Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) Reviews

The biggest thing is the central management. It is quite good and allows us to manage the different firewalls from it. We can implement and configure many firewalls and push our policies to them as well.

One of the most valuable features is the antivirus. It's very good.

We also now support cascading objects. We didn't support this previously, but on Check Point we do.

The dashboard is quite good, you can explore a lot of features there and it's easy to understand.

It also gives us SSL inspection, which provides more effective mitigation of defects and data leakage.

The antivirus is not as effective as it could be because updates are not that frequent.

Another area for improvement is that certifications are quite expensive with Check Point.

I've been using the Check Point Next Generation Firewall for the last year.

My role includes working on Check Point and Cisco ASA firewalls to make changes on them, per customer requirements or as the organization needs. I also explore new features and do troubleshooting.

It's quite stable. Until now, we haven't faced any issues.

The Check Point 44000 and 64000 Next Generation Firewalls are designed to be quite scalable. 

If we do face an issue which is not our support boundaries, we involve the Check Point TAC. They're quite technical, so they help us to resolve things. They are always helpful. They're knowledgeable and their response time is very fast.

Previously we were working on Cisco ASA firewall which didn't support the cascading objects. Also, Cisco supports two gateways, whereas the Check Point supports up to five gateways.

We also decided to bring on Check Point because there are a lot of switches that are not supported in Cisco ASA. Also, with Cisco, IPS does not come with the firewall and we have to configure it separately. The Check Point IPS comes with it.

There are a lot of features which are not supported in the Cisco ASA Firewalls.

The initial setup of the firewall is straightforward. I didn't find any difficulties in moving from Cisco ASA to Check Point. The dashboard is quite friendly, so it didn't take much time to learn.

Deployment took about three days.

We have different stages in our implementation process like planning, approving, implementing, checking and validating, and the last one is matching. Job roles in our organization go according to these stages the approvals. I do the planning part and my approval request goes to my team leader.

We have about 400 to 500 users. They are semi-technical or non-technical people, such as network and security engineers, who are tracking and monitoring the firewalls. If we're talking about troubleshooting we have from different levels, like L1, L2, L3.

It's saving us a notable amount of time. 

Check Point is good. It has a lot of features which will support a lot of things in your organization, and the dashboard is quite good. There are a lot of features, such as data protection and data inspection, at a good price.

We recommend to clients who are installing applications that they can work with Check Point Next Generation Firewalls. Our role is to support our customers in terms of their migration, firewall room cleanups, and implementing all the security features that the firewall has.

Our clients have branch offices in Mexico and Bermuda. Check Point is one of the top names in these areas.

Our clients come to us to fix holes in their endpoint security management infrastructure, which might be letting things through like ransomware. We recommend Check Point Firewalls and some other endpoint security management solutions to mitigate these risk factors. We use this solutions to help build a perimeter for the company, as it helps filter threats from affecting our clients' infrastructure.

The application authentication feature of Check Point is the most valuable as it helps us keep users secure. 

It works smoothly when managing clients' on-premise and cloud firewalls.

Permissions from the client regarding troubleshooting and how well we can packet capture have not been smooth.

Check Point should quickly update and expand its application database to have what Palo Alto has. 

There have been some issues with third-party integrations.

I've been using Check Point Firewalls since 2012. This was right from the beginning when it was hardware from Nokia and the R65 and R66 models. So far, that has gone well.

They are stable. There are no standalone Check Point boxes. If a module goes down, it doesn't affect the base as a whole. Check Point Firewalls have nice redundancy.

Scalability is a good feature that this solution has. It is easy scale out and do site-to-site implementations. Sometimes, you have to clean the OS or RAM to free up availability. However, if you do this, then there are generally no issues with scaling it.

The documentation is really good. 

Their support guys response is really quick. Though, sometimes it takes them more than four to five to get back to us via email and acknowledge an issue. If you have the diamond support, it is definitely fast. However, if you don't have that sort of expensive after-sale support, then it is a problem to engage a Check Point technician at a very fast pace.

We actively participate in the community group.

Our clients are migrating over to Check Point NGFW from Cisco, Juniper, and Fortinet because they want the Check Point Application Intelligence feature. 

We set up the management tool for the clients to manage all their infrastructure.

The migration is generally seamless and takes one shift or day (about nine hours).

We migrate clients to Check Point from other solutions. We also have situations where it's a clean install for deployment, which is the most common scenario.

We are working with Check Point Firewalls to provide installation, migration, updates, setup, etc. 

In the beginning, we needed help from the vendor with the setup. The support was good.

Our clients have seen ROI.

Cisco pushes clients to purchase their hardware, and this is not the case with Check Point. This helps to easily manage costs.

There are now more competitors in the market, like Palo Alto and VMware. 

Palo Alto is a bit more smooth and cost-efficient than Check Point. Palo Alto has Unified Threat Management (UTM) coupled with a dake lake database that is huge. Also, its migration is more smooth than Check Point's. 

Look for a software with licenses that support the features you want. I would recommend doing an RFP before purchasing. Get in touch with Check Point's sales team and compare it with other solutions.

Check Point features are always evolving. They try to stay abreast of the market. I would recommend not using older, obsolete models of Check Point because of this. 

I would rate this solution as an eight out of 10.

The primary use of the firewall is to allow or block some traffic. Mainly, it is the perimeter firewall for the Internet. It filters the traffic from external to internal, e.g., to secure the traffic. 

Some of our customers have been demanding Check Point as their firewall product.

I do the installation, support, firewalls, etc.

It provides a central station where it is very easy to deploy our firewall policy in one click to many firewalls. This is one of the leading perks. It saves time by having one central station because I can deploy the same kind of policy to many firewalls at once. 

With the latest release, it's easy to configure firewall rules with the scripting. This is one of the features that we have been demanding for some time so we can script some actions for automation.

The best part is that it is very intuitive. It is easy to configure, deploy, and maintain. If it works, it works.

The troubleshooting: When you find something that is not working, it is very easy to check in the logs what is failing and fix it in a short time.

The login tool is really nice.

We can virtualize the physical firewall in a virtual environment. However, the virtual environment is not stable at all. We have some customers who are using the virtual environment feature, and sometimes it crashes. We have many tickets open and the response is not as good as expected. We have to wait months for a resolution.

If you use all the features available on the firewall, it's not working. If you keep it simple, then it works. When you try to do cool things, you start to have some problems because that kind of integration is not fully developed.

I have worked with Check Point since 2007.

When it is failing, it is a nightmare. The stability has room for improvement. Sometimes, it is not working at all.

The scalability is good. I haven't had any scalability issues. If the firewall gets stressed, we buy a new firewall.

There are many options, such as, virtualization. They have also release a new product, Quantum, that makes it possible to scale up and have more firewalls. 

As an integrator, we have very big companies (like banks) to small companies, who have only 200 users or less. 

I would rate the technical support as a six out of 10. I have customers with no tickets open with Check Point and other customers who have many tickets open.

Solving some issues with them is a nightmare. They don't reply in time. They always ask the same questions. I expect better feedback from them, but that usually never happens.

Before Check Point, I used Cisco and Fortinet FortiGate.

The big differences is really the full integration firewall, e.g., Cisco doesn't provide this. Also, the Check Point central console is so much better because it provides that one central station, which is a plus.

The con for Check Point is the stability. The hardware for Check Point fails more often than other vendors. Usually, other firewalls are more stable than Check Point so I don't have to open as many cases with other vendors, like I do with Check Point.

There are two parts:

1. In the physical, you deploy with a wizard, which makes it very easy. It is a standard wizard where you click "Next, Next," then you see the GUI and everything is done there.
2. It is possible to do it in automatic way with the scripting. In the cases that you have some experience on it, it's very easy to deploy some scripts and the firewalls. For example, in the cloud, I created my own firewall with the same setup every day using the auto-integration since it's possible to integrate Azure with Check Point, which is very easy. One of the best features of the Check Point is its integration with the cloud, because not all vendors have that kind of integration.

The deployment time depends. If I do any scripting, it takes 30 minutes. If I do it manually, the deployment takes two hours. It also depends on the size and scope of the deploy, e.g., if I create a basic firewall rule or do a full automatic migration. However, It does take less time than other firewalls.

The implementation strategy depends on the customer.

I can deploy one firewall in an easy way. I can do it quickly by equiping firewall rules in text mode or in the API. However, when I have a problem, it's totally the opposite. I lose a lot of time.

The pricing and licensing are the worst part of Check Point. I usually don't know what I really am buying. When I have to do an inventory of the license, I don't know what it is being used for. Sometimes I feel I am being cheated, and the others times, I feel it is a bargain. Nobody knows! Even the Check Point representatives, they aren't clear on somethings, such as, what is the right license for what I need.

There is a possibility to have diamond support. You can have a technical engineer who is there just for you. When you have that type of feature, it's more expensive.

Cisco NGFWv

• Check the price first. 
• For migrations between different vendors, it's a nightmare. You need to do some tasks manually, otherwise it doesn't work when you migrate it. 
• Check the performance if it is working as expected. 
• Try to keep it simple.

It is a good product. I would rate the solution as an eight out of 10.

I had 3200 appliances deployed in my company where we had two CMSs. We had multiple VSXs on those appliances due to the main firewall that we had on the VLAN. We also had an external firewall on the VLAN, which were used to monitor and allow the traffic within the network. That is how we were using it.

They have a new R81 in place. Currently, they also have R75 deployed in the environment, but they are planning to upgrade to R80.20 because that particular firewall has very high CPU utilization and there is no more support for R75. 

I like that it first checks the SAM database. If there is any suspicious traffic, then you can block that critical traffic in the SAM database instead of creating a rule on the firewall, then pushing that out, which takes time. 

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. 

I like the Check Point SandBlast, which is also the new technology that I like, because it mitigates the zero-day attacks. I haven't worked on SandBlast, but I did have a chance to do the certification two years back, so I have sound knowledge on SandBlast. We can deploy it as a SandBlast appliance or use it along with the Check Point Firewall to forward the traffic to the SandBlast Cloud.

Working on Check Point for me looks simple. 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.

The ability for the multiple administrators to not do changes was fixed in R80.

I just changed companies six months back. I have been using Check Point for around two and a half years. I was working on the Check Point technologies in my previous company. I did the implementation of Check Point and was also monitoring the Check Point Firewall in my last company during firewall upgrades.

We had two Check Point Firewalls deploy in the HA. There was one particular change that we did regarding the FQDN objects. However, after deploying this new change, which already had multiple FQDN objects, the behavior of the firewall was changed in terms of the live traffic. Because after deploying the critical chain, the users were facing intermittent Skype and Office 365 issues. We checked the performance of the Check Point, which also decreased due to the FQDN objects that were pushed onto the firewall. Therefore, we had to reverse back the change in order to increase the performance, because it was utilizing 80 or 90 percent of it. Once we reversed that particular change, then it was working fine.

These firewalls are stable. The customer is looking forward to upgrading to the latest version of Check Point.

It is scalable.

The entire company network resides behind these particular firewalls. All of the users, if they wanted to go out onto the Internet, have to go through this firewall.

There are around five to eight people who worked for my team. We monitored the firewall. In case of issues, we would then go a call with the customer and troubleshoot that issue.

Sometimes, I faced issues while troubleshooting. In those cases, I did have to contact Check Point's technical support because some of those issues were complex. 

I would give the technical support a four out of five. They would get on the call and try to resolve that issue as soon as possible. 

Initially, I was working on the Cisco ASA Firewall, then I got an opportunity to work on the Check Point Firewall. The main difference is regarding the architecture. Check Point has three-tier architecture, whereas ASA doesn't have that architecture so you have to deploy every rule on the firewall manually. With Check Point, you have a management server and you can have that policy package pushed onto the other firewall, which is one of the key features of Check Point: You don't have to deploy every tool on the firewall manually. We can just push that particular policy package onto the new firewall based on global rules that we have Check Point. 

Every time, I had to deploy all of the rules and basic connectivity, SSH and SNMP management, on the ASA Firewall. Whereas, in Check Point, I can just go onto the global rules and put that policy onto the Check Point Firewall, then it will have all those global rules required in the company.

Check Point also has the Identity Awareness feature, which is using a captive portal. This is something good which I like. 

It was pretty easy and straightforward for me to deploy these firewalls.

It took around the 15 days to do the initial deployment and get the basic connectivity to the Check Point Firewalls. We had to send a field engineer to do the cabling and everything, like the data connectivity. It takes time to do all the network, cabling, etc. Once the basic connectivity is established, then we can move ahead with the implementation of the rules on the firewall. The company had an initial set of rules to follow for the setup.

We initially opened a case regarding the upgrade. Check Point's technical support was there on the call because the upgrade was going from version R77 to R81.10. This was a major update for the entire network, and they were there supporting us in case of any issues.

The customer feels more secure because they have two layers of security and comfortable working with this particular Check Point Firewall because they previously used Check Point R75. 

Pricing is fine. 

We had to get separate licenses for the different blades. It would be nice to have a feature where we can get the multiple licenses all-in-one instead. 

The licensing feature is good for the Check Point. It attaches to the management IP address of the central management server. So, you can remove that particular IP and then use that license on another device on some other firewall, if you want.

Compared to the Cisco ASA Firewall, the Check Point Firewall makes your work easier because you're not deploying the firewall, then pushing the policy, which takes time. Initially, when I was working with the ASA Firewall, we used to implement the firewall, then we used to hand it over to operations for the maintenance. So, I had to manually implement all of these rules, etc. 

When I learned about Check Point and had basic training for it, I got to know the architecture was different for the Check Point Firewall. You can just have a policy package and deploy that policy package on any of the firewalls that you want. It already has that particular set of rules, which makes your life easier while implementing the rules on the firewall, e.g., if there are multiple firewalls on the network that should have the same policy.

Anyone who is new to Check Point Firewalls should have the basic understanding and training so it becomes easy to deploy and implement. You can go onto YouTube and find various training videos regarding Check Point, where you can get a basic understanding of the Check Point Firewall.

I would rate this solution as an eight out of 10.

We provide solutions for various customers where we apply Check Point Firewalls, either for a VPN gateway or for securing their networks. We have provided them to a couple of financial customers to protect their mobile banking as well.

It has good features for searching the firewall rules and it has drastically changed daily operations. It's very easy, even for novice users or newcomers, to operate and manage this device. It has improved our operations that way.

The most valuable feature of the firewall is the packet inspection. That is an amazing feature from Check Point. Apart from that, we do have identity solutions which we use on a regular basis. Both are very good.

It would be great if the access management, the user management features, were improved in terms of the number of users that can be connected, and how users can access the various resources with the help of firewall authentication.

Also, one of the challenges I hear about from customers or engineers who work with and operate Check Point firewalls is not about the technical capabilities of the product but about understanding the product. There should be whitepapers available on the Check Point portal so that people can understand them more easily.

I have been using Check Point's firewalls for almost 12 years. I started with the IP390.

Stability has improved a lot from Check Point's very early days over the last 12 years. Back then we had to reboot the firewall after every two to four days.

The firewalls are scalable with our workload. We are at about 20 to 30 percent utilization so even if we doubled of our existing network resources and load on the firewalls, they would still have the space to scale. They're enough for the networks that we have implemented.

We recently finished a deployment and it's still in the user acceptance test phase. As of now, I cannot say anything in terms of increased usage. But for the customers that we have deployed it for within India and the APAC region, so far the results have been pretty good.

I have used technical support a couple of times, when it was required, for hardware replacements. Of course, once or twice I contacted them for active devices when we had some glitches. But that turned out to have nothing to do with Check Point.

Overall, technical support has been good. They understand the situation and what part needs to be replaced or what needs troubleshooting through remote support tools.

Before Check Point we used Cisco. And we use Cisco for a couple of customers because it's already pre-deployed, so it's not in our hands. We manage operations, so we are still managing Cisco devices. We don't have Juniper right now, but we have Palo Alto for one of our customers.

The initial setup is very straightforward. When we boot the firewall we have instructions which say how to connect to the QR, and from that portal you go to your gateway and configure all the required network interfaces. Once you have installed your Smart controller, you need not log into the firewall every time. Instead, you can log in through your Smart controller. That's a pretty good method which no other firewall provides.

For the very basic features, it does not take more than two days. But, for a full-fledged implementation, it can take around two months.

Our implementation strategy is to replace existing firewalls in the network. We try to keep the business downtime as short as possible, especially for business-critical applications.

For deployment and maintenance of these firewalls we have a team, worldwide in different regions: APAC, Europe, America, and the Middle East, although in the Middle East we don't use Check Point.

We have definitely achieved ROI with Check Point firewalls.

We definitely evaluate other options based on the customer's budget, and the stability and technical specs of the firewall. We generally choose Check Point as our preferred product vendor.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using Check Point's firewalls is that they are not complex.

I'm expecting a lot of solutions from Check Point and if there are more solutions from them, that would be great. I would like to see more product development.

Overall, I would rate it at 10 out of 10. It's the best firewall in the market.

For the SMB appliances, the use case is tricky because I don't actually like them too much. If you have a very small branch office, you could use one of them, but in that case I would just go for the lowest version of the full GAiA models. But for small locations that are not that important, it is possible to use one of the SMB appliances, the 1400 or 1500 series. 

The full GAiA models, starting with the 3200 and up to the chassis, are the ones we work with the most, and you can use them in almost every environment that you want to secure, from Layer 4  to Layer 7. The only reason to go higher is if they don't perform well enough, and then you go to the chassis which are for really big data centers that need to be secure.

About a year or a year-and-a-half ago, they introduced the Maestro solution, which gives you the flexibility of using the normal gateways in a way that you can extend them really easily, without switching to the chassis. You can just plug more and more gateways into the Maestro solution.

It's difficult to say how these firewalls have improved our clients' companies because a firewall isn't meant to improve things, it's meant to make them more secure. Nine times out of 10, it's going to give you something that the end-users aren't so happy with. But Check Point Next Generation Firewalls improve security and, indirectly, they improve the way users work. They can access practically everything on the internet without being concerned about what's going to happen. They give users more confidence when doing something, without having to worry about the consequences because the gateway is going to help them out where needed, preventing malicious stuff.

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. You can get practically all information — but not all the information, because not everything has been migrated from the previous SmartDashboard version into the SmartConsole. 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. 

As for the security features, that depends a bit on what you're doing with it, and what your goal is. But they're all very good for application URL filtering. Threat Prevention and Threat Extraction are also great, especially the Threat Extraction. It's very nice because your end-user doesn't have to wait for the file that he's downloading to see if it's infected, if it's malware or not. It gives him a plain text version without active content, and he can start working. And if he needs the actual version, it will be available a few minutes later to download, if it isn't infected. That's a great feature. 

Anti-Bot also is also very nice because if a PC from an end-user gets infected, it stops it from communicating with its command and control, and you get notification that there is an infected computer.

It's difficult to distinguish which feature is best, because they're all good. It just depends on what your goals are. As a partner, we are implementing all of them, and which ones we prioritize depends on the client's needs and which is the best for them. For me, they're all very good.

The MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) may not be the greatest, and the full proxy that you can activate instead of just doing application control is also not the greatest, but they don't even recommend using those. They're just available if you want.

But 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. That is a bit hard because you have to update your skills on all three.

A practical example is that I have a client that I run scripts for to get information from 40-plus firewalls. That client is thinking about refreshing and there may be SMB appliances in the roll-out that don't run those scripts. That would make my job a lot harder. So the best improvement would be standard software on all their devices.

I started working with Check Point firewalls in 1999, so it's been about 20 years. In the last year I have worked with all the SMB appliances, through the full GAiA and up to the 64000 series.

There's not much difference between a Check Point 3200 and a 5200 because they're running the same OS. There are just performance differences. So I can't say I've worked on every model, because I don't always check the model when I come to a client. But I've worked on every model that runs different software. I've worked with all three kinds of software that are used by Check Point.

The SMBs have room for improvement in stability. They're not as stable as they could be.

The chassis are great, but they are running behind. Maybe "running behind" is an overstatement, but the roll-out of new features on them is really slow because they want them to be tested and tested and tested. The clients installing these chassis are large banks or very large customers that can't have any downtime whatsoever, so it's normal that they test them more thoroughly. 

For the mainstream models, we do run into bugs on a regular basis, but they're mostly not showstoppers. You can run into a bug, but either there's a possible work-around or it doesn't impact things so much that there are huge problems for the client.

The SMBs are not scalable. New devices come out from time to time that are more performant. The mainstream devices are also not scalable except if you go with the Maestro version, and then you can just plug in an extra firewall and it scales up. With the chassis you just plug in an extra blade and it scales up also. So the Maestro and the chassis are very scalable, but for the other models it comes down to buying new boxes if the current ones aren't sufficient anymore.

Check Point support is a very difficult question because not so long ago I had a major complaint with Check Point about their support. Now, they give us much better support because we have the highest level of partnership. They recognize that the people from our team, in particular, are very skilled, so we don't go to first-level support anymore. The moment we open a ticket, we get tier-three support, and that is good.

But we haven't had this privilege for that long and, in the past, support could be a bit tricky. If we got a tier-one engineer it could be okay for support that wasn't urgent but if we were doing an implementation, especially since we had a lot of experience, they were mostly asking questions about things that we had already checked. Often, we had more knowledge than they did.

For us, it's great that we now immediately get access to tier-three. I just wrote an email to the support manager this morning about an issue we had last night, and I told him the support was great; no complaints anymore. It took a while, but now it's good. I can't complain anymore.

It depends on the partnership you have with Check Point. If you're a lower-level partner, you have to go through the steps and it takes a bit of time. If you're working in a company that has a good partnership and you can negotiate some things, then support is good and you get very good people on the line.

The initial setup of these firewalls is fairly straightforward for me, but they're not the easiest ones to learn and to set up. But I've been working with Check Points for 20 years. So if you're a new user, I wouldn't say it's easy. If you have experience, it's not really that difficult. But the learning curve is higher than some of the competitors.

The time for deployment depends on the features you want to enable on the firewall and the environment you want to put it in. If it's a branch office with a small network, a DMZ and an internet connection, that would take half a day or a day. It also depends though on if it is a completely new installation where you also have to install a Management Server. On average, we count on about one day per gateway and one day for the management, but it depends on the complexity of the environment, of course.

Our implementation strategy differs per client, and it even differs by the engineer who does it because everyone has his own skills and tricks from the past that they're using. But a uniform implementation approach, especially for different clients, is very difficult to do because every firewall is a complex product. You can't do for client A what you're going to do for client B.

If it's an installation we go the standard route, with a high-level design and get it approved by the clients. Then we go for the low-level design and implementation. A standard implementation is a clustered environment with a separate Management Server. We almost never deploy one gateway, so one cluster with a separate Management Server is the most basic level. We usually set up the management on a virtual system, not an appliance, and we try to go for appliances for the gateways, depending a bit on the customer's needs; it could be virtual.

Make sure you get the correct license. For instance, I did an audit for one of our clients recently and I saw that they always were buying the most expensive license and not using the features that were included in it. That's one thing to look at: If you're not going to use some features, don't buy the license related to those and go for a cheaper license. 

Also, negotiate. There's always room for discounts.

You get licensing bundles, so depending on which features you want to activate, your license is going to be more expensive. Some things, like Threat Extraction and Threat Emulation, require subscriptions. They don't come with a standard firewall. 

I'm not a licensing expert, but as far as I know there's the standard firewall, the Next Generation Firewall, and then the Next Generation Threat Prevention license. The price goes up in those bundles.

Another vendor I work with and have the most knowledge about, when compared to Check Point, is Palo Alto. They force you to work a bit more with applications instead of ports, although that's not something Check Point cannot do. 

The central management is different for Palo Alto. You can install it, but it doesn't work the way it works with Check Point. I like both. I like that with the Palo Alto you just go to a web browser and can configure the firewall all the way, but it's also easy to have the SmartConsole from Check Point where you can manage multiple devices. Palo Alto doesn't really have that. They have a central manager where you can get logs and where you can distribute some policies, but it doesn't work the way Check Point's central management does.

Both have their pros and cons. It depends on how you like to work. I like working with both of them. It's a bit different, but in terms of security and features, I don't think they're that different. It's just another way of working.

Make sure you have a good partner doing Check Point work for you because, as a direct client, it's very hard to get the necessary skills in-house, unless you're a very big company. Contact Check Point and ask them which partner they recommend and go that route. Don't try to do it yourself. The firewall is too complex to set up and maintain yourself, without the assistance of people who do it every day.

Learn and get experience with it. Don't be overwhelmed. When you start with it all the features and all the tips and tricks that you need to know to maintain it, it can be overwhelming. Like I said, the learning curve is very steep, and when you start with it, it's going to look like, "Whoa, this is impossible." But stick with it and when you get some experience it's going to be okay. It's a difficult product, but once you get the hang of it, it's one that's really nice to work with. We still run into issues from time to time, but Check Point products are very manageable and fun to work with. Check Point is my favorite vendor. I like working with it a lot.

I would rate Check Point's mainstream solutions at eight or nine out of 10, and the same for the chassis. I would rate the SMBs around a six. I don't really like those too much. Overall, Check Point is an eight, because most people are going for the mainstream solutions and those are very good.

We use several of the blades. We use it for regular access control, but we also use the application control. We use HTTPS inspection and threat prevention. We use the Mobile Access blades as well IPS.

We have a Smart-1 205 as our management server and for the gateway we've got 3200s.

Over time, we've enabled different blades on the firewall. We started off with the access control policy, and since then we enabled the HTTPS inspection and the IPS blade. That's helped reduce our risk landscape as a whole.

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. The ease of use is important to us. The more difficult something is to use, the more likely it is that you'll experience some type of service failure. When we do have issues, with the Check Point SmartConsole being as simple as it is to navigate, it makes it easy for us to identify problems and fix them, to minimize our downtime.

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.

We have been using Check Point's NGFWs for as long as I've been with the Department of Mental Health, so it's three years that I've personally been using them.

Based on other networking hardware that I've used, I would say the Check Point NGFWs are just as stable, if not more so. We rarely have any issues. In the past, I've experienced networking hardware often needing to be rebooted. That's not something that happens with these devices. They're on 24/7 and we have next to no downtime. I can't think of a time in my three years here that one of the devices has gone down and caused us any downtime.

We've already purchased a new management server from Check Point, and it will be replacing our 205 appliance. They make it easy. These devices inter-operate together, so if we need more resources, for example, on the management end, we're able to buy that server and replace our old one and scale up as needed.

As far as users are concerned, we have 70 locations throughout the State of South Carolina with a total of 400 to 500 devices that can be connected at any point in time.

I would think we have plans to increase our usage. We work in tele-psychiatry, for the State of South Carolina, and telemedicine right now is a hot topic. I see it very likely that our usage could double and triple in the coming years.

We've had an issue with licenses not populating to a new device, but that is the only thing we've ever called them for in relation to replacing or adding in a new device.

They're very helpful. They're easy to get in touch with. It's not like you're sitting there on hold for hours at a time, and they're quick to get back to you. It might be that they're taking packet captures and analyzing them and then getting back to you. It's a quick turnaround. I can't think of any time we've ever had to wait more than 24 hours to get an answer on an issue we've had.

I have set up replacements and it's very straightforward. It's very easy. It's much easier than some of the other network equipment that I've had to deal with. Check Point provides a wizard that walks you through the process and that streamlines the entire process. They also provide instructions on how to go about getting to the wizard and the process that we needed to take to complete that configuration. It was relatively painless.

The replacement was configured in one day and deployed the next, with no issues.

There are five of us in our company who have management access. I'm the network administrator, and I've got four IT technicians who work under me and assist in the firewall configuration and deployment.

I don't believe we've ever had to actually call Check Point to assist with anything. It's pretty straightforward. The wizard does most of the work and we have all the instructions we need. It's pretty much all done in-house.

I definitely feel it's been worth our investment. Check Point is there to help when we need them. Our downtime has been very minimal, and when we do have issues, they're there to help us. They're there to get us back up and running as quickly as possible. It's definitely been worth its weight.

One of the main reasons that we went with Check Point is that they provide a good solution for a firewall but at an affordable price. As a state agency, we can't afford Cisco Firepower. It's just out of our budget to be able to pay for something where licensing and hardware are so expensive. Check Point has really met our needs for a budget-friendly solution.

We pay a yearly support fee in addition to the standard licensing fees with Check Point.

I've worked with Cisco routers and firewalls. I've worked with Ruckus switches and routers, and Aruba access points.

A drawback with these products is their stability. Almost all other networking devices I've seen need to be rebooted over time. If they're left unattended for extended periods of time, we experience some sort of downtime. That is not an issue with our Check Point products.

Do your research and look into cloud solutions. Check Point offers many cloud services, and that's where everything's moving, towards the future. Research the different appliances and solutions that Check Point offers and find out what works best for your particular situation.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using Check Point's firewalls is not to be afraid to call for help. There are times where I may be trying to figure something out myself, when in all reality, all I need to do is call Check Point customer support. They'll explain to me why something is configured a certain way, or if there's a better way that I could go about configuring something, and things of that nature. They have been very helpful and have saved me time, anytime I've called.

I can't think of any additional features their NGFW needs that we don't already have access to. I know there are features such as moving the dashboard toward the cloud, and I think that's beneficial, but it's something they already offer. We just don't take advantage of it right now.

We use Check Point's firewall to provide network security to our organization as well as to other, third-party vendors.

The Check Point firewall is providing advanced-level security. Compared to before, our company is more secure now. It is not only securing the users working within the LAN environment, but also to the end-users or remote users in the company.

The most valuable features are its 

• antivirus
• threat detection
• central management system. 

The central management makes it easier, and is a time-saver, when implementing changes. We can do all the changes within Check Point and not use any third-party device.

The antivirus Check Point offers could be better when compared to competitors' firewalls. Updates should be more frequent. With other firewalls, updates are very frequent, but with Check Point updates are not so frequent. That needs to be improved.

Also, the certification as well as learning about this Check Point is much costlier when compared to the other firewalls. I have recently done certifications in various firewalls and Check Point's certification was more costly.

I have been using Check Point's NGFW for the last six years.

The Check Point firewall is very stable. It is one of the oldest firewalls in the market. It has all the advanced features, according to the security features we have. It's quite a stable firewall.

It is very good and scalable. We have recently expanded the usage of Check Point and it was not a very tough process to scale this firewall.

Right now it's protecting around 3,000-plus employees.

It has been a very good experience every time we call Check Point. We usually get them on a phone call and they are very informative people. They always provide us the solution.

We had another solution. We switched because Check Point gave us more advanced features and there was market demand for network security.

The initial setup was a little complex. The training from Check Point should be increased. It was a little complex, but with the help of their TAC and the help of other engineers, we installed it.

The deployment has taken about eight months. We have deployed it in a three-way architecture. We have installed a security gateway, an SMS (security management system) and we have installed the console.

We have a team of four people, all network engineers, for deployment and maintenance of the solution. We take care of all the firewalls for the organization, including Check Point's.

We had help from a Check Point integrator. It was a good experience. They were very helpful.

We are happy with our investment in Check Point's firewall. Per our standards, and for our environment, it is a very good firewall. It is protecting us well.

Pricing is a little high compared to competitive firewalls, but it is easy to go through the licensing steps.

We evaluated other options, including Cisco ASA. The difference was that Check Point provides advanced features, such as threat prevention and antivirus. Apart from those, it also provides us with IPS. Also, for Cisco ASA, we had to take extra services to install it, so we went for Check Point.

Make sure you get good training on Check Point's firewall, and it would be good if you have working experience on the device.

Using Check Point, I have learned that we need to serve our remote users as well, and Check Point is a firewall which is capable of doing that.

We use it to provide security to our environment from the outside world. We are using it to provide security against vulnerabilities using threat prevention, Antivirus, and IPS.

In advance, we get security vulnerabilities. So, we can configure new security policies, update our antivirus, or check the configuration to protect the environment.

We like the centralized management for configuring multiple firewalls. It also gives us the Antivirus, threat prevention, and vulnerability tests. These four features protect the environment with security checks. Vulnerability tests allow us to configure changes that can protect the environment.

The Antivirus feature is something that could be improved. We don't get much from the Antivirus update in comparison to their competitor's firewalls. It needs to be more advanced because Check Point is nowadays sent all over the world. Therefore, the Antivirus feature should be of very good quality and cover all virus checks. I would also like the Antivirus updates to be more frequent.

I have been working with it for the last seven years.

It is a very stable firewall. The updates that we get from this Check Point Firewall are also very stable. 

The scalability is good.

There are more than 10,000 users. The Check Point Firewall is deployed through the company.

All their technical people are very solid in their knowledge.

I have used Cisco ASA and FTD. We switched from Cisco ASA to Check Point because there were no antivirus, vulnerabilities, or security prevention features. Check Point has more advance features, which are easier to use, than Cisco.

We also had to install IPS devices with Cisco.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was not too difficult to deploy the Check Point firewall. Deployment takes between 12 to 15 months.

We have done a cloud-based deployment throughout our network.

We did the deployment ourselves. We have onsite specialists who have done many deployments.

20 people take care of the deployment and troubleshooting of this firewall.

There is a money saving because we no longer require other devices, like an IPS, a separate antivirus, or vulnerability tests. We get all the devices within a single tool. Before, we would have different teams taking care of different devices. Now, we take care of only one device, which is another source of savings. We have saved a lot of money with this solution.

The prices are good for its features. The benefit of its license is we get timely security prevention updates. The price is good for the technology that we get.

This is a good solution. I would recommend to take advantage of as many features as you can. It has many features, and to protect security, you should use all the best features that you can.

As soon as the company will grow, we will definitely increase our usage of the firewall. We have already increased our usage due to employees working from home.

The biggest lesson that I learned is we can use the features of a firewall security to protect our environment. Also, rather than deploying multiple firewalls, we can configure a centralized management system, and this saves time.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10.

We use it to provide security in our organization. Check Point Next Generation Firewalls are designed to support large networks, like a telco environment.

Check Point has a lot of features. The ones I love are the 

• antivirus
• intrusion prevention 
• data loss prevention. 

Apart from that, there is central management through which we can integrate all the firewalls and support them. It makes it easy to manage all the firewalls.

It's also user-friendly and not very complex. Anyone can use it and the dashboard is quite good.

Check Point has notably fewer tutorials on Google. If I'm facing any kind of issue and I Google it, less stuff is available. 

Apart from that, the antivirus is less effective than its competitors' antivirus. The antivirus is good, but in other firewalls, such as Palo Alto, it's quite effective. Check Point should provide more output. Sometimes it provides comprehensive information and sometimes it doesn't.

I have been using this firewall for more than one year.

The stability is good. We've never seen any kind of issue with the Check Point firewalls. In very rare cases we go to their TAC, but we normally try to resolve the situation from our side.

They are quite scalable. They are designed to extend in large data centers and tech environments. They are designed to support the needs of large networks, and offer reliability and performance.

Check Point's technical support is quite good. It's quite helpful. We have never faced any kind of issue with them. Whenever we have an issue with the firewalls, we just raise it with them and they are quite supportive and quite technical as well. They provide a resolution on time and effectively.

Previously, I worked on Cisco ASA firewalls and they have a lot of disadvantages. They have a lot fewer features compared to the Check Point firewalls. We just started using Check Point as a firewall in our organization and they give us new features which are better than the Cisco ASA. With Check Point, the IPS is already configured in the box, unlike the Cisco ASA, and there are a lot of features which help us to provide more security for our customers. In our case, the customers are all employees of our organization.

All of these are reasons we switched to Check Point.

The setup is straightforward.

Deployment depends on the customer's architecture or network.

In terms of a deployment plan, we have different teams in our organization that support different business cases. After an implementation ticket is raised by the requester it goes to the planning stage, then it goes to the implementation stage and then it goes to the validation stage. The planning stage is done by the network security admins. The approval stage that is done by our managers and the validation stage is done by us, the network security admins. This is the process that we follow in our organization. Everything is documented.

We do the deployment ourselves, but if we face any kind of issue, we just raise an issue with their TAC.

The pricing is good. It's not so expensive. You can deploy it and it will do a lot of jobs in one package. It's a good choice compared to the other firewalls.

We looked at Palo Alto and the Cisco FTD Next-Generation Firewall.

Check Point Next Generation firewalls are very good. They have a lot of features in one box and they're not that expensive. They support a lot of features, including antivirus, data loss prevention, and the central management is very good. We can configure all the firewalls through the central management. They have many things in a small package. I would recommend them.

The biggest lesson I have learned from the solution is that it has a lot of features that I was not aware of. The dashboard is quite simple and it's not complex to use.

We make changes on this Checkpoint Firewall as per customer demand. If they want to add a rule on the firewall we do that, and if they want to remove something we remove it for them. If they want to change the position of some rules or to allow or deny any kind of traffic, we do that for them.

In our organization we have a team of 20 - 25 network security admins. Sometimes the network team will also implement changes and they are about 25 people. Sometimes we get  the help of our managers to approve the changes or validate whether the change has been implemented correctly or not. If I sum it up, it's a team of about 100 people who directly use the solution, and they also take care of deployment and maintenance.