Share your experience using SteelConnect EX Enterprise SD-WAN

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.

We had the firewalls set up in the cloud systems. We were using them for VPN as well as the encryption of traffic coming in and leaving the cloud.

When COVID-19 hit and everybody started to work from home, we did not have a scalable VPN technology. Also, with more people working from home, security was a bigger concern. CloudGuard Network Security addressed both needs in one single product.

After implementing CloudGuard Network Security, overnight, 500 people could work from home on a secure and encrypted tunnel. What more could we ask for? When COVID-19 hit and everything closed down, we were able to spin this up within 2 weeks.

CloudGuard Network Security provides us with unified security management across hybrid clouds as well as on-prem. There is a single admin client that you can use. You can have a firewall deployed on-prem. You can have a firewall deployed in GCP. You can have a firewall deployed in AWS or Microsoft Azure, but you can manage it all with a single pane of glass. You can have a single management station managing all of these.

We are very confident about it and our security. It is a very robust solution.

The endpoint VPN is super stable. The routing is also very good. We tried a competing product first, but we could not make it work. We came across CloudGuard. The network routing across different virtual networks in Azure and AWS was way ahead of any of the other technologies. That helped us be able to cover the whole network using one single cluster.

They have come such a long way. There may be other areas that other people use, but as far as I am concerned, I have been very happy with it. There are always newer features getting added and new encryption protocols coming. I can see where they are going and how far they have come. I have been using the Check Point firewall since 2010. It has been 14 years, and I have seen how they have improved.

They are coming out with more SD-WAN express route support from a firewall perspective. That would be great. They keep on launching new features. That is how they work.

I was one of the first sites to use it as a PoC before they even introduced it to the world. It has been 4 or 5 years.

I would rate it a ten out of ten for stability. It has been running since we put it up.

I would rate it a ten out of ten for scalability. It depends on your design. You can either have a static deployment where there is only one firewall, two firewalls, and four firewalls, or you can put it in the elastic mode where it will spin up as the load goes up. It will auto-scale up and auto-scale down. It is fantastic.

They are fantastic. Their technical support is absolutely great. There is ownership right from the top down. They know their product. They stand by their product. If there is a feature that is not working, I have seen them write patches for me in 48 hours. They offered to provide the patch by Sunday evening in Tel Aviv, and by Sunday afternoon, I had an email saying that the patch was available for our download. We could download it and reinstall it. That patch was only written because of something in my deployment. It was not like they had 200 customers who complained about it. I was the only one complaining about it.

Positive

We did a PoC for one week. We had some major issues because of sizing. We sized CloudGuard too small, so we made it bigger. The next week, we did another PoC, and it worked well. By the third week, we were done. We went live, and everybody was working from home. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten in terms of ease of installation.

Their support was good. We set it up when nobody else in the world had seen it. We were probably the third company in the whole world to roll it out. We were that new to it. Nowadays, I would rate their support an eight out of ten, but in those days, it was one out of ten because we were all learning together.

I was the only one involved in its deployment. To deploy this, you need to have a background in IT security and networking put together.

We have seen an ROI. 500 people were able to work from home. That itself is a huge ROI.

It is one of the top solutions in the world. We know that it is protecting our entire cloud infrastructure, so it makes a lot of sense.

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

We did evaluate other solutions. We looked at Fortinet, and they could not do cross-VNet traffic at that time. We spent almost five or six days. We worked 10 to 12 hours a day. Even after 60 to 70 hours, they could not make it work, but it worked out-of-the-box with CloudGuard Network Security. In terms of ease of use, CloudGuard Network Security is any day easier.

We did not just go with our cloud vendor's cloud firewall because the cloud vendor did not have a firewall at that time. Secondly, even if they did, it is always good to have a third-party product protecting the cloud. If we are using AWS, I would not put an AWS firewall there because if there is a compromise somewhere else, it is most likely going to carry over to their firewall too because everything runs on the same fabric, whereas this is separate. It gives a completely independent security front end.

I would definitely recommend it. I have used it. I know how it works.

Check Point has been one of the pioneers of firewall technology. This is the only product that they really do. They are into cybersecurity firewall technology. They are not like other competitors, such as Cisco or Fortinet, who also have network switches, hubs, routers, etc. Check Point is a dedicated company that does cybersecurity. All in all, this is what they do. You can see the investment coming from the top down. They have ownership of the product. I have raised complaints that have gone up to Gil Shwed. He is the CEO and the founder of Check Point. I have got an email from Gil saying that he knows we are frustrated, but they are working on it, and he will make sure that this gets fixed. That is the kind of ownership they have.

Overall, I would rate CloudGuard Network Security a nine out of ten.