Check Point Security Management and Amazon CloudWatch both compete in the domain of security and infrastructure management. Amazon CloudWatch holds the upper hand due to its seamless integration with AWS services, offering advanced analytics and real-time data streaming.
Features: Check Point Security Management stands out with centralized firewall and domain management. It integrates smoothly with existing infrastructure and provides high visibility into network activities. The security blades make administration efficient. Amazon CloudWatch excels in log monitoring with real-time data streaming and in-depth analytics, integrating effectively with AWS services, providing a comprehensive view of system metrics.
Room for Improvement: Check Point should enhance SmartConsole functionalities, increase VPN stability, and refine support services. Its integration with other technologies needs improvement, and licensing fees are high. Amazon CloudWatch requires enhanced drill-down capabilities in its dashboards, clearer pricing structures, better API integrations, and stronger support for hybrid cloud models.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Check Point supports on-premises and private cloud deployments, offering robust features but perceived as complex by some. Its customer service receives mixed feedback with variable response times. Amazon CloudWatch, primarily deployed on public clouds, integrates easily with AWS products. Customer service is generally positive, though limited support for non-native AWS environments is noted.
Pricing and ROI: Check Point Security Management initially appears costly but often provides strong ROI through heightened security efficiency. Amazon CloudWatch's pay-as-you-go pricing is cost-effective but can escalate with extensive data collection. Both are considered worthwhile investments, offering potential cost savings and operational benefits.
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 strong ROI from using Check Point Security Management through unified policy management, reduced misconfigurations, and faster incident response.
The time to resolve issues is very much better now with Check Point Security Management.
I have seen a hundred percent return on investment with Check Point Security Management.
In recent years, due to business expansion, knowledge levels among support engineers seem to vary.
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.
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.
The customer support for Check Point Security Management is great.
Amazon CloudWatch's scalability is managed by AWS.
It can be a multi-domain Security Management server and can manage large or segmented environments with multiple domains or customers.
When you upgrade multiple times, you leave many files that are useless. They are dated, so it's always better to create a new machine every few versions, for example, three or four major versions.
Check Point Security Management's scalability is exceptional as it handles growth in users or devices very well.
I sometimes notice slowness when Amazon CloudWatch agents are installed on machines with less capacity, causing me to use other monitoring tools.
Check Point Security Management is really stable, and I have not experienced any downtime or issues with reliability except for when we do upgrades.
The SmartConsole used to administrate the security management is somewhat unstable.
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.
Maybe Amazon Web Services can improve by providing a library for CloudWatch with some useful features.
Amazon CloudWatch charges extra for custom metrics, which is a significant disadvantage.
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.
I believe they can improve the management by allowing better API functionality because the API now is a little complicated, making it difficult to do automation.
Additionally, it crashes pretty regularly, so they could resolve the stability issues as well.
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.
Licensing is quite expensive.
We pay on a three-year base.
Amazon CloudWatch allows me to set up and view even historical logs, which is one of the features I find valuable.
I like its filtering capability and its ability to give the cyber engine insights.
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.
Check Point Security Management has positively impacted my organization by providing centralized control, allowing us to manage all security policies and gateways from a single console, reducing complexity and saving time.
Check Point Security Management has helped my team save time, improve security, and reduce manual work significantly.
We can't work without Check Point because it provides the real visibility needed to manage the environment.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Check Point Security Management | 0.5% |
| Amazon CloudWatch | 2.1% |
| Other | 97.4% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 17 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 9 |
| Large Enterprise | 24 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 37 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 28 |
| Large Enterprise | 41 |
Amazon CloudWatch integrates seamlessly with AWS, providing real-time monitoring and alerting features. Its interface supports task automation, enhancing troubleshooting and analytics capabilities, while offering strong security and scalability at a cost-effective rate.
Amazon CloudWatch is an impactful platform for monitoring AWS resources and managing application performance. It simplifies infrastructure performance monitoring by providing comprehensive analytics capabilities, including application insights and event scheduling. Users appreciate CloudWatch for its detailed metrics, dashboards, and support in issuing alerts to detect anomalies. It efficiently tracks performance, optimizes resource utilization, and ensures service availability. CloudWatch is recognized for its robust alerting features and integration with other AWS services, further supporting its resource monitoring capabilities. However, there is room for improvement in dashboard customization, log streaming speed, and integration with non-AWS services. Enhancements in API integration, machine learning features, and support for third-party tools are also desired.
What features does Amazon CloudWatch offer?Industries implementing Amazon CloudWatch often focus on optimizing IT infrastructure. Companies in sectors like finance and e-commerce rely on its monitoring and alerting capabilities to ensure service uptime and performance. The platform's automation and analytics features empower teams to proactively manage performance and detect potential issues promptly.
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."
We monitor all Log Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
