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Check Point NGFW pros and cons

Vendor: Check Point Software Technologies

4.4 out of 5

323 reviews
96% willing to recommend

954 followers

Pros & Cons summary

Check Point NGFW enhances security by preventing known and zero-day threats and providing centralized management for policy control. It improves security posture with advanced logging and scalability features like ClusterXL, but faces issues like frequent reboots, complex setup, and inadequate technical support. Integration with non-Check Point products is limited, and the licensing model is complex and expensive, challenging for multi-vendor environments.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Check Point NGFW provides strong security features like IPS, antivirus protection, and threat prevention, enhancing overall network protection.

Scalability is a notable strength, allowing enterprises to efficiently manage multiple firewalls and adapt to different infrastructure needs.

Centralized management with features like Smart Dashboard simplifies configuration and monitoring, reducing operational complexity.

Advanced logging and reporting capabilities offer heightened visibility into network activities and threats, aiding quick policy adjustments and threat mitigation.

The solution supports seamless remote access via IPsec VPNs, enabling secure connectivity across locations.

CONS

Check Point NGFW faces persistent stability and performance issues, often requiring frequent reboots and creating difficulty in VPN setup and maintenance.

The limited interoperability with third-party vendors and the complex integration processes for features like two-factor authentication and advanced threat protection create challenges.

The technical support services for Check Point NGFW are in need of improvement, especially concerning response times and problem resolution effectiveness.

Check Point NGFW's pricing, including licensing and maintenance costs, is often perceived as expensive, complicating decisions for budget-conscious organizations.

Installation and configuration processes for Check Point NGFW are complex and present a steep learning curve, requiring significant time and expertise.

Check Point NGFW Pros review quotes

PS

Pushkin Sawhney

Principal Network and Security Consultant at Vodafone

Sep 14, 2020

Check Point definitely has a great architecture, where you can just enable the software blades and deploy a secure service. Overall, it provides ease of deployment and ease of use.

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SV

Steve Vandegaer

Senior Engineer Security at NTT Security

Sep 6, 2020

The feature I like the most is their central management, the Smart controller which you can use to manage all the firewalls from one location... Being able to access almost everything in one location — manage all your gateways and get all your logs — for me, is the best feature to work with.

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BF

Senior IT Manager at a mining and metals company with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 9, 2020

The packet inspections have been a strong point. Our identity collectors have also been helpful. In many ways, Check Point has been a step up from our SonicWalls that we had in-house before that. There's a lot of additional flexibility that we didn't have before.

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Check Point NGFW

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reviewer1425090

Network and Security Specialist at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Sep 23, 2020

I love the interface of R.80.30. The R.80 interface is very nicely thought out with everything in one place, which makes Check Point easier to use.

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I.

Ifeanyi Onyiaodike

Network security engineer at Fidelity Bank

Sep 7, 2020

The most valuable feature for us is the VSX, the virtualization.

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AS

Technical Support Engineer at AlgoSec

Sep 6, 2020

The Anti-Spoofing has the ability to monitor the interfaces. Suppose any spoofed IP addresses are coming from an external interface, it won't allow them. It will drop that traffic. You have two options with the Anti-Spoofing: prevent or detect. If any kind of spoof traffic is coming through the external interface, we can prevent that.

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Director at Trend Micro

Jun 5, 2024

The solution's technical support is fine.

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reviewer1098015

Network Security Engineer/Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Sep 9, 2020

The most valuable features are the security blades and the ease of managing the policies, searching log for events, and correlating them.

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Network & Systems Administrator I at Department of Mental Health

Sep 2, 2020

The simplicity of the access control is the most valuable feature for us. It gives us the ability to easily identify traffic that is either being allowed or denied to our network.

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KK

Network Associate at a wireless company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 17, 2021

We have between five and ten firewalls on-premises, and if we want to configure or push the same configuration to all of the firewalls, then the centralized management system is very helpful.

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Check Point NGFW Cons review quotes

PS

Pushkin Sawhney

Principal Network and Security Consultant at Vodafone

Sep 14, 2020

The area it needs improvement is the SandBlast Agent. It receives a file, or if it detects a Zero-day attack, it takes the file and analyzes it, either on-premise or in the Check Point Cloud, and then it reports back whether the file is secure or non-secure, or is unknown. That particular area definitely needs a bit more improvement, because there is a delay... where it needs improvement is where [SandBlast is] an appliance-based solution rather than a software or cloud-based solution.

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SV

Steve Vandegaer

Senior Engineer Security at NTT Security

Sep 6, 2020

The biggest improvement they could make is having one software to install on all three levels of their products, so that the SMBs, the normal models, and the chassis would all run the same software. Now, while there is central management, everything that has to be configured on the gateway itself works differently on the three kinds of devices.

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BF

Senior IT Manager at a mining and metals company with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 9, 2020

The VPN setup could be simplified. We had to engage professional services for that. That's not a problem, but compared to other products we've used, it was a little more complex.

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Check Point NGFW

Free Report: Check Point NGFW Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Check Point NGFW. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2025.

856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.

reviewer1425090

Network and Security Specialist at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Sep 23, 2020

The naming in the inline layers and ordered layers needs improvement. It makes things very complicated. I've seen quite a lot of people saying that. For audit policies, it is okay since it's very simple to see. However, this area is for very large organizations, which have too many policies, and they need to share all these policies. For small to medium-sized businesses, they don't need it. Even if somebody has 500 rules, if they try to use it, it can be very confusing.

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I.

Ifeanyi Onyiaodike

Network security engineer at Fidelity Bank

Sep 7, 2020

The VPN part was actually one of the most complex parts for us. It was not easy for us to switch from Cisco, because of one particular part of the integration: connecting the Check Point device to an Entrust server. Entrust is a solution that provides two-factor authentication. We got around it by using another server, a solution called RADIUS.

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AS

Technical Support Engineer at AlgoSec

Sep 6, 2020

For the user or anyone else who is using Check Point, they are more into the GUI stuff. Check Point has its SmartConsole. On the console, you have to log into the MDS or CMS. Then, from there, you have to go onto that particular firewall and put in the changes. If the management console could be integrated onto the GUI itself, that would be one thing that I would recommend.

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Director at Trend Micro

Jun 5, 2024

If you check each and every point from this part, you will find some flow in an area, or you will discover another flow in another area.

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reviewer1098015

Network Security Engineer/Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Sep 9, 2020

Debugging is very complex when compared to Fortinet, for example. That's the worst thing about Check Point. The deployment of the solution is harder than it is with the competitors. But after you've deployed it, the operation is easy.

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Network & Systems Administrator I at Department of Mental Health

Sep 2, 2020

I would like there to be a way to run packet captures more easily in the GUI environment. Right now, if we want to read packet captures, we have to do so from the command line.

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KK

Network Associate at a wireless company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 17, 2021

The level and availability of training should be improved.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 315)

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