Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall Reviews

One of the most valuable features is having the ability to cluster multiple firewalls even if they are different versions.

It's a complicated firewall. Until you come to know the firewall inducers, most people don't like the firewall because the components for it are a little bit complex. User-friendliness is a little bit tough. It needs to be more user-friendly when creating policies, and pushing policies. Committing takes more time compared to Palo Alto.

The solution needs to invest in its GUI. The interface is very bad and not user-friendly.

It's a stable firewall. There's no issue on the stability. When it comes to the detection rate of the IP, it is the most powerful solution for detection-ready tests, like evasion techniques etc. Forcepoint is a leader on the market.

The solution is very simple to scale. You just need to keep on adding devices. The firewall can cluster with multiple different models. Scalability-wise, this firewall will be the best firewall for an organization who is operating with a low budget. We typically implement for medium-sized to enterprise-level organizations.

Technical support is okay. It takes too long to get a response because the support comes directly from the Netherlands, and they may have very limited employees. The engineers are quite technical, but the response is very slow.

The initial setup is complex.

We are an integrator that helps with the installation.

The initial installation needs a high level of knowledge because it's not like other firewalls where you have one single appliance. You need to have a separate machine to manage the firewall. The firewall is just a dummy device and all the configurations are done on a Windows machine. Sometimes, in the case of the unavailability of a Windows machine, you cannot do much with the firewall.

What others need to know is that they need to have a clear idea of why they're going for this particular firewall. They need to know if are they looking for clustering or if are they looking for link load balancing. If they're not going for clustering, I would suggest they go with the most moderate firewalls like Palo Alto or Fortinet.

A certain type of attack, such as evasion techniques, isn't something that other firewalls really protect against. According to NSS Labs, Forcepoint firewall has been on top for the last consecutive four or so years because of the detection rate of evasion techniques that other firewalls failed to detect.  

The clustering of our ISP links is a nice feature that other firewalls also should have. It is a helpful feature, but it is not a user-friendly solution as a whole.

I would rate the solution five out of ten. User-friendliness is the most important reason I've rated it so low. After Cisco firewalls, no next-gen firewalls have come to the market. So if they want to compete with these firewalls, they need to enhance the overall user-friendliness of the solution.

Forcepoint could make the interface more reasonable and easier to navigate. If you are not good at Forcepoint, you cannot easily manage it. Fortinet is easy to navigate and reach.

Forcepoint should focus on upgrades. Sometimes, service is impacted or disrupted after an upgrade. You have to read the release notes carefully before doing anything.

I have been using Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall for three years.

Four years ago, I called support. Their response was very bad, but the antivirus was good.

Fortinet is better because it is very easy to manage. For Forcepoint, you need someone to dive into GUI or make some changes in the configuration, navigate, etc.

The initial setup is complex with the NG firewall compared to Fortinet. You can manage it easily by doing some virtual context and trying to divide the solution. You need experience for that. You have to do some lab to do something to prepare.

The product is not expensive.

I recommend Fortinet. Fortinet is booming now, but it is expensive. Both have pros and cons. You can compare both with Palo Alto. Palo Alto is more stable and more scalable. Forcepoint has many more features than Fortinet.

Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

I use Next Generation Firewall as the main point of security in our infrastructure.

Next Generation Firewall's best feature is that it can be managed on one platform.

Next Generation Firewall's configuration could be improved.

I've been using Next Generation Firewall for a month.

The initial setup was straightforward, and the full configuration took two to three hours.

We used an in-house team.

Next Generation Firewall is moderately priced.

I would rate Next Generation Firewall five out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for perimeter security. We use it across the entire office.

The most valuable feature is the fact that I can connect both offices together under the solution. I have two offices, and I can route the internet of both offices using the same product. The connectivity is great.

The integration capabilities are good. 

They need to improve their alerts. If I could integrate some of the alerts on WhatsApp, that would be nice. I should have the option to get my alerts, not just by email. I'd like to also see them, for example, on WhatsApp. 

I've been using the solution for two years. 

It is stable and reliable. I'd rate it eight or nine out of ten. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

The scalability is very good. I would rate it eight or nine out of ten in terms of the ability to expand.

We have about 200 people using the solution at this time.

Technical support is okay.

Neutral

The initial setup has a moderate amount of difficulty. I'd rate it five out of ten in terms of ease of deployment. The user interface was not something I was very familiar with. There was a little bit of complexity that I had to deal with. IN the end, it took a few days to get everything up and running. 

The pricing is okay. I'd rate it five or six out of ten in terms of affordability.

We are partners. 

We are using the latest version of the solution. 

I'd recommend the solution to others. Overall, I would rate the product eight out of ten. 

Our use cases involve deploying the Forcepoint solution, which includes installing the SMC server, management server, log server, as well as physical appliances and designing the clustering of Forcepoint.

Forcepoint is a good solution because it has a central server that serves as a management console. You can manage 100s of firewalls from this single console. Additionally, a key advantage is that Forcepoint provides VPN services as part of its basic subscriptions. It is not necessary to pay extra to use VPN services.

There is certainly room for improvement. In larger companies with extensive infrastructure, retrieving logs for a longer period of time can sometimes take a bit longer than desired.

In bigger companies with a larger volume of logs; it takes more time to retrieve them due to the increased amount of data.

I have been working with Forcepoint for about two years.

It is a very stable solution. If you set everything well, if your policy is well designed, it's stable.

Overall, I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. 

It is a very scalable solution. If you don't have enough capacity, you can easily double or even triple it. If you need to add extra Forcepoint devices due to insufficient power, it's just a matter of expanding the cluster. Additionally, the physical boxes can be set up as a hybrid cluster, which means you don't necessarily need the same expensive appliances. You can purchase more affordable ones and integrate them into the Acris cluster. Forcepoint's physical appliances can share and distribute the network traffic between them.

We have enterprise-level as well as small-sized clients. 

The customer service and support are quite good. They are very educated. I never had a case that I wasn't able to solve successfully. So, they are reliable. 

Positive

The initial setup is very easy because all you need to do is create a USB disk, which you can obtain from the management server. You configure it once. After that, you just connect the physical server to Ethernet, insert the USB disk, and turn it on. Everything else will be done. You configure it for the first time on the management server and then install it on the FlashDesk. After that, you simply connect the physical server to Ethernet, insert the USB disk, and turn it on. That's it. And everything else will be taken care of.

If you do a simple installation, just the physical setup, it's a matter of hours. For a single installation, for a small business or company where you have around 150 users on the network edge, one engineer is enough. Therefore, the time to deploy the solution depends on the size of the installation.

Moreover, some maintenance is required for the solution. One person or one administration is enough for maintenance. 

I would recommend the solution. Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten because there are disadvantages like only some logs for enterprises. It takes a bit longer for it.

The most valuable features are mainly the Management and the Active capabilities.

From a managerial point of view, as long as you have proper training, it's very easy to manage this firewall. Something that I've noticed that Forcepoint lacks, is the training that they offer to their customers. It's quite expensive, I believe it costs roughly $11,000. Because of this, we haven't been fully trained in this solution; to get the most out of this product, you need proper training. That is the only negative comment I have surrounding Forcepoint.

Aside from the expensive training, I honestly can't think of another issue. It's a fully-featured firewall that comes with everything required. The version that we are using has a single power supply, whereas we would prefer having dual power supplies on or firewalls.  

Our company has been using Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall for roughly two years. 

Stability-wise, I have never had any major issues with it. No matter the situation, it has always served its purpose.

Scalability-wise, I cannot comment because we have not increased the number of firewalls or the number of nodes on our existing firewall. Although we have not implemented these changes, I know that it's very easy to increase the number of nodes and bandwidth, which means that it is very scalable, but from an on-premise point of view, we haven't done that. 

We've never had a negative experience with customer support. They have always been quickly available. I can't complain, I think they have a pretty good team. 

I don't have anything bad to say about the product. I absolutely love it.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine. 

Forcepoint is a next-generation firewall, we are using it as a firewall for one of our customers, which includes one data center and 95 branches. Using the SD-WAN feature on Forcepoint NGFW, we provide a secure connection from all the branches to the data center.

We like the scalability of Forcepoint because, with the Forcepoint NGFW solution, we can scale anything. The solution has central management, so we can manage all the branches and devices centrally in one controller. This also allows the customer to manage the solution centrally.

Forcepoint comes with the SD-WAN feature, which connects all the branches and devices to the data center with a central connection. We bypass using a VPN or IPsec or anything like that because Forcepoint can do it automatically. Also, one of the controller benefits is that it can monitor the tech, meaning all the devices that are managed by Forcepoint.

I think some of the customers who already use Forcepoint will benefit from using SD-WAN because it has features like auto-scaling, but I think the auto-scaling needs improvement since only Forcepoint NGFW comes with the SD-WAN solution. Plus, auto-scaling is an important tool and it still may not be good enough for some customers, so I think there is room for more improvement in the auto-scaling feature in SD-WAN.

We have also gotten a slow response from technical support when we experienced hiccups, errors, and bugs. I think there is a lot of room for improvement in the support capabilities.

My company has been using the solution for about one year.

For a simple deployment with simple requirements, like firewall blocking and connecting to the LAN or data center, the stability of the device is quite good. However, when it comes to a complex deployment, the rules, firewall features, SD-WAN core features, and auto-scaling can cause the device to be not quite stable.

We like the scalability of Forcepoint because with the Forcepoint NGFW solution, we can scale anything. However, I think there is room for more improvement in the auto-scaling feature in SD-WAN.

I think their support capabilities have a lot of room for improvement because my company has had several issues. Of course, other products have issues too, but they have good support that helps us deliver a solution to the customer. With Forcepoint, however, the technical support is slow and I think the support team needs to be improved.

The installation is quite simple, but when it comes to configuration we need to know why the customer is implementing the solution. Firewalling or connecting other branches is a simple configuration but with something like auto-scaling or antivirus, Forcepoint needs to be more straightforward.

I think we deployed a data center in a half-day, so you can deploy the controller or the data center in about a day. The time it takes to activate and configure each branch varies, and may range from 15-40 minutes. Once we activate the solution and set it up for the customer, they connect it to the internet with our password and can begin working. Overall, I think one week is more than enough time for a thorough deployment.

There are some options for licensing. I think usually the licenses are valid for three years, but in my country we only have the option of a one-year license. The license is gauged on the requirements and the controller. There is a basic license and an advanced license, which offers more protection for antiviruses, like web category filtering.

I think Forcepoint is a good simple solution for firewalling. Because of the instability we faced within our project, which I think can be common with Forcepoint, I would only recommend this solution for a retail business with minimal, non-complex requirements. If you need more SD-WAN features, like auto-scaling, I don't think I would recommend Forcepoint. 

I would rate this solution as a five out of ten.

I use the Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall in my company for the protection of the Layer-2 networking area, which consists of Wi-Fi connections used in the enterprise.

The most valuable feature of the solution I like stems from the fact that the installation and configuration can be done locally. It is also easy to set up security capabilities. Forcepoint acts as a multi-service provider.

The endpoint protection capabilities of the product are an area of concern where improvements are required.

I have experience with Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Around 100 people in my company use the tool.

The product's initial setup phase is easy.

There is a need to make payments towards the licensing charges attached to the product. The product is not expensive.

The tool's SD-WAN capabilities are supported by the tool.

It is a nice product to use. The product can be used in the data center as a firewall.

The product does provide reporting and visibility features. There are many features provided by the product, especially the area of availability.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.