Check Point Remote Access VPN Reviews

Since SARS-COV2, most users went to work from their home office, so we needed to have an robust, secure, and stable VPN connection. We implemented Check Point VPN and we have had no problems with it. We are almost 50 users working from home securely. Also, the access rules based on VLANs have helped many users get access depending on which connection they have. For example, some users with VPN connections can only access some specific servers and ports, however, when they are on an internal LAN, they have access to the entire network.

We have more control over the activity that users have on the internal network, thanks to the monitoring offered by Check Point and the security provided by the gateway. 

I'm the IT manager for the company, and my work has been improved due to the fact that, in conjunction with VPN, we implemented the Endpoint Security client so we can manage our client's computers even if they are not physically in the office. When we need to remove some users from a VPN connection we just need to lock the account and use the assets console to disable the feature from the client's computer.

The combination of the user accounts for the VPN with the access rules provided by the security gateway gives you more control and specificity about who has access to what. For external users, we can offer a solution based on the internet needs and we are able to share information on a secure channel. We can specifically point to the desired resources in the organization without the need to install any additional software on external client machines.

It needs to improve the capability of the Secure browser VPN connections. Some in-house applications didn't work due to the use of JScript and the backend and front end technology for the applications. In the case of URL translation of the VPN Web portal, the requests made from the front end to the back end weren't valid (due to the use of dynamic subdomains). In the case of host translations, the request was made to the same host, however, we cannot specify the ports, which, in our case, are used to redirect to different servers.

I've used the solution for over two years.

It's very stable, however, I recommend some scheduled restarts for cleaning connections and processes.

It is very easy to manage the solution and also the integration.

I have had a good experience with the support tickets that I have dealt with.

Positive

Previous to Check Point, we didn't have any gateway security.

The initial setup was a little complex as it was the first time working with Check Point.

The implementation was handled by an in-house team.

We expect that investments is recovered in two years.

The pricing is fair and the support team is good.

We were evaluating Fortinet as well.

Check Point is very reliable and secure.

We use Check Point Remote Access VPN to provide access to employees, vendors, and advisors. They access the company resources - especially now that most people are working from home over the course of the last year. We also use it for specific companies that give us remote support to some applications, such as our parent company. Our admins access our company servers and resources. We're using Remote Access VPN with specific profiles for them that only give access to some resources.

We have three distinct environments. Server, DMZ, and User/SHOP. The firewall connects to the internet and those firewalls are the ones that the people connect to for the Remote VPN. We have the Blade enabled and they access the company resources as if they were working at the office.

The headache of connecting has been removed. It's very stable and we don't have any issues with it connecting. We have a large majority of people that were using nothing and always coming to the office. However, since the last year, we have a whopping 75% of users that have switched to using Check Point Remote Access VPN. The biggest advantage of Check Point Remote Access VPN is that we already use the Check Point firewall. We only needed to enable the feature and do the configuration in order to enable the VPN feature. We didn't need to buy or manage new hardware. This was a big advantage.

The biggest advantage of Check Point Remote Access VPN is that we already use the Check Point firewall. We only needed to enable the feature and do the configuration in order to enable the VPN feature. We didn't need to buy or manage new hardware. This was a big advantage. 

The integration with two-factor authentication for remote access users is another valuable feature. In our case we use RSA.

Those two are the most valuable aspects that we have on the solution. It also gives us the possibility to securely connect to the company resources, without Check Point security measures.

Another great thing is that we already have all the logs from the firewall on the SmartPortal as the remote VPN also integrates into the firewall. We can see all the logs on the same tool because we also have a fully secure solution for Remote Access VPN. For full operational security, we need to manage the different hardware from the firewalls and the logs that are not in the same place. This is another valuable aspect of this solution.

Having access to those logs affects our security operations because if a user calls the support but does not have access to the VPN, we can see on the same tool on the SmartPortal and troublshoot. 

We don't have any specific complaints. We are very happy with the Windows client. You log in with the VPN for the full client, you do the log in right from the software itself. For Linux machines, they don't have a full client to install. For the users that utilize Linux, there needs to be an equivalent. The documentation of the software needs to be more accessible. If an end-user wants to have access to customized training from the company, that should be able to be built-in. I would add that feature. 

I've been using the solution for around 1.5 years.

The stability is good. It's a never-fail.

The scalability is great. We deploy to 5000+ users.

It's second to none but we haven't needed it a lot. 

We used to use Fortinet. We switched because it was hard to deploy. 

Just pull the trigger on a 3rd party. Not complex at all. 

We used both a vendor and in-house talent. 

The ROI was instant and around 54%.

Go with a third party and get it set up correctly. It may be costly but it's worth it. 

We didn't evaluate anything else. I knew a vendor and had used the software before. 

Get this software installed as soon as possible. It's a smart move. 

Our primary use case is to provide a remote access VPN to organization users so that they can access the organization servers or resources easily from anywhere.

With the help of Remote Access VPN, our organization's users can connect to our network easily and access servers. This has increased employee productivity.

The most valuable point is that it provides multi-factor authentication (MFA), which increases security by requiring an add-on verification method and ensures that only authorized users have access to the network.

The knowledge base can be improved for advanced troubleshooting. For new users, configurations might be complex. This can be also improved. 

We have been using this solution for the last year.

The stability is excellent.

The scalability is very good.

Our experience with customer service and support is excellent.

Positive

We are using the same solution.

The initial setup was very easy and straightforward.

We implemented it through an in-house team.

As per the market, everything looks good.

No, we haven't evaluated other option

We use Check Point Remote Access VPN for security features.

We encounter challenges for the product’s installation and troubleshooting processes compared to other VPN products. It is difficult to restore settings in cases of connection failure. This particular area needs improvement.

We have been using Check Point Remote Access VPN for five years.

The product is stable.

We have 3000 Check Point Remote Access VPNs in our organization. It is a scalable product. We can increase and downgrade the access as much as possible. The usage depends on the licensing model.

The technical support team only responds to the problems where the device stops working. Apart from that, they don’t reply to normal issues.

Neutral

We used ForcePoint before. In comparison, Check Point Remote Access VPN is stable and easy to connect.

The product is easy to maintain. It takes a few days to install and troubleshoot.

The product has average pricing. We purchase its yearly pricing.

I advise others to use the product instead of multiple SD solutions and hardware products. I rate Check Point Remote Access VPN a seven out of ten.

Currently, as we are a company that constantly imports and exports solutions. We have needed to give our salespeople access to our executives since that part of retail is constantly on the move inside and outside our organization. This makes it somewhat necessary to figure out how everyone can access data since the information is being used and managed every day inside and outside of our institution. We have come to use the Check Point security services so that users can have the same access as we have inside when they are outside the organization.

The capacity that Check Point Remote Access VPN offers is one of the best. It has made it easier for us and the team to have great mobility inside and outside the organization. If anyone must consult the services internally, they can connect quickly and simply. The agent that allows the connection is very fast to install and very fast to configure. It has streamlined a lot of the complexity that we had faced before.

Among its most valuable features is how it quickly and easily connects everyone to the VPN service. It quickly installs an agent on the computers, so that our users do not have to worry about their mobile devices being configured. It is easy to install and can run and install as a client on devices whether the user has Mac or Windows.

In the future, if this service could be installed in a faster and simpler way (rather than having it directly connected to the appliances), that would be ideal. Today, many of the solutions are not what was needed when we had perimeter security. It would be good to have Remote Access VPN solutions for Check Point edge services.

We have been using the solution for three months.

For remote work, Check Point Remote Access VPN connects, creates the site, and gathers information about the site in terms of the VPN domain, the public IP at that time, and so on.

The Check Point products provide solid detection and advanced malware protection, which helps safeguard the organization’s security infrastructure. The platform offers essential features like sandboxing that perform well in threat detection.

The advanced malware protection and the sandboxing features are very valuable as they perform well, with detection being very high. Additionally, the panel features are also solid.

There are some issues with the Check Point VPN, such as its complexity compared to other VPN clients. Another downside is related to performance, which lags behind similarly priced products like those from Palo Alto. The platform becomes layered with add-ons, moving away from its original simplicity, which poses a problem.

I have been using Check Point since version 4.1, which amounts to about 15 years.

I rate the stability of Check Point Remote Access VPN as a seven out of ten. I experienced an issue when there was a recent upgrade to address a vulnerability that required the use of both a VPN user and a password along with a certificate or another form of identity confirmation. This was not mentioned in the upgrade notes, which initially caused some problems.

The scalability of Check Point Remote Access VPN is decent. On a scale of one to ten, I rate it a seven.

Check Point's support has always been great. They are very responsive, and we always get technically capable people. I would rate their support a nine or nine point five out of ten.

Positive

I have worked with multiple vendors, including Palo Alto and Fortinet.

For someone new to Check Point products or coming from managing other products, the setup can be difficult. However, for someone familiar with Check Point, the setup hasn't changed much over the years.

I am on the technical side and do not typically consider the business returns or ROI of the product.

I am not familiar with the exact pricing details. However, the pricing for the basic remote access VPN is a lot less than that of other vendors, and it comes with many features within the basic package.

I have compared Check Point with Palo Alto. Palo Alto is more GUI-based, which makes it easier to use, but it requires more configuration knowledge.

For regular users, Check Point firewalls are easier to configure compared to Palo Alto's. In terms of detection rates and performance, both Check Point and Palo Alto are very good.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Check Point Remote Access VPN allows organization users to work remotely. Especially in the pandemic period, work-from-home demand has been higher than ever. 

I have a remarkable case about the solution. That is for a bank. They want to have remote access VPNs that can provide connections for internal users who work remotely, partners who have restricted connections to the bank environment and ATM machines that connect to core banking applications. All VPNs acted in the same internet connections but still ensure these three VPNs were separated from each other. For the requirements, deploying the VPN in VSX appliances helped to solve issues. I created three virtual instances: one for corporate users, one for partners and one for ATM machines. 

Applying security policies for three instances is different. Corporate users must pass two-factor authentication layers and then have access to common corporate services (like email, and chat) and the right business applications depending on their working role, and their department. Partners after authenticating successfully only have limited access to the right place that they are allowed while being unable to connect to other places. 

ATM machines that act 24/7 need to have continuous connections, thus, they must authenticate using a certificate and their VPN clients must be configured to re-authenticate automatically after a timeout.

Check Point Remote Access VPN supports almost all common devices, from Windows to macOS, and from Android to iOS. Connection methods are flexible, including browsers and VPN clients. 

With such an approach, the solution can solve every remote working problem from anywhere, on any device while maintaining security features. The solution allows us to integrate with external systems like directory servers, email servers, and RADIUS servers for using directory users (a unified user instead must remember many usernames and passwords), adding multi-factor authentication via an OTP certificate. VPN users will have controlled access based on who they are and where they are by security policies. 

The solution offers flexible authentication methods to control access by policies and compliance. 

Check Point can integrate with external systems and third-party solutions to provide multi-layer authentications. This helps secure the user accounts from leakage of passwords and also protects corporate from unauthorized access damage risks. 

Security policies help to convert access regulations to policy rule configurations after authenticating. Setting policies allow, block, and limit users' access. 

With the compliance feature, Check Point can define what conditions user machines should have to authenticate the VPN. This feature helps to add more security to the network.

Endpoint Security on Demand, or Compliance Check is a good feature. It allows the creation of compliance policies and adds more security to the network. Machines will be scanned once they connect to VPN to make sure all of them are compliant. Conditions to configure compliance checks are Windows security (hotfixes, patches), Anti-Spyware, Anti-Virus software, personal firewall, or Custom (application, files, registry). These are not enough in a complicated environment. Almost of them are supported for Windows machines, however, are just limited conditions for non-Windows. In fact, using mobile devices on Android, iOS, macOS, and Linux is very popular. Compliance Check on Check Point should be improved by having more configurable conditions to support multi-platforms and adding more granularity. 

Besides compliance scanning sometimes causes consumes machine resources. 

I also suggest scanning operations will consume fewer resources and increase speed time.

I've been using the solution for more than five years.

As mentioned in my use case, the solution is running for thousands of corporate users, partner users, and ATM machines. The performance is very impressive. 

With Check Point VSX, the virtual instance extension is just an additional license, thus, it's very easy to add VS for other purposes. Besides Check Point also developed Maestro technology to allow hyperscale, increase throughput, and maximize capacity.

The Check Point Support Team is very professional and has technical expertise. The team is online 24/7 to make sure their customers always be supported. Response time to the customer is quick enough when they provide a solution to fix the issues or when they need some time to investigate or when they need some time to investigate they stay up to date.

Positive

I had used Fortinet Remote Access VPN before. At that time, other security features like Firewall, IPS, Application Control, and URL Filtering had been added to the same box running Remote Access VPN. The Fortinet appliance was overloaded all the time - although specifications in the datasheet could be OK. After changing to Check Point (using Remote Access VPN with other security features), the performance was amazing. CPU and memory usages were always at an average level.

We use the solution for our customers. Whenever the users work from home, they connect to the solution and are redirected to their network. It is very simple. They install the client, and the client makes a tunnel to the product. Once they are connected, they can enter into the network.

The policies are easy to use. Once we are connected, the entire infrastructure is safe, irrespective of the device we are using. There is no need to worry about safety. It's a secure tunnel that helps us access the network. It is a very useful feature. We can access the internal resources once we are connected to a VPN. We need not be in the office. The solution performs well.

The product’s architecture is a bit distributed. It should consolidate the architecture to make everything available on a single dashboard.

I have been using the solution for two and a half years.

The tool is stable.

The tool is scalable. We may need to opt for higher boxes. We work with enterprise customers.

The technical support is hardly good. The support team must improve its response time. It should also improve follow-ups through email.

Neutral

I have worked with Sophos and Array Networks. Check Point’s stability is better compared to other tools. I have frequently faced disconnection and other issues with other products.

The initial setup is not easy. We need to be skilled in Check Point to install the solution. The time taken for deployment depends upon the number of boxes we install. If we install one or two boxes, one or two weeks is sufficient.

Our customer needed to install more than 100 boxes in every region. It takes months to deploy the product at that scale. We need a team of 20 people to implement the tool for an enterprise. Once the installation is done, maintenance is easy. The product runs smoothly.

I recommend the solution to every vendor with Check Point as a firewall because it has great stability and security. We can terminate our VPN services to the same box if we're already using Check Point VPN. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.