Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) vs ShieldX comparison

The compared Check Point Software Technologies and Fortinet solutions aren't in the same category. Check Point Software Technologies is ranked #8 in Firewalls , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 2.4% mindshare in the category. Fortinet is ranked #11 in MS , and holds a 2.0% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Check Point Software Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Fortinet users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security and ShieldX are two leading network security solutions. Users are generally happier with the support and pricing of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security, but ShieldX offers superior features that many users feel justify its cost.

Features: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security offers advanced threat prevention, seamless integration with cloud environments, and an intuitive user interface. ShieldX provides scalability, robust micro-segmentation capabilities, and enhanced security for dynamic cloud environments.

Room for Improvement: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security users report complexity in configuration, limited analytics capabilities, and the need for enhanced reporting features. ShieldX needs better documentation, improved integration with third-party tools, and optimization for performance in large-scale deployments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is praised for its straightforward deployment model and responsive customer service. ShieldX has a user-friendly deployment but receives mixed reviews regarding customer support.

Pricing and ROI: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is noted for its competitive pricing and favorable ROI, making it a cost-effective choice. ShieldX, while more expensive, delivers high ROI due to its advanced features.

To learn more, read our detailed Firewalls Report (Updated: May 2026).

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Firewalls

May 2026

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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

Fortinet FortiGate

Mindshare comparison

Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)	2.4%
Fortinet FortiGate	15.1%
OPNsense	8.5%
Other	74.0%

Firewalls

Microsegmentation Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
ShieldX	2.0%
Illumio	23.8%
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation	20.4%
Other	53.8%

Microsegmentation Software

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala

Manager, Information Technology Operation/Presales at TechMonarch

A stable solution with an intuitive interface and quick customer service

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate, WatchGuard, Sophos, and SonicWall. I'm not as comfortable with SonicWall because of their UI and limitations. I prefer Fortinet above all other options. When it comes to configuration, I am confident in my ability to handle various tasks, including creating policies such as firewall rules, web policies, and application policies. Additionally, I can configure VPNs and implement load balancing, among other tasks. Overall, I feel much more comfortable working with Fortinet. Fortinet has made significant improvements by integrating AI with firewalls for threat analysis and prevention. In the past 2-3 years, they have launched FortiSASE and SIEM, and they also provide SOC services. Both Palo Alto and Fortinet FortiGate are excellent. While Fortinet FortiGate comes at higher prices, the functionality and support justify the cost. They promptly resolve firmware issues and inform all support providers about configuration changes.

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Viral Shaa

IT Security Analyst at Eos Energy Enterprises, Inc.

Cloud security has unified hybrid policies and now protects critical energy workloads continuously

I would say Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is valuable due to its hybrid cloud security features. It offers granular policy management across the on-premises and cloud environments, giving administrators consistent control for configuration drift. We need to change the policy and the inbound and outbound traffic settings, indicating what traffic must be blocked or allowed, and this capability with Check Point provides significant input into our security strategy. Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) provides unified security management across both hybrid clouds and on-premises environments. Unified security management affects my security operations positively, as we maintain critical systems on the cloud that require strong security and air gap networks. This cloud-native routing and policy installation helps close gaps in protecting critical applications and environments from exposure to the public cloud. From an administrator's perspective, Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) enhances our organization with clearer and more intuitive logging, making decisions easier to understand without deep investigation. In the CloudGuard UI, I can see which threats have triggered alerts, and this information is available on the unified dashboard that provides details of the threat analysis upon alert. As a small team, we log into the console to check specific alerts for high or low network usage or machine shutdowns. If needed, I tune the configuration policy, and the visualizing tools with reporting functionality simplify tracking changes made on the firewall, including the relevant source IP or device names. We ingest logs into our SIEM for detailed oversight, which allows us to monitor any administrative changes. Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) has significantly reduced our organizational risk. We clearly understand our threat landscape and the associated risks. Onboarding the CloudGuard solution directly into our cloud environment has significantly lowered the risks throughout the network and it is easy to launch. When we assess our security posture with third-party assessments, we gain granular visibility into our network pre- and post-CloudGuard installation, showing how we have addressed significant risks and secured vulnerabilities.

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MichaelProcyshyn

IT Director at park holidays uk

Proactively monitors, blocks, and reports what it has blocked; and self-updates meaning there is zero maintenance

The most valuable feature is the automatic scaling. With its microservices, it scales both up and down, depending on traffic and throughput. The traffic through our website depends on holiday bookings. It's very quiet in November through January, and then our traffic picks up quite rapidly and, at our peak, we will take in excess of a million pounds of business a day through our website. The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides. Uptime on the system has been 648 days and we do very little to it because it self-updates and alerts. It does everything that we need it to do, so the administration side of it is zero. One of the beauties about ShieldX is that it's such a good "fire-and-forget" product.

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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

"FortiGate has led to a reduction in our security budget."

"The price-performance ratio is quite high for FortiGate."

"It is simple to manage, and there are a lot of functionalities in the same box."

"This solution has helped us by controlling our incoming and outgoing traffic and blocking the vulnerabilities that can negatively impact us."

"The most valuable feature of FortiGate Next Generation Firewall is its SD-WAN."

"I have found the decryption of Fortinet FortiGate IPS very good. It's called SSL deep inspection, it's working very well. This is how you decrypt access and traffic, and it is through the IPS antivirus center. Additionally, the UI is user-friendly."

"The IPS and the application control feature are the most valuable."

"This solution has a unique range of features that are not available with any other product."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"The capability to auto-scale in or out, depending on the resource demand is great."

"It makes securing our cloud workload super easy, and we are able to push any sort of policy changes we need pretty quickly"

"A unique architecture makes this product stand out from other solutions."

"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."

"Its centralized control, ease of use, and flexibility are the most valuable for our data center security."

"The 24/7 online customer support services enhance effective operations and provide quick services in case of a system failure."

"The ease of administration with the cloud management extension and the cloud licensing model is valuable."

"The most valuable feature for me is that you have just one license. You can test and implement everything you need with one license. You do not need to pay for separate module licenses when you want IPS or other features."

More Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) pros

"Very often, when new challengers come in, what they do is they end up coming in at a lower cost with more functionality."

"The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides."

"For other security professions who are looking for something which is low in cost that does microsegmentation, they should look at ShieldX."

"Once you install it you can virtually forget about it; it's very low-maintenance and high-protection."

"ShieldX has been designed from the very beginning to work well in cloud environments. It understands autoscaling, automation, and auto-configuration. These are the things which are important in today's operating environment."

"It has helped us tighten our security posture. Now, staff can only access things that they should be accessing."

"We were able to see what devices are talking to each other, giving us more visibility."

"The Adaptive Intention Engine is fantastic. It allows us to develop security policies using the language of our internal customers. It's machine-learning applied to security workflows. That allows us to much more easily construct the policies that will protect those workflows."

More ShieldX pros

Cons

"They could improve performance with all the UTM features working. Sometimes, we have seen that when you enable the antivirus sensor, customers report slow web browsing."

"The learning curve is a bit higher."

"The UTM filtering control could be improved."

"I'm happy with the product, however the licensing fees could be lower."

"Being a great product, some changes in the pricing would make it a great choice for even more organizations."

"There are some complex administration tasks in their administration portal. That needs to be improved."

"Improvements could be made when companies expand and need better equipment and more licenses."

"The issue lies with features available in GUI versus CLI during configuration. When using GUI, I want to accomplish everything there, but sometimes it requires using CLI to ensure proper configuration."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"Zero touch removes any independence for configuring."

"Better documentation would be welcome."

"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."

"I would focus on the implementation in the cloud, as it relies on third-party vendors like Azure and AWS. It's not seamless; the solution should be more straightforward for complicated environments."

"This application can be more integrated with web application firewalls. Better integrations would provide more granularity, which would be helpful for focusing on the application itself and preventing attacks. It would be good to include the cross-domain search. If you have multiple firewalls that are managed on the same platform and you want to check who is using some particular objects or where a specific ID is being used, it should provide an option for this kind of search instead of having to check one by one on each firewall."

"Our biggest complaint concerns the high resource usage for IDS/IPS, as we cannot turn on all of the features even with a recent hardware upgrade."

"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."

"The customer support is not good."

More Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) cons

"There should be a bit more customer care, with regular review meetings on it or regular reports. It would be nice to have a quarterly or biannual review of what ShieldX has blocked."

"They need to be consistent in performance and capabilities over time, given the fact that this is new and I want to see where this goes in the next year or so."

"I would like better reports and in-depth reporting."

"With any kind of tool like ShieldX, where you're in the cloud instead of a traditional firewall, you're using CPU resources in those environments to provide the protection. So there's a cost associated with CPU resources. I'm pressing upon them to make the product much more efficient and use less CPUs to do the same thing."

"They need to be consistent in performance and capabilities over time, given the fact that this is new and I want to see where this goes in the next year or so. As the vendor continues to evolve and add future functionality, we want to make sure that we are still keeping up with the integrations, etc. Time will be the key factor here. The proper support for some of the latest technologies, Docker containers, etc. They need to keep up with threat landscape, so we will see how the security get layered. This is what we are going to be keeping an eye on."

"We are having some issues with their LDAP and integrating it with the Active Directory. We can't seem to set it up."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Fortinet prices are around $600 for the small 40F model, and for licenses, the simplest option is about $300 for a year. They sell licenses that can last for 1, 2, 3, or 5 years."

"Fortinet FortiGate SWG is an affordable solution."

"The price is okay."

"My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Fortinet FortiGate is quite good. I don't have a public site, such as in Azure, where I can see the pricing. I always have to go through the distributor, and that could take some time to get the real price for each appliance."

"Fortinet costs are 25% lower than the high-cost provider. There is an equipment cost and a recurring monthly cost for licenses and technical support."

"The price is fine."

"The initial setup is super straight forward and as far as the licensing goes for the small product that we have, the pricing was pretty competitive. It wasn't as simple and as cheap as a SonicWall but for the service we would get it was a good price."

"It's very competitive."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"I quite like the way they priced it. It is very reasonable."

"The tool's pricing is not cheap."

"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."

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

"We explored both pay-as-you-go and build-your-own-licensing models, and found both to be competitive."

"It is more expensive than other solutions and would be more competetive in the market if it came down in price."

"The product's licensing costs are yearly."

"We have a pretty good partnership with Check Point. We have a global subscription and agreement. They give us a pretty good corporate discount."

More Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) pricing and cost advice

"We are very happy with the pricing and licensing. It's about getting a site-wide license. One of the challenges that we've had with our previous vendor had been the cost of licensing."

"For other security professions who are looking for something which is low in cost that does microsegmentation, they should look at ShieldX. It might not be the big name out there, but it does everything that you are looking for in microsegmentation at a very low price."

"ShieldX also enables us to migrate to cloud environments faster. That is an important part of it for sure because it takes the exact same policies that we would apply to our on-premise environment and enables us to simply apply them to the cloud. It becomes one policy for both on-prem and for the cloud."

"ShieldX ensures that we can have the separation needed for our environment to avoid drastically increasing the cost on the licensing side. From this perspective, it's been very positive and helpful."

"We are actually expecting our costs to drop in the coming year, but it is just a matter of the licensing expiring. That is going to happen in the next six months or so. Then, we will start to see a decrease in overall spend."

"Security policies are now applied as applications are going up. Because it's automated, we don't have the three to four week delay. The insertion of applications in the cloud for us dropped from an average of three to four weeks to a couple of days."

"For a three-year deal we paid £55,000 plus tax... But, and this is a big "but," this was over two years ago. ShieldX had only just hit the market. We were the first company in Europe to buy ShieldX."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Outsourcing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	370
Midsize Enterprise	136
Large Enterprise	195

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	71
Midsize Enterprise	41
Large Enterprise	79

No data available

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

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is comparatively conservative in terms of pricing; ...

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What needs improvement with Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is definitely lagging behind its peers. I am not su...

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Comparisons

Sophos Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 17% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 13% of the time

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 3% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

Azure Firewall vs Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)

Compared 7% of the time

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)

Compared 7% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)

Compared 5% of the time

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)

Compared 4% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)

Compared 4% of the time

More Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) Competitors

Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) vs ShieldX

Compared 16% of the time

Illumio Segmentation vs ShieldX

Compared 16% of the time

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs ShieldX

Compared 10% of the time

VMware NSX vs ShieldX

Compared 8% of the time

Nutanix Flow Network Security vs ShieldX

Compared 7% of the time

More ShieldX Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

June 2026

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)

June 2026

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) report

Download Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) product report

Buyer's Guide

ShieldX

May 2026

Download ShieldX product report

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall

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

APEIRO, ShieldX APEIRO

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate is a versatile network security tool offering features like VPN, firewall, web filtering, intrusion prevention, and scalability. It is known for its performance and integration with other Fortinet products, making it a preferred choice for robust cybersecurity.

Fortinet FortiGate stands out as a comprehensive cybersecurity solution with strong performance and ease of configuration. It delivers unified threat management, integrating features such as dynamic routing, SD-WAN support, and centralized management. Despite its strengths, improvements in the web interface's stability, pricing structures, and reporting capabilities are needed. Users seek better integration with third-party tools and automation advancements to enhance the experience further. These enhancements, alongside improvements in bandwidth management and the reduction of licensing costs, are points of interest for users looking to capitalize on FortiGate's extensive capabilities.

What are Fortinet FortiGate's key features?

VPN: Ensures secure remote connections.
Firewall: Protects against unauthorized access.
Web Filtering: Blocks malicious sites and content.
Application Control: Manages and controls applications.
Intrusion Prevention: Detects and prevents vulnerabilities.
SSL Inspection: Enhances security by inspecting encrypted traffic.

What benefits should be considered when evaluating Fortinet FortiGate?

Affordability: Offers cost-effective security solutions.
Reliability: Known for consistent and stable performance.
Integration: Seamlessly integrates with other Fortinet products.
Comprehensive Protection: Provides broad threat protection capabilities.

Fortinet FortiGate is widely implemented across industries as a primary firewall system for securing internet gateways and safeguarding data centers. It supports businesses in achieving SD-WAN integration and enhances cybersecurity by providing essential features like antivirus, web filtering, and application control. Enterprises utilize FortiGate for securing remote connections and ensuring compliance with security standards, making it adaptable for different network sizes and industries.

Fortinet

Check Point Cloud Firewall delivers advanced threat prevention and administration ease with centralized management of hybrid clouds. It offers seamless cloud platform integration, maintaining consistent security policies and enhancing efficiency.

Check Point Cloud Firewall is designed for comprehensive cloud security, ensuring perimeter protection, traffic inspection, and threat prevention. It is often used for safeguarding workloads and applications in public cloud settings like AWS and Azure. The firewall effectively controls both east-west and north-south traffic and supports hybrid cloud setups. Utilizing features like VPN, IPS, and URL filtering, it secures environments across multiple platforms, helping manage compliance effectively while addressing latency, API integration, and onboarding challenges.

What are the key features?

Advanced Threat Prevention: Defends against cyber threats across hybrid clouds.
Auto-Scaling: Automatically adjusts resources to meet demand.
Unified Security Management: Centralizes management for consistent security.
REST API Automation: Enables seamless integration with existing workflows.
Robust VPN Capabilities: Ensures secure data transmission across networks.

What benefits to expect in reviews?

Ease of Administration: Simplified management processes across environments.
Operational Efficiency: Enhances productivity by reducing risk and complexity.
Consistent Security Policies: Maintains a uniform security posture between clouds.
User-Friendly Interface: Streamlines user interactions and task completion.

Check Point Cloud Firewall sees frequent use in sectors needing robust perimeter protection, such as finance and healthcare, where compliance is critical. Its capabilities suit businesses utilizing public cloud infrastructures, managing complex hybrid models, or requiring strong VPN services and traffic control.

Check Point Software Technologies

ShieldX offers advanced, scalable security for cloud and data center environments, addressing dynamic threats with precision. Its robust framework enables efficient threat detection and response, safeguarding critical infrastructure.

Specialized in delivering comprehensive security, ShieldX is designed for organizations looking to protect their cloud assets and on-premises data centers. It integrates seamlessly within existing IT frameworks, providing multi-layered defense against cyber threats. ShieldX uses machine learning and AI to detect anomalies and respond to potentially malicious activities, ensuring data integrity and availability while maintaining regulatory compliance.

What are the most important features of ShieldX?

Dynamic Security Policies: Automatically adjust security measures based on current threats.
Micro-Segmentation: Provides granular control of traffic between workloads.
Automated Threat Detection: Leverages AI to identify and mitigate threats instantly.
Comprehensive Visibility: Gain insights into network activities across all environments.

What benefits should users look for in ShieldX reviews?

Scalability: Easily adapts to growing security needs without disrupting operations.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces overhead by streamlining security management processes.
Enhanced Compliance: Supports adherence to regulatory requirements with minimal effort.
Increased Uptime: Minimizes downtime by preemptively addressing threats.

ShieldX is widely implemented in industries like finance and healthcare, where data protection is critical. Its versatile security protocols are tailored to meet specific sector needs, fostering a reliable defense against sector-specific threats. Organizations in these fields leverage ShieldX to ensure client data confidentiality and operational continuity.

Fortinet

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

Iowa State University

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