Barracuda CloudGen Firewall vs Check Point CloudGuard Network Security comparison

Barracuda CloudGen Firewall vs. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security

Download the complete report

Helped 831,158 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGate

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 20.3%, up from 17.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda CloudGen Firewall is 0.4%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is 0.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewalls

Featured Reviews

EhabAli

Sr. Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at BMB

Efficient, user-friendly, and affordable

In the past, NSS Labs was utilized to test files and verify the numbers and datasheets. It would be beneficial to have an organization or testing lab that can verify the numbers in our datasheets since changes are frequently made, which can be inconvenient for review. For instance, when comparing different competitors such as Forcepoint, Palo Alto, and Check Point, the throughput or numbers in the datasheet may be lower than the actual numbers. Conversely, Fortinet typically reports very high numbers, but they cannot be replicated in the real world. Therefore, it would be advantageous for them to partner with a neutral testing organization such as NSS Labs to validate these numbers, thus providing more credibility and comfort to everyone regarding the accuracy of the datasheets. For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial. This tool shows a lot of promise and is very good. Making it free would help many companies deliver their products in a more efficient and integrated way. It would also be more valuable to include the tool with the firewall package or license instead of having to pay extra for it. Paying extra puts more pressure on small companies to deliver the firewall and complete the configuration, especially if they have hundreds or thousands of policies. It's very painful to move through these policies line by line. The stability has room for improvement. When it comes to Secure SD-WAN, everything is fine. They are going the right way. SD-WAN is very promising. They can provide the SD-WAN solution separately, but they will not take this approach because even the smallest firewall can support the features, so there is no need to have a separate service or appliance. They are following the right steps, and there is nothing to be improved. Feature-wise, I'm really satisfied with the new release, and the features they have added. For now, it's fine.

Read full review

Ruud Jansen

Senior technisch consultant at Dycotrade

Provides a high level of security; have not had any issues with it thus far

I would like to see the connection improved. We now have a one gigabyte connection and the old firewall has 500 MBs. That's not enough, which is why we are also buying a new firewall for at least one gigabit, which will give us a faster line and faster internet. In the next release, I'd like to see more security for viruses and similar things and also block DDOS.

Read full review

PRASHANT GARJE

Manager - Enterprise Architecture and Cloud at Axis Bank

Cost-effective, supports automation, and provides good security

We have done a lot of automation with the firewall, but sometimes, there are some failures because of some bugs. The fixes for them are still not available. We have daily or weekly communication with the Check Point people giving support in the India region, but we have not seen much improvement or response to our requests for some additional features. We are moving to infra as a code, so we are expecting more advancements in this product. Just installing the patches is not going to help us. They need to focus on this area. I expect Check Point CloudGuard to come up with some AI/ML integration. A firewall is the first L3 security device available to you. It is the single point that manages or processes the traffic for an organization. There is a possibility that the device goes down or gets rebooted for any reason. The integration of artificial intelligence with the devices can help us to know in advance that there might be a surge in traffic. There might be a spike in the traffic, so we can have some additional firewalls integrated. This predictive analysis has to be there. This way, if required, a second, third, or fourth firewall can come into the picture. All the firewalls will process the traffic simultaneously. I am expecting such capability. This sort of feature is available with AWS. We are deploying all the firewalls on AWS, but it would be easy if, in the future, such a feature is available from the OEM or Check Point itself. It will be very helpful for the organization. We have had a couple of outages because of some misconfiguration. They were human errors but there were no prior indications that if we were making these sorts of changes, this would happen. People making the changes on the firewall were not aware of this, and that is the reason why the outage happened. In a financial organization, an outage of even five minutes can cost a lot.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Its stability is the most valuable."

"The VPN is the most valuable feature."

"Customers want to load balance more than eight lines or six internet lines. FortiGate is the only solution that can accomplish this."

"Using this product makes the VPN seamless and almost invisible to me in the sense that I don't have to think about it."

"Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable solution."

"Good anti-malware and web filtering features."

"We use the filtering feature the most. It has filtering and inbuilt securities. We can create customized rules to define which users can access a particular type of site. We can create policies inside the firewall."

"The ECC management and the GUI that offers single interface management are the most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"Ability to manage multiple firewalls."

"The ability to be deployed and supported remotely is valuable."

"Its central management, especially when it comes to distributed environments, is great. I can generate and save a setting and then apply that setting across the network with just one click."

"When you are sending information to an external email address, Barracuda can warn you when you are trying to access a private or personal email, or trying to upload information and not allow you to do that."

"If an employee tries to get or move a file that is not permitted to them - for example if he wants to copy it to a USB - he will not have the right to do that, because Barracuda manages who has the right to copy, and what you copy to a USB. The USB is encrypted with a specific code from Barracuda and will only be decrypted into any other laptop in the company if they allow it to see it."

"Scalability is good; the company wants to be able to handle large customers."

"What I like best about this product are the support and the features."

"One of the big benefits of the product is that it allows you to manage big environments with fewer resources."

More Barracuda CloudGen Firewall pros

"The most valuable feature I have found in CloudGuard Network Security is the flexibility to rebuild the firewall as needed."

"The tool's most valuable features are threat prevention and protection mechanisms."

"The number of options it gives for deployment or security is valuable. When it comes to security, it has a feature that is super awesome for zero-day-based attacks. Their IPS is also very capable. We tested other firewalls, and we understood that it is the best one in the market."

"Customers appreciate the CME plugin for automatically understanding assets within the cloud. This information appears in the manager, allowing users to tag the assets and adjust policies and rules accordingly."

"Workflows across the company ecosystem have can flow smoothly without experiencing any challenges."

"Identity awareness, URL filtering, IDS, DLP, Content Filtering, VPN, and Application Control are all excellent."

"The solution has been quite stable."

"The most important feature is that we are able to use Check Point CloudGuard Firewall for our cloud security. We can make the deployment automated. We do not require manual intervention."

More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security pros

Cons

"Palo Alto has a feature called WildFire Analysis that is unavailable in FortiGate. WildFire is better than a sandbox because it can address zero-day threats and vulnerabilities. It can immediately identify zero-day threats from the cloud."

"Security is a continuous process. In every product, there is a requirement for improvement. Its pricing should also be improved according to Indian market requirements. They must also improve on the reporting part. Its reporting can be more precise. If we can get a real-time report in a specific format, it will be helpful for customers to know about the current status of their security."

"It is quite new for us, and we need to go more in-depth into the monitoring tools. It provides different features that we need to do what we want. So far, it is okay for us. In terms of improvement, in the future, they can provide a faster implementation of features. Some of the features are first available in other solutions. Fortinet sometimes takes a little bit longer than other solutions, such as Check Point, to implement new features."

"The documentation available for Fortinet FortiGate should be improved"

"If I had any criticism that I would give FortiGate, it would be that they need to stop changing their logging format. Every time we do a firmware upgrade, it is a massive issue on the SIM. Parsers have to be rebuilt. Even the FortiGate guys came in and said that they don't play well in the sandbox."

"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."

"They should offer special pricing to premium partners and customers."

"It could use more templates for third-party site-to-site VPN setups other than FortiGate and Cisco."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"While using Barracuda CloudGen Firewall, we encounter issues with VPN profiles for Windows."

"The biggest issue that I have with this solution is that it is not super intuitive. Once you know what to do, things make sense, but you can't just open the program and start doing things. It would be great if there was a little bit more guided usage inside the program."

"It would be better if they had a trace and trap feature. It's hard for me to say anything bad about Barracuda. This is because we had a firewall go down in the town of Kirkland Lake, and it was a blown-out port, and they had an instant replacement."

"Barracuda CloudGen Firewall should work a little bit more with the logs so that, in our company, we can generate a little bit more reports and get a bit more statistics, which would be fine for us."

"The usability for the administrator's experience needs improvement. My system administrator has some questions about its overall connectivity and flexibility."

"Command line could be more user friendly."

"To start working with spam, it takes a while because the product has to see that multiple emails are coming in with all the spam. If it could reduce that amount of time, then we would reduce the amount of users who are receiving spam."

"It's a little bit complex in terms of handling. If you implement a change, there is a specific point where you have to commit it. It's not like you just push a button and it's always committed. If you don't know to check whether your commit command has been executed or not... that is something Barracuda needs to work on."

More Barracuda CloudGen Firewall cons

"We did not use the AWS Transit Gateway, and that's one of the things that we're currently using. I believe we will be working with Check Point again, in the near future, to implement it, once they start having proper support for a single customer with multiple accounts. When we were using them, we had to install Check Point on each and every single account."

"It can be difficult to install properly without prior training"

"Check Point CloudGuard is not a feature-centric product because Check Point concentrates on security."

"There is room for improvement, especially concerning the integration with the management center. It would be beneficial if tasks that currently require scripts could be performed directly from the GUI."

"We are at the place where we are looking at better integration with the management system. We use an MDS today, and it is self-deployed. We want to get to the Smart-1 Cloud, but we do not know what that looks like today because it does not support a multi-domain setup. Smart-1 should either be able to do multi-domain or there should be some form of taking a multi-domain environment and putting it in Smart-1."

"They can improve their security features to the next advanced level so that their efficiency in catching the malware can become 100%, and there is no scope for any data loss or leakage from the system due to any issue."

"Greater automation would reduce the need for manual configuration and management."

"There is a limitation with the version upgrade. We are using version 81.10 and from what I understand, it is problematic to upgrade this version. I do not know if that is true."

More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Fortinet is reasonable in pricing and licensing. Overall, FortiGate is affordable. The licensing fee can be a little high, depending on the budget for your project."

"Fortinet FortiGate gives you most of the features in one license."

"Fortinet FortiGate as a less expensive solution than Palo Alto."

"Compared to other firewall products, it's a little cheaper in terms of pricing."

"Its price is reasonable. They have a clear pricing policy. It is not complicated by the number of VPN users at a time. We know what the price is. The yearly subscription for the security license is rather high, but it is all included for whatever number of users you have and the kind of functions you need."

"The pricing is flexible."

"On a scale of one being cheap and ten being expensive, I rate the tool's price as an eight."

"It's a very full-featured and it's priced well solution."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"The 600 series is about USD $10,000 a year and the 80 is USD $400 a year."

"Purchasing through AWS Marketplace was good. We did it because it was easy."

"Pricing and licensing are fine. It's worth the value because every four years, if I buy any other product, I have to replace my hardware. But with Barracuda I get a free hardware upgrade. Today I'm using Xbox. After four years I can take another Xbox or a Ybox."

"Pricing is good. Licensing is pretty much automatic if using Control Center."

"The solution costs more than 800 Euros to purchase an F18, which is an entry model, and then another 500 Euros for instant replacement, and 500 Euros for energized updates. The total package would be around 1,900 Euros for five years license and all updates for an entry model."

"The product is a bit cheaper than some solutions."

"My advice is to try and evaluate it (Barracuda offers a trial period of one month)."

"It's not the most expensive, but it's certainly not cheap."

More Barracuda CloudGen Firewall pricing and cost advice

"It is fairly priced, but it can be a little expensive from time to time."

"Every project needs different pricing. I believe that when we talk with the particular guys, we will find a price for the customer. They are flexible in terms of that because we need to be flexible, and we have many companies who are aggressive with discounts."

"Pricing-wise, it is pretty competitive. However, I would like to see more flexible licensing. There should be more of a consume what you need and true-up type of model."

"It is not expensive."

"The pricing and licensing have been good. We just had to do a license increase for our portion of it. We had that done within a couple of days. Given the fact that it's purely a software-based license, it ends up being even quicker than doing it for an on-prem firewall."

"The price of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is very high compared to other solutions, such as Fortinet FortiMail. For the over 2,000 mailboxes we use with the solution it is very expensive."

"The pricing is pretty high, not just for your capital, for what you have to pay upfront, but for what you pay for your annual software renewals as well, compared to a lot of other vendors. Check Point is near the top, as far as how much it's going to cost you."

"The price could be better."

More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Firewalls solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

22%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Government

Retailer

Construction Company

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Energy/Utilities Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?

When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...

What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?

From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...

What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?

As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...

What do you like most about Barracuda CloudGen Firewall?

The encryption and the security standards are valuable.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda CloudGen Firewall?

When the corporation purchases something, it follows a request-for-proposal process and the best price wins. So, I th...

What needs improvement with Barracuda CloudGen Firewall?

However, the solution isn’t perfect. It sometimes lets through emails incorrectlycategorized as safe but malicious. I...

What do you like most about Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

The tool's most valuable feature is its management console.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

Pricing is high, over $25,000 USD annually. The package offered includes features we may not need, and more flexible ...

What needs improvement with Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

The pricing is too high. We pay more than twenty-five thousand USD per year, which could be reduced. Moreover, Check ...

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

Comparisons

Compared 23% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 13% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 11% of the time

WatchGuard Firebox vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

Meraki MX vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

OPNsense vs Barracuda CloudGen Firewall

Compared 14% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Barracuda CloudGen Firewall

Compared 13% of the time

WatchGuard Firebox vs Barracuda CloudGen Firewall

Compared 7% of the time

Azure Firewall vs Barracuda CloudGen Firewall

Compared 7% of the time

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Barracuda CloudGen Firewall

Compared 3% of the time

More Barracuda CloudGen Firewall Competitors

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Check Point CloudGuard Network Security

Compared 14% of the time

Azure Firewall vs Check Point CloudGuard Network Security

Compared 14% of the time

VMware NSX vs Check Point CloudGuard Network Security

Compared 9% of the time

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Check Point CloudGuard Network Security

Compared 9% of the time

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Check Point CloudGuard Network Security

Compared 3% of the time

More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Competitors

Product Reports

Fortinet FortiGate

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Barracuda CloudGen Firewall

Download Barracuda CloudGen Firewall product report

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security

Download Check Point CloudGuard Network Security product report

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security report

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall

Barracuda NextGen Firewall, Barracuda CloudGen Firewalls

CloudGuard IaaS, Check Point vSEC, CloudGuard IaaS, Check Point Virtual Systems, Check Point CloudGuard Network Security

Learn More

Fortinet

Barracuda Networks

Check Point Software Technologies

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate offers comprehensive network security and firewall protection across multiple locations. It effectively manages data traffic and secures environments with features like VPN, intrusion prevention, and UTM controls.

Organizations rely on Fortinet FortiGate for its robust integration with advanced security policies, ensuring significant protection for enterprises, cloud environments, and educational sectors. It facilitates network segmentation, application-level security, and authentication management, securing communication within and between locations such as branches and data centers. Its efficient SD-WAN and UTM features enable streamlined data management and enhanced threat protection capabilities. Users appreciate its centralized management, facilitating seamless operations across diverse environments.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate?

VPN Capabilities: Ensure secure remote access for users and seamless site-to-site connections.
Intrusion Prevention System (IPS): Detect and prevent security threats and vulnerabilities.
Advanced Firewall: Offers robust firewalling with application control and web filtering.
SD-WAN: Optimizes application performance and enhances bandwidth management.
SSL VPN: Provides reliable and secure access for remote workers.

What benefits should users expect from Fortinet FortiGate?

High-performance Security: Delivers effective threat mitigation with high availability.
Centralized Management: Simplifies network operations with cloud-based management tools.
Detailed Analytics: Provides comprehensive insights into network activity and security threats.
Load Balancing: Ensures optimal resource distribution and traffic management.

Fortinet FortiGate is crucial in sectors like education, offering robust networks for secure data flow between campuses and facilitating remote learning. In enterprise environments, it allows efficient management of application traffic and security across multiple branches, while in the cloud, it seamlessly integrates with diverse platforms to enhance security infrastructure.

Barracuda CloudGen Firewall is a comprehensive network security solution that provides advanced protection for organizations of all sizes. It offers next-generation firewall capabilities, including application control, intrusion prevention, and web filtering.

With its integrated VPN functionality, it ensures secure remote access for employees. CloudGen Firewall also includes advanced threat intelligence, leveraging real-time updates to detect and block emerging threats. Its centralized management console simplifies administration and provides visibility into network traffic.

CloudGen Firewall can easily adapt to changing business needs based on its scalable architecture.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is designed to secure cloud assets, offering robust firewall capabilities and protection for both internal and external traffic across AWS, Azure, and on-premises environments.

Enterprises rely on Check Point CloudGuard Network Security for comprehensive network protection, threat prevention, and compliance enforcement. Supporting virtual machines and hybrid environments, it delivers advanced security measures including intrusion prevention and application control. Key functions include firewall security, network segmentation, and cloud environment protection, ensuring businesses maintain a secure and compliant IT infrastructure.

What are the most valuable features of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

Flexible Architecture: Adaptable to diverse cloud and on-premises environments.
UTM Capabilities: Unified Threat Management delivering multi-layered security.
Advanced Threat Prevention: Includes IPS, application control, and anti-malware.
Auto-scaling: Automatically adjusts capacity based on traffic and demand.
Comprehensive Threat Prevention: Protects against known and unknown threats.
Ease of Use: Streamlined deployment and management processes.
Integration with Cloud Platforms: Seamlessly works with AWS, Azure, and other clouds.
Centralized Management: Single-pane-of-glass visibility and control.
User Identity Awareness: Enhances security policies based on user identities.
Zero-touch Deployment: Simplifies initial setup and deployment.

What benefits and ROI can users expect from Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

Email Protection: Shields email communications from threats.
Anti-malware: Guards against malicious software.
Single-pane-of-glass Visibility: Provides a unified view for better security management.
Scalability: Grows with the business needs.
Seamless Cloud Transition: Eases the move from on-premises to cloud environments.

In industries such as financial services, healthcare, retail, and education, Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is implemented to safeguard sensitive data, ensure compliance, and protect critical infrastructure. Companies in these sectors benefit from its advanced threat prevention and flexible deployment options, meeting their stringent security requirements while enabling secure digital transformation.

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya

ARZ, Bauer, CBCX Technologies, Diamant-groep, Eissmann Group Automotive, European Youth Olympics, Exalo Drilling, FineLine Technologies, Geocell, Grimaldi, Infront Sports & Media, Odlo, Schenker Deutschland AG, Tilak, Verbandsgeneinde Zell, Conservas El Cidacos S.A., Institute for Emergency Medicine and Medicine Management, Erwin Muller GmbH, Info-Tech: NGF is Champion, Schoellerbank, IZB Informatik-Zentrum, RHI AG, Berglandmilch, Antenne Bayern, Sanochemia

Physicians Choice Laboratory Services, Helvetica Insurance

Barracuda CloudGen Firewall vs. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security