Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) Reviews

The primary use case for this solution is associated with a challenge whereby we have multiple cloud computing platforms. We have our past cloud platforms in AWS and ECP. Therefore, we can configure management and policy governance tools to deployment across all sites.

Dome9 has improved our organization in the way that we have a centralized view of all of our assets, our visible assets our ECs, our inventories. Then all the policies are centralized and it is easier to manage because everything is one component console. 

I would like to see Test B functions at the application access level.

The stability is good.

The scalability is good.

Technical support is excellent; they are quite supportive.

The inial setup was straightforward.

The deployment took us about six months because we had issues while integrating. The issues weren't with Dome9.

We implemented Dome9 ourselves, in-house. We used our own set of experts.
I think there is less than six staff required for deployment and maintenance.

The licensing costs for this solution are on a yearly basis.

My advice is to try to get the trial period first because this will allow them to see if this is a suitable solution or not for their environment. They have to remember that this solution can only be compared to Test B, but it's not Test B. The trial allows for appropriate compatibility and suitability evaluations.

On a scale from one to ten, ten being the best, I would gladly rate this product an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case of this solution is cloud protection for MC65 Operating System, AWS, and Microsoft.

Right now, we have a hybrid infrastructure. We needed security on the cloud, and this solution has provided the security that we were lacking.

• Traps prevention
• Security on the cloud

The product can still grow.

It is fast. It provides what we need at the moment, and it's still growing.

It is scalable. It's a cloud solution, so it's easy to implement and manage.

Technical support is fair. I have had some good support technicians when I call in. 

We were not on the cloud before. We're a big Check Point customer. Our secure perimeter is checkpoint, so we needed security for the cloud. So, it was a pretty easy decision right there. We evaluated other vendors, but it was easy decision.

The initial setup was straightforward, not complex.

We did our own deployment. We used a reseller for buying the product, but not for the implementation.

We also looked at Cisco's cloud products since we have a lot of Cisco products.

Look into it. I like how straightforward it is and simple it is to implement in the cloud. 

Our primary use case is for major cloud vendors: AWS and Azure. 

Moving into the cloud without having to change a lot of our internal processes and retrain staff is one of the biggest benefits of this solution. 

It is what we use mainly for on-premise. That is really what has us using the product, as it is sort of our standard for data centers.

I would like to see more focus on east-west traffic inspection and AWS.

Things are changing very quickly in the cloud. There is a lot more maturing that needs to happen as far as CloudGuard goes, specifically more around some cloud native type situations where everything is being shoehorned through one or multiple VMs is not optimal.

We definitely have to watch new versions and deploy them in a smart way, but that is the way with any type of software.

The scalability depends on the situation. Some situations are not very scalable. High scalability, in AWS, without matting is just not there. It's more of an AWS problem than it is a Check Point problem.

We are receiving our technical support through a partner. Therefore, we do not really engage directly with Check Point that much. We use the partner for technical support matters, who is great.

We did not use anything previously. Going to the cloud was a new requirement for us.

The initial setup was just as straightforward as setting up a physical Check Point box would have been.

We implemented in-house by deploying it ourselves.

We don't really track the ROI on this.

We also considered Fortinet. Check Point has better overall integration with Azure.

I was part of the decision-making process.

I would rate it a six out of ten. 

Other vendors typically are working with hardware acceleration and various other products, which you can't get in the cloud. One of the key things that made us more comfortable with Check Point is this is only thing that they do. It's the same exact thing as they are doing on-premise for the most part.

We use this solution to secure networks. We block unwanted malware. 

We have a development team who asked us to open reports. We asked that they initiate traffic to see what is blocking them. We then give them reports and after that, they ask to open the report for the traffic application and we work accordingly.

The most valuable feature is the monitoring. We can easily monitor what kind of stuff comes over to our network and we can then check the dashboard and work accordingly.

I would like for them to develop guides. If you compare it with Cisco, you can just type out any problem you're having regarding Cisco and you will easily get a solution. With Check Point, it's not easy to get a solution.

We maxed out scalability. 

The initial setup was a bit complex. Is take two or three months to implement and we have to continuously work on it. We needed two to three engineers for deployment. 

We researched the top firewall solutions and settled on Check Point and Palo Alto. Comparatively, both are good. 

Ultimately Palo Alto is a very advanced firewall. This firewall can easily identify what application is running behind the network.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

We consolidated from three management consoles and three clusters to only one, which is a big improvement. 

In general, Check Point VSX is a good solution. Its blades and VSLS (Virtual System Load Sharing) work fine.

Having a web UI in the VSX (or something similar) would be nice. However, you can do everything in the CLI.

We are replacing three old cluster ASA firewalls and concentrating it into an all-in-one VSX cluster. This allows our central management have more time for other tasks.

We have an FTP infrastructure that is accessed by customers. As FTP service is quite vulnerable if not secured properly, before implementing Dome9 we had to apply multiple security solutions on the FTP servers.

Dome9 wrapped the FTP infrastructure with its network security configurations. This gives us the ability to monitor FTP activity as well.

• Centralized firewall management for both Windows and Linux distros - This is something that everyone is looking for. The initial version of Dome9 was one where you managed all the rules centrally in Linux and Windows, which was quite challenging. Now, to see in a single pane of glass, all the agents, all the rules, everything that is going on in out datacenters, is quite valuable.
• Visibility of the security configurations
• Clear view of the security configurations and connections across environments (DMZ, external and internal networks)
• The user interface is responsive and quite intuitive; when selecting an object it automatically shows the relevant actions

I’d like to see more integration with third-party tools. For example, it would be helpful to have an integration between Dome9 and ServiceNow to manage security incidents and security changes.

I don’t recall any stability issue from the first time we used it. It has been solid and reliable.

I didn’t encounter any scalability challenges. According to the vendor, we are far from the limit that has been tested by the vendor so far.

The technical support has been very professional and helpful. They are knowledgeable and answer our questions in a timely fashion.

We had been using iptables on Linux servers but it was missing centralized management. Also, configuring firewall security rules was quite a nightmare, especially testing.

The initial setup was straightforward, as the solution is quite intuitive.

In order to obtain better pricing, I would advise taking into account the existing number of devices and add a forecast of the number of devices to be added in the coming year or two. The company has multiple modules that you purchase independently or in groups, depending on your needs.

When we did market research five years ago, there were not many alternatives in the market for our purposes. We looked at Kaspersky Lab and Trend Micro but they didn’t address our needs.

We ran a PoC with Dome9 and it was transformed quickly into production.

My advice would be:

• Share your project goal(s) with the vendor to help you map the functionalities and modules needed, to be implemented in phases, during implementation.
• Map your existing security configurations and create a lab to test them with and without Dome9.
• Implement the solution progressively and look at the logs in the Dome9 application to learn about the network activity.

We use Dome9 to control our AWS security groups, evaluate and map security group traffic, and conduct compliance checks of our cloud environment regularly.

Dome9 continues to be a major piece of our cloud security architecture and has given our senior leadership team a high degree of confidence in our ability to protect our cloud environment. We have more visibility than ever before, appreciating the valuable and proactive insight that we receive from the platform.

Clarity and Compliance have become two of our favorite features. Clarity allows us to visually depict our security groups and effective policy for both our current environment and can do predictive visualization based on cloud formation templates. The Compliance engine has helped put our auditors and senior executives at ease, as we can quickly and accurately measure ourselves against hundreds of compliance checks to include CIS benchmarks, PCI, and other best practices.

Dome9 continues to enrich its features at a blazingly fast pace. I would like to see tighter integration with other compliance tools, like Chef Compliance, in addition to Inspector. Also, I would love to add more richness to the Splunk add-on for Dome9.

None, it has been a solid performer for us, and well within the SLA.

We have yet to encounter any issues with scalability.

We have not needed it much, but when we have, they have been very responsive and they truly are helpful.

Initial setup was super easy. We were integrated in 15 minutes, then it was just another hour or so of tuning and kicking the tires.

They support either annual licensing or hourly. At the time of our last negotiation, it was either one or the other, you could not mix or match. I would have liked to mix/match. 

We evaluated native AWS features and a competitor, Evident.io, but found that Dome9 was able to do all of what we needed in one tool instead of two.

Start with read-only and move to full-control slowly. When you go to full control, there will need to be good communications with your AWS teams, so they know it is there. Do not do full-control on your lab environment.

They are a great partner to work with. Not only is the product solid, but we have loved having a good relationship with their leadership and seeing our feedback manifest into real product updates and features!

Monitoring using SmartConsole and all its features is extremely easy, and I find SmartEvent an excellent monitoring tool for spotting threats and user behaviour.

The multiple virtual firewalls on one box are extremely useful and the interconnection with virtual switches is simple and easy to understand.

We need a product that is logical and for which we can find people skilled who are interested in learning it. Check Point is always a winner, as its an industry standard.

We have Microsoft CASB cloud app security and it's one of the least compatible firewalls. They really need to look at this, as both Check Point and Microsoft are major players. Why aren't they compatible? If we had Palo Alto then we wouldn't have this problem.

Three to five years.

No stability issues, not even once. The firewall is set up and and the various parts are interconnected. It works just fine. R80.1 is also a major improvement.

No scalability issues but I don't think we are utilizing the device to its maximum capability.

Good. We go with a distributor but they work okay. It is a lot more reliable with the latest OS than it used to be.

No previous solution. It's always been Check Point, though before the virtual firewall we used to have a Juniper fw. Now we are just Check Point because for the threats we face now, I don't think we need different firewalls at different layers.

The issue normally is getting SIC working between the gws and the management server. Actually it's reasonably straightforward, though you have to get it right. It used to be you had to have a certain type of disk drive but this is a better solution.

Look into this carefully and be sure you use all you buy. We haven't bought SandBlast or the bot solution but they look effective.

We did not evaluate other solutions. It was decided we would stay with Check Point.

Make sure you can make use of the virtual firewalls and read up on the device or take a course before you implement. Or, if you get it installed, make sure you have the right devices in the right virtual firewalls.

Valuable features include centralized management using the MDM solution of Check Point and the Log Management module. The latest version of VSX supports all blades of Check Point's security suite.

I get maximum flexibility as I can use a standard management server to manage all virtual gateways along with a dedicated log server for each virtual gateway. Sometimes I can use a single server to manage all virtual gateways.

Earlier versions only supported the Firewall and VPN feature. Now I can run Anti-Bot/Anti-Virus, URL and App Filtering, Threat Emulation, and other blades.

I can assign weights to each virtual gateway depending on how critical each virtual gateway is.

The VSLS feature provides linear scalability so I can keep adding hardware (maximum of eight) to meet my performance expectations.

It is somewhat difficult to upgrade the entire hardware without downtime.

We have been implementing this solution to many customers in India and the SAARC region for seven years now. This is one of the most popular virtual firewall products in the industry.

We have not encountered any problems with stability.

A sufficient amount of planning is required to deploy a solution that is scalable. However, as Check Point allows an Open Server to deploy its VSX solution, scalability is not a problem once the base hardware is chosen appropriately.

Support is one area where efforts should be required from Check Point. Customers having multiple, more than ten, gateways are encouraged to consider Diamond Support services.

We did not use any other solution previously.

Engineers having less than three years of hands-on experience on Check Point products may find this product somewhat challenging. However, the best part is, once the product is deployed, there is no difference between virtual gateway and physical gateway from the operational perspective.

Check Point pioneered this product, so don't look anywhere else if you are looking for a stable and scalable product with top-notch security blades.

We did not evaluate any alternative products.

Choose your implementation partner very carefully. Choose someone who has done multiple, large-scale implementations and can show proof of the same in terms of customer references through emails or phone calls.

We started long ago with the dynamic access and protected assets, and it has always been a cornerstone for our highly mobile, distributed development team. We require tight control on access, and when our team travels it helps us gain access as needed in a protected manner.

Compliance is becoming an important tool for us as well.

We have been able to empower our development team to work with the infrastructure in a managed, foolproof way to insure testing and other efforts don't leave unintended holes.

The governance and compliance areas are becoming very useful, and continue to expand in very user-friendly ways. Addressing the large amount of compliance information and benchmarks we need to observe, the tools are becoming our goto dashboards.

Many years, so many I forget. Not too long after I discovered them at AWS the first or second year of RE: Invent.

None. Just follow the easy instructions for IAM Policies.

Rock solid.

Never a problem.

Highly engaged at all levels of the organization, and truly helpful, which cannot be said for many others in their space.

Helpful and usually spot on early in the request.

We have assessed several, and Dome9 is the only one that we have used continuously, and it has begun to replace other solutions as Dome9 rolls out new features.