Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) Reviews

What could be improved in this product is its architecture. Its user interface also needs improvement.

The user experience, particularly in the implementation, management, and operations of this product, also needs to be improved.

Operations management is difficult in Check Point CloudGuard Cloud Network Security.

I've been using Check Point CloudGuard Cloud Network Security for seven years.

I find this product stable. It's a good product.

Check Point CloudGuard Cloud Network Security has good scalability.

I'm giving technical support for this product a five out of ten.

My advice to people looking into implementing Check Point CloudGuard Cloud Network Security is that they should have technical expertise before deploying it.

I'm giving Check Point CloudGuard Cloud Network Security an eight out of ten.

The security features of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security are very good.

The solution could improve to have a DLP feature.

I have been using Check Point CloudGuard Network Security for approximately three years.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is stable.

The scalability is good.

The initial deployment is easy. However, the implementation can be complex.

My advice to others is to evaluate the products first and then proceed.

I rate Check Point CloudGuard Network Security an eight out of ten.

It is a good tool for a large enterprise operating across multiple cloud environments, like AWS, Azure, or a hybrid infrastructure. Check Point posture management gives you visibility across your entire cloud infrastructure, so it helps you with management, maintenance, and compliance. With visibility across all these cloud platforms, you can protect against compromised credentials or identity theft. 

The assessment history lets you test each environment for each rule you set. You can see if the security tests have passed or failed, then plan a roadmap ahead on how to strengthen your security to defend against attacks on your cloud environment.

I would be great to have additional features when it comes to vulnerability assessments in terms of how the solution discovers vulnerabilities or compromised workloads and not just on security configurations with customizable reports would be nice. 

I'm a system integrator and a managed service provider. I've been using CloudGuard for a couple of years.

So far it works and we've had no major issues with stability. When it comes to managing clouds or gaining visibility, generating, or scanning different cloud environments, it meets all the requirements, especially if you're going through a specific compliance audit.

When it comes to scaling up, it's very easy to just add licenses. But to prior implementing this solution, you need to have a good accounting of all your assets to onboard on this platform. CloudGuard is good for bigger, more complex cloud infrastructures. But if you have only one cloud infrastructure, I don't think you will see much advantage over other cloud posture management. That's why this is useful mainly for bigger enterprises with multiple cloud instances and different cloud environment providers. 

So far, they've met all the service-level agreements (SLAs) with no delay. When it comes to Check Point, they have local distributors to provide level one or level two support. For level two or level three, it will go directly to the Check Point support. And I think that's how their SLAs work. The first line of their support should be local. If it cannot be handled locally, it goes global Check Point support. 

Positive

Setup is usually simple. It's not hard to implement it and gain visibility across two or more cloud infrastructures. It's quite fast. As long as you have the right number of assets, workloads, and applications for each cloud environment, you can easily deploy CloudGuard.

In terms of pricing, it's in the middle but more on the high side. It's not steep. However, I think the price is right for its functionality and the value you get from it when you're managing multiple clouds. It solves a lot of your compliance problems.

The licensing model is based on the size of your cloud infrastructure. So to estimate what you will pay, you need to count each and every asset. And when I say assets, that means every application, database, server, or virtual network on your cloud infrastructure. 

I'd like to see more flexibility in their licensing model. It's based on assets, but we all know that assets keep on growing. I would recommend a flexible, upgradeable license, so when you add assets, they can easily bill you or upgrade you.

I rate CloudGuard a nine out of 10.

I recommend CloudGuard posture management for anyone who needs to take control of multiple cloud environments. It streamlines visibility, so this is the right tool if you are trying to meet a specific compliance standard or you're managing hundreds or thousands of servers within your cloud environment. It unifies your cloud environment. 

Public Cloud

I have been using it in my AWS-Azure multi-cloud schema in order to monitor and protect transactions and data from all escalations - not only what we have at the database level. It helps us protect the data of our big data. 

It has been the complete solution to help cover our lack of security at the infrastructure level. Not only does it cover the servers, but at the workstation level, it is monitoring what users are doing. It identifies actions and can make automatic remediation at a user level. 

The solution has helped us to detect possible attacks or access that is not allowed. It also has helped us to identify the configurations that do not meet the company standards and allows us to improve security practices. As a result, we were able to make the necessary adjustments to be more armored and work safely. 

It gives us the peace of mind we need to continue exploring areas of our scheme that will help us with our projects in the short, medium, and long term. It will help us to continue innovating and reinventing ourselves with greater and greater security.

Data security has been very valuable because data is the soul of a company and if the data is not protected, the company has no possibility of existing. 

In all areas of an organization, Check Point CloudGuard is not only in the cloud, as its name implies. It goes beyond. The areas of importance from the most important to the least important are: infrastructure, technological security, data administration, legal department, etc. Check Point solutions can provide a complete 360 security scheme to the entire cloud infrastructure. It transfers its vision to the entire peripheral network.

Today, globally, there are many companies of all sizes that do not understand the value of their data, but even with all the existing clouds, they also do not understand what the shared responsibility model is. They only assume that by having a cloud, the provider must ensure security, when the truth is that providers only protect their sites. Everything we do in the cloud and how we configure it is actually our responsibility, in this sense we can evaluate many solutions that help us protect our clouds, however, and after trying 5 different solutions, the checkpoint solution is by far The most complete

I have been using the solution for 3 months.

If we were using a similar but not as extensive solution. We were using Darktrace.

The solution offers an excellent price, benefit, and installation relationship. Thus far, Check Point has offered us this very successful relationship.

We were evaluating several options before choosing Check Point. What we identified would be important aspects of the new provider were: simplicity in the installation and 360 vision of all our infrastructure. When we were evaluating, we looked at Palo Alto, Check Point, and Cloud Security.

If you are looking for a complete solution for your cloud or clouds, with Check Point you can have everything from one place.

Hybrid Cloud

I have been using Check Point CloudGuard for 3 years now. I use it in the financial sector, and use the gateways for perimeter security, east-west traffic inspections, and internet access. We have gateways for production, development, and outbound (internet access). The blades for IPS, FW, And URL filtering have been enabled with no problems. All the gateways are stable. We mostly use it for VPN site to site, and we can establish VPNs with Azure and other services. 

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has established communications with other devices and other cloud providers. CloudGuard has improved the passage of CIS and PCI regulations. The functions for autoscaling save costs for the company and the centralized management helps us with administration. CloudGuard complements the security model of the company. We only need one solution for all cloud providers as it offers good compatibility with lots of protection. the easy funtion of use the licence core in other gateways helmpe to save cost. And the easy VPN configuration helpme to stablish more than 100 VPN in an shortly time.

The most valuable features are the VPN Blade, IPS Blade, URL filtering, and Applications Control Blade. They help me to align with any compliance or regulations within our financial sector. The VPN blade has helped me to establish tactical communications. The logs help with troubleshooting and they are great. The IPS blade helps me to meet regulations and protect against intrusion. The applications control makes it easy to configure and created profiles. It blocks all the non-authorized applications. 

CheckPoint CloudGuard could be better at solving cases. In many cases, the client should be able to request or obtain a sufficient explanation or to obtain an appropriate answer. Check Point should improve the queue clients need to go through to obtain access to direct support chat. This should be for users with privileged access.  

CheckPoint features that should be included in the next release include the possibility to create a cluster on AWS and a Multi-region Cluster. They need to also include the possibility to use a managed web portal. 

I've been using the solution for about 3 years.

The scalability is very good.

Technical support is very good.

The initial setup is easy.

The team that helped us was very good.

The ROI we've had has been very good.

Hybrid Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Our primary use case of this solution is for compliance on the cloud and Check Point is very good for tracking that. We are resellers of Check Point CloudGuard and I'm the managing director of the company. 

I very much like the interface and visibility is good. 

I'd like to see improvements with the configuration. 

I've been using this solution for one year.

This is a stable solution. 

The initial setup was straightforward. 

We have a subscription that is paid annually. The cost is reasonable. 

I would recommend this product. 

I rate this solution a 10 out of 10. 

Public Cloud

We are a small consulting company. We have around 100 employees. We don't use advanced firewalls because we don't really have important data that can be hacked. Nobody is going to care about our data because it's only the HR department's timesheet data on our on-premise systems. The firewall is protecting remote access, allowing the employees to access our office environment. So sometimes employees connect to our systems which have some test systems on it. They run some tests about the consulting we've given to clients. That's all. We just have basic things on our firewall. Just two things are important for us - the site to site VPN, which we have with some customers, and the government site. That is important. That's why I want to change the firewall to a new and up-to-date one so maybe it will be an improvement to prevent some hackers.

After I made up my mind to migrate it to another solution, I was kind of checking all the other firewalls, the FortiGate, Check Point, pfSense and OPNsense, and Check Point has pretty simple solutions, like the virtual appliance which you just download and it is imported into VMware and you just start using it. You just have to know Check Point's GUI so you can manage your IP addresses and access rules and stuff. But as I said, Check Point is really advanced and the GUI is kind of advanced, which the customer reports actually prove.

In terms of what could be improved, we have no support with the current Check Point environment. It ended maybe three or four years ago. Because it's an appliance you have to have support. That's a problem for us because I cannot update it at the moment. We have to have another support. We have to subscribe to another support so I can update it. I think it's a good amount of money and our boss does not want to pay that kind of money for firewall solutions. It's not a hardware solution, which by the way, if it would be up to me, I would migrate it to a hardware FortiGate system because all our customers at the moment are migrating their environments to FortiGate hardware solutions. They say it's a really good improvement from their previous firewall solution because it's easy to manage and they're very happy with it.

But as I said before, my boss does not want to pay a lot of money for a firewall solution since we don't have much data to protect and the data is not very important. It's not a big use for us. So we will just probably try pfSense or OPNsense. I can patch it to an up-to-date version, like the 2021 patch. We have the open source solution because my boss does not want to pay for it. It's my approach to migrate the firewall, actually. If it was up to me, I'd probably migrate it to a FortiGate system.

I'm not very experienced with Check Point. But what I would like to see is a step-by-step initial installation of the firewall. That would be really helpful. Like in Oracle appliances, when you start it asks you, what's your current IP address? An initial setup should be a step by step and intuitive process. You click on "begin," it asks you some simple questions. You fill in the blanks - your current IP address, what you want to do, if you want to set up a site to site VPN, for example, that kind of thing. That would be the smartest thing to have.

I can't give it any review about Check Point technical support because I am only working here for about three years and by the time I started at the company it already did not have support.

I have no idea about the initial setup, but it seems like it's not so complex. The initial set up is probably not that hard, but not that easy, either. If I were to delegate the firewall system to a junior guy, I think that he's not going to manage Check Point, but he'll probably manage FortiGate.

In the past, my clients were all using Check Point Systems. When I reviewed it at that time, back 10 years ago, Check Point was number one, as far as I remember, meaning FortiGate wasn't a major solution in Turkey. Nobody was talking about FortiGate then. Now FortiGate, is a major player in the firewall industry in Turkey. Most of our clients are migrating to FortiGate because they say it's cheaper than Check Point. So when I see the Check Point's GUI, it's really complicated. My recommendation would be for Check Point customers to first learn about Check Point's GUI, which is pretty advanced, for me at least.

But when I talk to my friends who are managing IT, they are migrating to FortiGate. They say, FortiGate is very easy to manage and I should really think about it now. When I was first introduced to Check Point it was really advanced. I didn't understand when I first looked into it. I just wanted a solution. pfSense has the same problem. By the way, according to your report, some customers said that pfSense needs improvement on the management and the GUI and aspects like that, so maybe I'll need another review of OPNsense versus Check Point and FortiGate etc...

We didn't have any problems at all. Just in one case, actually. We have a rule that pops up from nowhere which we didn't create. When we restart our Virtual System firewall, it creates a rule which messes up all our internet connection. So if I were to give a number from one to 10, I would probably say Check Point is a nine out of 10. Other than that, we haven't had any problems. Check Point is pretty reliable. I think it's our company's problem that we couldn't patch it after it froze. Maybe an up to date, patched version doesn't have this problem. 

Overall, it's really working for us. I don't have any problems other than it's just outdated.

On-premises

We are a solution integrator and the Check Point CloudGuard Network is a product that I have experience with. We implement firewalls and other products for our customers.

The most valuable feature is threat prevention.

The initial setup is complex and could be made simpler.

The console could use some improvement.

I have been working with the Check Point CloudGuard Network for approximately three years.

This product is quite scalable.

I also have experience with Cisco Firepower and Fortinet.

This initial setup is complex.

Licensing is available on a monthly or yearly basis.

In summary, this is a good product and I have not found any problems when using it. I can recommend it to others.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

On-premises

The perimeter firewall provides me control over my perimeter servers and devices.

Current cloud applications are getting good protection from CASB solutions but they are limited to data leakage and application control. Beyond that, I require something to monitor my data that flows inside of my cloud application.

Sophisticated threats, such as zero-day attacks, can't be controlled by CASB solutions. Instead, they require something that can work using artificial intelligence. They should have a correlation with machine learning algorithms to defend against today's attacks for my cloud applications.

Sophisticated attacks can't be prevented using normal SaaS security. CloudGuard SaaS is a technology that prevents not only sophisticated attacks but offers protection email threats.

Most attacks that succeed are because of SPAM emails. When users fall into an attacker's trap, Check Point's industry-leading technology provides maximum protection. It is effective against email phishing attacks and provides visibility over shadow IT applications.

Along with an email security solution, CloudGuard adds another layer of comprehensive security and we can completely rely on it.

CloudGuard comes with the best feature sets that include protection from Zero-Day attacks, which we usually get when we have blades on the perimeter firewall. These are analyzed using SandBlast Threat Emulation and SandBlast Extraction.

We are able to easily identify users who are going to use cloud applications when they log in from either a trusted network or device.

We have complete visibility of attacks originating from email including spear-phishing, spoofing, etc.

Based on the reputation of the domain and URL, the firewall allows traffic to flow.

I would like this product to provide functionality like a web application firewall, where we can fully monitor all traffic passing both to and from the cloud.

The latency should be minimized by having multiple entry points all across the world. Nearby requests will have lower latency access to cloud applications.

It would be useful to have AD integration with an on-premises server.

The API integration is complex, which is an area that should be improved.

Onboarding this product takes some expertise because it is complex compared to other services that Check Point provides.

We have been using Check Point CloudGuard Network for more than a year.

Need to focus on stability.

This solution is highly scalable.

Technical support, along with presales engineers have good knowledge of the product.

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

The initial setup is a mixture of straightforward and complex.

We deployed vendor

Although I don't have specifics for pricing, based on my overall experience, I can conclude that Check Point provides the best pricing when comparing to other vendors.

We did not evaluate other products.

Our primary use case for this solution is a firewall.

The most valuable Check Point CloudGuard feature is the firewall. I also value the user authentication, IPS, and application control features.

The clustering and HE from the scaling availability could be improved.

The documentation could be much better as well.

I have been using this solution for about a year. 

I would rate stability as average, too. It's not the best, but it's also not the worst. 

I would rate the scalability potential of this solution as average.

Check Point CloudGuard technical support is good.

I have not previously used any solutions. 

Deployment was easy. It took about half a day to do all configure everything how we needed it. 

The first time we deployed it was through a Check Point pre-sales specialist. After that, we deployed on our own. 

If we end up needing to scale, we would have to buy a new license. 

Private Cloud

Microsoft Azure