Check Point Security Management and Amazon CloudWatch are key players in the domain of cybersecurity and infrastructure monitoring, respectively. In terms of security policy management and network control, Check Point seems to have the upper hand with its integrated solutions.
Features: Check Point Security Management is designed for comprehensive security, featuring SmartConsole for centralized control, advanced URL filtering, and VPN functionalities. It includes firewall blades that enhance security across networks. Amazon CloudWatch is part of the AWS ecosystem and focuses on real-time infrastructure monitoring, offering robust metrics collection and seamless integration with AWS services.
Room for Improvement: Check Point could improve its stability, performance, and integration support for non-Windows platforms. Simplifying SmartConsole and streamlining updates are also needed. Amazon CloudWatch could benefit from enhanced data granularity and better dashboard visualization. Users also seek improved integration with third-party tools.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Check Point's on-premises or hybrid deployments add complexity compared to CloudWatch's seamless integration with AWS, easing setup for cloud-native applications. Check Point's customer support varies in reliability, while CloudWatch benefits from AWS's robust support system, offering consistent assistance.
Pricing and ROI: Check Point requires significant investment with high upfront licensing costs, but offers good ROI through operational efficiency. In contrast, Amazon CloudWatch's pay-as-you-go model makes it cost-effective for AWS users, though additional costs may arise with increased data and custom metrics usage. Check Point is a high-cost comprehensive security solution, while CloudWatch is a more economical option suited for cloud-based operations.
Amazon CloudWatch offers cost-saving advantages by being an inbuilt solution that requires no separate setup or maintenance for monitoring tasks.
I have seen a return on investment with Check Point Security Management, as my security concerns regarding data production have been greatly diminished, and my time is also saved.
While using their cloud and cloud resources, if you have an issue with CloudWatch, you must pay additional monthly fees to get time from dedicated tech support.
In recent years, due to business expansion, knowledge levels among support engineers seem to vary.
We have partner support that helps us mitigate vulnerabilities reported by our infrastructure team.
The challenge was with drivers due to the size, and we had not provisioned the partition to the right size.
Amazon CloudWatch's scalability is managed by AWS.
So far, it has been functioning smoothly without any issues in the past 1.5 years.
I sometimes notice slowness when Amazon CloudWatch agents are installed on machines with less capacity, causing me to use other monitoring tools.
In my environment, Check Point Security Management is stable, as I do not see any downtime.
When using third-party dashboards such as Kibana or Grafana and other visualization tools, there should be a way to feed CloudWatch's data and logging capabilities into these visualization tools.
Amazon CloudWatch charges extra for custom metrics, which is a significant disadvantage.
Maybe Amazon Web Services can improve by providing a library for CloudWatch with some useful features.
Each time this happens, I need to upgrade to the latest version of the firmware, and this frequent updating affects my productivity negatively.
We had to provision the virtual machine twice.
Overall, the pricing of Amazon CloudWatch is very expensive.
Amazon CloudWatch charges more for custom metrics as well as for changes in the timeline.
Since we are using it extensively, we get significant discounts during procurement.
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Check Point Security Management involves a bit of a challenge in pricing, as it is somewhat costlier than previous devices.
Being an inbuilt solution from AWS, it saves time on installation, setup, and maintenance.
The best features of Amazon CloudWatch need to improve visibility into the network because when using hundreds of network resources such as transit gateway, VPNs, routers, route tables, and firewalls, it does not give many details in a structured manner.
I like its filtering capability and its ability to give the cyber engine insights.
Check Point Security Management does not operate like that; it shows the mobile device, tablet, smartphone, laptop, and desktop separately so that I can easily find out how many desktops are connected, how many mobile devices are connected, and I can easily block mobile devices and free up the IPs.
We can't work without Check Point because it provides the real visibility needed to manage the environment.
It's already helped secure our organization effectively.
Amazon CloudWatch is used for monitoring, tracking logs, and organizing metrics across AWS services. It detects anomalies, sets dynamic alarms, and automates actions to optimize cloud utilization, troubleshoot, and ensure service availability.
Organizations leverage Amazon CloudWatch for collecting and analyzing logs, triggering alerts, and profiling application performance. It's also employed for monitoring bandwidth, virtual machines, Lambda functions, and Kubernetes clusters. Valuable features include seamless integration with AWS, real-time data and alerts, detailed metrics, and a user-friendly interface. It provides robust monitoring capabilities for infrastructure and application performance, log aggregation, and analytics. Users appreciate its scalability, ease of setup, and affordability. Additional key aspects are the ability to create alarms, dashboards, and automated responses, along with detailed insights into system and application health. Room for improvement includes dashboards and UI enhancements for better visualization and customizability, log streaming speed, advanced machine learning and reporting capabilities, pricing, and integration with non-AWS services and databases. Users also seek more real-time monitoring and comprehensive application performance features, and simpler alerts and configuration processes.
What are the most important features?
What benefits and ROI can users expect?
Amazon CloudWatch is implemented across a range of industries, including technology, finance, healthcare, and retail. Technology firms use it to monitor application performance and traffic, while financial organizations leverage it for ensuring compliance and system reliability. Healthcare entities rely on it for maintaining service availability and monitoring data flow, and retail companies utilize it for tracking customer interactions and optimizing server usage.
Check Point Security Management is an advanced security management platform for enterprises. The platform integrates all aspects of security. A single platform manages the entire infrastructure, from data centers to private/public cloud deployments.
Check Point Security Management is a reliable and easy-to-use security platform. It integrates all aspects of your security environment to strengthen the security posture without impairing productivity. The system has a layered policy model. This means the security policy can be separated into layers for network segmentation. Different administrators can manage different policies. The policy layer automates the tasks.
The platform is extensible, scalable, and integrates easily with orchestration systems and change management.
Basic Components of the Infrastructure
The smart console offers several advantages. Changes in security policies and logs can be done with a click. You can navigate from an item within a log to the policy. There are also built-in multi-language support and accessibility features.
1. Security Management Server: The server manages security gateways with set security policies and monitors security events on the network.
The automation server is an integrated part of the management server. The API server is active by default on servers with 4 GB of RAM or more and on standalone servers with 8 or more GB of RAM.
The automation server communicates with the management server the same way as the Smart Console. This architecture allows the same validation errors and warnings to be presented when using an automation session.
The same audit logs generated using the Smart Console are also generated using an automation session. If you have a multi-domain environment, there is only one automation server that monitors all the IP addresses of the multi-domain management server.
2. Security Gateway is placed at the edge of the network. It monitors and filters traffic and enforces security policies.
Logging, Event management, and Monitoring
With Check Point Security Management, logging, reporting, event management, and monitoring are integrated. The platform features widgets and chart templates that optimize visibility. One of the best features is the one-click exploration. This simplifies going from a general overview to specific event details.
Benefits of Check Point Security Management
The unified console also means a single policy for users, data, applications, and networks. The granularity control helps accelerate administration processes. This feature, together with automation, is key to achieving reduced operational overhead. Security teams can automate tasks and even create self-service security web portals with the Check Point Security Management platform.
Threat management is fully integrated, with reporting, logging, and monitoring all in one dashboard. This provides full visibility into the security of the network.
Security Management Suite
The Security Management Suite consists of the following modules:
Reviews from Real Users
A Network Security Engineer/Architect at a tech services company says, "The features we like and find the most valuable are the ways we can manage the policy, create objects, and drag and drop objects in our daily operation. It makes our daily operation on the firewall management much easier than going, for example, to one firewall, then going to the other."
"The management API is the best new feature for me. It allows us to further automate our customers' automated server ordering," says a System Engineer Network & Security at OTTO GmbH & Co KG.
A Senior Infrastructure Services Specialist at St.George Bank Limited adds that "The solution is ideal for use and deployment in a large infrastructure environment."
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