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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
127
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
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
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 December 2024, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is 3.2%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 18.4%, 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
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
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

"This solution brings us closer to having a better security score, which helps us a lot in complying with information regulations based on security."
"The visibility, the one-pane-of-glass which allows me to see all of my edge protection through one window and one log, is great. Monitoring everything through that one pane of glass is extremely valuable."
"It improves the availability of engineers to carry out projects."
"The 24/7 online customer support services enhance effective operations and provide quick services in case of a system failure."
"It offers remarkable flexibility in how we configure and utilize the resources."
"The technical support team is knowledgeable and responsive."
"Moving into the cloud without having to change a lot of our internal processes and retrain staff is one of the biggest benefits of this solution."
"Auto Scaling is one of the features that make me want to choose CloudGuard over actual HW."
"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."
"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is security."
"Instead of proving that all the access control lists are in place and all the EPGs are correct, we can just point the auditor to a dashboard and point out that there aren't any escaped conversations. It saves an enormous, enormous amount of time."
"The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network."
"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution."
"The product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the integration with PaaS services from the public cloud. It would be very helpful."
"Check Point Virtual Systems is a complete solution, but pricing can be better."
"It is a very expensive program and there are additional costs despite the standard licensing fees."
"Zero touch removes any independence for configuring."
"The business and product development team should introduce a high-end feedback collection mechanism and analyze the customer requirements constructively."
"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."
"The deployment phase takes too much time."
"There is room for improvement in addressing bugs and support issues."
"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."
"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."
"The integration could be better, especially with different types of solutions."
"The product must be integrated with the cloud."
"There's room for improvement when it comes to Cisco Secure Workload. A couple of internal areas could be refined a little bit. They are trying to solve it, depending on where you suppose the agent is. Suppose you have the agent on both the server and the client, which could be the front-end server or web server connecting to the. In that case, if those two are communicating on RPC, the server can look into its configuration. It could go down and find the configuration file on the FTP server and then set the policies to it. But there are a lot of different FTP servers out there. It's also a complex case for the tool to support all FTP servers."
"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."
"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 emailed notifications are either hard to find or they are not available. Search capabilities can be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing is good. Customers want it to be cheap. I consider the pricing to be elastic. CloudGuard Network Security is perceived as cost-effective compared to using the built-in tools provided by the cloud."
"They're a little high in price. The price could be lower."
"There is flexibility in the different licensing models that are offered."
"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."
"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."
"When customers compare it with Sophos or any other products, the price is on the higher side."
"Licensing is available on a monthly or yearly basis."
"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."
"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 cost for the hardware is around 300k."
"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."
"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."
"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Computer Software Company
28%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
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?
Pricing is high, over $25,000 USD annually. The package offered includes features we may not need, and more flexible licensing could be cheaper.
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 Point does not initially support serverless architecture, requiring additional e...
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: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.