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Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs Cisco Secure Workload comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Check Point CloudGuard Netw...
Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
126
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (8th), Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP) (2nd), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (3rd), WAN Edge (3rd), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (6th)
Cisco Secure Workload
Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (16th), Microsegmentation Software (5th), Cisco Security Portfolio (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is 3.4%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 17.8%, up from 14.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud and Data Center Security
 

Featured Reviews

PRASHANT GARJE - PeerSpot reviewer
May 22, 2024
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.
Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 6, 2024
Discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map
We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration allows Cisco Secure Workload to learn about our networks and network tags, providing valuable insights into vulnerabilities related to the operating system and various applications installed on our servers. Recently, Cisco announced a new product called HyperShield, an AI-based autonomous micro-segmentation solution. While Cisco has not stated that HyperShield will replace Cisco Secure Workload, it represents a natural evolution for the company. HyperShield features dynamic policy discovery and enforcement; however, once policies are enforced, they do not change until a discovery occurs, requiring a re-enforcement process. This new platform operates autonomously, minimizing the need for user or security engineer intervention. I would have expected Cisco to incorporate more automatic discovery and enforcement features within the existing Cisco Secure Workload product. Instead of enhancing the current product, they have introduced a new solution. Cisco plans to honor existing Tetration licenses, allowing users to transition to HyperShield without additional costs, reflecting the investment enterprises have already made. From Cisco’s perspective, this represents a natural progression in their product line. While the product name changes, it seems more of a rebranding effort. The enhancements are greater autonomy, improved discovery, and automatic enforcement, which are now being introduced in HyperShield. Cisco Secure Workload offers automatic policy enforcement but cannot adjust policies dynamically as the application needs to change. Having used the platform for the past five years, the recent announcement has been reassuring. Cisco has confirmed that our investment in the platform will not go to waste. They will honor our existing licenses, providing a natural migration path to the new solution without any disruption

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the tool's ability to manage cloud traffic locally without routing it through our data centers."
"As per the solution's blade design, there are many options. For example, you have to buy a UTM blade and an advanced malware blade, etc. If the blade license is there, we can configure from the firewall GUI."
"The product has allowed us to develop applications from the cloud - even with large environments and well-segmented security lines."
"We find all the features valuable, particularly the firewall, application control, URL filtering, and HTTPS detection."
"We have found the overall functionality of the product to be exactly similar to the physical product. The one good advantage is that it is cloud-based and can be deployed either as a part of a scale set or one can shut down the virtual machine and adjust the physical parameters of the virtual machine easily and bring it right back up."
"The 24/7 online customer support services enhance effective operations and provide quick services in case of a system failure."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring. We can easily monitor what kind of stuff comes over to our network and we can then check the dashboard and work accordingly."
"The most valuable feature of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is the ease of use. It was not difficult to learn."
"The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."
"The product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."
"The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage. The telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent. It's complete. You see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network."
"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution."
"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network."
"By using Tetration insight, we are able to get the latency on our level accounts and we can determine whatever the issue is with the application latency itself."
"The product provides multiple-device integration."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement regarding the technical support provided."
"Easier optimization techniques can definitely help with better performance of the OS, as using the vanilla software doesn't actually showcase the real capability of the software."
"Its price is fair, but it can be more favorable."
"The main issue that I have noticed is that for deployment, it still requires a dedicated management server, and the gateway is completely different. That sometimes can cause issues."
"The documentation has been rough. Being able to do it yourself can be hit or miss given the constraints of the documentation."
"We have the product deployed on Azure China. One crucial concern is the version limitation; unfortunately, in Azure China, we are restricted to running version R80. Our architecture has a Load Balancer, VMSS CloudGuard, etc. The duplication in this setup prevents the application from seeing the original client IP. This poses a problem for certain applications that require the original IP for login purposes. Although we managed a workaround with a different architecture involving a WAF, it is not as straightforward as the standard Azure setup."
"It needs to cover additional kinds of infrastructure, like containers and serverless options. It's somewhat limited in that area."
"Improvements needed include better integration with Azure features to match on-premises capabilities."
"Secure Workload is a little complicated to use, and the dashboard isn't intuitive, so it takes a while to learn how to use it."
"The emailed notifications are either hard to find or they are not available. Search capabilities can be improved."
"It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."
"They should scale down the hardware a bit. The initial hardware investment is two million dollars so it's a price point problem. The issue with the price comes from the fact that you have to have it with enormous storage and enormous computes."
"The multi-tenancy, redundancy, backup and restore functionalities, as well as the monitoring aspects of the solution, need improvement. The solution offers virtually no enterprise-grade possibility for monitoring."
"The integration could be better, especially with different types of solutions."
"I'd like to see better documentation for advanced features. The documentation is fairly basic. I would also like to see better integration with other applications."
"There is some overlap between Cisco Tetration and AppDynamics and I need to have a single pane of glass, rather than have to jump between different tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing is reasonable."
"It is fair. Its license covers all the features. There is a cost-benefit. The licensing for the cloud is better than on-premises because, with on-premises, you have to pay separately for different things."
"We have a pretty good partnership with Check Point. We have a global subscription and agreement. They give us a pretty good corporate discount."
"It is not expensive, but it is a little bit above the middle range. There are other solutions that are a little more expensive than this, but they also have some interesting features."
"The licesning has some good features. For example, the scaling feature is free of charge, allowing multiple scale-ups and scale-downs over a two-week period, which is pretty good."
"I know that we have an enterprise agreement with Check Point. That gives us some benefits, but I do not have more information about that."
"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."
"When customers compare it with Sophos or any other products, the price is on the higher side."
"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."
"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."
"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."
"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."
"Regarding price, Cisco Secure Workload can be expensive if you don't have a budget. If you're not doing micro-segmentation, every extra security measure or enforcement you're putting on top of your existing environment will be an extra cost. It's not a cheap solution at all. But from my point of view, if you need to do micro-segmentation, this is one of the best tools I've seen for it. I can't compare that to Microsoft's solution because I haven't looked into it. I've looked into VMware and Cisco. Those are the only two that I know of. I didn't know that Microsoft could do micro-segmentation at all. Maybe they can, but I haven't heard anything about it."
"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."
"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
6%
Computer Software Company
29%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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?
CloudGuard is pretty expensive. Azure ends up being cheaper. They are fairly priced. It's not cheap. However, you definitely need to spend some dollars on security. While it's rather fair pricing, ...
What needs improvement with Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?
The solution's future releases would benefit from incorporating more advanced machine learning capabilities for real-time threat detection and enhanced user interface options for ease of use.
What do you like most about Cisco Secure Workload?
The product provides multiple-device integration.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Workload?
CloudStrike offers antivirus capabilities and firewall features for servers and VDI but lacks automatic policy discovery. This raises questions about the resources required to discover and write po...
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?
We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration allows Cisco Secure Workload to learn about our networks and network tags, provid...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Physicians Choice Laboratory Services, Helvetica Insurance
ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)
Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. Cisco Secure Workload and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
815,854 professionals have used our research since 2012.