Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall Reviews

Many of our clients have a two-stage firewall. They use one vendor in the data center and another on-prem, so we have to choose between Forcepoint or Cisco. There are choices, but many of our clients have Forcepoint.

Configuration is not easy because it has an old-fashioned interface. The configuration interface is highly complex, and it's been the same for years. They have to change the interface.

The structure of the configuration interface isn't like Palo Alto or FortiGate where you can do everything from a single screen. With Forcepoint, you have to import or assign rules because it's working with SMC, the central firewall management. Also, you cannot communicate directly with the product. You have to communicate with the product through the management interface. 

The dashboard also should be updated. 

I'm the PS manager, and our team is working with many products, including an email gateway and Forcepoint Next-Generation Firewall. We've been using it for more than four years.

Forcepoint's stability is satisfactory, for the most part, but when you have a log increase, you will face issues. If the hard disk is full of logs, it won't accept any configuration. 

If you want help from the support desk, you have to contact tech support and ask them to access the product to go through more troubleshooting. It's the same with web, email, and DLP.

We use multiple firewall solutions, including Cisco, Palo Alto, and FortiGate.

Setting up Forcepoint is okay, but you have to import the device and establish tunnel communication between the device and the SMC or the central management team. Deployment takes about five days from beginning to final confirmation, and we have a team of about six people for managing Forcepoint. According to the policy, you have to do things according to the number of clients behind the firewall. It's not straightforward, and it depends on the number of parameters or assets as well as the configuration the customer requires.

The license is based on the number of clients behind the web gateway. If you increase the number of agents, the license will cost more. 

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. 

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.

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.

We publish books and use Forcepoint Firewall as the first line of defense on VPN access.

Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall could improve with applying policies. Also, improvement with publishing websites and VPN agent.

The solution needs to add an antivirus profile and anti-spyware profile, not just policies and VPN.

Our company has been using Forcepoint Firewall for 5 years.

Forcepoint is a good, stable solution.

This solution is scalable. 

The technical support for Forcepoint is fine. They are polite and available twenty-four hours and usually resolve problems the same day.

The initial setup of this solution is easy. We only set up some of the policies.

Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is reasonable, it is priced the same as other firewalls. 

We evaluated Palo Alto, their main advantage over Forcepoint is that they have an antivirus profile and anti-spyware profile.

I would rate Forcepoint a 7 out of 10. I would recommend that anyone considering this solution to upgrade their software to have more advantages.

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.

The solution's most valuable features are reporting, support, and classification of cyber attacks.

They should provide more details on potential cyber-attacks over a dashboard or email for the solution. Also, they should include centralized dashboard configuration and management.

We have been using the solution for three years.

I rate the solution's stability an eight or nine.

I rate the solution's scalability a nine out of ten.

The solution's technical support team is quite responsive and provides consistent support.

Positive

The solution's initial setup process is complex. It is challenging to identify new and existing systems.

We implemented the solution with the help of a system integrator.

The solution is expensive.

I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

It is very simple, easy to use, and flexible. It is a top solution with a complete feature set. Its most valuable feature involves its environment. 

A pain point worth mentioning is the need of the customer or client to properly know the environment as it relates to the presentation of Forcepoint and to have a better knowledge of the product's implementation. 

We have been using Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall for six years. 

It's very stable product. 

We feel Forcepoint's scalability to be pretty easy and good. It works very well. 

We feel the product's technical support could be better, as this relates to the solution itself, to the installation of the product, and to having a proper understanding of the case. 

The initial setup of Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is not terribly complex. We are talking about three months at the intermediate level. 

While the deployment of a single firewall depends on the environment, this took us between two to five days. 

We employ more than 16 people on our staff for the deployment and maintenance of the solution.

Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall has a good price. 

In addition to Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall, we evaluated the concurrency of Palo Alto's features. We feel that Forcepoint affords better centralized management than its competitors.

Our company makes use of every current version of Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall. 

Our clients who use Forcepoint run the gamut from small, medium to large businesses. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.