we need it.

One of the main reasons that Check Point is used is that it helps us to administer security at a reasonable price. This is naturally in addition to meeting the expectations of the institution.

An annual technical support fee is paid to maintain the equipment with the most updated licenses and versions and thus avoid vulnerabilities

Check Point is the option that has always been considered for its good firewall organization, which allows us to have excellent security.

My advice is to always have a supplier with whom you can resolve doubts or more specific technical questions. Since the equipment requires many very technical parameters, it is helpful to have a person who understands and uses this technology correctly.

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.

We deployed a Check Point firewall on the perimeter as well as on the internal network. Both are in HA & we have enabled all threat prevention blades. All devices are 5600 & 4200. We are managing our two firewalls with two different security management servers.

Currently, we are using the R80.20 firmware version and we have a pretty simple design.

Our primary uses are firewall security, VPN, web filtering & monitoring. We have also used the TE-100X appliance for private cloud sandboxing.

With Check Point, we achieved redundancy but the problem was three public IP addresses that were required to be configured as HA, with two physical IPs & one virtual IP.

Our previous firewall used a single public IP but now, with Check Point using three, it became very difficult for us to make available the same segment of public IP addresses from our ISP. After many support calls, however, we found a solution.

The other option which is helpful is that there are no limits for any objects used in the policy. Our previous firewall does support limited time objects & IP address objects.

Check Point's new Smart dashboard has an all-in-one configuration interface. They provide a very easy configuration for NAT and one tick for source & destination NAT is possible.

Policies can be configured in a more organized way using a section & layered approach.

Application control has all of the required application data to introduce it into policy and the URL filtering works great, although creating regular expressions is complicated.

The software upgrade procedure is very easy; it just needs few clicks & we are done.

Check Point has both GUI (Graphical Interface) & smart dashboard, but it will be better if it sticks to either one of them. 

A threat prevention policy needs to be created in a different tab but instead, if those policies could be related to access policy then it will be easier to apply the threat prevention to our relevant traffic.

One of the most complicated aspects is the VPN Configuration, which should be simplified in future releases. The monitor tab should have a VPN tab, where we can see the current tunnel status.

I have been using Check Point NGFW for more than the last three years.

With respect to stability, we always have ongoing support calls. We have faced lots of issues that have led to upgrading with a Hotfix.

When it comes to scalability, our current Check Point is far better than our previous firewall.

Technical support is very helpful & always there to help us with issues. Also, the TAC response is quick.

Previously, we had a Fortinet firewall, which was pretty slow when it came to operations.

The initial setup was simple.

We implemented the firewalls with our in-house team.

Check Point should provide some basic license for mobile access VPN by default, for at least five to ten users.

The only other vendor that we have evaluated is Fortinet.

We use this solution as a layer 3/4 firewall deploying access rules in our DMZ. We have more than six different centers with different service layers, a core of up to 500Gb per site, and other service centers providing security for all inbound and outbound connections.

VSX gives us the capacity to consolidate hardware in fewer devices, reducing the OPEX, and creating different VFWs to provide service to different environments or services.

Layer 7 features allow us to upgrade our security services. Activating the required features only requires upgrading the license.

This product has provided us the total control of our connections in our very bandwidth and session-intensive environment. It offers high capacity on NAT tables that, with other vendors, needed to use really huge devices to support.

We can control all of our international connections in a central point with a distributed cluster in a very easy way and with good performance.

The layer 7 features (AV, IPS, Web filtering, etc) and integrations with AWS provide us a clear point of management for future deployments on the cloud.

The packet inspection capabilities are great.

ARP protections based on interface works better than it does with other vendors.

There are new improvements related to the upgrade of the solution, making for the easiest upgrade/update procedures.

New features allow for concurrent use of the console in write mode between different users.

The exposed API allows us to automate a lot of actions in a very easy way.

The central console and log collector are basically the best central management consoles, and each day provides new useful features like counts, etc.

There are issues with stability in some specific versions.

The VPN is a little difficult to configure, and sometimes you need help from Check Point professional services.

There are some performance problems with the IPS when the FW is in a high load, but in general, it is working better than in previous versions.

The routing is configured on the gateway, so, you need to remember for migration purposes.

The virtual infrastructure of the central management requires a huge amount of resources to work properly and manage all the logs without problems.

I have been using Check Point NGFW for more than 10 years.

In general, this is a very stable solution. We have had only one incident in the last few years that was with the size or the route tables in memory that finally it was discovered that was a bug in a specific version and was solved upgrading the devices to new firmware that solved the bug

This product is very scalable. There are a lot of different virtual and physical devices to cover any requirement in terms of sessions, performance, etc.

We are very happy with the support. They are very skilled engineers and always fast at analyzing and solving issues.

We did you another solution, but we switched due to prices and solution stability.

The initial setup is not more complex than other solutions.

Was implemented using a third-party vendor.

Our ROI with this firewall is high.

The vendor has a very flexible licensing approach.

Cost per Gb reduced and reduced OPEX compared with other vendors.

We evaluated Fortinet, Juniper, and Palo Alto.

This is a complex solution and there are other vendors that are easier to manage, but it is perhaps the best solution regardless.

We use this firewall to protect the internal network and to set up the IPSec standard from one location to another.

One of the benefits that we have realized from using this product is that the user interface makes it easier to operate, compared to using the CLI.  In Check Point 5.0, we bought the option, giving us the ability to use the GUI as well as the CLI. A person who is comfortable with the UI can work with it according to different scenarios.

The most valuable feature is the set of encryption options that are available.

Viewing the logs in the interface is easy to do, which is one of the things that I like.

This is a UI-based firewall that is easy to use.

The antivirus feature is a little bit weak and should be improved. The updates are not as regular when compared to other firewalls, such as Palo Alto.

The training materials and certification process should be improved. For example, the certificates are more expensive and there's no good training available on the internet right now.

I have been using Check Point NGFW for approximately seven years, since 2014.

The stability of this firewall is good and we haven't had any problems. It is a well-known, quality brand.

There are no issues with extendability or scalability. Over the course of a year, we added another firewall, bringing us from one to two deployments, and the process was not tough. We were easily able to manage it.

We have approximately 12 people who work with this firewall during different shifts.

I have been in contact with technical support many times, and they are good. Most of the time, they solve the problem as soon as possible, and they give a perfect solution.

Currently, we are using firewalls from different vendors, including Palo Alto and Cisco. Our Cisco ASA solution is completely CLI-based and Palo Alto is like Check Point with an interface that is a mix of UI and CLI-based.

Both Palo Alto and Cisco ASA have very good tutorials available on the internet, including videos on YouTube and courses on Udemy.

On the other hand, Cisco ASA is more difficult to use because there is no UI and for a person who does not have any knowledge of the networking commands, they have to learn them.

The first phase of the implementation is to plan the firewall deployment. After that, we do the configuration and validate it. In the case of a Check Point firewall, this process will take between two and three months to complete.

The complexity of the process depends on the features that you want to add. In general, it is straightforward and not too complex.

I was not present when the first firewall was set up, although I was presented for the deployment of new ones. Whenever there is a new firewall deployment, I am involved. We have between four and five network engineers who take care of this part.

There is no maintenance required from our side. When we have a hardware issue then we contact technical support to get it sorted out.

We have seen ROI; for the purpose that we have deployed this firewall, we are getting returns. Based on this, we are buying more Check Point firewalls.

The price of Check Point is lower than Palo Alto but higher than Cisco ASA. For us, the price for licensing is fine, we have no issue with it, and feel that the cost is justified.

There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

My advice for anybody who is implementing Check Point NGFW is that if they get stuck, then visit the technical support section of the website and read the articles that are available. I have learned many things from the tech articles, and it's a good website if you want to learn about it in-depth.

One of the things that I learned is that Check Point firewalls also use Linux commands. After working with Check Point, I improved my Linux skills, which is a good thing for me.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.