Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs Cisco Secure Workload comparison

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. Cisco Secure Workload

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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

Check Point CloudGuard Netw...

Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security

6th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

152

Ranking in other categories

Firewalls (8th), Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP) (1st), 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

7th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (14th), Microsegmentation Software (4th), Cisco Security Portfolio (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is 1.4%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 14.0%, up from 12.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud and Data Center Security

Featured Reviews

Martin Raška

Senior Security Engineer & Instructor at Arrow Electronics

Unification of security features strengthens network protection

The overall network security is good. It's big-picture, all in one bundle. It's valuable to have everything in one place instead of spreading across different products. Unified security management positively affects a company's security operations. They have one unified view of the security. I can connect multiple gateways to the management and have it in one place. I can have reporting and views in a single pane of glass on the consolidated platform. It's easy to use. The management is the best on the market. It's very easy to work with, read, understand, and navigate. It helps increase our customer's security posture. We can see in some cases CloudGuard improves our customers' posture overall.

Read full review

Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

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

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Some retail customers find the scale-up and scale-down features valuable, particularly with scale sets. This is useful for handling increased loads on devices and utilizing firewalls, similar to on-premises setups with active standby configurations."

"The SSL spectrum proved to be the most valuable for our incoming connections."

"This software is great in overall performance since it can locate any trouble across the networking system and provide solutions before it affects workflows."

"It's a high-performance device. The network performance is also really good. We check how much time it takes for the servers. Our network performance has increased since using this solution."

"I found the access control policy through SmartConsole, which was formerly SmartDashboard, to be very valuable. It deeply explores source, destination, and port protocols. Competitors struggle to match this simplicity and effectiveness."

"It matches what we have on-prem. We kept the same management and the same functionality that we were having on-prem. It has simplified things for us because there is no new dashboard to touch."

"Check Point CloudGuard technical support is good."

"The CloudGuard Network Security's most valuable feature is implementing IPS for accessing our data center and server environment in Azure. It helps us to prevent attacks. By protecting our environment with Check Point, which we were already familiar with, it provided a solution that extended into the cloud environment."

More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security pros

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network."

"Scalability is its most valuable feature."

"It's stable."

"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."

"Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."

"The product provides multiple-device integration."

"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution."

"The product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."

More Cisco Secure Workload pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"I want the upgrades of their CloudGuard solution to major versions to be easier. We have had a few small hiccups. They have different types of cloud clusters called Geo Clusters, and those just cannot be upgraded past a certain point, which is a hurdle that we are currently experiencing."

"It's meeting our needs at this time. If I could make it better, it would be by making it more standalone. That would be beneficial to us. I say that because our current platform for virtualization is VMware. The issue isn't any fault of Check Point, it's more how the virtualization platform partners allow for that partnership and integration. There has to be close ties and partnerships between the vendors to ensure interoperability and sup-portability. There is only so far that Check Point, or any security vendor technology can go without the partnership and enablement of the virtualization platform vendor as it relies on "Service Insertion" to maintain optimal performance."

"In future releases, I would like to see the data loss prevention (DLP) feature could scale along with the virtual machine scale sets."

"More integration into one solution with increased automation would be beneficial."

"It should be more unified across all platforms."

"From the policy optimization point of view, they can do better. This is not just for CloudGuard. CloudGuard is one little piece managed by Check Point. They can also integrate a third-party policy management solution to improve that. For example, Tufin is focused on policy optimization and management."

More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security cons

"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 emailed notifications are either hard to find or they are not available. Search capabilities can be improved."

"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."

"It has an uninviting interface."

"The interface is really helpful for technical people, but it is not user-friendly."

"It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."

"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."

"There was a controversy when Cisco reduced the amount of data they kept, and the solution became quite cost-intensive, which made its adoption challenging….Although they have modified it now, I preferred the previous version, and I wish all the functionality were back under the same product."

More Cisco Secure Workload cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On average, it is normally on the lower end, being less expensive than Palo Alto or Cisco."

"I like the flexibility because I am pretty sure you can use the same license on Azure or AWS. I forgot the name of the license, but there is a specific type you can use that lets you interchange them, and that is pretty good. I like that."

"It is expensive."

"Handling costs is not my department. Licensing has been quite acceptable. It is a bit easier now, but when I began working with CloudGuard, it was a bit too technical."

"Licensing is available on a monthly or yearly basis."

"We are using our BYOL. We are using our existing Check Point discounts to work with licensing. Overall, it is very competitive. Its pricing is reasonable to me."

"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."

"Although I don't have specifics for pricing, based on my overall experience, I can conclude that Check Point provides the best pricing when comparing to other vendors."

More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security pricing and cost advice

"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."

"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."

"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."

"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."

"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."

"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 pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Energy/Utilities Company

Computer Software Company

26%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

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?

Pricing in Jamaica is a major issue, with users often citing it as a reason for not using Check Point.

What needs improvement with Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

They could improve the documentation. The interface is fine for me since I have been using it for some time.

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?

Fortinet FortiGate vs Check Point CloudGuard Network Security

Comparisons

Compared 21% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Check Point CloudGuard Network Security

Compared 17% of the time

Azure Firewall vs Check Point CloudGuard Network Security

Compared 13% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs Check Point CloudGuard Network Security

Compared 7% of the time

Barracuda CloudGen Firewall vs Check Point CloudGuard Network Security

Compared 3% of the time

More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Competitors

Cisco Hypershield vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 19% of the time

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 19% of the time

Illumio vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 17% of the time

Cisco ACI vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 10% of the time

More Cisco Secure Workload Competitors

Product Reports

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security

Download Check Point CloudGuard Network Security product report

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security report

Cisco Secure Workload

Download Cisco Secure Workload product report

Also Known As

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

Cisco Tetration

Overview

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.

Check Point Software Technologies

Cisco Secure Workload is a cloud and data security solution that offers a zero-trust policy of keeping an organization’s application workloads safe and secure throughout the entire on-premise and cloud data center ecosystems.

Cisco Secure Workload will consistently provide protection by discovering workload process anomalies, stopping threats immediately, minimizing the risk threat surface, and aborting any lateral movement.

Today’s ecosystems are very elastic, and in the application-focused dynamic of today’s aggressive marketplace, Cisco Secure Workload delivers a robust security solution that works effectively with today’s most popular applications. The solution uniquely surrounds each and every workload to ensure organizations are able to keep their data, network, and applications safe and secure at all times. Cisco Secure Workload ensures that enterprise organizations can maintain secure applications by consistently building firewalls around every workload level throughout the entire ecosystem. The solution can manage applications that are deployed on containers, virtual machines, or bare-metal servers.

Cisco Secure workload is able to meet an organization's busy needs and offers flexible options such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and on-premises options. Using the Secure Workload SaaS options, users receive all the benefits of Cisco Secure Workload protection without the hassle of having to deploy and maintain the platform on premises. Users are responsible for acquiring the necessary software licensing and deploying software agents. Using SaaS, Secure Workload runs in the cloud and is operated and maintained by Cisco. This option offers the ability to scale easily and is a popular choice for SaaS-first and SaaS-only clients. Many organizations find they get the best TCO and achieve the best productivity and profitability using the SaaS options.

When choosing on-premises options, organizations choose between hardware-based appliance models (large or small form factors). Platform selection is dependent on scalability goals, the desired fidelity level of flow telemetry, and the actual number of workloads. When a user chooses to configure Cisco Secure Workload for a conversation-only flow telemetry for all workloads, each platform has the capability to scale up vertically twice the default platform scale. Additionally, with Secure Workload, it is possible for the platform to be scaled horizontally in order to satisfy the demands of extra large widely distributed enterprise environments using federation capabilities.

Cisco Secure Workload also provides a robust disaster recovery (DR) tool, which helps to make it a complete, comprehensive solution. The DR allows for continuous restore and backup capabilities that enable users to quickly remediate operations and data to a standby cluster in the event of a drastic failure or disaster.

Reviews from Real Users

“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. Other valuable features include vast support for annotations, flexible user applications, machine learning, automatic classification, and hierarchical policies.” - CTO at a tech vendor

Cisco

Sample Customers

Physicians Choice Laboratory Services, Helvetica Insurance

ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. Cisco Secure Workload