Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) Reviews

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.

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.

We use Check Point CloudGuard for full visibility across our workloads in the cloud and on-premises.

The GSL builder's graphical interface makes writing custom rules and policies easy, but some knowledge and training are still required. The training required takes around two weeks to complete.

The GSL builder helps reduce human errors by almost 80 percent because it provides compliance rules and performs intelligence queries on our behalf.

The GSL builder saves us time creating custom rules. Initially, defining the rules takes time, but once that is downloaded, it becomes an automated process. We save around ten hours per week.

Our organization requires the use of Check Point's auto-remediation feature. This feature automatically analyzes and remediates threats, enabling us to perform forensic analysis on detected events. By implementing this feature, we benefit from several detection capabilities, including anti-ransomware and behavioral analysis, which ensure comprehensive threat detection and analysis. Additionally, the auto-remediation feature automatically quarantines and remediates malicious files, preventing data breaches. As a result, we can leverage the forensic report to enhance our endpoint security posture and effectively protect our internet connectivity.

The auto-remediation feature stands out for its ability to prioritize alerts. It focuses on high-risk issues first and then remediates them accordingly.

The unified security management console, a component of the monitoring tool, offers a comprehensive overview of our platform's security posture. This holistic view enables us to promptly identify emerging environmental threats and conduct thorough investigations, ensuring swift and effective responses.

The evaluation of the application depends on its criticality. For example, in an airport scenario, an AODV application is used for critical operations. This means that the AODV application is of high importance and requires a more thorough investigation or a faster response in case of issues.

Check Point CloudGuard has significantly improved my cloud threat handling. It has been a great asset in increasing my security posture score due to its automated remediation capabilities. Additionally, its threat intelligence provides valuable insights, making it a comprehensive security solution. Furthermore, CloudGuard offers comprehensive lifecycle security for all my applications, including new deployments. It also addresses complex security needs within my cloud environment, ensuring compliance with all relevant regulations and governance requirements.

CloudGuard provides good performance for automating our organization's security across assets, workloads, and multiple clouds.

The agentless workload posture plays a crucial role in determining our organization's security posture. This includes security and posture management, threat prevention, and high-availability posture management. All these aspects are highly important, and they also help automate my DevOps multi-cloud security threat level.

Network security helps us reduce the amount of compliance and audit activities we need to perform. It provides advanced threat protection, allowing us to inspect all traffic entering and leaving our private subnets within our entire virtual network. This comprehensive approach ensures robust network security and ongoing time savings.

CloudGuard can help free up around six hours of our staff time because it can be integrated with different applications and systems. 

CloudGuard's unified platform can free up an average of six hours per day, a feat impossible for any human worker. However, the system's automated configurations can function around the clock, achieving this level of efficiency.

The most valuable features are the ability to create pipeline rules, the enhanced NetOps security, and the deep visibility across our entire infrastructure. 

Check Point CloudGuard also helps us adhere to the compliance and regulatory requirements, I can ensure best practices are implemented, prioritize risk management, and prevent critical attacks.

Automation and advanced threat prevention have room for improvement. I would like the rules configuration which are manually reviewed to be automated according to the defined rules.

I have been using Check Point CloudGuard for two years.

Check Point CloudGuard is stable.

Check Point CloudGuard is scalable.

The technical support is good.

Positive

The initial deployment required knowledgeable people. We had already planned the required configuration type, the necessary posture management approach, and the rules that needed to be defined. We had discussed these requirements with the CloudGuard team member and implemented them together. Four people were involved in the deployment.

A person from CloudGuard helped with the implementation.

We have the enterprise-level license and we renew it annually because it is worth the cost.

I would rate Check Point CloudGuard an eight out of ten.

Check Point offers a bundled solution that includes cloud threat hunting, cloud migration security, DevSecOps, and cloud security compliance. This comprehensive package is a superior choice as it provides a unified approach to cloud security.

We have Check Point CloudGuard deployed in one location with 400 users.

A team of four admins performs maintenance on CloudGuard every quarter.

CloudGuard boasts advanced threat prevention for network security, seamlessly securing public, private, and hybrid cloud environments. It also provides unified security management and simplifies complaint handling.

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. 

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.

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.

I use CloudGuard CNAPP to protect and gain visibility into vulnerabilities across our cloud workloads in a multi-cloud environment spanning AWS, GCP, and Azure. By implementing CNAPP, we have successfully reduced vulnerabilities in our cloud infrastructure by 70-80% over the past two years.

CloudGuard has significantly improved our organization's security posture over the past few years by reducing critical vulnerabilities by up to 80-90% across various workloads. This enhancement has led to lower security costs and enabled us to effectively communicate our improved security stance to stakeholders, putting us in a much stronger position than before.

The most valuable features of CloudGuard CNAPP are its reporting capabilities for aggregating vulnerability information and scoring, as well as its CloudBot feature, which automates remediation deployment across our diverse workloads in various accounts and regions.

One area where CloudGuard CNAPP could be improved is in its reporting capabilities. Customization options for building tailored reports would be beneficial, as it would allow for different views on vulnerabilities based on specific criteria such as tags or dimensions. Currently, the reporting features have some limitations in providing the level of customization we require.

I have been using Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP for about three years.

We haven't had any stability issues with the solution so far.

Scalability, particularly in workload protection, is an area that needs improvement. It is challenging to roll out workload protection to different teams, and there is room for enhancement in this aspect.

I would rate Check Point's service and technical support as an eight out of ten. The pre-sales team was excellent, providing expert assistance, and our experience with the technical team has been good so far. 

Positive

The initial deployment of CloudGuard CNAPP was extremely straightforward since it is agentless and seamlessly integrates with public cloud tools. We began with a POC, then gradually rolled out the solution across all our cloud accounts, starting with AWS and expanding to GCP and Azure.

We have seen a return on investment in terms of reduced vulnerabilities.

I find CloudGuard CNAPP's pricing and licensing to be flexible, allowing us to explore new features without hard limits. Currently, we operate under an enterprise agreement with the flexibility to utilize the tools we need effectively.

We initially evaluated Palo Alto's cloud security posture management solution but ultimately chose CloudGuard CNAPP due to its faster implementation process and cohesive reporting capabilities. CloudGuard CNAPP's simplicity and comprehensive reporting aligned better with our need for efficient deployment and intuitive data analysis, making it the preferred solution for our cloud security requirements.

The benefits of using CloudGuard CNAPP were realized very quickly, almost immediately after deployment. The implementation process was straightforward and seamless, leveraging agentless integration with existing cloud security tools. The positive results were clear from the start.

We use CloudGuard CNAPP's CSPM capabilities extensively. We assess CSPM for identifying misconfigurations by running automated processes to scan all our cloud accounts. We prioritize risks, work with technical teams to explain vulnerabilities, and initiate fixing processes, deploying available solutions or performing manual/automated remediations. We then report progress to our teams and iterate on the process as needed.

The effectiveness of CloudGuard CNAPP's CSPM for providing compliance rules and security best practices is high. Its policies align well with common standards like NIST or CIS frameworks, enabling effective assessment against known vulnerabilities. This alignment facilitates communication and understanding between teams, streamlining the resolution process for identified vulnerabilities.

CloudGuard CNAPP's CSPM effectively identifies risks critical to our business, particularly focusing on exposure and availability ratings. It saves us significant time, likely reducing the resolution process for critical risks by around 30-40%, as it provides pre-configured assessments and clearer insights compared to starting from scratch.

The CloudGuard CNAPP team provides excellent visibility into incident investigations by simplifying access to cloud workload configuration logs and integrating with tools like SIEM platforms. This enables the incident response team to ingest data from CloudGuard CNAPP and correlate it with internal indicators, streamlining the investigation process.

We use CloudGuard CNAPP across eight countries in South America and North America, with around 130,000 employees and approximately 5,000 engineers. We manage over 100 AWS accounts and support various applications, including e-commerce tools, generating over 10,000 notifications.

My advice for someone evaluating CloudGuard CNAPP would be to start with a hands-on exploration of the dashboards and data provided by the solution, then focus on internal selling and localized deployments. The biggest lesson I have learned from using CNAPP is that while it is easy to start with, achieving full adoption and maximizing its potential requires thorough preparation and dedicated effort from the team.

Overall, I would rate CloudGuard CNAPP as an 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 our CSPM and CNAPP services powered by CloudGuard. Those are the two that we are doing direct services for today, but as a reseller, we offer all the pillars.

We are a value-added reseller. We are not necessarily using it as our own. We are not a dev shop, but those are the use cases. If one of our customers has a dev shop and is working out of the cloud, this is where they look to get some better understanding and control over what their development team or their DevOps team is doing and building. This is where CloudGuard CNAPP comes into play.

CloudGuard CNAPP definitely helps with bringing the controls, which can then play to compliance. We have a few key customers in the utility space, so compliance is a major driver. Being able to apply required controls through CNAPP helps and benefits them.

Security is not a No, where you have to say, "No. You cannot do it." By having the CNAPP toolset for the DevOps team, you enable them to do their work, and it is securely done.

We use CloudGuard CNAPP's Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) capabilities. We have been using CSPM for just over a year. We use it internally for our own IT security. We are a company with about 75 people, and our IT security uses CSPM actively not just to respond in time but also to help manage and keep an eye on all the controls and things.

Cloud Security Posture Management identifies the risks that are most critical to our business. It helps us to prioritize those. 

We do not use CloudGuard CNAPP's CloudGuard Workload Protection capabilities. We do not have a development shop. That is where the workloads come into play, but absolutely, that is where our customers could get some of the value to be able to keep their automations and speed going by having those workload protections in place. 

It is able to bring visibility into that cloudy space where the security departments do not really see what is happening on the DevOps side. It brings visibility, security control, and standardization. These are some key features.

I am not a technical person, but generically, the user interface can be a little more intuitive. Our staff has trained network security and cloud security professionals, and they get it, but when you are trying to get to the customers to be able to pick it up and maintain it, it can be a bit difficult, so the user interface can be a little better.

We have been using CloudGuard CNAPP for just about a year.

It is a Check Point product. It is not going anywhere. We have known CSPM for years, and it has only got improved every step of the way. Our impression is that CNAPP and the other pillars will do the same. They will continue to be steady and sturdy.

Their top-end technical support is excellent. Like anything else, it is hard to get to TAC, but we are an elite partner, so we have great channel support and strategic support. We have good experience with tech support.

We have not used any other solution. We have been a Check Point customer for a long time. When it started to come out, we started to take it on.

We are primarily on Azure, but our customers are in AWS and Azure. We do not have a lot of work with Google Cloud. We have a little bit of Oracle cloud, but AWS and Azure are the two big players we see our customers using.

I am not involved in its deployment, but I know that for CSPM, which is probably related, you discover as you go. You deploy it, and you are able to get the overall insights into what the environment is. I presume you would lead with that and then work on the workload and CNAPP, but I have not had to do it myself.

We have seen an ROI, but I do not have statistics to back it. Even for our small internal IT, it helps with efficiency and reduces the time in having to go through and try to find all the misconfigurations and other things. That time is money, and that is the return on the investment, for sure. I presume our customers feel the same way when they are using and deploying, especially things related to CNAPP. Once deployed and in action, they save a lot of time because one hour of prework saves ten hours as a rework, and that is what we get with CloudGuard CNAPP.

We evaluated Orca and Wiz. We are a value-added reseller, so we do sell them. Wiz has a lot of good and competitive aspects to CloudGuard features, but CloudGuard is very competitive with them, and we are deep partners, so we lean towards that.

To those considering this solution, I would say that it is pretty easy to get it started and get the evaluation going. Check Point has a whole cloud team that is there not to sell you anything but to help find where you are in the cloud journey and bring evaluation and other things forward.

CloudGuard CNAPP is definitely in the upper echelon. I would rate it a nine out of ten. It competes very well with other solutions such as Wiz. If you break it down, it competes very well with them. That puts it right up there at the top.

We primarily use it for egress internet traffic for four clouds, as well as between clouds to on-prem. Those are the main use cases. We have another small use case for ingress traffic, but it is a very small use case right now.

By implementing CloudGuard Network Security, we wanted to get network visibility in our clouds. That was the main point. We also wanted to provide a segregation layer with stateful inspection with all the next-generation features, such as IPS.

CloudGuard Network Security certainly has made our organization more secure. Our business partners cannot inadvertently open up the access that they should not be just to get things done. They now have to go through our firewall. We have got the inspection layer. Our security organization can see threats if they come in and take action on them. We were able to realize its benefits almost instantly.

CloudGuard Network Security provides unified security management across hybrid-clouds as well as on-prem. We heavily use global policy to join on-prem and the cloud, as well as multiple clouds. It is a huge benefit for us as we can set a global standard for policy and then push that across all the different security zones.

We are very confident in our cloud network's security. We have had many years of experience developing it, so we were very aware of the design and the solution within each cloud. We are confident with how we deploy it, and we have plans to make it more efficient as we go.

Most recently, it would be the dynamic objects or datacenter objects. The query feature is going to be a game-changer for us as we move forward. It simplifies our policy, and it gives us a way to dynamically learn and discover things in the cloud instead of having a static way.

Currently, we are struggling with licensing just because of the pace and growth of our cloud. Keeping up with licensing for new regions and new gateway usage is certainly something we are looking into. We are working with our accounting to figure out how we can improve. The licensing piece is big for us.

We are at the place where we are looking at better integration with the management system. We use an MDS today, and it is self-deployed. We want to get to the Smart-1 Cloud, but we do not know what that looks like today because it does not support a multi-domain setup. Smart-1 should either be able to do multi-domain or there should be some form of taking a multi-domain environment and putting it in Smart-1.

I have been using CloudGuard Network Security for probably five years.

From our experience in five years, it has been very stable.

It seems to be very scalable. We have plans to increase the usage of CloudGuard Network Security.

We do scale sets across our clouds and across many regions globally. The number of applications behind it is in the hundreds if not thousands.

It is an excellent service. I would rate their support a nine out of ten. Improving a little bit in the smaller clouds such as Oracle and Google would help a lot.

Positive

We did not specifically use any similar solution in the cloud. It was brand new.

We have a public cloud and then a hybrid with on-prem. We have AWS, Azure, Google, and Oracle.

In terms of the version, on-prem, we use Maestro, and in the cloud, we use the latest CloudGuard. We use the software version R80.40 and are about to upgrade to R81.20.

Its deployment was a little complex for us because we have a very large cloud environment and we are multi-cloud. We had an existing estate, so it was hard to put a firewall in the path and not break things.

We are still implementing it because we are taking a cloud-by-cloud approach. We have done AWS and Azure. It took probably two years to do that, so I would assume that for Google and Oracle, it is going to take at least a year.

In terms of the implementation strategy, we first develop the IEC for the code to deploy it, and then we deploy it and test it in a sandbox environment. We then deploy it to non-prod and roll it out to those regions, and after that, we would do the same with prod.

We implemented it ourselves.

We have seen an ROI, but I do not have any metrics.

Pricing-wise, it is pretty competitive. However, I would like to see more flexible licensing. There should be more of a consume what you need and true-up type of model.

In the past, we have evaluated other solutions. When we tested them, they did not have the same feature set or functionality that CloudGuard had. When I initially tested years ago, the scaling probably was not as efficient. The support was also a big factor. The support that we got from those vendors was not as good as from our account team with Check Point. 

When we looked at the cloud provider firewalls, they did not match up to what Check Point could do with the various deep packet features and functions like IPS. The feature set was the main difference. At the time, the cloud providers could not provide IPS or deep packet features. That was a big driver for us with Check Point. The fact that we could not integrate policy with our on-prem firewalls, which were from Check Point, was another big driver because we wanted a unified policy. Our existing relationship with Check Point helped as well.

To those evaluating CloudGuard Network Security, I would advise certainly engaging with the Check Point account team. Get their solutions team to help you walk through the solution and talk to others in the industry about their experiences.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this solution is to deploy it as soon as you can in your cloud journey.

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

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.