Check Point IPS Reviews

The primary use cases include application security control, comprehensive security management, and proactive protection against a wide range of threats. It serves as a crucial component for safeguarding applications and ensuring overall security effectiveness. It contributes to proactive protection and plays a pivotal role in firewall protection strategies.

The focus is on safeguarding the departmental environment, and it is effectively fulfilling its role in environmental protection.

It offers robust protection with features such as Next Generation firewall capabilities, mobile solutions, and proactive threat prevention.

Enhancements are necessary for the proficiency of notifications in the event of a Social Security incident, whether through email or alternative channels such as SMS.

I have been working with it for ten years.

It offers excellent stability. I would rate it ten out of ten.

I would rate its scalability abilities nine out of ten. Currently, 1,800 users within our organization actively use it.

I would rate its customer service and support nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup can be somewhat intricate, involving coordination with the OEM and service provider. I would rate it a six out of ten.

For the deployment, we conducted a refresh last year, which took approximately two to three weeks to complete. It is essential to have at least two individuals involved in the process, with one requiring additional expertise. This team typically consists of a Check Point specialist, an expert, and an administrator.

The pricing is quite reasonable.

It is highly efficient and it provides a mobile solution for various devices, including cell phones and iPads, catering to mobile workflows. The system is not only efficient but continually improving. I would certainly recommend it. Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten.

We use the Check Point IPS for intrusion prevention. It was installed inline. This solution enabled us to stop all threats and intrusion activities across the data center. The IPS uses a signature-based approach to control traffic, allowing only authorized traffic to flow outside. However, it can also identify the traffic behavior and enforce the policy based on that behavior, protecting against even new and unknown threats.

The docking of the IPS engine can be improved.

I have been using Check Point IPS for three years.

The product is stable.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

I rate the solution’s scalability a five or six out of ten.

Technical support is awesome.

I’ve used Cisco. It is very hard to configure and manage the day-to-day operation. It was entirely controlled by the CLI, like the command line interface. Compared to Check Point, it was wholly managed using the GUI. We can finetune and customize the signature. This feature is available in the Check Point.

The initial setup is not so difficult. It takes two and a half months to complete.

I rate the initial setup a six out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy.

I recommend using the out-of-path installation of this tool. Then, find the desired signature and fine-tune the exception based on your specific environment, including the port involved. Once done, bring the tool line into the traffic. Finally, enable the signatures one by one instead of relying on a single group containing older signatures.

The solution has the inherent complexity of managing IT infrastructure and configuring Check Point IPS. The Signature Management requires manual customization to adapt to your network traffic conditions. Building and customizing signatures is a complex and demanding task.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

In my company, we use Check Point IPS for its intrusion protection functionalities. The product is the core of our security infrastructure that we use to filter and block attempts for connection into resources, which usually you want to happen only for specific administrative roles.

The most valuable features of the solution are that the product's stability has been very good. The product's uptime has been massive, and there has not been any downtime, making it a very good product. Our company has had a six-year uptime record with Check Point IPS. The firewall has not caused a single second of outage while functioning to protect access to our data center.

Based on what I hear from my full-time firewall administrators, the upgrade process or the maintenance of the devices for each firmware upgrade requires one to break the cluster and run a specific moment at a time, a single node concept. I hear from my admin that the firmware upgrade process is quite cumbersome. Our company has made Check Point very well aware of the cumbersome firmware upgrade process, including the other customers as well. The aforementioned details can be considered for improvement.

The price of the product needs to be improved since it is an expensive solution. All the components of Check Point IPS are expensive, while licenses of the product exceed all its other expenses. If you have a data center without infrastructure, you will suffer from losses on a monthly and yearly basis due to DDoS attacks, which we know about since we have the data for ourselves. It is up to each customer to determine how long he can lose his data center, and then you count if it is possible to lose it for that amount of time, and if you don't, then pay the price for the firewall.

I have experience with Check Point IPS.

Stability-wise, it is a good solution since we haven't faced any outages in our company.

With MCO solution, Check Point IPS is super scalable since we can spawn virtual firewalls and provide additional CPUs to one particular firewall. Check Point IPS is a SUSE firewall solution where you can launch virtual firewalls within the SUSE, making the product very flexible and versatile.

There are thousands of end users of the solution in my company, which is a major airline company.

My company plans to increase the solution's usage since we have thousands of users.

For the deployment and maintenance, there is a need to provide twenty-four hours and seven days a week coverage. Per cluster, you would need three people for maintenance. If you have twelve nodes split across six clusters, you need six persons and one manager for maintenance.

I have contacted the solution's technical support for solutions like Check Point IPS since it provides two ways to make a change in infrastructure, which you can find in its GUI. If it is not there in the GUI and doesn't work from the moment you need CLI, then you create a technical case to have the vendor watch your actions while you do it, which applies to Cisco controller-based networking. It either works via the GUI, and if it does not, you almost always create a tech case in the case of Cisco or a technical support case in the case of Check Point to have somebody from the technical support assist you. Cisco or Check Point products are no longer meant to be run without support.

The initial setup of Check Point IPS was complex. The nature of the product is such that the setup phase is complex since one needs to insert a firewall into all the connections. One cannot implement a firewall partially since that is completely useless. When one implements Check Point IPS, it is necessary to ensure that all of the traffic goes through it, making the implementation complex, but that's not Check Point's fault since it is the nature of the IT landscape.

The deployment process takes at least three months.

Regarding the deployment process, you install the boxes in a lab environment or a DMZ. In the second step, you upgrade the firmware to the last version you want to have the firewall because you wouldn't want to do that after it has been put in your network. From the moment you have the base setup, you separate the cluster again and distribute it across your data centers, after which you can start activating the firewalls. Basically, what you do is that you install them, cluster them, and in the final stage, you implement or migrate from an existing rule set from another firewall onto the new firewalls. The rule set is super crucial because you cannot start with a blank rule set in a production environment, and you cannot build it up from scratch. Either you get a rule set from somewhere else or build it up manually, which will require massive work.

The implementation process is always done with the help of a third party.

If my data center goes down for more than 15 minutes, we lose one million euros in operational costs, meaning our company's return on investment is immediate. If you do not have a firewall infrastructure that protects your data center today, you will suffer outages due to attacks. If you consider one million euros per fifteen minutes, it is clear that my company experiences a clear ROI using the solution.

My company pays for the yearly licensing of Check Point IPS. It is a very expensive tool. Anything that falls under the security-related aspect, including Cisco products, is very expensive.

Our company has been expanding the use of Check Point IPS. We currently have twelve nodes, and we are considering expanding them. We continue to have Check Point IPS in our company, and we even changed from physical devices to virtual devices, including MCO solutions.

Considering how Check Point has evolved as a company, I would definitely recommend the solution to those planning to use it. Now, we are investigating the competitors of Check Point to have a better position when we negotiate prices. We also work with FortiGate in our company. If you look at FortiGate or Check Point, they are the top-line products in the firewall industry at the moment. Check Point is like a top-level provider of firewall solutions.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case is to protect the workstation. The IPS blade is integrated into our Check Point environment. We have many blades in Check Point IPS representation, each with a specific function.

The most valuable feature is very good and easy to use. Configuration is straightforward, and support is fast, usually within one hour. The IPS blade is integrated into our Check Point environment and is used for intrusion prevention.

There is room for improvement in the pricing model, and it can be more competitive.

Moreover, another area of improvement is in the maintenance of the solution because it requires a lot of people to maintain the solution. Some tasks can be automated, and I would like to see a feature where we can automate the tasks.

The company has been using Check Point for around 20 years, and I have been with the company for two years. The IPS blade is integrated with Check Point, and we use R81.20.

The initial setup is straightforward. It is easy to configure.

The solution requires proper maintenance because there are several tasks to check for updates and more. We have five people on the maintenance team. Our company has many firewalls since it is big, and the number of endpoints is more than 5000. Moreover, we have various roles like engineers, system administrators, or network administrators.

I would give Check Point IPS a seven out of ten. We started using this product a year ago, and it has worked well for us.

We wanted a more robust solution for controlling access to our cloud environments (AWS and Azure). In addition, we wanted our control to be cloud-based. 

Our thought was to find a solution to aid us in being proactive as well as reactive. We have multiple environments in multiple clouds with some areas having delegated administration. The solution we needed was one to reduce the need for administrative headcount to continuously review any misconfiguration. Beyond that we were looking to find a solution for SASE.

The product has allowed us to proactively mitigate any network access misconfiguration resulting from delegation. 

We didn't have to hire an additional network administration resource to focus on detecting any misconfigurations. Dome 9 has assisted through the pre-canned compliance templates. 

We are able to define our own rules for detection. 

In addition to the Harmony Connect Endpoint bundled VPN, the Harmony Connect SASE is continuing to reduce reliance on traditional VPN to the point we will likely discontinue the use of the bundled VPN.

In terms of valuable features, it's hard to choose one. Dome9 and Harmony Connect have both been great in detecting and solving access issues.

As mentioned elsewhere in this review, the Harmony Connect SASE has been extremely valuable in improving our security posture and moving us to a zero-trust mindset (organizationally speaking).

Also, as mentioned, Dome9 has paid for itself through the cost savings of additional headcount. If we didn't have Dome 9, we would keep an additional headcount for the single purpose of detecting network changes within the environment. 

Support is the biggest area for improvement. Check Point is responsive, however, their support agents seem to be very siloed in their ability and/or product knowledge. It takes time and escalation to get through most tickets as they are passed from one group to another and then back again. We are able to navigate our support issues with the aid of our account team, so I want to underscore that support is indeed responsive. However, the processes support techs have to follow seem to be the root cause of the support response issues. 

I've used the solution for two years.

This is where Check Point needs to get operations ironed out. Stable Check Point products are items that haven't been acquired recently. Recent acquisitions seem to lack cohesive functionality.

From what we've encountered, scalability isn't an issue.

Support seems siloed in knowledge, As a result, most support requests require additional management. 

Neutral

We previously used a different solution, however, it was costly and didn't provide the same functionality.

The setup was difficult given the number of products and the lack of a cohesive user experience.  

We implemented the product in-house with the aid of support as part of a POC.

We noted ROI after one year.

It seems, as with other services of this nature, opting-in on the bundled licensing is the best bet. I'd suggest looking at the Infinity Plan. 

We evaluated Cisco, Juniper, and Palo Alto.

Make sure you have a good vibe from your sales team. They tend to support you in the long run. 

I primarily use Check Point IPS as the second layer of security. The first layer includes routers, DDoS protectors, and access lists on other network devices. Check Point IPS is used for threat prevention in the network, not for web applications. I also rely on other solutions for web application firewalls.

The integration of IPS with the firewall is quite efficient. It's easy to implement, monitor, and prevent certain situations on the same platform, which is very useful for me. Also, the real-time update function is beneficial. Check Point provides new versions of IPS policies and indicators of compromise, which help us maintain an up-to-date security posture.

Currently, the solution is good for my needs, so I don't have any particular improvements to recommend. However, a reduction in price would always be welcome.

I have been using Check Point IPS for over ten years.

The stability of the solution is very high. I would rate it as ten out of ten. It has been consistently reliable.

Scalability can depend on the environment. In my setup, using a hardware version, scaling is not easy. There's a limitation on the power because it's not a modular harmonic system. Others might find it easier to scale if they use the Harmony solution.

Customer support used to be very good, rating at nine or ten out of ten a few years ago. Recently, it's not as strong, more around six or seven out of ten due to the quality of solutions provided and support handling of cases.

Neutral

I have used many platforms for Check Point, including Nokia and Splat, and now I use a dedicated platform for Check Point IPS.

The initial setup was simple, though it was a long time ago.

The price could be lower. It's always better for an end user when prices are reduced. The cost makes it difficult to implement in smaller companies.

I have used many vendors and platforms, such as Nokia and Splat along with Check Point, for various security needs.

Overall, I rate Check Point IPS a nine out of ten. I recommend it to other users for its integration capabilities and stability.

I have been using the product as an antivirus. It acts like a security guard, stopping bad things from getting in and ensuring only the right stuff gets through.

The tool's most valuable feature is its detection panel. Managing and updating policies within Check Point IPS is easy and without issues. It provides a secure network. 

The tool's pricing could be better.

I rate the tool's stability a ten out of ten. 

The solution is 100 percent scalable. My company has 150-200 users, and we plan to add 100 more users in the future. 

The tool's technical support is good. 

The setup process itself is straightforward, but configuring it can be complex due to the complexity of our network. It can be completed in two days. 

The tool's deployment can be done in-house. 

We can get 100 percent ROI from using the product. 

The tool's licensing model is good. The licensing costs are yearly. I rate it an eight out of ten. 

The solution exceeded our expectations. The Check Point IPS works with other security solutions, such as Ubiquiti and Bitdefender. Each product has its role in securing our network, devices, and users. We also use Microsoft Active Directory. I rate the tool a ten out of ten. You need to spend time and understand the product's capabilities. 

Check Point IPS is focused on prevention rather than strictly detection capabilities.

IPS enables us to secure our clients against the latest cyber threats.

Check Point offers DDoS and endpoint protection called EDR or XDR, so it provides a holistic security architecture for any organization.

I have been working with Check Point IPS for around five years.

Check Point IPS is stable.

I rate Check Point IPS seven out of 10 for scalability.

Setting up Check Point IPS isn't easy, but it's not too complex, either. I rate it seven out of 10 for ease of setup. Generally, customers cannot do it themselves. They need an integrator. 

Pre-planning is necessary. You need to clearly define the use case and the specific policies the customer wants. IPS doesn't require any maintenance after deployment.

My customers see a return in about three months' time. 

I rate Check Point IPS seven out of 10. Check Point is doing some ongoing consolidation. They are trying to unify the look and feel of the on-premise and cloud. That's in the roadmap, so that's why I'm giving it a seven. Once that is unified, maybe I will bump it up to 10. 

If you are an SMB customer, Check Point has prepackaged suites that are cost-effective and best for the total cost of ownership.  If a customer is asking for something specific I will probably recommend Palo Alto. It depends on use case scenarios. This was a perfect fit for my current customer's use case scenarios.