Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) Reviews

We leverage it as a next gen firewall, it does all of our IPS, URL filtering. We use it for our remote users, for VPN access. We use it to build VPN tunnels out to remote sites. It handles quite a bit.

It allows us to be a little bit more diverse in our hiring. We can hire people out in remote areas, that otherwise we wouldn't be able to because they'd have to come into the office without it.

The VPN side of it. Obviously without the VPN, we'd have tons of end users that wouldn't be able to connect to our environment.

Stability issues. I built out this firewall in a cluster, and I had stability issues day one. Needs to be rebooted frequently. Tunnels need to be bounced frequently. Their hardware compatibility guide, when I built out the servers to host them on, was not accurate. And there are compatibility issues and stability issues.

We would lose our remote sites, they would just dump. Say we had our site in California, all of a sudden we're not connected to them anymore. Or we have site in AWS, then we can't connect there anymore. So I'd have to go in and reset the IPSec VPN tunnels, in order to regain connectivity, more frequently than I should have to. Obviously that can happen from time to time, but it was pretty frequent with Check Point, to the point where we're going to rip it out the next two weeks, and install Cisco everything.

As far as scalability goes, I don't feel we really had to push it. We're not a huge company. It was literally always resolved with a license upgrade. If there were too many users connected, we would just upgrade a license and then have more users connected concurrently. So scalability, not an issue. But we sized it pretty appropriately when we installed.

We had third-party tech support through our contract, and it was okay. I pretty much ended up having to figure everything out if there was a problem. As far as Check Point goes, I haven't really dealt directly with their tech support.

When I started at the company, this solution had been in place, and it was failing, the cluster was failing. So I was tasked with rebuilding the entire solution, to make it a little bit more stable. I bought two brand new servers, and spun up a cluster for Check Point. And it improved a little bit, but for what we paid for that solution, it was not really worth it. Because of stability. 

We have migrated some stuff over to Cisco ASA Firewalls. And those seems to be more stable. A lot easier to use, more stable, faster to get going.

I thought it was pretty straightforward, myself. The issue that I ran into, on their website, when you go to install a solution they have something called the hardware compatibility list. That assures you that if you install their product, you also have the right servers to do it, you have the right NICs card, etc. So I actually bought brand new servers with brand new NIC cards that matched all the specs for the hardware compatibility list. I started getting everything setup, and it turns out the hardware compatibility list was wrong. It was wrought with issues. And I ended up having to pull some old NIC cards to throw in the servers to even get the thing to work.

So they don't have accurate documentation, I guess you could chalk it up to that. Or they didn't test it very thoroughly before they put it on the website. So that caused us a lot of heartache. This was a business-impacting setup. I had to do late-night maintenance windows, so when things don't work, it affects us at a pretty big level.

I don't think the product's pricing is a good value. I feel it's very overpriced. 

I feel a lot of the features for a next gen firewall are there. But I feel it's overpriced, because of the stability issues. As far as support goes, I really can't speak to direct Check Point support, but the third-party was pretty terrible. 

I feel you'd get a lot more out of it with Cisco. With Cisco you'd pay about the same. I feel the licensing is a lot more straightforward. It's easier to understand. 

That's another thing about Check Point, I think their licensing model is very confusing. As far as the licensing goes, it's pretty complex. If anybody was to purchase the Check Point product, definitely make sure they have an account rep come on site, and explain it line by line, what each thing is. It's not straightforward. It's very convoluted. There's no way you could just figure it out by looking at it.

We're halfway there right now, with the Cisco Firewalls we're switching to. They're very capable, they work like you'd expect, simple licensing, simple upgrades. It's been a breeze with those so far. 

I would say avoid it. There are definitely better solutions out there. For the amount of headache that you get with this product, it's not like you're saving yourself any money. It's just as much, if not more, than other solutions.

When it works, it works well. But, like I said, I've never really had a stretch of time where it just worked really well for everyone. It's been a constant pain point for our organization.

I use Check Point NGFW in my role as an Information Technology Security Engineer. We have implemented it for our customers and use it ourselves.

Fortinet is easier to set up due to its understandable interface and ability to connect to the CLI directly from the web interface without needing an external SSH client.

Check Point NGFW should improve its user interface to make it more user-friendly and intuitive. Additionally, the issue with link selection on VPNs needs to be addressed.

I have been familiar with Check Point NGFW for around two years.

Overall, I am satisfied with the stability of Check Point NGFW.

I am satisfied with the scalability of Check Point NGFW.

We have an engineer who is certified to work with Check Point, and I am satisfied with their technical support.

We have an engineer who is certified to work with Check Point.

I am not dealing with the pricing of Check Point products since I am a technician, not a seller or buyer.

I proposed Check Point, Fortinet, and Juniper to our customers. Fortinet is popular for its ease of use and cost-effectiveness.

I would recommend Check Point NGFW even if the customer doesn't have a Check Point infrastructure.

I'd rate the solution nine out of the ten.

We use the tool as a data center firewall. Some of our customers use it as a perimeter firewall. We are only using the security gateway.

The product is flexible. I like the product’s performance and throughput.

The cost of add-on features is too high.

I have been using the solution for five to six years.

The tool is stable. We haven’t faced any issues after configuring and putting it in production.

We have roughly 7000 appliances. The tool is scalable. I like the scalability of the solution. We have 10 to 20 customers.

The technical support is good.

Positive

The initial setup is easy.

The pricing is moderate. The license cost is good. However, some features like VPN are costly.

We use the solution for our clients. My recommendation depends upon the requirements. I do not recommend the product for an SMB. I recommend it for enterprises. It has good performance and throughput. Overall, I rate the solution a seven or eight out of ten.

Our primary use of Check Point NGFW is for network protection.

The most valuable feature of Check Point NGFW is it is a complete solution for protecting not only the network but the applications. Additionally, it provides a hybrid cloud solution.

The whole solution has room for improvement.

I have been using Check Point NGFW for approximately five years.

The solution is very stable.

Check Point NGFW has been scalable.

I would rate the technical support of Check Point NGFW a seven out of ten.

The installation is straightforward.

We have one staff member that does the implementation of the solution.

I would say that the customer has to implement Check Point NGFW with the reseller. They have experience in the implementation and with security.

I rate Check Point NGFW a ten out of ten.

We use the product as a firewall solution for application control, defined rules and policies, and insights features.

The platform helps our organization to save working hours.

Check Point NGFW is easy to configure.

The product's technical support services need improvement.

We have been using Check Point NGFW for two years.

It is a stable product.

It is a scalable platform.

The technical support team could include skilled engineers to understand the issues and respond.

Neutral

We have used Fortigate before. In comparison, Check Point NGFW provides a more detailed configuration.

The initial setup is easy and takes 20 minutes to complete.

The product provides value for pricing in terms of performance and technical features compared to other firewalls.

I recommend Check Point NGFW and rate it a nine out of ten.

We primarily use Azure DevOps for source control with Git, CI/CD pipelines, and project management using Azure Boards, and it's pretty much the core of our development workflow.

The flexibility of the pipelines in Azure DevOps is impressive; we can customize them to fit our specific needs and integrate with a lot of different tools, while Azure Boards is helpful for keeping track of everything, though it does take some getting used to.

The integrations with other tools in Azure DevOps are generally seamless; we use it with Slack, Jenkins, and a few other tools without any major issues, and the API is well-documented too, which makes custom integrations relatively straightforward.

My experience with Azure DevOps shows it's a very powerful platform; it's helped us streamline our development processes significantly, and I would definitely recommend it.

When using Azure Boards, it's feature-rich, which can be overwhelming at first; there's a learning curve to understanding all the different functionalities and customizing the workflows to fit our processes.

The pricing of Azure DevOps can be complex; it's not always easy to figure out exactly how much you're going to end up spending, and occasionally the UI can be slow, but that's not a frequent problem.