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Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs Check Point Harmony SASE (formerly Perimeter 81) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 24, 2024

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
Sponsored
Ranking in Firewalls
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
317
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Check Point CloudGuard Netw...
Ranking in Firewalls
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
127
Ranking in other categories
Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP) (2nd), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (3rd), Cloud and Data Center Security (7th), WAN Edge (3rd), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (6th)
Check Point Harmony SASE (f...
Ranking in Firewalls
17th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
57
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (5th), Anti-Malware Tools (7th), Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (7th), ZTNA as a Service (5th), ZTNA (3rd), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 20.7%, up from 17.7% 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. The mindshare of Check Point Harmony SASE (formerly Perimeter 81) is 0.1%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

EhabAli - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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.
reviewer8099174 - PeerSpot reviewer
Secure access with an intuitive design and straightforward controls
In terms of improvement, Perimeter 81 could enhance its reporting and analytics capabilities to provide more detailed insights into network activity. Additionally, expanding integration options with a broader range of third-party tools would be beneficial for seamless compatibility with various existing systems. As for additional features in the next release, it would be great to see advanced threat detection and response capabilities integrated into the platform. This would further enhance security by proactively identifying and mitigating potential threats. Additionally, improved mobile device management features and more comprehensive user behavior analytics would be valuable additions to meet evolving cybersecurity needs.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The web filtering facility and application control are the most valuable features from the point of view of our clients. The VPN feature is also quite popular amongst our clients. Two-factor authentication is one of the good features in Fortinet. These features are important for the current scenario of security. Security has become a necessity nowadays. With cyber-attacks becoming more common, protecting an organization's data is one of the major tasks. It is also very stable and scalable, and it is very straightforward to configure. Their technical support is also good."
"It is quite easy to handle."
"We've found the solution to be pretty stable."
"The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtering testing applications, web filtering, and the new VPN."
"It's very fast and easy to configure."
"Fortinet FortiGate's ease of management is the most valuable feature."
"You can create multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), which are treated as separate firewall instances."
"There are great templates, so you don't have to customize them if you don't want to. You do have the option to custom create some folders and some reports, however, with what is there, you don't really need to go through extra effort, as they already give you a lot of predefined views of reports and so forth."
"The scalability is very good; again, very user-friendly. I wouldn't even say "user-friendly" because, as long as you deploy it properly, you can kill an EC2 and it will spin up another one right away, within about a minute and a half. And it will be ready for production right away."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its management console."
"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."
"What's most valuable to me is that it's a contiguous solution that aligns well with the components that we've relied on and trusted from a traditional hardware, firewall, and unified threat management system. My engineers and analysts don't have to learn another platform. We have already entrusted our security controls to Check Point for perimeter and physical security, and now we can do so at the virtual layer as well, which is key to us."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its scalability. You will only have to pay less for scaling up. Its notable benefit is deployment complexity. Regional deployment is simpler compared to on-premise setup."
"One of the main characteristics that Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has given us is granularity and visibility."
"Auto-scaling and zero touch are valuable features."
"The most valuable feature for us is the scale set, which allows us to scale horizontally, vertically and dynamically depending on the traffic load."
"It's improved the security of every single OS in the organization as well as the visibility and security capabilities."
"Perimeter 81 has increased my security and privacy while maintaining solid internet performance."
"The characteristics that I have liked the most are the ease of implementation and administration."
"The solution provides us with an easy way to configure and join the VPN with Perimeter 81."
"Our investment in quality hardware has proven to provide a better customer experience. They heavily rely on Check Point Firewall and Check Point SaaS Connect to safeguard their networks from external threats and attacks."
"The reports give a simple overview of the traffic pattern within the organization."
"What I like about Harmony Connect is that every packet through the network is screened and filtered so that only clean packets can enter the PC. This is useful for a variety of security reasons because you no longer need to worry about things like DDoS attacks."
"Logging back into Perimeter 81 is relatively user-friendly as I just need to re-type my Windows credentials in to access the VPN."
 

Cons

"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having a frequent ask questions(FAQ) area for people to receive quick answers to popular questions. Additionally, it would be beneficial to have an SMS notification feature. For example, if you cannot access your email you could receive an SMS message."
"Quality control on their firmware versions needs improvement. When they introduce new firmware, there tend to be bugs."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding enhancements to FortiMail, FortiSOAR, and FortiDeceptor."
"The solution lacks sufficient filtering."
"Fortinet needs to overhaul its documentation."
"There is one big configuration file with no separations for the unique VDOMs. Maybe they could separate individual VDOM configuration files with the root VDOM configuration file referencing the individual VDOM config files.​"
"MTBF: Hardware failure is more common when compared to SonicWall or Cisco ASA."
"Some of the filtering is not robust, you can escape it with a VPN. Some of the users bypass some of the filters. It catches some but it also misses some, that area could be improved. It's functioning reasonably but there's room for improvement in that area."
"The networking system updates, when delayed, can lead to misconfigurations and data loss."
"CloudGuard Network Security's pricing is expensive. We have encountered issues with its licensing."
"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."
"Every good security product requires a company with many research departments and staff."
"The challenge mainly revolves around the slower functionality of virtual IP switching in Azure Virtual Network compared to on-premise solutions. On-premise, switching between clusters is faster, taking only a few seconds, while in Azure, it can extend up to five minutes. The downtime is a concern for us."
"The user interface can be improved."
"If you compare the GUI with the Palo Alto and Forcepoint in the Cisco, they're very easy. Check Point, due to its design, is a little bit complex. They should make the GUI easy to use so that anyone can understand it easily, like Fortinet's GUI. Many companies end up using Fortinet because the GUI is very easy, and there's no need for training. They just deploy the box and do the configuration."
"The price of the solution could be reduced, it is expensive."
"They should work towards the WAN intergration."
"There is an issue when installing the Check Point client."
"The solution requires you to buy a minimum of 50 licenses and that is not practical."
"Offering in-app explanations detailing what each feature does, its benefits and potential use cases can help users better understand and utilize the tool to its full potential."
"One of our challenges is ensuring the security of our cloud-based operations."
"Support is one of the points of improvement."
"An improvement could be made in terms of achieving better coverage in such complicated regions as the Asia Pacific, China, and Russia."
"If I were to be nitpicky, I would ask that Perimeter 81 offer the option for us to change the color of the graphical user interface, like maybe pink or green or so on."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Fortigate's pricing is competitive."
"Fortinet's pricing is more straightforward than other solutions. If Fortinet doesn't stick out when you're searching for a solution, you are a glutton for punishment. You only need to know two things when purchasing a Fortinet solution: your total bandwidth and bandwidth at the site. You need to estimate the future bandwidth with other solutions if your customer plans to upgrade."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
"The price of the license and warranty can be better because it is very expensive."
"The price of Fortinet FortiGate is better than Cisco, Check Point, and Palo Alto. In terms of pricing, it's probably a better-priced firewall solution overall."
"Fortinet Secure SD-WAN delivered the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) per Mbps among all other vendors."
"The price is highly competitive when compared to other brands that offer similar functionality."
"You need to pay a license for this solution. Our licensing is now done in our subsidiary."
"The product is expensive but also valuable."
"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 pricing is highly competitive and advantageous, offering great value."
"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."
"You get charged only for what resources you choose and how much traffic actually passes through the firewall, which in turn saves a lot of money."
"CloudGuard Network Security is not too cheap."
"I quite like the way they priced it. It is very reasonable."
"I consider the product to be a medium-priced solution. There are no additional costs attached to the tool."
"Annual licenses cost $30 to $40 each."
"I would rate Harmony Connect's pricing at six out of ten. It wasn't particularly expensive, but it wasn't super cheap either."
"The product is neither cheap nor expensive."
"The product's pricing model accommodates diverse needs and deployment sizes."
"The solution's pricing model may not be suitable for smaller companies, as they might find it expensive. Larger companies tend to receive more value due to many users."
"The product is reasonably priced."
"The cost of the solution's licenses depends on the particular use cases."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Government
5%
 

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 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 ...
What do you like most about Perimeter 81?
Even after restarting, it tries to quickly reestablish connection which is very helpful.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Perimeter 81?
It's essential to consider the organization's specific requirements and budget. Here are some general recommendations...
What needs improvement with Perimeter 81?
In terms of improvement, Perimeter 81 could enhance its reporting and analytics capabilities to provide more detailed...
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
CloudGuard IaaS, Check Point vSEC, CloudGuard IaaS, Check Point Virtual Systems, Check Point CloudGuard Network Security
Check Point Quantum SASE
 

Overview

 

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
Physicians Choice Laboratory Services, Helvetica Insurance
Aqua Security, Cognito, Multipoint, Kustomer, Postman, Meredith
Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. Check Point Harmony SASE (formerly Perimeter 81) and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.