Check Point NGFW Reviews

We have a pretty small office and therefore, a small network environment, and the SMB appliances from Check Point were a perfect fit and exactly what we were looking for in order to improve our overall security posture in the office.

It was critical for us to be able to secure our network, including intrusion detection and prevention along with threat emulation and extraction for zero-day threat help, and Check Point fit perfectly.

After implementing the solution, we were able to get through a third-party penetration test of our network without issue.

Check Point NGFW has improved our organization by making our corporate network much more secure. Once our SMB appliance was installed, configured, and up and running, we could rest a little easier knowing that unauthorized access to our network just became much more difficult.

By turning on the various software blades, intrusion detection and prevention were in place, we had threat emulation and extraction in place, etc. It was a one-stop-shop for us and gave users on our network a certain peace of mind knowing that there was something in place to help keep them safe from malicious actors.

There are many aspects of Check Point NGFW that are valuable and important to our organization, but I'd say the top three are intrusion detection and prevention, threat emulation, and threat extraction. These three features have set a good baseline of security on top of the normal application URL filtering and other services of the firewall.

The way in which a computer is immediately isolated if it starts behaving badly and I get a notification of an infected computer is also extremely nice and a great feature.

When first looking into the Check Point offerings, it was fairly confusing trying to determine the differences between the different offerings. Specifically, SMBs versus other models, and which one would work best within my environment for my use case. I think we ended up in a good spot after speaking with a reseller in the area, but it would have been nice to be able to get there independently.

The WatchTower app that can be used to access the SMB appliance remotely is a nice touch, but it doesn't allow for many actions to be taken and therefore is relegated to mostly notifications. At that point, it requires me to gain local access to go further. It would be nice to add more features to the WatchTower app to be able to perform certain administrative functions without the need for local access. 

We have been using Check Point NGFW for two years.

This product is stable and we have had no issues.

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

Easy setup and configuration by a non-network/security person.

Check Point brings good value for the money and is competitive in the market.

We evaluated Fortinet FortiGate but Check Point seemed like a better fit for us in terms of features and value.

The role NGFW plays is to protect the organization against Layer 7 network attacks.

The solution has helped us to guard our perimeter security on a wider level. This is not like plain vanilla firewall. We have got a wider visibility with the help of this next-generation firewall; it shows us the traffic flowing across the network and based upon that, we have made the modifications required to restrict access.

Also, the active cluster module has helped us to balance the load during peak hours. Since moving to the active-active module, we have got the much-needed breathing space.

It has helped us to inspect traffic, not only with a limited protocol base but on the application/service level inspection too.

The service base access policy has provided us with a next-level restriction, which wasn't there on old school firewalls.

The integrated threat & anti-bot blade gives us protection from zero-day attacks and these can be blocked using analysis & signature matching.

The integrated intrusion prevention blade not only gives an additional level of security but also cuts down the load to manage an extra device.

The threat emulation blade and user identity awareness feature has helped us a lot in terms of perimeter security and have given us granular visibility of user access.

The integration with third-party vendors is quite easy and well defined, which really helps you with the automation.

The integration of gateways with a centralized managed server gives you full control in a single place.

The setup and implementation are quite easy and the logs and reports are elaborative and effective for securing the network.

The one area that I would like to see a change in is policy installation. Right now, with a larger user database and a high number of rules, it takes a bit of time for policy installation. There is definitely some improvement in the R80 version; however, I believe that it should not take more than one minute to refresh the database. Also, there is a significant spike in gateway resource utilization during policy installation. 

The additional blades have an impact on resource utilization, hence scope of improvement is needed here too.

I am using Check Point NGFW for the past five to six years for perimeter & internal security.

The solution is quite stable, however some issues also observed in new version release & same is fixed through hotfix/portfix once it is highlighted to the TAC 

The new hyperscale module gives you the much-needed breathing space, which the industry was looking at for quite a long time.

When it comes to technical support, Check Point is on another level. The support engineers are very well versed with the solution they are managing.

The initial setup & integration was quite easy, and the support during migration was outstanding.

It was a collaborative effort of our in-house and vendor teams. The support was good & quite appreciable.

It's good & the same as expected.

Our branch offices and customer sites require Internet access for the on-site staff and remote access capabilities for after-hours and remote support.

The Check Point firewalls allow us to provide site-to-site VPN, client VPN, web/app filtering, and IPS functionalities.

Client VPN is leveraged by site staff due to the majority of our sites requiring 24-hour support and also allows centralized teams to remotely assist with multiple sites globally.

We also use these at locations to provide security when our stand-alone network requires connectivity to the customer's network.

Check Point's solution is both affordable and easy to manage for the small business applications that we utilize them for. Due to the great pricing and support, we can afford to deploy the firewalls in a high-availability solution providing greater uptime and less worry. 

The price point of their equipment also means that we can often purchase a more robust solution compared to some competitors and Check Point's inclusion of more advanced features, such as IPS, by default, is a great selling point.

We greatly appreciate the ease of configuring firewall policy ACL rules and how the seamless integration with VPN users and user groups provides the ability to granularly restrict access. The uncomplicated configuration ensures that mistakes are avoided and rules are easily audited.

Having the ability to set an expiration date for remote access VPN users simplifies the process and increases security by ensuring that stale accounts and not forgotten.

In general, we find that CheckPoint offers a great balance between ease of use and configurability.

The one thing I have been continually asking for is a more robust certification process including self-paced study material similar to Cisco's Security certification track. Not everyone can afford the time and money to attend the official in-person classes offered by Check Point. Even if someone was not interested in fully pursuing a certification, offering certification guides is often a method that IT professionals follow in order to learn about a specific topic and keep for reference.

An area that I sometimes find lacking is the information provided by the system when performing troubleshooting issues such as site-to-site VPN tunnels. The logs provide general information regarding what is happening but often, it leaves you wanting additional details. This also ties back into the lack of training and knowledge required to utilize the more advanced features of the command line.

We have been using Check Point NGFW for more than five years.

We have never had a device or software failure in the more than five years that we have been using Check Point devices. To date, we are extremely happy with the performance.

The few times that we required customer service, they have been extremely helpful and knowledgeable. I would rate them on par with the other top-tier companies.

We previously utilized Cisco firewalls but the cost structure of the hardware, licensing, and support became prohibitive. Check Point offered a more robust solution at an affordable price point.

The initial setup was extremely quick and easy, and the deployment time for a new site is often under a day.  

The price point and licensing was the main factor in moving away from Cisco and migrating all of our sites to Check Point. They offered more features for a lower cost than competitors, and the licensing model was easy to understand.

We evaluated NGFWs from Cisco, Palo Alto, and Fortinet in addition to the Check Point.

Our primary use case is to secure the perimeter and users in our network.

We use IPS/IDS, deep packet inspection, and VPN.

Our network performance and safety have improved. The reporting also gives us more information about our network, including cost and risk reduction.

This solution helps to keep our network safe and secure, protecting our investment.

The most valuable feature is the powerful, deep packet inspection engine.

The management console and diagnostic tools are powerful and we are happy with them.

The reporting is detailed and helpful.

There should be better integration with our current NAC solution to increase the granularity of policies that we implement.

We have been using the Check Point NGFW for two years.

Overall, this is a very complete tool.

In my company, we use the Check Point NG Firewall solution to secure the perimeter and user network. We use IPS/IDS, deep packet inspection, and VPN. We have implemented routing rules based on the destination of the traffic, and the performance of the global solution is satisfactory.

We use the solution, too, as the firewall in a core node, which is very important to the business. It secures the network equipment and service integrity.

We are delighted with the powerful management console and diagnostic tools.

The Check Point Next Generation Firewall has improved the performance of our network, bringing the IT administrator a lot of information and data to make decisions about security, vulnerability, strengths, and weaknesses in our deployed projects.

It provides a lot of information to help better understand our users. Now we feel more confident with our network and know what happens on it, as well as what kind of traffic we have.

In addition, we have many reports that include data to help with decision-making and information about how the solution reduces cost and risk.

The most valuable feature in my opinion is the powerful deep packet inspection engine. This engine provides me with a great capacity to control the traffic generated by my users and provides our company with a very real vision of the use that users make of the network.

The reporting capability is very important as we are able to show the company management the benefits and the return on investment, in terms of securing our network.

The number of physical network ports on the device should be increased to allow for greater capacity.

Another point of improvement would be to continue improving the integration line with our current NAC solution in order to exchange more attributes and increase the granularity of the implemented policies.

We have been using the Check Point NGFW for three years.

Compared to other similar solutions on the market, this product is quite complete.

In my opinion, this solution is already quite complete with respect to our requirements.

Nowadays, there are many threats and it's necessary to have an automatic process to defend your organization. The Check Point NGFW is a good solution for this use case.

For my organization, CheckPoint NGFW helped us with enforcing threat prevention.

Threat prevention capabilities are a natural extension of next-generation firewalls' deep packet inspection capabilities. As the traffic passes through the device, they also inspect the traffic for known exploits of existing vulnerabilities (IPS).

Files can be sent off-device to be emulated in a virtual sandbox to detect malicious behavior, named sandbox security.

I think that the main benefit of an NGFW is the ability to safely enable the use of Internet applications that empower users to be more productive while blocking less desirable applications.

I think that the most valuable feature is the prevention of known and zero-day threats because they are constantly trying to access your company and compromise its data. It is very important to have your solution always update for this.

I think that another important feature is that it is a cloud solution. More and more companies have all of their systems in the cloud and the threats are pointing here.

The features that a next-generation firewall includes are application and user control, integrated intrusion prevention, advanced malware detection such as sandboxing, and leverages threat intelligence feeds.

Check Point products have many places that need to be improved, but they are constantly upgrading.

I have been using Check Point NGFW since 2015.

Check Point has a good support department and they are always ready to help you.

Previously, I used Fortinet but Check Point provides us with more features.

I used this solution for the first time in 2015 when I worked for a local Internet Service Provider. At that point, I used the R77.30 console and I saw all of the good features that it provided.

Now, I use R80.30 in my current company and these products are the best in the market. This company is going to be at the forefront and you can complete your solution with other products in their portfolio.

Today’s next-generation network firewall can be found deployed on-premises at the edge of enterprises and branch offices, on-premises at internal segment boundaries, in public clouds such as Amazon (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and the Google Cloud Platform. They are also deployed in private clouds.

The licensing includes the cost of support.

We evaluated many others options including solutions by Fortinet, Palo Alto, SonicWall, etc.

We think that Check Point is the best because they are at the forefront.

The primary use is to protect the organization from any kind of attack. It is able to isolate, secure, and control every device on the network at all times. Solutions should have the ability to block infected devices from accessing corporate data and assets.

It provides access to the Internet for corporate resources in a secure manner. Our resources are used to host applications and services that are accessible to end-users over the Internet.

It is used to provide required/limited access for third parties who want to connect to our corporate network. Access is granted based on application type and should be independent of port or protocol.

It provides next-generation protection including IPS/Web Filtering/SSL decryption and more. 

It offers centralized policy management capabilities for all firewalls.

This solution was able to provide access to our internet-based resources using our application/FQDN.

The license offers different modules for NGTP and SNBT. It provides multiple functionality or blades, which can be enabled on the firewall depending upon organizational requirements.

Other than stateful packet filtering with the NGTP license, it provides blades such as IPS/URL/VPN/Application Control/content awareness/Anti-Bot/Anti-Virus/Anti-Spam. With SNBT, it provides additional security using the SandBlast Threat Emulation and SandBlast Threat Extraction for Zero-day attacks in real-time.

Any file, before it reaches an endpoint, is executed in a virtual environment for analysis. Based on the verdict and configured policy, a decision will be made as to whether it should be delivered to the endpoint or not.

It provides the flexibility to use any module with the NGTP and SNBT license. Depending upon the requirements, the blades/module can be enabled on the firewall security gateway and it can be deployed easily.

In case SSL decryption or IPS need to be enabled on any security gateway, it is simple to do. We can go ahead and enable the module/blade and then create a policy, deploy it, and it will start to work.

It has a default five-user license for Mobile/SSL VPN, so the organization can check the solution any time or can even provide access to critical users on an as-needed basis, without getting the OEM involved, all on the same box.

For smaller organizations with the correct sizing of the appliance, they can use the full security solution on a single box. It will provide financial benefits along with reducing the cost of purchasing additional solutions or appliances. 

For example:

• URL Filtering Module: It can replace the proxy solution for on-premises users with integration of application control and the Identity module. Active Directory access can be provided based on the User ID and the website or application.
• SSL VPN or SSL decryptor, and more. 
  
• Core assignment for each interface, which can be done using the CLI. If the administrator determines that a particular interface requires more compute, he can manually assign additional cores accordingly. This is done by enabling hyperthreading on the firewall. 
• The policy can be copied from any security gateway and pasted onto another one.

This is a zone-based firewall, which differs from other firewall solutions available on the market. It changes the way the admin manages firewall policy. The administrator has to be careful while defining policy because it can lead to configuration errors, allowing unwanted access.

For example, if a user needs to access the internet on the HTTPS port, then the administrator has to create a policy as below, rather than using NAT for assigning the user's machine to a public IP.

Source: User machine
Destination: any
Port: HTTPS
Action: allow (for allowing the user's machine access)

This has to be done along with the below policy:

Source: User machine
Destination: Other Zone created on Firewall
Port: HTTPS
Action: block 

The two policies, together, mean that the user's machine will not be able to communicate with any other L3 Network created on the firewall.

The firewall throughput or performance reduces drastically after enabling each module/blade.

It does not provide for standalone configuration on the security gateway. Instead, you need to have a management server/smart console for managing it. This can be deployed on a dedicated server or can be deployed on the security gateway itself.

I have been using the Check Point NGFW for more than eight years.

This solution is very much stable and does not require frequent changes in architecture. The patch frequency is limited and it does not require frequent maintenance windows in terms of downtime.

This firewall is very much scalable. The introduction of Maestro has changed the concept of hyperscaling.  

The technical support is excellent. The center is located in major cities in India along with the Check Point presales team.

We did not use another solution prior to this one. We have been using Check Point for a long time.

During the initial setup, support is excellent. It is a well-known OEM and they have people ready to resolve any issue that should arise.

Our in-house team deployed it with support from the OEM.

Cost-wise, it cheaper than industry leaders such as Palo Alto. The licensing is straightforward; there are only three types of licenses that include NGFW, NGTP, and SNBT, so the organization can choose its license according to their requirements.

We have evaluated solutions by Juniper, Cisco, and Palo Alto.

Before implementing the security gateway, you need to be sure about the license and modules that you are going to enable. This includes determining the proper size, as it can affect throughput drastically after enabling each module. This is especially true for SSL decryption.

The architecture needs to be studied before finalizing, as the configuration is done remotely using the centralized smart console. All of the security gateways need to be connected to the management server for any policy configuration, and they should be available at all times.

We support various clients in the government sector in Mexico. We provide different solutions in terms of network security, data security, and perimeter security. The NGFM Firewall is available locally and different offices and/or institutions of the government sector pass through a more secure and controlled infrastructure.

This type of infrastructure has different zones or areas that are managed and keeping them centralized has helped us to maintain and control them. In addition, we are generating fast and safe solutions for our users on each site.

Check Point has provided us with an easier way to control all of the access traffic for more than 50 segments that we have within the organization. In addition, we have been able to maintain stricter control of the users and/or equipment that are had in all the institutions that make up the government sector of the entity.

Check Point technology has allowed us to keep the organization and distribution of the network in order within the institution. In addition, the VPN service we have has worked correctly for users who want to work remotely from their homes, which was of great help during the pandemic.

Within the organization, the inspection of packages has given us great help in detecting traffic that may be a threat to the institution.

The configuration of policies has allowed us to maintain control of access and users for each institution that is incorporated into our headquarters. It is well organized.

Some other of the services that have worked well for us are antivirus, anti-bot, and URL filtering. Together, these have allowed us to maintain control and organization amongst the users.

Another one of the pluses that have helped us a lot has been the IPsec VPN, especially in these times of pandemic.

Using the tool is somewhat complex when teaching new staff, although after practice it is quite easy to get used to this technology.

One of the improvements that could be included is to have a help menu to obtain advice or help for the different options that are presented in the application.

The equipment is complex, so you need guidance from specialized people or those who constantly work with Check Point. Better forums and information manuals could be provided so that users from different institutions can have more access to the information.

The company has been using the Check Point NGFW for more than four years.

Compared to other networking equipment I have used, I would say that Check Point's NGFW is just as stable. We rarely have problems, and they can all be properly fixed without affecting productive or critical network elements.

There are currently more than 5,000 users within government facilities in Mexico. This team has provided us with the necessary resources to provide services to users in record time.

With the teams that we currently have, we have not considered increasing the number of technicians. If the need should arise then Check Point is still a very good option.

Technical support has been available when we have problems, and they are always there to help us get back up and running as quickly as possible. In addition, the equipment is kept up-to-date with the latest versions, or alternatively, those recommended by the provider.

This solution was deployed before I entered this governmental organization. What I have heard is that prior to this, the security and segmentation control was not ideal and they wanted to improve it. With the implementation of Check Point, great improvements have been provided to the infrastructure, maintaining order within the organization.

When I entered the company, the equipment was already installed. With the passage of time, some configurations have been improved and some extra services have also been achieved for mobile users.

It was implemented through a provider that has been guiding us towards the correct use of the equipment and the best practices to keep it updated. The service has been excellent, both in common day-to-day ticketing situations, including the most serious incidents.

It has been well worth the investment, as the Check Point technology is there to help when we need it.

One of the main reasons that Check Point is used is that it helps us to administer security at a reasonable price. This is naturally in addition to meeting the expectations of the institution.

An annual technical support fee is paid to maintain the equipment with the most updated licenses and versions and thus avoid vulnerabilities

Check Point is the option that has always been considered for its good firewall organization, which allows us to have excellent security.

My advice is to always have a supplier with whom you can resolve doubts or more specific technical questions. Since the equipment requires many very technical parameters, it is helpful to have a person who understands and uses this technology correctly.