Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) Reviews

We are using CloudGuard Network Security for comprehensive security. We have hardware appliances from Check Point, and we also have their firewall installed.

CloudGuard Network Security provides unified security management across hybrid-clouds as well as on-prem. It has improved our security posture. 

CloudGuard Network Security helped reduce our organizational risk. It has not yet helped us save time and costs because we are understaffed. However, it has helped to see what is happening and what we should mitigate or allow to happen.

It gives us all-encompassing security and overview. Previously, we did not have any kind of overview of what was happening with the network.

The interface is unifying all the data in one place. I can see the network side and the policy attached to using USB devices. Everything is stored and related.

A Check Point problem was that there were different solutions, and each had its own interface, section, and logs. Things are going great with the new feature that consolidates all the data from those systems in one place. Right now, I am not sure what improvements are needed. We are having occasional issues related to gateways, but we are still analyzing it.

I have been using CloudGuard Network Security for the past six months since I joined the company.

Until now, it has been stable, but we have had occasional issues with two gateways that used to break or are broken. We are not sure yet. We are still analyzing it. We might be sending it to the warranty team.

We implemented it keeping in mind all the requirements in terms of licenses, hardware, and other things. Everything is pretty much as we needed. We have no plans to upscale it. However, I am waiting for the OS version R82 to see how we can add more data on the fly.

So far, customer service has been almost great. We have had some issues, such as needing to escalate every time because one gateway was not working at some point. We had an endless loop of emails trying to fix this, and the suggestion was to reinstall the gateway and do it from scratch, which was not an option at that point because it would leave that specific location without access, and business hours did not permit it. Other than that, things went smoothly most of the time.

Previously, we only had security with a basic VPN and firewall in place.

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

Basically, we are using Check Point CloudGuard firewalls everywhere. We are using them at the perimeter and internally.

By implementing this solution, we wanted to protect our perimeter. We are using Check Point along with other solutions to protect our perimeter. We also have many application-level use cases that can be solved with Check Point. 

Most of the things that we have are on the cloud. Its main benefit is reliability. We have tested so many firewalls on the cloud, but when it comes to reliability, other firewalls fail miserably. Check Point is very good. It is a very reliable solution. With other vendors, when you move something to the cloud, the features that they are offering might only work partially. We never faced any such issue with Check Point. They offer features that will work completely. Apart from that, they have solutions for almost every cloud use case. That is another thing we love.

CloudGuard Network Security provides unified security management across hybrid-clouds as well as on-prem. They have a centralized management server. There is a process called CME. If you have multiple clouds, such as AWS, GCP, and Oracle, and you are deploying CloudGuard across all the clouds, you have single management to take care of everything. This is why they provided a unified management solution. CME takes care of scaling and integration. It has a zero-touch approach. It takes care of everything. You just need to deploy it, and the connectivity should be there. It then takes care of everything. It drastically reduces the deployment time and administration overhead.

When any incident happened, it was able to tell us the particular packet associated with that. Based on its internal intelligence, it identifies everything. We were not even aware that there was an attack like that, but it gave us complete clarity about what happened and what was the attack journey. Visibility-wise, it has been very good.

It makes us confident in our security. We have proper visibility into the network. We can see exactly what is happening. We get this level of clarity. Especially when we offload the SSL capability on the firewall, we have unparalleled visibility on even the SSL traffic.

The number of options it gives for deployment or security is valuable. When it comes to security, it has a feature that is super awesome for zero-day-based attacks. Their IPS is also very capable. We tested other firewalls, and we understood that it is the best one in the market. 

When it comes to the firewall capabilities, the level of information that it offers for any security incident is very good. It gives a very good clarity about what happened and at what time. It is very good.

There is centralization. You can manage everything in a single pane, and you have support for all the software. If it is a Kubernetes, you have a solution for it. If it is IOT, you can cover that. You have gateways as well for network security.

The main issue that I have noticed is that for deployment, it still requires a dedicated management server, and the gateway is completely different. That sometimes can cause issues. If it loses communication with the management server and you want to push any sort of critical policy, that would be affected. Apart from that, I do not see any issues. Everything else is going well.

We have been working with Check Point firewalls for more than ten years. We are currently using Check Point CloudGuard firewalls.

Check Point also has NGFW firewalls. They are hardware-based firewalls. All the features are identical. The only difference is that one is on a virtual platform, and the other one is on a physical platform.

It is reliable.

We are only using auto-scaling firewalls. The good thing is that it scales well. Within seven to ten minutes, it gets integrated with the management server. If there is a failure, the firewall will be ready within ten minutes.

We have a team of around seven people who take care of the network security part. Our environment can go up to 3,000. If you combine the server users and the end users, there are more than 10,000 users.

We work closely with Check Point support when there is any issue or limitation. When we face any issues related to processing, scale-out, or delay, we definitely connect with the Check Point support. They usually provide the solution quickly.

I would rate their support an eight out of ten. The reason why I am not giving them a ten is that we are connected through a third party. We cannot directly engage with Check Point. We usually contact this third party, and they engage Check Point support. We have a technical person assigned directly, which is a good thing, but this is how we initiate the process.

Positive

We are mostly relying on TerraForm. For us, the deployment is very straightforward. When you deploy, it will automatically integrate with its management server, so you do not need to put in any effort. The only thing is that you should have the connectivity between the gateway and the management server. Once you deploy, it automatically gets added to the management. The policy push is automatic. That is very good. So, when it comes to deployment, after pushing the code, you do not need to do anything. Everything will come online. That is the best part.

We do have a couple of gateways in management, but I do not take care of that part. I am mostly on the cloud side.

It takes five to ten minutes for initialization and then there is the management part. At the maximum, it will go up to 30 minutes. I usually see everything happening within 15 to 20 minutes and not more than that, but if there is any connectivity issue or any other error, then the duration will get affected. If it is straightforward, it will take a maximum of 30 minutes and not more than that. Because the integration is automatic, I do not need to onboard the gateway to the management server. There is a functionality called CME that takes care of the entire thing.

In terms of maintenance, it does not require any maintenance. The only catch here is that because it is a cloud version, when it comes to upgrades, you cannot upgrade the existing versions to newer versions. We simply deploy the new one. It is not a complicated task. This is the only thing when it comes to maintenance.

I was the main person who took care of the deployment engineering part. 

I do not have visibility on the ROI, but we are completely satisfied with the performance. We will continue with Check Point in the future. We have been renewing their licenses without thinking about any other firewalls. I consider it as a good investment, but this aspect is managed by a different team.

We have an enterprise licensing team that works closely with Check Point. I know that we have an enterprise agreement with Check Point. That gives us some benefits, but I do not have more information about that.

We tried the Azure Firewall. It was good, but zero-day, URL filtering, and NAC capabilities were not there. It was a native firewall, but it was not able to fulfill our use cases. The main competition was against Palo Alto. When we did the comparison, we found Check Point to be more reliable. With the Palo Alto firewall, we had issues with autoscaling. It was not working as expected. These were the two that we tested. Being a bank, we cannot test everything. There was a discussion with Cisco as well, but we did not go with Cisco.

The advantage that Palo Alto has over Check Point is the GUI. They do not require a dedicated management appliance to be deployed to access the firewall capability. They do have that platform, but the individual gateway can be also accessed via a dedicated GUI. With Check Point, you have to have the software called SmartConsole. It is very good, but a company like ours has too many gateways. When you have so many gateways onboarded to the management, it will be slightly slow, but it is not a show-stopper. The GUI is good, but you require the client applications to be installed on your laptop. From the GUI itself, you would not be able to access them. That is one advantage of Palo Alto. You can straightaway access them through the GUI. The software that you need to install for Check Point is a huge one, so the performance depends on the machine. If you have many gateways associated, it can be a bit slow at times.

Check Point is a number one vendor based on the NSS labs and other regulators. In terms of performance and security, Check Point is always number one. Irrespective of how many firewall vendors are there, Check Point will always be number one. Check Point's capability to identify an incident is also very good. Its performance is also good. We were worried that if we moved to the cloud, unlike on-prem, we would not have any dedicated hardware to accelerate something. However, when we migrated to CloudGuard, we did not face any issues. 

When it comes to the cloud, I would definitely recommend the solution. One main thing is reliability. I appreciate Check Point for that. For an organization like ours, security is the main thing. Check Point has been able to protect us from various attacks. Autoscaling and other things are also working perfectly. We were able to achieve all of our use cases with the Check Point CloudGuard firewall. I do recommend this solution.

For zero-day attacks, I know there is technically no single solution, but our observation is that for most of the sophisticated attacks, if it is not already there, Check Point will have a solution within a day. When it comes to DDoS and bot-level attacks, Check Point has a sophisticated approach to prevent them in most cases.

Overall, I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

We use Check Point CloudGuard Network Security to replace an Azure Firewall, securing the network flow in our organization.

The URL filtering provides a lot of added value compared to the Azure Firewall. It is easier to use and offers much more visibility on the network activities. It helps us manage our security operations by reusing on-prem solutions with the cloud, therefore improving ease of use.

The reporting needs enhancement. Currently, we are not always aware of the gateways' status, like CPU and RAM usage. It would be beneficial to have a report that manages everything and gives an overall view of what is going on.

I have been using it for six to ten months.

I have experienced a few issues where connectivity is lost temporarily, however, it does not affect traffic processing. It is more about not having management information for a few seconds.

The scalability is really good and relies totally on CloudGuard, whether it is on Azure or AWS. At least on Azure, it works fine.

The customer service is good. They helped me with the few issues I had, meeting my expectations. Their support for traditional security projects is good, and I found the same support quality for cloud projects.

Neutral

I have used solutions for on-prem security management, yet not for the cloud.

The initial deployment was easy, taking about a week.

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten. It would be ideal to have improved reporting features for a comprehensive overview.

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.

Most people ask me to integrate with Point CloudGuard and SecureNet Network. One big client wanted to move his on-prem data center to CloudGuard Azure, and I provided the CloudGuard Network Security Solution for him. His data center was also rendering to our clients, so it was messy. However, it gave them more confidence in Security CloudGuard deployments and integrations. It was quite easy with Terraform, resulting in a very easy deployment.

The most valuable feature is the automation and the APIs, making our life much easier for integration. Check Point has excellent, very useful tools to help us with the poster and to see if we're passing the grade.

It gives us more confidence in secure cloud deployments. The network security was very easy to migrate. We did it with Terraform. I just filled in the blanks and Terraform did everything else.

Check Point CloudGuard NetWork Security provides unified security across hybrid clouds as well as on-prem. It's more or less the same across deployments.

Check Point helps companies with their security posture. It has useful tools to help with this aspect to improve security. 

I'm not sure if I have the experience to discuss improvements.

The deployments can be difficult if a person doesn't know what they are doing. 

Better documentation would be welcome. 

I have been using the solution for a bit over a year. It has been one year and four months or something like that.

So far, I haven't had any stability issues.

I haven't had any experience with scaling problems. I didn't need to scale up for my client or use automated scaling.

Support were very helpful. They usually respond quite fast, and they are very knowledgeable about what they do. When we have a problem, we can solve it immediately, and sometimes a one-on-one meeting can be very insightful.

Positive

I didn't use other vendors since I specifically handle Check Point in my company.

The initial setup is straightforward. First, I speak with the client to understand everything he needs, his current deployment, and how it's done. In the meantime, we can see if there are improvements or small tweaks needed. Then, I deploy in a test environment to ensure everything works without conflicts. Finally, we do a test with Check Point - not a full deployment on the production side. If everything works in the test, we start migrating slowly to the production side. Implementation usually takes one to two weeks. 

The deployment could be done with one person if the person knows what they're doing. It iss very easy. Someone who is not familiar with CloudGuard and cloud solutions might find themselves a bit lost with too much information and not knowing where to look.

I don't have insights on the list price.

I would give an eight out of ten for the overall product rating. 

I'm a Check Point distributor, mainly. 

Many traditional on-premise customers transitioning to the cloud often prioritize solutions like CloudGuard, especially when dealing with scale sets and clusters. These customers are accustomed to constructing their own network infrastructure and are drawn to CloudGuard for its compatibility with these setups. This primary use case highlights the appeal of CloudGuard for organizations seeking to maintain control over their network security while migrating to cloud environments.

The unified security management significantly impacts security operations and management positively. It's undeniably beneficial, offering streamlined processes and enhanced control. With the rise of infrastructure as code and tools like Terraform, there's a shift towards a separate manager pushing policies to gateways, which can introduce complexity. However, advancements like dynamic resets, enabled directly on the gateway without manager intervention, represent a significant leap forward, simplifying operations and propelling the company towards more efficient security management.

The most significant benefit for our customers lies in the familiarity and comfort of transitioning from on-premise Check Point solutions to CloudGuard's unified management system. This seamless continuity offers reassurance and confidence in navigating the cloud security landscape, making the transition smoother and more intuitive for them.

When compared to other migration solutions in terms of identity-centric security threats, Check Point stands out for its efficacy rates, particularly evident in its threat cloud and AI capabilities. The integration of various security features, along with the collaborative aspect where information from all Check Point Gateways feeds into a collective pool, underscores the robust security aspect of the platform. This is where Check Point consistently sets itself apart in the security landscape.

We maintain a high level of confidence in our security posture, provided everything is configured correctly. Check Point offers additional solutions to address gaps beyond the firewall's capabilities, especially in scenarios where threats may circumvent it or exploit other entry points. Network security alone may not suffice, but Check Point's supplementary solutions, such as Network Calabrio, complement our defenses effectively, serving as a solid foundation for our overall security strategy.

Our clients appreciate the familiar look and feel of Check Point's interface, which maintains the security standards they've come to trust. While there are numerous reports comparing efficacy rates of cloud-native solutions, they often fall short in comparison to third-party vendors like Check Point.

The auto-scaling feature is undoubtedly one of the most valuable aspects of having Check Point security in the cloud. It provides excellent protection by dynamically adjusting resources based on demand. Additionally, the centralized reporting and management, accessible through a single pane of glass, offer consistency and efficiency across multi-cloud environments. This unified approach ensures seamless security management regardless of the cloud platform, making it a highly advantageous feature of Check Point's cloud security solutions.

Check Point's primary competitor, Palo Alto Networks, offers a SaaS firewall solution that can be deployed in both traditional virtual networks (VNETs) and virtual wide area networks (VWANs). This firewall solution features auto-scaling and consumption-based pricing, allowing users to scale according to their needs seamlessly. While Check Point does offer some VWAN offerings, they appear to be more static and less tailored to cloud-native environments compared to Palo Alto's dynamic and flexible approach.

I have been working with it for approximately five years.

In terms of stability, I've never encountered any issues where a gateway went down or experienced faults. My experience across various environments has been consistently positive, without any instances of gateway crashes or failures for any specific reasons.

The scalability aspect functions seamlessly, although there's a significant process involved, particularly with the CME and management components recognizing new gateways and pushing necessary files. Despite the complexity, the CME serves as an effective tool for deploying scripts and managing tasks. However, the requirement for management to push configurations to the firewall adds an additional layer of intricacy beyond simply pushing to the gateway.

The technical support provided by Check Point is commendable. Once a case reaches the right hands, resolutions are often swift. However, there can be challenges in initially getting the case directed to the appropriate personnel, which is not uncommon for organizations of our size. I would rate it seven out of ten.

Neutral

I've implemented various deployments, with one of the most extensive being a multi-tier architecture utilizing different scale sets for handling ingress, egress, and east-west traffic internally. This particular deployment spanned across two regions, with a total of twelve instances distributed among the scale sets, each serving a distinct function. Essentially, it aimed to replicate a traditional data center environment in the cloud, catering to the specific needs of the organization.

Lately, I've been engaged in numerous discussions surrounding cloud-native firewall solutions like AWS Firewall or Azure Firewall, as well as offerings such as Palo Alto's SaaS firewall and CloudGuard NGFW.

CloudGuard compares favorably, offering a familiar and user-friendly experience akin to Check Point's traditional products. The trend towards cloud-native solutions is evident, particularly among non-security-focused individuals. The flexibility to assist in migrating customers who are embracing cloud-native approaches, integrating seamlessly with platforms like Azure WolfStack and AWS real stack, is a significant advantage. This ease of migration is a notable strength of competitors like Palo Alto.

It functions well, especially the auto-scaling feature, despite the complexity involved, particularly with integrating Azure load balancers. Consolidating these components would be beneficial, but without a SaaS offering, reliance on Azure's resources or cloud-native resources remains a factor. Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten.

We are using it for in and out of our cloud from on-premises. Security from our SD-WAN and express route connectivity is our main use case.

We also have vendor integrations. SAP RISE was the big one that we recently had where we were using dedicated CloudGuard network gateways for straight vendor implementations.

The ease of deployment has been a benefit. Having Check Point on-premises definitely helped with moving to the cloud. It feels very similar after you migrate. It was not as cumbersome as on-premises, and it was a little less scary for others. It enabled others within our company to adopt.

We have unified security management across hybrid clouds as well as on-prem. We are using just gateways to the cloud, and we have the same management server and the same console as on-prem gateways. It definitely allows you to have unified policies across the board. This seamless integration is a huge plus. Smart-1 Cloud is the next portion to go up to, so we can remove the complexity of management, such as login and whatnot, from our responsibilities.

By using CloudGuard Network Security, we have a good foundation. The history of Check Point has a reliability that I trust. Most of the improvements we do are more internal. There are actions that we, as customers, need to do. It helps to have vendors like Check Point who will go out of their way to help you make their product seamless. It is only as good as how you use it. That has been a big positive, and we have had a good accounts team that has been able to bring proper resources to us, and we encourage those additional resources they provide to us to help us be successful.

For identifying security threats, our company uses a portfolio of different kinds of vector spots and inspection spots. Some of that is handled by another team, and I do not have direct insight into that. However, it has definitely added some automatic reaction with our on-premise setup, which has helped us integrate cross-platform. That portion has been great because no one wants to be too vendor-dependent. You want to be vendor-agnostic. The fact that we can utilize it across multiple vendors has been a positive for us.

We are using gateways, and I appreciate the high-availability gateways they have. They stand out more than the competitors. 

The Check Point architecture team adapting fluently to the architecture that each cloud has is valuable. They are adaptive to customer solutions, which is a big advantage.

Some more built-in marketplace templates would be nice. It would be nice to see more vendor assistance in deployments and backup of recoveries versus having customers rely upon that themselves. That would make it a lot more seamless and aligned with the standard on-premise model that is there. Check Point can extend the same posture that they have to CloudGuard and make that transition very seamless.

Check Point does not have as big a footprint in engineering teams as Cisco or Palo Alto has, especially in the US market. Therefore, finding someone who understands Check Point is a lot harder. If Check Point can make it easier for seamless transitions, it will build the confidence of engineers and help with the adoption of a new vendor for those engineers. Anything they can do to help with that is a competitive advantage, and it works for any company looking into it.

I have been using CloudGuard Network Security for about three years.

It is very stable, but in any virtualized environment, you are still dependent on your cloud provider. If Amazon, Microsoft, Google, or any other cloud provider reboots the gateway because they are doing some maintenance and did not tell you about it, it is not Check Point's fault. It is something where you have to correlate whether you had an outage or lost a node. You still have to report that. It still looks like that your Check Point firewall went down, so guilty until proven innocent type of deal comes into play. That has been a little bit more challenging than when it is your hardware on-premises. Outside of a power issue or an upstream switch, if something goes wrong in the box, it is not on Check Point. At that point, you can hammer down to the cloud. Having shared resources makes it a little bit difficult to delineate. You have to go case by case.

I have not directly experienced the need for scaling, particularly horizontally. Based on studies, presentations, documentation, and architecture, scalability is definitely there, so I have confidence that if my business needs to shift to high throughput and high sessions, Check Point will have a solution for me to do that seamlessly.

I have always had challenges with TAC. There still seems to be a difference in the type or level of tech support you get based on the region you call into. That has been a little bit more challenging. We have had issues with getting the same candid answers where they were regurgitating without looking through. At the support level, we have had some challenges back and forth, but when we talk to our account team or our sales engineer and say that we have a problem, their reaction is very quick. Their escalation internals take care of that. They get us the right people.

For additional deployments from the cloud perspective, we have always had great contacts to get to. I have been very happy with the level of support Check Point has given us for new deployments' design ideas and problems. The feature roadmap they chose has been excellent.

Overall, I would rate their customer service and support an eight out of ten. I am dropping points because of the TAC issues that I have had.

We do use another vendor that does a similar function. The vendor is Fortinet. Both vendors have their own pros and cons. The big difference between the two from a cloud network security perspective is that the high availability model that Check Point has is not what the competitor has. So, you are still relying upon load balancers, and you are still relying upon cloud failover, which adds a little bit of complexity. This high availability has been a huge plus. We have not seen our current vendors or other vendors be able to do so. 

We, as such, have not switched. We have a different vendor we use, and we have not made the decision to switch. We are still at that deciding factor because we are seeing where things fit with both platforms. From an ROI perspective, switching would not be advantageous to us at this point based on what we are getting, but it is definitely something that is looked upon as we look at life cycles. We can then make a decision one way or the other to meet our business needs. 

The decision to go for CloudGuard instead of our cloud vendor's cloud firewall was predated. There were some implementations that were already there. We have made additional investments where we did go between vendor A and vendor B and made a decision. I made the decision and chose Check Point, not just for the single pane of glass and ease of management but also for the high availability. For the high availability that we were deploying, there was no other solution that could give us the seamlessness we were looking for. We could not get that from other vendors, so it became evident that going for Check Point was the right decision to make.

We are a Microsoft Azure Shop, and the deployment model would be high-availability gateways. We are not using gateway low balancers. We are just using the high-availability deployments.

In terms of ease of deployment, I cannot speak for the earlier years, but I did hear that there were some pain points. That was more of a combination of cloud maturity in Microsoft and Check Point integrations. There were other challenges related to intermixing and the knowledge base. This was when Check Point was new to our company, and we probably did not have the right MSP support. A lot of those gaps and failures were due to the support and not having that strong knowledge base and operating support afterward. Recent deployments, from 2020 to 2024, are different. There is a night and day kind of difference. We had instant Check Point support. They walked us through and sat on the call while we deployed in real-time with our CloudOps teams. It was seamless. We ran into a gap, and we were easily able to fix it right then and there. They were very collaborative. It has just been a night-and-day type of scenario.

For the first implementation, we used an MSP consultant in collaboration with Check Point. We did the recent deployment in-house directly with Check Point.

We are yet to figure that part out. There is a lot of tuning on our side, and we have definitely seen its remediation and prevention capabilities help us in very critical situations. Knowing that we could be proactive instead of constantly being reactive has definitely put me at much more ease at night. There are some improvements to that. 

Investment-wise, this is where you look at the consolidation and realize that you might have different vendor technologies that might be doing the same thing. This is something we will have to look at. It is not necessarily a Check Point problem. It is something that we, as an enterprise, have to look into.

My experience has been extremely positive. It was not a concern because I had an account team that fought for pricing for our company. They were not pushing me to professional services for certain help. I was instantly getting a CloudGuard architect to help us out. They understood our environment and bridged the gap where we needed that help with our public cloud provider and with Check Point, in this case. That is what made the experience. They allowed us to scale it well, and that is where Check Point has done very well. 

They realize that customers need to be adaptive in their cloud deployments, and they are much quicker than on-prem. They know that in the end, their product speaks for itself, so pricing has always been very competitive compared to other vendors. I have always had account teams no matter what company I have worked for, and they have always done a good job of meeting that gap. So, its pricing was not the reason we made the decision.

I would rate CloudGuard Network Security a nine out of ten. The ease of template deployment would have been nice. There was also a little bit of weirdness with the licensing models for our on-premise management. That is pretty much it. Otherwise, I am extremely happy with it. They are not negatives. It is still great.

We have been using Scale Set with Check Point. We use it to scale up and down in Azure depending on the workload. It is scalable, and it is easy to scale up and down depending on the usage. If we have a lot of traffic, it automatically adds a new firewall, and if the traffic slows down, it just removes the firewall. I do not need to worry about the load because it would not be an issue when scaling.

The management server provides unified management. We save a lot of time by not having to log in to different platforms. It is good to have everything in the same place. It saves maybe half an hour a day.

We get good insights into security, and we are more secure because we have more insights than we would get from other products.

We are having issues with updatable objects in the Scale Set solution. It needs to be fixed by Check Point.

The setup instructions are not correct. They should be corrected. We sent the product feedback last week. Several things were misspelled and incorrect in the documentation, and it got updated.

We have been using Scale Set with Check Point for about four years.

We do not have any issues with the product. Usually, the issues are with the Azure platform, such as an Azure host going down. It is not a Check Point issue.

I have been working with Azure Firewall for five years. It is a lot smoother to work with Check Point. When it comes to rule sets and IPS, Azure Firewall does not have too many functions. It does not look nice, and it is not easy to make rules. It is a lot of a headache to work with Azure Firewall. It also costs a lot more.

We cannot get any fancy reports from Azure Firewall the way we can from Check Point. We do not have any insights with Azure Firewall. We get a lot better insights with Check Point.

It is easy if you know what to do. If you follow Check Point instructions, it is hard because the instructions are not correct.

I do not have too much to compare to, but if I compare it with Azure Firewall, Scale Set is quite good. It has quite a good price.

I can only speak for Scale Set. I would rate it an eight out of ten because it is a good solution. I like it.