Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) Reviews

We have around 500 firewalls all around the world with a global team to manage them. We are using Check Point NGFW for Internet traffic, IPS, and UTM devices.

Atos provides this solution, including network design and advice.

• Antivirus
• IPS
  
• They got the logs into one site, which is wonderful.
• There is a secure action line code that you can announce your products in.
• If you have a number of sites, like a hundred sites around the world, you can deploy multiple VSX testing. 
• All over the world, you can have DMZs in data centers, e.g., in the USA, Dubai, and London. 
• It is easy to deploy and upgrade. 
• Easy to manage, e.g., if there is a new engineer onsite, they can easily manage it.

In a VPN setup, we have Internet connection via Check Point. The connectivity is not turnkey like competing devices. We have not yet terminated our site-to-site VPN because things are fluctuating right now and Check Point needs to be upgraded. Also, their troubleshooting needs to be improved for this. 

I have been using it for five years.

I haven't seen any stability issues, though I have seen some issues with the management of the gateway. Stability-wise, it is good (a nine out of 10).

We have 74 locations. We can have 10,000 users maximum via an Internet gateway. We have four data center across the world: two in USA, one in London, and one in Dubai. Passing through Check Point per location: in the USA - 5000 users, in London - 2000 users, and in Dubai - 10,000 users.

There are 12 network security engineers/consultants managing Check Point and the legacy firewall, SonicWall.

Right now, we cannot go directly to Check Point because of vendor dependency. We have to first initiate with our vendor.

We migrated SonicWall to Check Point about two years back. That took one year to set up in our organization. 

We switched away from SonicWall because it is a legacy firewall at end of life. SonicWall was missing features that Check Point has, like UTM, IDS, IPS, antivirus, etc. Check Point is better for protection and performance-wise.

It is easy to deploy or upgrade. There is no need to do this manually with commands. This solution can be set up online.

We have two devices. Right now, we are deploying and upgrading a new setup, where you can do management, management plus gateway on the device, or virtually you can install your management device on VMware or Hyper-V. With the Hyper-V and the Management Server, you can access all the gateways. For the Management Server and gateways, we have an activation key.

We are an IBM OEM company who received installation support from that vendor. They provided all the network connectivity.

For our implementation, we:

1. Started with an initial diagram of the configurations and what we want to see after the installation.
2. Segregated the SonicWall and Check Point tools for the migration since we used automation.
3. Checked the mode of installation. We went with transparent mode.
4. Collected the IPs for the firewall. It required multiple IPs because with we have cluster nodes.
5. Assessed the feasibility of Check Point in our environment.

For our strategy, we looked at:

• How many users are in all our offices? For example, is it a small office, mid-size office, or data center?
• Using high-end versus lower-end devices, e.g., lower-end devices means a smaller price tag.

A smaller office of less than 500 people would get a 4000 Series. Whereas, a larger office would get a 5600 or 7000 Series. We have to be focused on the natural topology.

We have had some vulnerabilities when we upgraded the R80.30 Management Server. We have some gateways right now in our R77.30 version, and this means if we go without license in R80.30, then it will prompt a bad connection and terminate. We have had some license difficulties with the connection going from R70 to R80. However, these don't largely impact performance.

We looked at Fortinet and Palo Alto. We did not feel FortiGate was capable of what we required. Palo Alto is somehow not as good as Check Point, budget-wise and performance-wise. Palo Alto is more costly than Check Point.

If you need a good support or something that is good budget-wise, then I recommend going with Check Point compared to Cisco or Palo Alto.

It is a good firewall. It has returned good performance. We are happy with the product. I would rate the product as a nine out of 10.

Check Point NGFW is being used as a security product in the environment. It is securing the IT infrastructure and delivering the services as expected. In the current world scenario, IT is becoming the backbone for every organization, and most business is highly dependant on IT so securing the IT infrastructure is becoming challenging. Check Point NGFW meets the expectations of our organization to secure the IT infrastructure as per organizational need. Check Point NGFW also gives many security features in single box which reduce your management complexities.

Our organization's primary need is to make information available and secure from an insider as well as outsider threats. Check Point NGFW can give you lots of security features on a single device that can be used as per the organization's need, you not need to procure separate security devices to strengthen the security. The organization also provides services like service providers so it becomes more critical to secure the IT environment and we believe Check Point NGFW family is meeting the requirement as per the expectation.

Advanced logging capabilities: Check Point generates extensive logs which may be very useful to figure out the issues. Its logs also contain too much information which can be used to modify the policy as per user need and organizational security environment. The same can be used to figure out probable attack surface or necessary steps for mitigation. 

Anti-spoofing security feature: Check Point has inbuilt by default enabled feature of anti-spoofing which reduces the attack surface from the spoofed IP addresses. 

IPS: Check Point IPS is one of the best products in the market.  

Management: Check Point should move away from its current architecture wherein it mandatorily requires a management server to manage the gateways. They should develop A feature in the gateway itself so that no management server is needed for policy and gateway management. They should leave it to the user whether they want to procure a dedicated management server or run the show with the gateway itself. It will also reduce the operation cost.

They should also optimize the packet mode feature like Cisco’s firewall packet tracer wherein it tells administrators which policy or rule is processing the intended traffic.

More than two years.

Check Point maestro is highly scalable, their other chassis base solutions are also scalable 

If you choose Check Point maestro platform they you need not to worry about the scalability.

They are very cooperative and supportive in nature. 

We were using an ACL based firewall which was traditional and not meets the current security expectation. So to meet the advance security requirement product like Check Point is needed.

It was straightforward.

Check Point authorised partner had been involved in the migration to avoid any operation issue 

Hard to calculate.

They should first understand their organization's needs and accordingly choose the product. In case if someone is not sure especially about sizing then they should use the Check Point maestro platform as it gives you the flexibility to augment the capacity on the fly without disrupting the existing running operation.

We have not evaluated any other option before Check Point. 

Check Point gives you flexibility and eases the management with meeting organisation’s security need. But before choosing proper sizing has to be done.

*Perimeter Firewalls - to protect regional hubs and local offices from public space and provide L3-L7 filtering

*Internal Segmentation Firewalls - to secure company's internal network from movement of malicious actors and reduce traffic flows only to authorised ones

*Public and Private Cloud - to secure hybrid environment either onprem or in the cloud while achieving micro segmentation per host

*Cloud Compliance - to get a visibility into cloud environment and and related vulnerabilities 

*Data Center

*SaaS

Check Point is able to satisfy almost any security tool for enterprise clients. This allows us to deploy complex changes from a single management interface, get better visibility, and significantly reduce operational complexity.

I have to emphasize the value of Diamond support here where most senior engineers can provide great support with any challenges. Thinking out of the box, sense of responsibility, professionalism and much more - such an attitude helps to provide resolution to any crisis in the shortest term

With the new capabilities embedded into R80.XX flavor it is possible to achieve great flexibility while defining your security policy. It is possible to utilize a variety of objects to define static or dynamic criteria for inspection and reduce general rule base size and complexity, while not giving up on security

The security research team is doing a great job staying on top of ongoing threats and releasing fixes for ongoing attacks within days or sometimes hours.

Check Point always actively listens to its customers trying to identify emerging needs and satisfy them pro-actively

I would like to see an improvement of built-in monitoring capabilities such as throughput. Practically visualization of CPview outputs into beautiful pink GUI will do it. 

The monitoring of scalable solutions is quite tricky, but it could be relevant for all vendors who possess the same technology.

IPS fine-tuning may require some time to understand the interrelation between IPS protections, core Protections and other IPS profile elements. But in general, Check Point is on the way of great simplification of TP management

Check Point products are being in use for the last 6 years.

The firewall is the primary use case of this solution & IPS is secondary use case of the solutions.

We are looking forward to Sandblast solutions.

We also use it for cloud expansions 

The Check Point NGFWs brought up the security level with the help of the advanced software blades - we use Application Control, URL Filtering, IPS, Anti-Bot, and Antivirus. The setup was simple, and the performance is great - we have significant resources to expand the environment in the future without disabling any blades and thus maintaining the security on the same, high level.

It has improved the security posture of the organization by implementing this solution.

Now we can add application signature in the same rule base & don't have to create a different policy for that.

Advanced networking and routing features - we use Proxy ARP to announced virtual IPs to ISP and bing domain names to it; BGP for dynamic routing over IPSec VPN tunnels to other environments, and Policy-Based Routing for connecting to two ISPs.

• Easiness while working on all blade of firewalls 
• Flexibility in NAT rules 
• The new Policy Layers feature for building up the Access Control policy - the rules are now more understandable and efficient.
• Also, even so, the new SmartConsole is declared to be unified starting from version R80.10, there are still some features that have to be configured in the old SmartDashboard (e.g. Mobile Access policy and Antivirus), or on the Gaia OS level (all the routing features).
  

• Offline Sandblast solution, which should send malicious sources to other security solutions.
  
• TAC Support level to be enhanced 
• More details to be included while VPN troubleshooting, using GUI representation 
• Integrate all blades to use a single policy rather than multiple.

I have been using Check Point for more than 14 years.

We are using Palo Alto and Check together.

Cost is negotiable always & matches the expectations and licences are flexible and are added advantage. 

We evaluated other solutions.

Our company works in developing and delivering online gambling platforms. The Check Point NGFWs are the core security solution we use to protect our DataCenter environment located in Asia (Taiwan). The environment has about ~50 physical servers as virtualization hosts, and we have two HA Clusters consist of 2x5400 hardware appliances, managed by an OpenServer Security Management Server on a Virtual Machine (KVM), all running on R80.10 with the latest JumboHotfix. The Clusters serve as firewalls for both inter-VLAN and external traffic.

The overall security of the environment has been greatly improved by the Check Point NGFWs. Before implementing this solution we have to rely on the Cisco ACLs and Zone-Based firewall that we had configured on switches and routers, which in fact a simple stateful firewall, and currently not an efficient for protecting from advanced threats. The Check Point NGFWs brought up the security level with the help of the advanced software blades - we use Application Control, URL Filtering, IPS, Anti-Bot, and Antivirus. The setup was simple, and the performance is great - we have significant resources to expand the environment in the future without disabling any blades and thus maintaining the security on the same, high level.

1. Advanced logging capabilities - our support team on duty constantly monitors the security logs in the SmartConsole, and notifies the security team in case of major alerts.

2. Advanced networking and routing features - we use Proxy ARP to announced virtual IPs to ISP and bing domain names to it; BGP for dynamic routing over IPSec VPN tunnels to other environments, and Policy-Based Routing for connecting to two ISPs.

3. The new Policy Layers feature for building up the Access Control policy - the rules are now more understandable and efficient.

The pricing for the Check Point products should be reconsidered - we found it to be quite expensive to purchase and to maintain (the licenses and the support services need to be prolonged regularly). 

We also had several support cases opened for software issues (e.g. unstable BGP sessions over VPN tunnels), which, in our opinion, took too long to resolve - up to one month.

Also, even so, the new SmartConsole is declared to be unified starting from version R80.10, there are still some features that have to be configured in the old SmartDashboard (e.g. Mobile Access policy and Antivirus), or on the Gaia OS level (all the routing features).

We have been using the Check Point Next-Generation Firewalls for about 3 years, starting from late 2017.

In general, the solution is stable, but we still have had some support cases opened and have to install the JumboHotfixes on a regular basis to fix the minor bugs. Please note that the current version of the software we use - R80.10 - is not the latest one (R80.40).

The solution is scalable - we use the Active-Standby Clusters, but could switch to Active-Active and add additional Gateway nodes if needed.

We have had several support cases opened. Some of the were resolved by installing the latest recommended JumoHotfix, some required additional configuration on OS kernel level (e.g. TCP MSS clamping). The longest issue took about one month to be resolved, which we consider too long.

We relied on the ACLs and Zone-Based firewalls of the Cisco switches and firewalls, which doesn't provide sufficient security protection against the modern advanced threats. 

The equipment has been delivered on time, without delays. The setup was straightforward. The configuration was easy and understandable. 

In-house team - we have a Check Point Certified engineer.

Use the Check Point Performance Sizing Utility to measure and estimate the hardware needed to purchase for your environment.

Our primary uses for the Check Point NGFW are network segmentation, identity awareness, and application control.

The most valuable features for us are identity awareness, IDS and IPS, and application control.

The speed of technical support is very slow and is something that should be improved.

We have been using Check Point firewalls for about 20 years.

There were times in the past when it wasn't as stable as it is now. However, with the current version, we have been running for the past year without any issues.

Our company has about 1,000 users that generate traffic that passes through the firewall. Beyond that, we haven't had much need to scale.

The technical support is very slow.

The two firewalls that we having implemented are Check Point and Fortinet.

I have also worked with Juniper but it does not have all of the advanced features that Check Point has, such as application control and identity awareness.

The initial setup is pretty simple. The amount of time required for deployment depends on the number of rules that need to be configured. The initial setup can be done in one day, and the post-setup configuration depends on the rules to be applied.

The initial setup was completed by a partner, who was a certified system integrator.

Our in-house team handles maintenance.

This product is not cheap and there are additional costs that depend on what model or package that you buy. If you need more features then you may have to buy additional modules. In our case, we knew what we wanted in advance so there were no additional costs.

Overall, I am pretty happy with Check Point firewalls. My advice for anybody who is implementing this product is to get somebody with experience to help choose the correct, stable version, and assist with the configuration. All of the new features take time to implement properly, but if the correct steps are followed then they won't run into problems when the system goes into production. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the product to block traffic at the application layer, limiting access to YouTube and social media during busy periods while allowing it during lunchtime or office hours.

The product's primary benefits include effective intrusion blocking and improved network management. 

I appreciate the support provided as well. It is highly reliable and has a prompt response time. 

The system's operation could be enhanced. I recommend developing a management console that can more efficiently handle multiple Check Point devices, as we have multiple appliances across different sites. 

We have been using Check Point NGFW since 2016 for approximately eight years.

There are occasional issues, but they are typically resolved with subsequent updates. I rate the stability a six out of ten. 

We have three sites where we use Check Point NGFW. The first site has about 1000 users, the second site has between 800 and 900 users, and the third site has approximately 100 to 200 users.

I rate the product scalability as two out of ten. Improvement is needed as it could be more convergent, particularly for on-premises solutions.

We are currently using Check Point, Palo Alto, and Cisco.

Check Point's advantages include its lower cost than Palo Alto. However, it requires maintenance of many parts, as it is only partially GUI-based. In contrast, Palo Alto is mostly GUI-based, simplifying operations for our IT security team.

The setup process was straightforward. Some aspects in terms of maintenance are easier due to the GUI-based interface.

We took help from a consultant for implementation. 

I recommend Check Point Firewalls. It is a solid product with reliable support and frequent updates.

I rate it an eight.

In our logistics setup, we employ Check Point NGFW across various critical areas. For instance, we use it to secure different database applications within our systems, ensuring robust protection for our operations. Whether it is managing updates, maintaining standby reliability, or enhancing system performance, Check Point NGFW plays a vital role in safeguarding our logistics infrastructure.

Using Check Point in our system has provided several benefits. Firstly, it ensures secure access for authorized users while preventing unauthorized access from public users. Secondly, it enables us to monitor application usage closely, identifying any suspicious activity such as repeated failed login attempts. 

Check Point NGFW provides essential security, featuring no-obligation access for secure connections, strong intrusion prevention, and comprehensive antivirus protection.

One area for improvement in Check Point NGFW is the support process. It can be challenging to open a technical support case through the customer portal, often requiring additional steps to open the case.

I have been working with Check Point NGFW since 2015.

We have not experienced any major stability issues with Check Point NGFW.

Check Point NGFW is fairly scalable.

The technical support is decent. I would rate them as an eight out of ten.

Positive

Setting up a new Check Point NGFW is generally straightforward for us. With our experience and familiarity with the process, we can handle it without encountering any significant issues. We are used to creating simulations and implementing improvements, which facilitates the setup process, even at an intermediary level. We usually require two engineers for the deployment process, along with additional resources like network switches, PCs, and testing equipment.

The pricing for Check Point NGFW tends to be higher compared to other options in the market, especially for high-end models. In comparison with enterprise-grade firewalls like Palo Alto, Check Point is among the more expensive choices.

My recommendation for organizations considering implementing Check Point NGFW is to prioritize selecting high-end models for optimal performance and security. Check Point NGFW offers robust protection for networks and data, allowing businesses to maintain their operations with confidence. Overall, I would rate Check Point NGFW as an eight out of ten.