No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.
reviewer2085951 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Information Security at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Real User
Jul 29, 2024
The ability to prioritize alerts enables me to focus on critical issues instead of common misconfigurations
Pros and Cons
  • "It saves time because I can look across the organization. Instead of checking 50 different accounts atomically and spending 15 minutes investigating each, I can spend 15 minutes exploring all 50 accounts. It allows me to quickly look across the org for similar problems when one comes up. That's a huge time saver."
  • "Making basic rules is easy, but it's complex if you want to do something a little more nuanced. I've been unable to make some rules that I wanted. I couldn't evaluate some values or parameters of the components I look for. I haven't always been able to assess them."

What is our primary use case?

CloudGuard is a tool for evaluating the health and configuration of an account. We primarily use it for AWS, but we also use it for Azure. I also use it for inventory and historical reporting.

We work with 50 AWS accounts. Four teams across a couple of time zones use CloudGuard. Our security and DevOps teams are the primary users, but the support team occasionally uses it. Management consumes the output and the reports. I think it makes them feel good, so that's nice. 

How has it helped my organization?

I recently transitioned into a management and architecture role. CloudGuard helped me delegate to my engineers the day-to-day tasks of operational care and feeding and health assessments of the environments. I previously spent more time building rules and implementing automatic remediations. Now, I let it fly, and my engineers operate it. 

I helped with the design and build, and I was originally in charge of the run. I've now handed off the run, which enabled me to do more. I think it helped those guys to be effective and do more. I'd say it freed up the equivalent of a quarter to an eighth of an FTE.

CloudGuard allows us to scale. As we bring on customers, more accounts come online, and more platforms are deployed in our environment, I don't have to scale my team linearly with the growth of our product. These rules work over and over on the number of accounts. I think that's a place where it will help us as our customer base grows.

The security operations team saved some time. I'm on the team, so I do a lot with this. It's one of the essential tools. Depending on the incident, Check Point can be extremely helpful in understanding the configuration. I use it ad hoc or tactically in those conditions. At the same time, other operations or security incidents are out of view of Check Point and Dome9, so it doesn't come into play. When the problem is at the account or configuration level, it makes remediation and troubleshooting an investigation easier.

It saves time because I can look across the organization. Instead of checking 50 different accounts atomically and spending 15 minutes investigating each, I can spend 15 minutes exploring all 50 accounts. It allows me to quickly look across the org for similar problems when one comes up. That's a huge time saver. 

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the ability to create a reference rule set and use that to evaluate an account's health. It provides daily reports on any drift from that rule set and real-time alerts. Some of the automated remediations are also helpful.

I like the GSL Builder, which helped us reduce human error. It helps answer a question quickly in real-time that I might not want to put into a specific rule that I evaluate across all my accounts all the time. In many cases, we've built rules that we consider everywhere for the posture of all our essential accounts. However, I often work on an issue or question, and I just want to see who has this configuration or misconfiguration. GSL Builder lets me quickly locate all the S3 buckets with a faulty configuration. I use it tactically like that sometimes.

I'd be sad if it went away. However, you couldn't throw an inexperienced person at it and expect them to get any value from it without some handholding or spending time to read the documentation and think about it. You must know about the asset you interrogate to write a good rule or to do a good evaluation. That isn't a Check Point problem, but it's a general issue in cloud security. 

CloudGuard offers several pre-packaged rules for various evaluations, such as NIST, 853, etc. I went through them, found 50 rules I think are handy, and put them into a custom rule set. Then, I spent time writing about 30 rules specific to my environment. I use those to evaluate the health of my accounts continuously. 

We check health insurer information because all this data is highly confidential and protected by HIPAA. We use these rules to evaluate our cloud properties constantly. I can't imagine the time that would take to perform this kind of evaluation by hand or using another tool. That's why we have Check Point.

There are many auto-remediations available. We use a few and wrote a couple of our own. It's an excellent risk management tool. We use it because we're so paranoid about the security of our environment. I've used this tool at other companies in different industries, and they've been apprehensive about automatic remediation. It depends on the part of the world you live in. I use it, and it stopped problems, so I've gotten tremendous value from auto-remediation.

The ability to prioritize alerts has been handy. It enables me to focus on critical issues instead of common misconfiguration. The visibility into my workloads is pretty good but not great. I don't use it at a granular level. I'm primarily focused on protecting my overall cloud posture and the health of the account with CloudGuard, but I also look for some common misconfigurations that might be workload-induced.

What needs improvement?

Making basic rules is easy, but it's complex if you want to do something a little more nuanced. I've been unable to make some rules that I wanted. I couldn't evaluate some values or parameters of the components I look for. I haven't always been able to assess them.

It feels like some attributes of resources can't be interrogated through the GSL the way I would like. For example, I wanted to figure out all the systems launched with a particular image that had been running for 31 days or more. Until I talked to the Dome9 people and the support team, I didn't understand how to frame that query in GSL. The support team told me how to do it, but I couldn't figure it out alone. The documentation is a little unclear about how to do some of those configurations. More tutorials and examples on the blogs and support pages would be helpful. 

I had another problem when we tried to encrypt all of our storage volumes. There is a feature called batch jobs or Elastic MapReduce jobs. CloudGuard sometimes can't detect the encryption status of the underlying disks of those systems that process my workloads. It pops up with a bunch of alerts that say, "Non-encrypted volumes have been found in your account." 

Those jobs are dynamic, so they spin up, run for an hour or two, and all the systems are destroyed. By the time I checked it, all the systems were gone. CloudGuard threw a bunch of alerts in the middle of the night when all these things happened, and I went back to evaluate the configuration. I know they were all encrypted because I can see how it was deployed. It didn't have a great insight into my actual workload, but it generally tells me when people launch unencrypted things. It isn't perfect, but it's okay.

Buyer's Guide
Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)
August 2026
Learn what your peers think about Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2026.
911,473 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used CloudGuard for four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

CloudGuard has been solidly stable. I'd say nearly perfect.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

CloudGuard's scalability is decent. They're switching to a new onboarding methodology that I'm not in love with, but I think we'll find a way to make it work and continue to scale. It has been good.

How are customer service and support?

I rate Check Point's support an eight out of ten. I've contacted them with a few questions or issues and always had good support experiences with them. I'm not a huge customer paying millions of dollars a year. I work for a small startup on the bleeding edge of technology, and I feel like Check Point and Dome9 meet me where I am. 

It wasn't trying to shove a network firewall, like a data center security tool, down my throat. Palo Alto and Check Point are old-school network security appliance vendors that are out of their depth in cloud security, so they bought tools like bought Twistlock and Dome9. Check Point's acquisition and management of Dome9 have been excellent. I can still talk to people at Dome9 and get support for this tooling, but it has been difficult for me to do that with their competitors. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I've used Palo Alto Prisma Cloud, but I've also used Palo Alto's Cloud Security Posture Management tooling. I prefer Check Point, which is why we have it.

I still have both solutions, but I use Palo Alto for something else. I use Twistlock, a Prisma Cloud module, for runtime protection of containerized workloads. I also use Dome9 for CSPM. I did not like using Prisma Cloud for CSPM because I did not care for the rule language or configuration. 

Also, I feel like Check Point, and Dome9 listen to their users. If I'm dying for a new feature to improve the solution, they would hear me out and consider it. I guarantee you that Palo Alto doesn't care.

How was the initial setup?

Deploying CloudGuard is straightforward. I deployed it and configured the auto-remediation alone, but I also worked with another architect to discuss the design and workshop some ideas, so we could say a team of two deployed it.
After deployment, maintenance has been very low.

What was our ROI?

We've seen a return. It still makes sense to write a check. I can't imagine going back to doing it the way I did before. It's essential for my compliance program to have this tool in place. If I could save the $100,000 or more I pay annually and use cloud-native tools, the additional time I would spend tuning and doing everything I'm doing with CloudGuard wouldn't be worth it, at least not in the first year. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

CloudGuard is fairly priced.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Check Point CloudGuard Posture Management an eight out of ten. I advise new users to start with a defined list of goals or problems and implement the solution in a way that initially prioritizes their most significant issues or primary goals. Don't try to boil the ocean. In other words, don't enable all the features and do everything at once. They will be overloaded unless they know what they're doing. Go feature by feature, function by function, and area by area. Determine where your critical risks are and implement the solution based on that knowledge.

I think there are some benefits to using a third-party tool. For example, these tools might simplify and enrich features or offer focus. You're adding another view or pane of glass to your security world, but once you start to look across clouds, it becomes interesting. I have to write all my own rules for Azure and AWS. At the same time, I can get the same report delivered to my inbox that I can then feed to my executives, showing them the health of these cloud properties. 

It looks cohesive and coherent instead of using separate native tools for AWS, GCP, Alibaba, and Azure and trying to compile all those reports and metrics. At least I can distill my posture into a commonsense readable score and transmit that to the executives. I can tell them, "Our posture's at 98% compliance." They can comprehend that and compare the scores from week to week. It helps me from a reporting angle.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Samir Paul - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Practitioner at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
MSP
Top 5Leaderboard
Apr 30, 2024
Provides centralized visibility and helps identify any misconfigurations or compliance issues
Pros and Cons
  • "The identification of misconfigurations, maintenance of compliance in a centralized way, and visibility across all the multi-cloud tenants are the key functionalities."
  • "The impact analysis that they perform can be improved. It is currently lacking. It should be more detailed."

What is our primary use case?

When a customer has a multi-cloud environment with AWS, Azure, GCP, or any other cloud, maintaining posture across the cloud environment is very difficult. They need a CNAPP solution for governance and centralized compliance. It gives centralized visibility where they can track each and every cloud account, compliance check, misconfigurations, risks, and vulnerabilities. Accordingly, they can take remediation action as well. That is the main purpose of a CNAPP solution.

How has it helped my organization?

CloudGuard CNAPP helps to be compliant across a multi-tenant environment. We can be sure of the compliance status with respect to different cloud tenants. There is visibility into each and every cloud tenant. It is very easy to get visibility from a single console. Centralized management gives good granular control where we can check the risks and vulnerabilities and also do remediation centrally.

Its benefits can be realized in four weeks. It is API integration, so it is very straightforward. You integrate with the client, and you start monitoring. You get the information in real-time. The overall implementation time frame is about four weeks. The first two weeks can be for the monitoring stage. In the third week, you can fine-tune your policies, and in the fourth week, you can start remediating.

Posture management is a part of CloudGuard CNAPP. CloudGuard CNAPP is a combination of three technologies: Cloud Security Posture Management, Cloud Workload Protection (CWP), and Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM). It is a combination of technologies. When customers use CloudGuard CNAPP, they use all these three models.

Cloud Security Posture Management is very good for identifying misconfiguration. It is able to capture all misconfigurations.

They maintain different compliance standards. Apart from that, they are also very good with the alerts and notification part. Whenever they perform a scan and find a vulnerability, it is sent to different channels as an alert or notification. It is good. They only need to improve the impact analysis on CSPM.

Cloud Security Posture Management identifies the risks that are most critical to the business. In terms of time savings, it can identify a risk within 10 to 15 minutes instead of it being a day-long task. The scanning happens in almost real-time. It is a good feature they have given, and I appreciate their solution.

The scanning provided by CloudGuard Workload Protection helps to identify problems before they go live. It has good capability for that. It can perform a proactive analysis, and we can identify the risks or vulnerabilities before the exploit. This identification of problems is very important because knowing about a problematic scenario in advance and being able to address it can save us a huge business loss. A proactive analysis is very critical. In the cybersecurity domain, it is one of the critical features for every customer.

CloudGuard CNAPP gives us the severity score. When it identifies any risks or vulnerabilities, it assigns a severity score.

CloudGuard CNAPP gives good visibility across all the multi-cloud tenants. We have everything covered in one solution. It covers risks, vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, compliance, data security, data loss, etc. It gives good visibility. This visibility is important for customers.

What is most valuable?

The identification of misconfigurations, maintenance of compliance in a centralized way, and visibility across all the multi-cloud tenants are the key functionalities.

What needs improvement?

The first improvement area is the impact analysis. The impact analysis that they perform can be improved. It is currently lacking. It should be more detailed.

The second improvement area is that they should adopt more remediation on various resources.

The third improvement area is that they should introduce Gen-AI capability on their platform so that remediation can be very easy. They have the threat hunting and detection part, but they need to adapt more on the Gen-AI side so that the remediation can happen automatically. People should be able to do remediation with a click. It would be a very good feature to have for remediation.

These are three main improvement areas for them. I have already provided Check Point feedback about these through another channel.

With respect to Cloud Workload Protection, they should introduce more granular security control in terms of policy. I feel they should work on it and develop it more. They need to provide more granular security control in terms of various attacks, such as the MITRE ATT&CK framework. They need to give a different policy for each technique and tactic such as ransomware, exploitation, etc. I also work with CrowdStrike, so I know about different types of granular controls. From the Cloud Workload Protection perspective, they need to improve the policy framework.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with CloudGuard CNAPP for 2 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not seen any issues. It works in the passive mode, so it does not impact performance or anything like that.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a scalable solution. Every SaaS solution is scalable, so CloudGuard CNAPP is also a scalable solution.

How are customer service and support?

I have not contacted them much, which is a good thing. CloudGuard CNAPP works in a passive mode. If anything needs to be done, it has to be done in your cloud tenant. There are very few times when you or an admin is required to communicate with the support team.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I also work with CrowdStrike and Palo Alto. CrowdStrike does not have the CNAPP capability. CrowdStrike is an EDR solution.

Palo Alto has the Prisma solution. Its capabilities are similar to Check Point. They are similar to me. I do not see much difference. There might be some difference in the cost, but technology-wise, they are the same.

How was the initial setup?

CloudGuard CNAPP is a SaaS-based solution, and you need to integrate all your cloud accounts into that. That is it.

You need to integrate your cloud account or onboard your cloud account in the CloudGuard CNAPP solution by doing the API integration. After you onboard, you first put the cloud account in the monitoring mode. You monitor things for two weeks. After you validate your findings on CloudGuard CNAPP and you do not see any false positives, you can go for the block mode as well. That is the approach the industry should follow while onboarding any CNAPP solution.

What was our ROI?

You start to get an ROI from the day you deploy CloudGuard CNAPP or integrate it with your cloud account. 

It is like insurance. When something happens, only then you realize its value. CloudGuard CNAPP works in the same way. Without such a solution, it is very difficult to find vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and data breaches on each and every cloud tenant. When you integrate CloudGuard CNAPP with your cloud account, you get a single view. It is very easy for your cloud administrator to take quick action. The ROI starts once you integrate or onboard a cloud account with CloudGuard CNAPP.

What other advice do I have?

After you have subscribed to CloudGuard CNAPP, I would advise onboarding your cloud account and then monitoring your cloud account and the CloudGuard CNAPP findings for two weeks. After that, you can fine-tune the policies and then run the solution in block mode. That is the process.

A CNAPP product is mandatory for any organization that works in a multi-cloud environment.

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

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)
August 2026
Learn what your peers think about Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2026.
911,473 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer2353149 - PeerSpot reviewer
Global network and telecom director at a hospitality company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Apr 15, 2024
Offers central console management that ensures we have uniform threat prevention policies
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature for us is the scale set, which allows us to scale horizontally, vertically and dynamically depending on the traffic load."
  • "There is room for improvement in the integration with PaaS services from the public cloud. It would be very helpful."

What is our primary use case?

I use it to protect our public cloud workloads today. It safeguards them directly from the internet and also from the corporate network. We have interconnected our Azure environments with our on-premises network, including our data centre. CloudGuard Network Security helps protect workloads within Azure from both the corporate network and the internet.

How has it helped my organization?

CloudGuard Network Security has significantly improved our operations. Its automatic scaling capability, based on the network load, eliminates the need for capacity planning. 

We don't need capacity planning anymore or do proactive actions in order to always have that capacity planning, it does it automatically. Our network engineers now focus on administering the entire cluster rather than managing individual members and their loads.

Our confidence in our cloud network security is pretty high, largely because of central console management. It ensures that we have uniform threat prevention policies applied globally, which significantly boosts our confidence in the system.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature for us is the scale set, which allows us to scale horizontally, vertically and dynamically depending on the traffic load.

It provides us with unified security management across both CloudGuard and on-premises environments. We use CloudGuard Network Security for Azure and have a single management console that allows full visibility into logs and consolidated logs across all environments. This ensures we maintain consistent IPS, IDS, and threat prevention policies across all regions and data centres.

What needs improvement?

There is room for improvement in the integration with PaaS services from the public cloud. It would be very helpful. A more cloud-native approach is needed because even it is PaaS services require public cloud resources, even if the traffic load is low. These resources are still required for high availability and resiliency.

So, a full PaaS solution with improvements on that end, basically.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using it for five years now. 

How are customer service and support?

We have many different firewalls worldwide in our environment. Check Point support provides direct, 24/7 support, even when some components may be outdated. Since almost 95% of our hardware is supported, they're still able to provide support for the remaining 5%, which is greatly appreciated.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We opted for CloudGuard primarily due to two factors, which ultimately became three. 

  • First was the Azure consumption cost, which was lower compared to competitors. 
  • Secondly, its plug-and-play capability is straight out of the box, as deployment is directly made from the Azure Cloud Marketplace. In contrast, with competitors, you have to manually import and deploy the image they provide, which isn’t off the shelf. 
  • The third factor was the scaling solution offered by CloudGuard, which we found to be the fastest.

How was the initial setup?

I was involved. It was straightforward, out of the box, plug and play. 

What about the implementation team?

We didn’t use a reseller or integrator; it’s really simple to deploy, and we had the capability to set it up on our own.

What was our ROI?

I haven't calculated it because we deployed CloudGuard Network Security as part of our cloud journey. The ROI wasn't calculated solely on that part; it was more about the overall process of closing the data centre and moving to the cloud.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The licesning has some good features. For example, the scaling feature is free of charge, allowing multiple scale-ups and scale-downs over a two-week period, which is pretty good. 

However, since we are still on an IaaS infrastructure, we end up paying for firewalls that are operational without actually handling traffic loads. This is why a PaaS approach would yield more benefits for us.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. The reason it's not a ten relates to the need for a more cloud-native solution that fits today's requirements. The deployment was five years ago, and we're still waiting for Check Point to evolve to truly have cloud-native capabilities.

I'd advise looking into the scale set feature and the out-of-the-box capability, which were really the silver bullets for us. It was a strong requirement, and if anyone is seeking that kind of solution, I would greatly recommend it.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2386959 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Security Consultant with 5,001-10,000 employees
Reseller
Apr 9, 2024
Fair price, great dashboards, and fantastic for identifying misconfigurations
Pros and Cons
  • "The rulesets and the findings are valuable. The actual core functionality of it and the efficacy of events are great."
  • "The setup can be better. With every other Check Point product, the setup is scripted. You just approve versions, and then you are off. The setup for this solution is still very much manual. I would like to see that transition to more of a scripted setup."

What is our primary use case?

We are a VAR. We use posture management in various client environments for different assessments. 

We do not use it internally. We use it in multiple client environments. We have different types of client environments with different sizes.

How has it helped my organization?

It is great for identifying misconfigurations. That is the part that I love about it.  It is very good at finding that needle in the haystack. It gives you an overall posture for every little thing, and if you dive into it and look at some of the findings, you start seeing that you have one or two servers that are misconfigured, and you have an open BLOB, open storage instance, unsecured web portal, or something else that you did not know about. 

The effectiveness of its Cloud Security Posture Management for providing compliance rulesets and security best practices is great.

Its Cloud Security Posture Management helps identify the risks that are most critical to our clients relatively quickly. I cannot put a number on that, but not having to go through every little configuration on every asset would probably save a week's worth of effort for the smallest client. 

Its traffic monitoring capabilities are good. Helps visualize traffic flows and possibly exposed assets.

The actual setup is pretty manual. It takes about an hour or two, depending on the client you are working with.

What is most valuable?

The rulesets and the findings are valuable. The actual core functionality of it and the efficacy of events are great. There is some triaging, but in terms of findings, it does seem to find the needle in the haystack.

The dashboards specifically are great. By just logging in and going into the portal, we can see the high-level dashboard views. We are able to dive into whatever we want to see there, and that is fantastic.

The network mapping and the traffic flow map, where it shows you which VMs might be possibly exposed, are also very valuable. It shows which systems might have direct access to the Internet and which systems do not. It shows you overall how the network flow is set up based on your security groups, routing, and everything. I have got a good use out of that.

What needs improvement?

The setup can be better. With every other Check Point SaaS product, the setup is scripted. You just approve deployment scripts,  and then you are off. The setup for this solution is still very much manual. I would like to see that transition to more of a scripted setup. That has been an issue when I set up a client because every client has different skill sets.

The general reporting also needs improvement. It is very cumbersome to pull the reports for big environments. I had a client environment with 50 tenants, and I had to manually run a CIS report for each tenant and download it. There were 50 different reports. I wish there was a way to get the reports for all 50 tenants in one report and not 50 different reports.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with posture management for 3 to 4 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I never had stability-related issues. That has always been fine.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable. You can do it, but you need to redo the setup for each and every additional account and visibility. It is scalable. It is just not quickly scalable.

How are customer service and support?

I would rate their support for CloudGuard CNAPP a eight out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have not used a posture management solution before.

How was the initial setup?

Its setup is very manual. I would like to see that transition to more of a scripted setup. It is a very manual process. For the most part it is fine however I have definitely had issues with it. Sometimes, it just does not work, and I have had to open tickets.

What about the implementation team?

I am an integrator and consultant.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Its price is very fair.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

N/A

What other advice do I have?

To the new users of this solution, I would advise not following the built-in guide while setting it up. Always open the admin guide for the most up-to-date information.

Overall, I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. Even with all the issues, what you do get out of it is very valuable. The reporting and the setup are holding it back from a ten. That is where it can be improved greatly.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
PeerSpot user
Justin Mcclung - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of IT Operations at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Mar 26, 2024
Saves time and enables us to manage all devices from one place
Pros and Cons
  • "The visibility is most valuable. It allows us to see all of our devices from one place, and it gives us the ability to manage push updates and things like that from one place."
  • "Its price is fair, but it can be more favorable."

What is our primary use case?

We use it to secure our network. We use it to manage our firewalls and some of the other services that we have with them.

By implementing CloudGuard Network Security, we mainly wanted visibility.

How has it helped my organization?

CloudGuard Network Security saves time from having to go to multiple places to look for different things. It gives us the ability to see it all in one place. We could realize its benefits in less than 90 days.

CloudGuard Network Security provides unified security management across hybrid-clouds as well as on-prem. We are able to combine different aspects into one place.

I am confident in our cloud network security. Check Point is a great company. They stay up to date on everything that is happening, and they keep us informed about anything that needs to be done to maintain that security posture.

What is most valuable?

The visibility is most valuable. It allows us to see all of our devices from one place, and it gives us the ability to manage push updates and things like that from one place.

What needs improvement?

Its price is fair, but it can be more favorable.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using CloudGuard Network Security for about two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It feels very stable to me.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Its scalability is good. It is being used across multiple departments. There are 300 users and a lot of endpoints.

We do not have any plans to increase its usage this year. We might do that in 2025.

How are customer service and support?

Their support is great. I would rate them a nine out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not use any similar solution previously.

How was the initial setup?

I was not too much involved in its deployment. My role is not as technical as it used to be.

We worked with partners to help us with the deployment who had expertise in this, so it was pretty straightforward. Our implementation strategy was to work with a partner.

What about the implementation team?

We had a Check Point partner for implementation. Our experience with them was good. 

What was our ROI?

We have seen an ROI in terms of time and labor costs. People do not have to spend as much time on different things. They have one interface to manage different things.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is fairly priced, but it can be a little expensive from time to time. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I am not aware of any solutions that we have evaluated. Check Point is our firewall vendor, so we went with them. We were able to have just one partner and one point of contact for any issues. Having a bunch of different products creates problems of its own. You do not know whom to call and whom not to call for an issue. Having one single contact to oversee all that is beneficial to us.

What other advice do I have?

I would advise taking your time. Be patient, and you will see results. It does not take much time, but some people want to see a return right away. It took us about 90 days to see the return. It is more based on you getting in it and doing things with it, but be patient.

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

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2379078 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Cybersecurity Architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Mar 26, 2024
Lowers our risk and helps to be proactive
Pros and Cons
  • "We know the vulnerability in advance, so we can take some action for that vulnerability."
  • "Down the road, we would like to see automation. That is probably a feature that most people want. If they can automate patching a vulnerability, it will be much easier."

What is our primary use case?

We use it to protect our applications in the cloud. We are doing a lot more cloud migration. We are moving all our applications into the cloud and our servers into the cloud. We need to protect our servers in the cloud.

By implementing CloudGuard CNAPP, we wanted to make sure we get alerts so that we can react much faster.

How has it helped my organization?

We use CloudGuard CNAPP's Cloud Security Posture Management capabilities. It knows all the accounts that were spun up. When we create an account in the cloud, it is onboarded automatically. We pull it into automation. Whenever someone changes any settings on the infrastructure side, the posture management will flag it. Sometimes, there is a way to automate a change. If we put some settings, it can make changes right away to shut that down.

Cloud Security Posture Management has a lot of compliances. It helps us to make sure our cloud configuration is up to a certain standard. If we have to be compliant, we have a good start on where we are.

Cloud Security Posture Management identifies the risks that are most critical to our business. It gives a risk score for what is being discovered. After we have that score, it is up to us how fast we want to remediate an issue. Sometimes, we might think that it is not crucial, and we might not take immediate action on it. 

We send every finding to our backend SIEM and work with our SOC to remediate those findings. Our SOC environment has that visibility of the logs so that we can react.

What is most valuable?

We know the vulnerability in advance, so we can take some action for that vulnerability. It is mostly all about how fast we can react to something.

We could see its benefits right away after we deployed the technology. However, getting visibility does not mean that we can react fast. For that, we have to work closely with all the app guys or server guys to patch all the things after we get the visibility.

What needs improvement?

Down the road, we would like to see automation. That is probably a feature that most people want. If they can automate patching a vulnerability, it will be much easier.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using CloudGuard CNAPP for about four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I am not aware of any problems.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

So far, so good. We have plans to increase its usage, but it depends on the collaboration with multiple groups.

We have been using it with a small group in our organization. We want to make sure that this group benefits from it, and then we can use that use case and expand that use case throughout the organization. Currently, it is being used for a small group, and there is an ongoing effort to make it more visible.

How are customer service and support?

They are good and responsive. We have a dedicated engineer, which is good. We have a certain person to go to for any questions or any problems. It has been good so far. Sometimes, we do experience slowness in responding, but overall, it has been pretty good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have been using CloudGuard from day one. It used to be known by another name. We have been using it before the name change. We are long-time customers.

How was the initial setup?

Currently, we are just dealing with the public cloud. We have AWS and Azure clouds. 

Its deployment needs a lot more collaboration. From the cybersecurity side, we can only do certain things to protect our environment. From the app side, it also needs collaboration with whoever is managing that application or server. A lot of collaboration is needed rather than just having the security person.

When we get all the permission to do the deployment, it is a lot easier. The security team does not hold the key to the kingdom, so we do not have access to all environments. Once we get that access, it can be deployed a lot easily.

What was our ROI?

We have definitely seen an ROI. We have not quantified it, but the notifications about misconfiguration or vulnerabilities by CloudGuard CNAPP are helping us to improve our site. Our risk is much lower. It lowers our risk on how we do things, and sometimes, it is hard to quantify that into money.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The licensing part still needs some work. The issue that I have is that we do not use all the services in the cloud, but sometimes, CloudGuard identifies them as an asset. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did not explore other options. We are just leveraging what CloudGuard has.

What other advice do I have?

To those evaluating this solution, I would recommend trying it. You never know what you will see until you try.

It is a good product. We definitely want to see more features. We constantly try to see the new features being integrated into the product so that we can leverage them.

We are not yet using CloudGuard CNAPP's CloudGuard Workload Protection capabilities. Because the workload side is hosted by a different group, it requires collaboration. We need to work closely with the workload group. We are looking at opportunities to see if we can collaborate.

We are not yet using CloudGuard Workload Protection for VMs, containers, and serverless, but we are interested in looking into it. If we have it, the scanning provided by CloudGuard Workload Protection will help us identify problems before they go live. I have seen a demo of it, and I am looking into whether we can deploy it for our environment. It will give our cybersecurity visibility. It will help us know what is going on, and then we can react to it.

We are also not using CloudGuard CNAPP's CloudGuard CDR (formerly Intelligence) and its intrusion detection and threat-hunting capabilities. I would love to use that and get some benefits out of it sometime in the future.

I would rate CloudGuard CNAPP an eight out of ten. Automation is what we are looking for because we do not have enough time and people to handle all the events and findings.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2355798 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Advisor at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Mar 26, 2024
Provides the network security and performance we expect
Pros and Cons
  • "All the features that we subscribe to from CloudGuard NGTP are valuable. All the threat prevention and access control features give us the network security that we expect."
  • "From the policy optimization point of view, they can do better. This is not just for CloudGuard. CloudGuard is one little piece managed by Check Point. They can also integrate a third-party policy management solution to improve that. For example, Tufin is focused on policy optimization and management."

What is our primary use case?

We have deployed CloudGuard in our environment to protect conversations between different network segments. For example, we can protect north-south traffic and east-west traffic.

We deploy our production workload in different cloud provider environments, such as GCPAzure, AWS, and IBM.

How has it helped my organization?

CloudGuard Network Security enhances our network security from an end-to-end connectivity point of view. We can deliver high-performance security to our different functional teams to support our business.

CloudGuard Network Security provides us with unified security management across hybrid-clouds and on-prem. We have one unified platform to manage on-premises gateway and CloudGuard gateway. We have a unified and standard way to ensure compliance and enforce all the definition requirements and process outcomes.

Check Point is at the top end of the market when it comes to security and threat prevention. They have a service called ThreatCloud. We get frequent updates from ThreatCloud. We can look at the numbers, signatures, and bad IPs they provide to us, and we can compare this information with other vendors or competitors. It gives us confidence that they are better in terms of threat detection.

What is most valuable?

All the features that we subscribe to from CloudGuard NGTP are valuable. All the threat prevention and access control features give us the network security that we expect.

What needs improvement?

From the policy optimization point of view, they can do better. This is not just for CloudGuard. CloudGuard is one little piece managed by Check Point. They can also integrate a third-party policy management solution to improve that. For example, Tufin is focused on policy optimization and management.

They can also offer solutions faster to address customer concerns.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using this solution for five or six years in our environment.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Check Point overall is pretty stable. We can rely on them. This is one of the key reasons why we stuck with Check Point for more than 20 years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is good. They have all kinds of solutions from on-premises to the cloud. There might be some limitations to their partnership with certain cloud providers. They can speed up to give us better solutions, especially for CloudGuard. I know some competitors offer solutions to address customer concerns faster than Check Point. It is an area for improvement.

How are customer service and support?

Our experience has been good. Their sales engineers and support engineers are pretty good, but they also have some gaps. They can improve that. I would rate them an eight out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

What was our ROI?

We have seen an ROI because they fixed the gap. We were able to put a solution to fix a gap. It gives us confidence about how secure our environment is.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We have a pretty good partnership with Check Point. We have a global subscription and agreement. They give us a pretty good corporate discount.

We have a global subscription to cover everything, not just the cloud but also the on-premises gateway. We have all the threat prevention subscriptions as well, which makes us stick with Check Point. Even though we get a better price offer from competitors, this global discount makes its pricing a better deal for us.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Before deploying it, we did compare it with other vendors. We looked at the major players in the market, such as Palo Alto and Fortinet.

We did not go for a cloud-native solution because they could not provide the same security as Check Point. We deployed CloudGuard in all of our cloud environments because we felt that their native solutions could not satisfy our requirements. We were also able to add selective threat prevention features, which native-gateway solutions might not have had. This is a value-add when we deploy CloudGuard in a cloud.

CloudGuard Network Security is easy to use for us. Because we have been using Check Point, it is easier for us to integrate new features, rather than deploying a new environment.

What other advice do I have?

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

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
PeerSpot user
reviewer2355630 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Security Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Mar 20, 2024
Gives a lot of visibility and we can manage all cloud environments from a central place
Pros and Cons
  • "The ease of deployment has been nice. It is like managing any of our on-prem firewalls."
  • "The only pain points we have had with it were when we did major version upgrades. Rather than being able to do incremental upgrades on those, we had to completely redeploy. I know that has changed recently, but we had some hiccups when we did the upgrades. This is the only issue we have had."

What is our primary use case?

We are primarily using it for access control for our various cloud environments from our on-prem resources.

By implementing CloudGuard Network Security, we wanted granularity and control of the traffic going through our different BDCs within AWS. We use one there. We also wanted identity awareness for going into cloud resources.

How has it helped my organization?

CloudGuard Network Security gives us access and visibility into what is going on in our cloud environments. Previously, we did not have any cloud instances. We were just managing the on-prem and then letting it go. It gives a lot of visibility. We could realize its benefits instantly.

CloudGuard Network Security provides us with unified security management across hybrid-clouds as well as on-prem. We were able to manage all of our cloud environments from one central place. We have got CloudGuard in Azure and AWS restricting traffic between those hybrid cloud environments.

We feel very confident in our cloud network security by using CloudGuard Network Security. We get what we would expect with an on-prem firewall. We get all of the functionality and security that we would expect from an on-prem firewall in the cloud. We did not go with our cloud vendor's cloud firewall because they were not able to meet a lot of the security standards that we needed.

What is most valuable?

The ease of deployment has been nice. It is like managing any of our on-prem firewalls.

What needs improvement?

The only pain points we have had with it were when we did major version upgrades. Rather than being able to do incremental upgrades on those, we had to completely redeploy. I know that has changed recently, but we had some hiccups when we did the upgrades. This is the only issue we have had.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using CloudGuard Network Security for over four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is very stable. I would rate it a ten out of ten for stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It scales pretty easily. At this time, I am not aware of any plans to increase its usage.

How are customer service and support?

Their support is great. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not use a similar solution previously.

How was the initial setup?

It is a private cloud. We have it in both our private Azure and private AWS restricting access between the individual BDCs and on-prem environment and between the two different cloud environments as well. 

It is primarily deployed by one team, but multiple clients use the cloud services.

What was our ROI?

I believe we have seen an ROI. We are able to manage it from an already existing management server that we are using for on-prem. Not having to have another product that we are managing outside of Check Point is a big plus.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at cloud-native firewalls. They were not able to meet the security standards that we were able to get by using CloudGuard.

We looked at their IPS solutions with the cloud-native firewalls, but we could not go as granular. With CloudGuard Network Security, we could see the individual protection and fine-tune it.

CloudGuard Network Security is also easier to use than other solutions.

What other advice do I have?

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

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Ilaria Buonagurio - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Corporate Information Security Prevention at Luxottica Group
User
Dec 24, 2023
Good monitoring, compliance, and reporting of remediation actions
Pros and Cons
  • "The feature that I value the most about Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP is the possibility of checking compliance with different standards. This compliance check can be performed for each subscription or service that we have on all the different cloud providers that we use."
  • "One feature of the product that I would like to enhance is the possibility to connect to vulnerability management platforms so that the issues that emerge from the scans can then be ingested directly into the vulnerability management process."

What is our primary use case?

We use it as a CSPM (cloud security posture management) solution. In particular, the main use case it to identify misconfigurations in our cloud environments. 

We have different cloud providers, and it monitors all of them: Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure. For each workload or subscription, Check Point Cloud Guard checks whether the configuration is in line with the sector standards and guidelines or not. 

It also checks for each subscription to see if it is compliant with a given policy. It has multiple policies for Europe, the USA, and even Australia.

How has it helped my organization?

With Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP, we are able to monitor the security of all of our cloud environments. Moving to a more and more cloud-centric environment is vital for us to ensure security. 

In addition, we have to comply with some standards that require us to guarantee compliance and overall data security and safety in the cloud environments that host our exposed applications, databases, servers, and virtual machines. 

With Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP, we are able to identify which remediation actions need to be taken in order for us to be compliant with the standards and to secure our environments better.

What is most valuable?

The feature that I value the most about Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP is the possibility of checking compliance with different standards. This compliance check can be performed for each subscription or service that we have on all the different cloud providers that we use. The result of the compliance check is having a list of issues, misconfiguration, or vulnerabilities that need to be fixed and addressed. The list is detailed with severity, description of the issue, risk, and how to mitigate it. It also points out the exact bit that needs to be addressed, so there is no guessing game, and when we address the issue to the technical team, they already know what needs to be done

What needs improvement?

The service is already top-notch; both on the commercial side and on the technical side. I had the luck to be put in contact with a very talented and skilled technical after-sales team that guided us step by step through the configurations. Also, the commercial team was very comprehensive with our situation and allowed us to create a package that best fit our needs.

One feature of the product that I would like to enhance is the possibility to connect to vulnerability management platforms so that the issues that emerge from the scans can then be ingested directly into the vulnerability management process. It would be very nice to provide, on top of API connections, built-in plugins for the major ticketing systems.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for three years.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

No, we have not used any solution before.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The setup cost is really low compared to the license cost. However, it's a good investment if you want to secure the cloud ecosystem.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated other options, among which Prisma Cloud and Orca Security.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Matej Kacic - PeerSpot reviewer
Executive Director at Security Avengers
Real User
Apr 3, 2024
Offers flexible licensing options since every project requires different pricing
Pros and Cons
  • "Our clients choose CloudGuard as a natural progression of their solutions. They understand Microsoft and CloudGuard fits."
  • "Check Point could show us use cases that would help us in Czech and could help us with security threats in our specific country."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case is for segmentation and next-generation protection. 

What is most valuable?

Our clients choose CloudGuard as a natural progression of their solutions. They understand Microsoft and CloudGuard fits. They are vendor-oriented. They stick with Microsoft. They have a lot of experience with Check Point and this fits in. 

Check Point Management is the best and Azure management is also very good. It's simple and has high security. There are no additional costs which is one of the advantages. 

Compared to other solutions, CloudGuard is easier to use. 

What needs improvement?

I don't see much need for improvement. 

In Czech, we are a little behind the USA and Germany so we have matured in our mentality to move towards the cloud. 

Check Point could show us use cases that would help us in Czech and could help us with security threats in our specific country.

The level of confidence our clients have in their cloud network security using CloudGuard Network Security depends. Some are very confident but some are worried about information being exploited. When compared to other vendors, CloudGuard is the best when it comes to threat protection.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been implementing CloudGuard for our clients for four years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It scales well for our clients' needs. We have deployed over 2,000 servers.

How are customer service and support?

Support is good for CloudGuard. It could depend on the support person who is helping us. Different regions offer different levels of support. Israel and US offer the best support.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

It's easy for me to deploy. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Every project needs different pricing. I believe that when we talk with the particular guys, we will find a price for the customer. They are flexible in terms of that because we need to be flexible, and we have many companies who are aggressive with discounts. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten. 

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: August 2026
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.