Check Point NGFW Reviews

We use this firewall to protect the internal network and to set up the IPSec standard from one location to another.

One of the benefits that we have realized from using this product is that the user interface makes it easier to operate, compared to using the CLI.  In Check Point 5.0, we bought the option, giving us the ability to use the GUI as well as the CLI. A person who is comfortable with the UI can work with it according to different scenarios.

The most valuable feature is the set of encryption options that are available.

Viewing the logs in the interface is easy to do, which is one of the things that I like.

This is a UI-based firewall that is easy to use.

The antivirus feature is a little bit weak and should be improved. The updates are not as regular when compared to other firewalls, such as Palo Alto.

The training materials and certification process should be improved. For example, the certificates are more expensive and there's no good training available on the internet right now.

I have been using Check Point NGFW for approximately seven years, since 2014.

The stability of this firewall is good and we haven't had any problems. It is a well-known, quality brand.

There are no issues with extendability or scalability. Over the course of a year, we added another firewall, bringing us from one to two deployments, and the process was not tough. We were easily able to manage it.

We have approximately 12 people who work with this firewall during different shifts.

I have been in contact with technical support many times, and they are good. Most of the time, they solve the problem as soon as possible, and they give a perfect solution.

Currently, we are using firewalls from different vendors, including Palo Alto and Cisco. Our Cisco ASA solution is completely CLI-based and Palo Alto is like Check Point with an interface that is a mix of UI and CLI-based.

Both Palo Alto and Cisco ASA have very good tutorials available on the internet, including videos on YouTube and courses on Udemy.

On the other hand, Cisco ASA is more difficult to use because there is no UI and for a person who does not have any knowledge of the networking commands, they have to learn them.

The first phase of the implementation is to plan the firewall deployment. After that, we do the configuration and validate it. In the case of a Check Point firewall, this process will take between two and three months to complete.

The complexity of the process depends on the features that you want to add. In general, it is straightforward and not too complex.

I was not present when the first firewall was set up, although I was presented for the deployment of new ones. Whenever there is a new firewall deployment, I am involved. We have between four and five network engineers who take care of this part.

There is no maintenance required from our side. When we have a hardware issue then we contact technical support to get it sorted out.

We have seen ROI; for the purpose that we have deployed this firewall, we are getting returns. Based on this, we are buying more Check Point firewalls.

The price of Check Point is lower than Palo Alto but higher than Cisco ASA. For us, the price for licensing is fine, we have no issue with it, and feel that the cost is justified.

There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

My advice for anybody who is implementing Check Point NGFW is that if they get stuck, then visit the technical support section of the website and read the articles that are available. I have learned many things from the tech articles, and it's a good website if you want to learn about it in-depth.

One of the things that I learned is that Check Point firewalls also use Linux commands. After working with Check Point, I improved my Linux skills, which is a good thing for me.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The purpose of using the firewall is to protect the users from the external network, internet. Apart from that, we have set up IPsec tunnels between two different sites, and for internal usage, between two different zones, we use these firewalls as well.

Our environment consists of a 3-tier architecture, which is recommended by Check Point. We use the central management system to manage our 3-tier architecture, and we use the Smart Console as well.

This solution has improved the way our organization functions in multiple ways. For example, during the pandemic situation, things completely shifted. People who are working from the office are now working from home, and it is our responsibility, as network security engineers, to monitor the home users. We do not want them to access any blacklisted sites and we want to make sure that they are protected from threats and risks from the internet.

With the Office Mode VPN, it would not be possible to manage work from home because the security would not be in place. We have more granular security options with this firewall.

There are many useful features including the Office VPN, which provides us with a seamless connection for users who are working remotely. This is helpful for our employees that are working from home, as they get the same office environment as if they were on-premises. It is also helpful for us as an organization because we have good control and visibility over their data, including network traffic packets.

There are two major areas that need to be improved.

The study material for Check Point needs to be improved, as well as the cost for certification. One of my friends recently completed the certification and it was costlier than other firewall security certificates.

The reports are generally good but there is not much control. We would like to have more filters. Essentially, we want more granular reporting.

I have been using Check Point NGFW since 2018.

There are no issues with stability that we have found. It is a good brand, and it is one of the oldest and finest firewalls on the market right now.

Scalability is not a problem. It has both UI and CLI-based options to configure it, and it is not difficult to extend or scale. We have between four and six deployments and we plan to continue using it in the future. As we are growing, we will continue to expand its usage.

We have about 12 people working directly with Check Point NGFW. There are approximately 4,000 users who are indirectly using it, as their traffic passes through the firewall. It is used by the entire organization.

We have support available from the Check Point TAC team. Our experience with them has been pretty good. We haven't had any issues or problems communicating with them or getting a solution from them.

Prior to Check Point, we were using Cisco ASA.

The problem with Cisco ASA is that it is a purely CLl-based firewall. Check Point is not only UI and CLI-based, but it is also a next-generation firewall. It has many different and more advanced features, compared to Cisco ASA.

For example, in Cisco ASA, we can use only two gateways in active-active mode, but with this product, we can use five gateways at a time. Another difference is that the Cisco ASA policy configuration options are not as granular as Check Point.

The initial setup process was very straightforward.

Our deployment took between seven and eight months, which included replacing our Cisco ASA firewall. It began with the planning, then implementation, followed by validation, and then we replaced the existing firewall. It would have been a little complex for us, but we did it all in a very straightforward manner.

We have a very good in-house engineering team that does the setup and configuration. We did not require any third-party assistance because we have had full training on it.

Our deployment included seven or eight people who were working in different shifts. Similarly, we have three to four network security engineers working in shifts who maintain it. This includes things like dealing with tickets for updating policies.

We are happy with the return that we are getting from this firewall.

Rather than money, this product is saving the security of our organization. This is the first thing that we were looking for, before deploying this firewall in our organization. We know that ASA is cheaper than Check Point, but our concentration was making the environment more secure.

Cost-wise, it is more expensive than Cisco ASA, but the returns include better security and more granular options. We are happy with that. We were not looking to save money but rather, providing a safer environment for our users.

The price of this product is not too costly and you do not need to pay for all of the features. It is more expensive than Cisco ASA, yet cheaper than a similar product by Palo Alto. The cost varies, depending on the service. For example, we have opted for Geo Protection, which is something that costs extra, but we wanted that feature.

We did not evaluate other options. We only compared the differences between our existing Cisco ASA implementation and Check Point.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this product is that the TAC team is very knowledgeable and supportive. If I want to understand something or if I have doubts, then usually clear it up and make sure that I understand the logic. I have learned a lot from them.

This is a product that is rich in features and my advice for anybody who is deploying it for the first time is to learn about them in advance. It is a little bit different than a CLI-based firewall and I recommend learning about all of the features before deploying it.

At this point, we are happy with the results that we are getting from Check Point, and are not looking to replace it. It works as we were expecting before it was deployed.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

In today's world, we can't completely rely on traditional signature-based devices, as technology involving cyberattacks is becoming more sophisticated. We require an all-in-one solution that can defend against newly-created attacks, necessitating the usage of NGFW firewalls. This is where Check Point comes into the picture.

Our environment contains multiple roaming users, where we have to extend trust beyond the organizational network. Not only is there east-west traffic to deal with, but a large volume of north-south traffic, as well. We are required to monitor all of the traffic, which includes many branch offices connected centrally.

Monitoring Data via DLP in such a scenario, we require a single solution, which is nothing but Checkpoint.

It has not only improved our environment but the entire organization. Adopting it brings better functionality.

Starting from the basic firewall blade to sandbox threat emulation and threat extraction, it works seamlessly to protect against both known and unknown malware.

After the version 80.xx migration, Check Point stability and security have improved tremendously.

Through the management server, it has become very easy to manage the configuration for each of the blades, as well as the day-to-day operations. With central management, it has become possible to manage endpoint devices as well.

Check Point has the best technical support, which I feel if we consider other firewall vendors in the market, is an important distinguishing point.

Stateful inspection is one of the strongest points in this product, which is applicable while creating policies for application and URL filtering.

Check Point provides dedicated blades to monitor network traffic, which helps while troubleshooting network and packet-related issues.

It is easy to filter traffic based on source-destination services, time, etc, which is an enhancement over other firewalls in the market.

Check Point fulfills our requirements but it is important that they stay on top of competitors by addressing certain points.

There are issues with stability while upgrading devices with hotfixes. For example, many times, a device will stop giving responses after an upgrade (observed in 80.10 release).

The rule database needs to be improved because when we apply rules for the destination, based on service and application and URL filtering Layer, the parallel lookup fails.

I have more than three years of experience with Check Point NGFW.

Stability can be improved further.

Scalability is excellent.

Technical support is very good and provides the right solutions every time. They are highly skilled.

We have seen many customers migrating their firewall from Sophos to Check Point, or from Cisco to Check Point. The main reason has been that they were not getting NGFW functionality and the security feature sets that Check Point provides.

The initial setup is straightforward.

I implemented it with the help of a vendor.

We are definitely getting most of the things that we expect from this product.

Check Point is a vendor that listens to customers and determines what they want. Based on the requirements and the solutions offered by other vendors, Check Point will negotiate to try and give the customer the best price.

Check Point offers options and operates differently from other vendors with respect to licensing. Each blade requires that you have a license.

We also evaluated Palo alto.

I think people like me love Check Point because in my experience over the years, I have not heard of a comprise where Check Point was protecting the network. As long as the devices are configured properly, this is a very small chance of being compromised.

In general, the NGFW features in Check Point fulfill our requirements, which is expected from a Cybersecurity firm that has been involved in the field for a long time. 

We use firewalls to protect our private environment from the public environment. My IT group is in charge of protecting the environment and maintaining safe usage of the internet. This product gives us a better, safer solution for the users within our company. 

Using this solution saves us time because nowadays, there are many malicious sites, as well as other threats and viruses on the internet. As it is now, we are not required to do anything because we have the antivirus and regular updates from Check Point. That is very helpful for us because when new viruses emerge, we just install the new signature and it works to protect us.

What used to take me seven days to do, now takes me only five. However, this is not just a time benefit because it better protects our environment as well. I estimate a 20% to 30% reduction in the number of attacks, compared to before.

I like the antivirus, attack prevention, three-layer architecture, and data center management features.

The antivirus updates are quite frequent, which is something that I like.

Central management is a key feature. 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. It means that we only have to push the configuration once and it gets published on all of the firewalls.

The level and availability of training should be improved. I have seen people that are not well trained on the Check Point firewall and the reason is simply that the quality of available training is poor compared to that of other firewalls on the market.

The command-line interface (CLI) should be more user-friendly.

I have been using Check Point NGFW for approximately four years, since 2017.

I work on the Check Point firewall five days a week and the stability is very good. In general, the updates to the software and antivirus are very stable. We have not faced any issues.

It is very easy to scale and extend usage. We started with five firewalls and now there are approximately ten. There is not much effort required to scale and it is not very complex.

Directly or indirectly, there are between 2,000 and 3,000 people using it. Whenever their traffic is required to be sent to the internet from the office environment, the traffic passes through the firewall.

We are very happy with our experience with technical support. They are very knowledgeable and the process for resolving tickets or problems is fast. We have had incidents dealt with quickly by their team. 

Prior to Check Point, we were using Cisco ASA and we are still using it today. The reason for implementing Check Point is that we wanted more advanced features. What we found was that after 2017, we needed better protection for our environment, and that is something that comes with advanced firewalls such as Check Point and Palo Alto.

I'm very happy with the Check Point firewall because it includes many features that are missing from Cisco ASA. Also, it offers a better and easier experience.

One of the significant differences is that Cisco ASA does not have a central management system. If we want to configure 10 firewalls with the same configuration, it is not possible to push them all at once. Instead, you have to configure them one by one. Apart from that, the antivirus and threat management need additional hardware because the functionality is not present in Cisco ASA. 

One of the positive points about Cisco ASA is that the training is very good, and it is available on the internet. This makes it easy to use for somebody who is new to the product. This is unlike the case with Check Point, where quality training is not available.

We found the initial setup to be straightforward, as we have many experienced people in our team and they have worked with Check Point firewalls. 

We used the central management functionality a lot, and we initially configured five or six firewalls. It took between six and seven months for the complete deployment.

Our implementation strategy included the three-layer architecture, the centralized management system, the console, and the web UI. We followed the process that was recommended by Check Point.

Our in-house team was in charge of the deployment. We have a team of seven people that work in shifts, and we did all of the work, with some support from Check Point.

Six or seven people in different shifts are required for maintenance. At any given time, we generally work with two or three people during the same shift. I think that two people working at the same time are sufficient.

We have seen ROI and when you consider the features like central management, antivirus, and threat management, it is a good investment.

We did have cost savings, moving to Check Point from Cisco ASA. We required additional hardware devices, such as an IPS solution, antivirus, and threat management. In addition, we needed too many resources because we had so many individual ASA firewalls. There was no central management system, so more staff were required.

Ultimately, with Check Point, we needed fewer people and we also saved on the cost of hardware.

The price of this solution is average; not too high and not too low. It is more expensive than Cisco ASA but cheaper than Palo Alto.

After the first package of licenses, we have not needed to purchase additional ones. When our license expires then we will purchase another one. 

We also evaluated a solution by Palo Alto and we chose Check Point because it was more cost-friendly.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this product is that it is good to see a company like Check Point is continuously working on the quality of their product, and we should learn from that. It is good to improve over time because it is very easy to get into the market, but it is not too easy to sustain. 

My advice for anybody who is implementing this firewall is to ensure that they are trained completely because it is not easy to use. Moreover, there is not much training available online, so you want to have trained with the device. This is a product with many features, which are pros, but these same features can become cons if you are not using it with complete knowledge.

In summary, this is a good product and they have been improving continuously, but there are still some areas to improve.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The main use case is Firewall provisioning and integration with Tufin and Skybox. Also, we focus on firewall compliance, rule review, VPN configuration, and network troubleshooting.

Working for one of the largest companies, I found that using Check Point has made firewall provisioning very easy for us, and integration with the above-mentioned tools has eased the process of PCI audit, security compliance, and rule recertification.

I think the VSX has been the most valuable feature for us. We use it for tunnel management, which is great. The configuration has been quite straightforward.

Debugging could be improved when compared to the competition.

I think the product release lifecycle should be improved.                                                       

We have been using Check Point NGFW for almost eight years.

Previously, we used Cisco ASA. We switched because of the fact that Check Point offers more stability and visibility into the firewalls. Management is easier, especially using the GUI version.

I think that the pricing is different for every organization.

We did evaluate Juniper, as well.

We have two clusters. We are using them as both perimeter firewalls and data center firewalls.

In the past few years, we encountered attempted attacks on our company and we succeeded in finding that we were those attacks, or that some user or workstation was communicating with malicious sites. Without the Check Point Next Generation Firewall, we wouldn't have had the tools to identify these things and to remediate the problems.

A firewall is a firewall. It's a Layer 4 machine that blocks or allows traffic for ports. That's the basics and we don't need a next-generation firewall for that. But the features that are important include:

• IPS
• sandbox
• SandBlast
• Anti-Bot
• URL filtering.

A basic firewall is a basic firewall. You don't need Check Point and you don't need Palo Alto or the other vendors to block ports from source to destination. But we need the advanced features of this product to give us the visibility into, and the security and protection from, scenarios that are not the usual source-to-destination attacks. The solution needs to understand what the connection is, what the behavior of the connection is, and what the reason for the connection is. It can't be a stupid machine. It needs to know that if you're allowing port 53 from source to destination, that it has to check and give us the information that this communication is legitimate, and not something that is malicious.

We just upgraded to the latest software version of Check Point so we have a lot of new stuff to learn. The older version had a little bit of a problem with identity awareness and with HTTPS inspection with the visibility of the logs, and the implementing of rules. But as far as I can see now, with the new version, most of the problems were fixed.

In terms of new features, maybe it would help if we could start to manage all the stuff in the cloud and not in the on-prem servers. The management side could also be faster when you install policies. But other than that, I'm satisfied.

I've used Check Point NGFW firewalls for more than eight years.

In all the time I've been using Check Point there have been no major issues or problems. It's a very stable environment and a very stable solution, in my experience.

We have around 600 to 700 endpoints, workstations, points of sale, and mobile devices. We also have about 200 servers, a WiFi environment, and a networking environment that is not small. We have implemented it 100 percent but, because of the Coronavirus, the company itself is not 100 percent capacity.

For now, we have implemented everything that we wanted and the firewalls are working 100 percent. There are no plans in the near future to grow. Of course, if everything goes back to normal, maybe we will grow.

There are no problems for us in terms of scalability because we're not working at full capacity. We designed the new solution to give us the resources that meet our needs for the moment and for the future. There is no problem with scalability and we can add new firewalls, or replace what we have with bigger firewalls. Everything is okay in terms of scalability from our side.

We continue using our partner for resolving problems and doing the changes that we need. That is the way that most vendors are working. First of all you need a partner and then the partner will open up a case with Check Point.

But one of the best things about working with Check Point, especially here in Israel, is that there is a direct line to the support, because we have such a good relationship with them, to speed things up.

The support is fast, professional, and thorough. Those are the most important things when you have a problem. If we need to call for support from either our partner or Check Point, we get a quick response and, usually, a fast resolution of the problem.

We migrated from Check Point to Check Point

It was really pretty straight forward because we upgraded from an older Check Point product. The installation and the assimilation of the new firewall was very quick with almost no downtime and almost no problems.

We deployed four firewalls in two clusters and, all in all, it took about one day of work; half a day for each side. That includes the installation, the configuration, and the exporting of the configuration from the old system and, of course, all the fixes and patches.

On our side there was one person involved in the initial setup, just to make sure that everything was going okay and, after the installation, to do all the checks and verify that everything was working fine and as needed.

We deployed it with the help of a partner, called Spider Solutions, here in Israel. Our experience with them was good. The technician that came here to install the firewalls was professional and thorough. Everything went according to plan, with no issues.

The whole initial setup was done by the partner and our role was more oversight to see that everything was okay and to give the information that was needed to proceed.

The pricing in this category is a jungle, but Check Point was very competitive. They were very forthcoming and agile for our budget needs.

I have checked a few other vendors and solutions but, in the end, Check Point is the best candidate for our organization. That's true technology-wise and because of the support. Because Check Point is an Israeli company, it's very easy to get help very fast. We speak the same language and that helps as well. Doing support in Hebrew is very helpful for us. 

Other vendors were either more expensive or, to get some of the features, we would have had to upgrade to a bigger, stronger, and more expensive machine. But with Check Point, that wasn't the case.

Check this solution and see how it fits with your organization. See how easily you can manage and control the environment. The visibility and the management provided by the product is one of the most important things, other than the security features that the product has. And check the sizing carefully. Check that the machines you're going to buy are sufficient for your current needs and the future needs of your organization.

We are using this solution for the security enhancement of our internal company network. This is to protect our customers as well as internal users from the untrusted network or outside world.

I am using the physical appliances of Check Point Firewall as well as virtual machines (VMs). We are using the same versions of R80 on our VMs that we are using for our physical appliances.

It saves a lot of manpower. If we have centralized management, then we do not require as many members on our team. So, this is a cost saving feature. If there wasn't centralized management, we would need 30 members instead of 11 members for our team. 

The nicest feature is the centralized management of multiple firewalls. With the centralized management, we can easily use and operate multiple firewalls as well as create a diagram of them. 

It has various features, like Threat Prevention and Antivirus. It is easier to use and have knowledge of a single device rather than multiple devices/technologies when doing an installation. It is also easy to use because of having Antivirus and Threat Prevention features within the same firewall.

I would like the user interface to be more user-friendly. I want the UI to be easier to use than Check Point's competitors. 

We have been using this technology for the last four years.

Check Point is the one of the most trusted vendors in the market. All the Checkpoint Firewall updates are very nice. We get the updates every months, and they are very stable updates.

The solution is very scalable. It is easy to expand it, if required. and doesn't take too much time. It also doesn't require too much manpower.

There are 2000 to 4000 people who are indirectly using Check Point Firewall.

It is always a good experience to work with their technical support. They are knowledgeable, always finding a solution. If we send them a bug, they fix it as soon as they can. 

I previously used Cisco ASA Firewalls for network security. 

Check Point is more advanced in comparison to Cisco Firewall. It has many good features, like central management, Threat Prevention, and Antivirus included in one device. With Cisco, we didn't have that.

The setup is straightforward, not complex; it was a simple setup. For the physical firewall, we just required a physical appliance, then we set it up according to our requirements. We had the complete setup guidelines. We used the three-tier hierarchy, which is standard and recommended for Check Point. We could also purchase service from Check Point to assist with the setup process. So, it was a good experience.

Our deployment took six to eight months.

We didn't require Check Point's help during deployment. After deployment, we did require their help for critical cases.

This product provides a complete return on investment. It gives us the level of security that we expect and should have.

The pricing and licensing part is something that could be improved. Check Point license and pricing are a bit higher compared to competing firewalls. I think they can work on that.

We didn't require an evaluation process. We knew that we had to go for Check Point.

I would rate the solution an eight out of 10.

The Next Generation Firewalls, the 64000 and 44000 series, provide us with support for large data centers and telco environments. They're quite reliable and provide great performance.

There are a lot of features which help us in providing a more secure environment for our organization, such as when we have Active-Active.

The most valuable feature is that the scalable 64000 Next Generation Firewalls are designed to excel in large data centers and the telco environment as well. We have a lot of these types of customers, and these Check Point firewalls support them.

In addition 

• it supports dynamic objects, which we use for security purposes
• the antivirus is quite effective
• the logging and tracking are quite easy
• overall, it is easy to use.

The area where Check Point can improve is the antivirus, as it only provides a small number of updates for it. Updates should be more frequent.

In addition, the certification process is quite expensive. It should be a little cheaper so that everyone can be trained and certified and have better knowledge of Check Point's products.

I have been using Check Point's firewalls for more than a year. My responsibilities include implementing changes on the firewalls and troubleshooting.

They're quite stable and quite good. Management is simple because we can implement a lot of changes on the firewalls through the central manager.

They're quite scalable because they support large data centers, while offering reliability and performances as well.

The initial setup is quite easy. You don't need much training for it. Deployment takes around one week.

We have different stages in the setup process and we follow all the stages. We have to give structure to the plan, outline what we need to do. That goes to our manager, our senior experts, for approval. Then we implement the changes after their approval. Once the changes are implemented, we have our team leaders who validate whether everything is good and as expected or not. Then we close it. This is the basic strategy we follow in our organization.

About 500 to 600 employees work on Check Point firewalls in our organization and they have different roles. For example, I handle network and security admin. There are also security associates, consultants, and analysts.

The pricing of Check Point's firewalls is good. It is not that expensive.