What is our primary use case?
We need central management for our policy, monitoring, and different day-to-day administrative tasks, so Check Point Security Management fits all the requirements for our needs. As we know, Check Point Security Management can be used for central policy management. It is an all-in-one management system. We can manage firewalling, application control, URL filtering, IPS, Anti-Bot, and Threat Emulation. We can unify the rule base and reduce it in one central management console called SmartConsole. That is our main use case for this product.
I can use one console for access lists, application control, managing day-to-day reporting, granular access control, managing large and segmented environments with multiple domains or customers, and integrating threat management with that console. It has summed up the tasks in one console, which is our specific use case.
We can manage one firewall in one site, one cluster in one of our sites, and another cluster in another site with a single console. This feature allows us to manage large and sophisticated management tasks in one console, which is why it is called Multi-Domain Security Management.
What is most valuable?
The granular and general access control allows us to centralize our policy management in one console for firewall, application control, URL filtering, IPS, Anti-Bot, Threat Emulation, and Threat Extraction. It is unified in one console, allowing us to unify the rule base to reduce complexity. These features are beneficial, and the system is scalable.
Administrators are operational, so it creates operational efficiency through faster rollouts of change with policy packages, creating faster and easier operational day-to-day activities.
I strongly admire the compliant support feature. It creates detailed logs, audit trails, and customizable reports. It has excellent reporting features including the threat blades, threat prevention blades, and firewalling blades. I can comply with this and provide it for auditors, which makes it an interesting feature.
What needs improvement?
Performance with logs needs improvement as Check Point Security Management has large-scale environments that need dedicated log servers. If you store logs on the central management server or Check Point SMS, it will create resource-intensive tasks. When the logs are too heavy for the security management server, the CPU spike will be high, causing our management day-to-day activity to lag or become difficult. This needs to be improved. Additionally, the resource demands need improvement. For example, log indexing related to SmartEvent needs strong servers, which should be improved for the future.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been deploying Check Point Security Management products for almost three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is stable for our clients.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is scalable because it can manage different gateways or different firewalls in different sites. It can be multi-domain Security Management server and can manage large or segmented environments with multiple domains or customers.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
For management, we did not use another solution. We just used Cisco ASA on that single firewall which can be managed through CLI. We switched from Cisco ASA, but that was not management; it was a firewall.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We considered other vendors such as FortiGate and Palo Alto firewalls. We chose Check Point Security Management server because we selected Check Point for our firewall.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Check Point Security Management nine out of ten because it has good features. I decreased one point due to the performance and resource demanding issues on the log indexing, and SmartEvent needs strong servers, which needs to be considered.
It is deployed on-premises and is not costly. The management server can be expensive, but it excels at what it does.
Check Point Security Management server centralizes our policy management by unifying the firewalling features and threat prevention features to manage it in one console. It creates ease and operational efficiency. We save time and increase our day-to-day operational efficiency by removing management complexity.
If you want to centralize your policy management such as firewalling, application control, URL filtering, and different threat prevention features, and unify your rule base to reduce operational complexity, you need to use Check Point Security Management.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Reseller, Partner