Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall comparison

Check Point Software Technologies and Imperva are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Check Point Software Technologies is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.8, while Imperva is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.9. Additionally, 100% of Check Point Software Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Imperva users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Imperva Web Application Firewall and Check Point CloudGuard WAF compete in the web application firewall market. Check Point CloudGuard holds an edge in AI-driven features and seamless cloud integration, which are increasingly crucial for modern applications.

Features: Imperva Web Application Firewall offers correlated attack validation, virtual patching, and account takeover protection. Check Point CloudGuard WAF features advanced AI capabilities, ease of API integration, and comprehensive threat prevention.

Room for Improvement: Imperva users suggest enhancements to the user interface, real-time traffic visibility, and support response times. Check Point CloudGuard users recommend improvements in administrative portal latency, documentation, and real-time monitoring.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Imperva WAF is known for rapid deployment across on-premises and cloud environments with generally well-regarded support. Check Point CloudGuard is flexible in public and hybrid cloud deployment, although support availability concerns exist.

Pricing and ROI: Imperva's pricing is considered high due to complex licensing and extra costs for features, yet it offers strong ROI in DDoS protection. Check Point CloudGuard offers competitive pricing with bundled packages, though slightly more costly than some competitors like Azure WAF.

To learn more, read our detailed Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall

January 2025

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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

Cloudflare

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

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Dialungana Malungo

Principal Cybersecurity Specialist at Unitel S.A.

Protects our web applications and APIs and has a very low false positive rate

CloudGuard WAF is a very straightforward solution. I do not have to worry about signatures. Most of the solutions that are out there are mainly based on signatures, and I have to do a lot of maintenance to get the signature updates, and sometimes, due to a lack of resources, I am not able to do so. With CloudGuard WAF, I have peace of mind, because most of the features are AI-based, and there is not much configuration that needs to be done on my side. Once set, I only go to CloudGuard WAF to check. I do not have to worry about signatures or updates. Everything is done perfectly, and I have a sense of peace because I know our applications are safe. It is very important for us that CloudGuard WAF protects our applications against threats without relying on signatures. That is definitely one of the key features I need.

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Abdullah Jin

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Offers bot protection and DDoS Protection and protects public-facing portals

Support is one thing I wish Imperva could improve. They follow the phone model and keep rotating you from one customer service person to another. The layer one support isn't very clear about the workings of the product. My feedback is primarily about Imperva Cloud, not on-premise. On-premise is a whole new story. Support is the issue for Imperva Cloud. It's also a bit pricey. It's a premium service and very expensive. The licensing model is not very straightforward. Every feature is priced separately, and to enjoy maximum protection, you'll have to spend a lot of money. The licensing model is a bit complex, and each feature is very pricey. For example, API security and web application protection are two separate license packages.

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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

"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."

"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."

"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."

"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is that it has a free version. They give us the free version with the anti-DDoS features and also the load balancing solution."

"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."

"The solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."

More Cloudflare pros

"The most valuable features are its ease of use and multiple functionalities."

"Check Point CloudGuard Network Security helped reduce the cost of ownership for our web application firewall by 50%."

"I have thousands of exposed websites and APIs. Being able to control what is happening and try to prevent any attack is the best feature."

"The most effective CloudGuard feature for threat prevention is its web app protection."

"The first valuable feature is that it is not a complex process to get it up and running. It was not complex at all. We were in a close relationship with the team that developed the app, and it worked in a few hours. The second valuable feature is the information that comes out of it."

"It is a very scalable and stable solution."

"The features I have found most valuable are the comprehensive threat prevention capabilities, automated policy management, and seamless integration with cloud environments."

"The solution's strongest point is that you can connect everything to it, giving you a full view of what's connected."

More Check Point CloudGuard WAF pros

"The tool's profiling feature maps all the web application directories and related components on the profile directory. It has improved the security of my client's website applications."

"One good thing about Imperva Web Application Firewall is it can be on the cloud and also it can be on-premise."

"Its inline transferring mode is the most valuable because it is 100% transparent. When you change the IP, there is no change on the network side. If you can't and want to try to reach an IP, you can reach the server IP. There are many other advanced security features in it. The smallest appliances of Imperva can handle the highest traffic at a customer site. For example, a smaller appliance from Imperva can provide you the same security as an F5 product."

"There are some features that are configured by default, so even without doing much, it can still provide a level of protection."

"Protection is the best solution since it has profile functionality."

"There is a quick switch between any of the the nodes if something goes wrong, where there's a there's an attack against a specific area. The security setup is reasonably easy. It's not a problem to do setups and rules and integrations. And, yeah, just the the back end team is also very willing to insist if there's questions that that we cannot answer or with these questions that we do have"

"We can prevent attacks or issues even before they happen."

"The solution is very scalable. It is one of the most important features. You can also expand resources and features as well."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pros

Cons

"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."

"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."

"Support response time could be improved."

"It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal."

"There are some issues with the CDN services."

"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."

"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."

"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."

More Cloudflare cons

"They might be able to add more integrations."

"Improving the process for handling licensing renewals would be a welcome enhancement."

"The documentation of each of the tools that they offer needs to be better."

"If the price could come down, I would be very happy with the product."

"I do not know if it is already there, but I would like to have complete visibility between the posture management and firewall as a service."

"I feel like I need more clarity in understanding pricing for DDoS protection."

"We would like the solution to be more economical since it is not accessible to all clients."

"They should improve in the delivery of more detailed reports with more information."

More Check Point CloudGuard WAF cons

"The reporting is missing some features, such as: only two export formats, and the time period does not include the last day, week, year."

"The initial setup could be simplified. Every time you have to install the solution you have to get in touch with support or somebody that can to do that for you."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall could improve the console by making it easier to use."

"The UI interface needs improvement."

"In the past, I have bugs on the WAF. I've contacted Imperva about them. Future releases should be less buggy."

"The user interface could be better."

"I'd like the option to pick your bot protection."

"It would be useful if the solution used more intelligence in attack protection. For example, firewalls are to be dependent on the configuration, but if they could have some data science around it the solution would be even better. The profiling of the traffic, and making decisions surrounding that should be intelligence-based, instead of being based on the configuration of the firewall itself."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

"We are using the free tier of the solution."

"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

"A free version of the solution is available."

"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."

"We are using the free version."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"Check Point CloudGuard Application Security's pricing is not friendly."

"As Infiniti customers, the pricing is manageable, as we have allowances dedicated to each Check Point product. The price is not as high compared to other options I have dealt with in the past."

"The sales team or account managers from Check Point are top-notch. As I am using other products as well, my pricing was competitive compared to others."

"If the pricing for the Infinity platform covers everything, it would be more straightforward. I had a hard time selling it to our CEO as a former CFO because of the differentials. There are different deltas year to year over a five-year period. It is very difficult to explain. It would be easier to digest for our executives if there was a flatter scale"

"The pricing is not that expensive considering what it offers."

"Check Point CloudGuard Application Security's pricing is comparable to other products in the market."

"Considering all the benefits we've observed, we find the price to be satisfactory."

"The tool's licensing costs are yearly and competitive."

More Check Point CloudGuard WAF pricing and cost advice

"The cost of this solution depends on the platform."

"Everybody complains about the price of this solution."

"There is a license for this solution and we purchase the license annually with no additional fees."

"The solution's pricing is an issue."

"It's an excellent product, but it can be very costly."

"The tool is expensive."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall's pricing is expensive."

"The price of Imperva Web Application Firewalls is expensive compared to others."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

23%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Security Firm

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

13%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?

Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...

See all answers

What do you like most about Cloudflare?

Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.

See all answers

What do you like most about CloudGuard for Application Security?

We have not had any incidents. We could realize its benefits immediately. We watched and monitored the traffic, and i...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudGuard for Application Security?

As Infiniti customers, the pricing is manageable, as we have allowances dedicated to each Check Point product. The pr...

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What needs improvement with CloudGuard for Application Security?

We are satisfied with the product because it does what we need it to do, but one thing that I would like to see impro...

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Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

My recommendation is Imperva.

See all answers

Is Citrix ADC (formerly Netscaler) the best ADC to use and if not why?

For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you hav...

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DDoS solutions: Any other solutions to consider aside from Radware DDoS Protection Service and F5 Silverline DDoS Protection?

You can have a look to Imperva Cloud WAF, the anti-DDoS mitigation is under 1s and works very well. I observed a lot ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 49% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

F5 Advanced WAF vs Check Point CloudGuard WAF

Compared 16% of the time

AWS WAF vs Check Point CloudGuard WAF

Compared 14% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Check Point CloudGuard WAF

Compared 11% of the time

open-appsec vs Check Point CloudGuard WAF

Compared 9% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Check Point CloudGuard WAF

Compared 8% of the time

More Check Point CloudGuard WAF Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 17% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 13% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 11% of the time

AWS WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 10% of the time

NetScaler vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 2% of the time

More Imperva Web Application Firewall Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Check Point CloudGuard WAF

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Imperva Web Application Firewall

March 2025

Download Imperva Web Application Firewall product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Check Point CloudGuard Application Security, CloudGuard Application Security, CloudGuard AppSec

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Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

Check Point CloudGuard WAF (Web Application Firewall) is a cloud-native security solution designed to protect web applications and APIs from known and unknown threats. It employs contextual AI and machine learning to prevent zero-day attacks without relying on traditional signature-based detection methods, ensuring that applications remain secure even as new threats emerge.

CloudGuard WAF offers preemptive protection against vulnerabilities by using machine learning to identify and block zero-day threats like Log4Shell and Spring4Shell. It provides precise detection capabilities, minimizing the need for constant fine-tuning and reducing false positives. Designed for cloud-native environments, CloudGuard WAF integrates seamlessly with CI/CD pipelines, supporting automated deployment and configuration through infrastructure as code (IaC) or APIs.

Key Features of CloudGuard WAF:

ML-Based Threat Prevention: Stops application-layer attacks, including those listed in the OWASP Top 10, with minimal tuning and no reliance on signature updates.
API Discovery and Security: Identifies and secures APIs, preventing misuse and enforcing API schemas to protect against unauthorized access.
Bot and DDoS Prevention: Detects and mitigates automated attacks that can disrupt services or degrade customer experiences.
Intrusion Prevention (IPS): Provides protection against over 2,800 web-related CVEs using Check Point’s award-winning IPS technology.

Benefits of CloudGuard WAF:

Zero-Day Protection: Mitigates risks from newly discovered vulnerabilities without waiting for signature updates.
Reduced Operational Overhead: Eliminates the need for constant manual tuning and exception handling, simplifying security management.
Comprehensive API Security: Enhances control over your attack surface by discovering and securing all APIs, including shadow, rogue, and deprecated endpoints.
Fast and Easy Deployment: Deployable within minutes via WAF as a Service (WAFaaS), requiring only a one-time DNS configuration for immediate protection.

CloudGuard WAF is particularly suitable for organizations using modern, cloud-based architectures that require robust, automated security measures for both applications and APIs. Its capabilities are valuable for industries that handle sensitive data, such as finance or healthcare, where compliance and data protection are critical. Pricing and support are typically customized to the specific needs and scale of the deployment, with options for continuous updates and maintenance through Check Point's managed services.

CloudGuard WAF by Check Point provides advanced, AI-driven protection for web applications and APIs, offering automated, precise threat prevention and easy integration with cloud-native environments, ensuring robust security without the need for extensive manual configuration.

Check Point Software Technologies

Imperva Web Application Firewall is a versatile solution that protects web applications and databases from various attacks, including DDoS, cross-site scripting, and SQL injection attacks. It offers data security, availability, and access control and can be deployed on-premises or on the cloud.

The solution has good security against web attacks and offers advanced bot protection, API security, and mitigation features. Imperva WAF is easy to configure and deploy; it has good customer service and an excellent user interface.

Imperva

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Orange España, Paschoalotto

BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens

Buyer's Guide

Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall

January 2025

Free Report: Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall

Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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