Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) vs Cisco Secure Workload comparison

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) vs. Cisco Secure Workload

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Check Point Cloud Firewall ...

Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security

5th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

160

Ranking in other categories

Firewalls (8th), Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP) (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (5th), WAN Edge (3rd), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (4th)

Cisco Secure Workload

Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security

8th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (15th), Microsegmentation Software (4th), Cisco Security Portfolio (7th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is 3.3%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 9.9%, down from 14.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud and Data Center Security Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Check Point CloudGuard Network Security	3.3%
Cisco Secure Workload	9.9%
Other	86.8%

Cloud and Data Center Security

Featured Reviews

Devraj Kc

network and security engineer at Max international

Cloud security has strengthened compliance and now protects internet access for our workloads

The best features Check Point CloudGuard Network Security offers are its threat emulation and threat extraction blade as well as bring your own license where you can use the on-prem Check Point CloudGuard and decommission it to use in the cloud. I believe Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has impacted our organization positively because it is one of the stable products that I have used till now, and we do not have to upgrade Check Point CloudGuard Network Security for any sort of CVE or bug in its OS and it is very stable. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has decreased the organizational risk because it provides compliance with HIPAA as well as PCI DSS by means of its compliance blade. It makes it easier for us to determine if we are compliant or not. It made me more secure because when you talk about security, Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is on top of the list with 99.8 in blocking malware according to the Miercom list. I believe it has had a positive effect and we have not had any incidents.

Read full review

Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

Discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map

We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration allows Cisco Secure Workload to learn about our networks and network tags, providing valuable insights into vulnerabilities related to the operating system and various applications installed on our servers. Recently, Cisco announced a new product called HyperShield, an AI-based autonomous micro-segmentation solution. While Cisco has not stated that HyperShield will replace Cisco Secure Workload, it represents a natural evolution for the company. HyperShield features dynamic policy discovery and enforcement; however, once policies are enforced, they do not change until a discovery occurs, requiring a re-enforcement process. This new platform operates autonomously, minimizing the need for user or security engineer intervention. I would have expected Cisco to incorporate more automatic discovery and enforcement features within the existing Cisco Secure Workload product. Instead of enhancing the current product, they have introduced a new solution. Cisco plans to honor existing Tetration licenses, allowing users to transition to HyperShield without additional costs, reflecting the investment enterprises have already made. From Cisco’s perspective, this represents a natural progression in their product line. While the product name changes, it seems more of a rebranding effort. The enhancements are greater autonomy, improved discovery, and automatic enforcement, which are now being introduced in HyperShield. Cisco Secure Workload offers automatic policy enforcement but cannot adjust policies dynamically as the application needs to change. Having used the platform for the past five years, the recent announcement has been reassuring. Cisco has confirmed that our investment in the platform will not go to waste. They will honor our existing licenses, providing a natural migration path to the new solution without any disruption

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The endpoint VPN is super stable. The routing is also very good. We tried a competing product first, but we could not make it work. We came across CloudGuard. The network routing across different virtual networks in Azure and AWS was way ahead of any of the other technologies. That helped us be able to cover the whole network using one single cluster."

"The tool's most valuable features are the REST APIs that help to automate the deployment and maintenance process. It helps us to reduce time to 15-25 minutes compared to the manual process which used to take around two to three hours."

"It makes my life easier. I have on-prem and cloud firewalls. I can use the same policies in both places."

"The product gives analytic reports."

"This product is quick to deploy, scalable, and is a fully functional firewall available in the cloud."

"Workflows across the company ecosystem have can flow smoothly without experiencing any challenges."

"This provided us a smooth experience while moving our load from on-premises data centers to the Google Cloud environments, and increased the adoption and the speed of the migration process."

"Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has had a strong positive impact on our organization across several dimensions, especially in security posture, operational efficiency, and cloud agility."

More Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) pros

"The most valuable feature of this solution is security."

"Instead of proving that all the access control lists are in place and all the EPGs are correct, we can just point the auditor to a dashboard and point out that there aren't any escaped conversations. It saves an enormous, enormous amount of time."

"The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage; the telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent, it's complete, and you see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network."

"It's stable."

"This product does everything that you need it to do and more and does a lot to provide visibility in a network environment, save time and money, and make the organization IT operate in a much more streamlined fashion."

"The only use case I can see that makes sense is micro-segmentation. I think there are other use cases for it. The main purpose of the product is to do micro-segmentation by collecting IP. That could be done by installing an agent, and then you have all the communication coming in and out. You could also use some flow sensors installed in the network that receive a copy of the traffic and then report that back to the system."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is security."

More Cisco Secure Workload pros

Cons

"Making it even easier is a good way to improve it more. When it's easier to use, there are fewer mistakes."

"As an administrator, I can say that among all of the Check Point products I have been working with so far, the Virtual Systems solution is one of the most difficult."

"Its price is fair, but it can be more favorable."

"I hope that Check Point continues to improve its technical documentation regarding the Check Point CloudGuard IaaS gateway and management system."

"The connection to the on-premises management requires using the CLI. It's not just a click, and you cannot edit in the management to prepare everything. You need to do it online and in real time. After that, you must execute a script, and then you should be happy that it appears in the management."

"The documentation could be much better."

"Regarding CloudGuard Network Security's integration with various resources like application gateways and application-based security groups, there's room for exploring dynamic access in those areas. A significant concern is the upgrade process. Unlike an in-place upgrade, upgrading the tool in Azure requires deploying a new resource, which can be hectic and less reliable. We have to spend something new to have the tool's latest version."

"At the cost level, the solution is somewhat expensive."

More Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) cons

"A feature that I was looking for was emailed alerts and notifications so we'd get them right away."

"I'd like to see better documentation for advanced features. The documentation is fairly basic. I would also like to see better integration with other applications."

"Secure Workload is a little complicated to use, and the dashboard isn't intuitive, so it takes a while to learn how to use it."

"The interface is really helpful for technical people, but it is not user-friendly."

"They should scale down the hardware a bit. The initial hardware investment is two million dollars so it's a price point problem."

"The scalability of this solution needs to be improved."

"The entire interface could be improved; it's ugly and uninviting, and Tetration tends to be a lot more cumbersome and not very intuitive compared to the biggest competitor's modern-looking GUI."

"The integration could be better, especially with different types of solutions."

More Cisco Secure Workload cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We explored both pay-as-you-go and build-your-own-licensing models, and found both to be competitive."

"Pricing-wise, it is pretty competitive. However, I would like to see more flexible licensing. There should be more of a consume what you need and true-up type of model."

"The licesning has some good features. For example, the scaling feature is free of charge, allowing multiple scale-ups and scale-downs over a two-week period, which is pretty good."

"The pricing is pretty high, not just for your capital, for what you have to pay upfront, but for what you pay for your annual software renewals as well, compared to a lot of other vendors. Check Point is near the top, as far as how much it's going to cost you."

"Although I don't have specifics for pricing, based on my overall experience, I can conclude that Check Point provides the best pricing when comparing to other vendors."

"The pricing is highly competitive and advantageous, offering great value."

"Licensing is simply by the number of hosts that you are looking to protect within your environment. It makes it much easier to ensure that you are covering your environment."

"The solution's licensing is based on the number of users of the VMs. We follow a pay-as-you-go model. Its pricing is competitive."

More Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) pricing and cost advice

"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."

"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."

"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."

"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."

"Regarding price, Cisco Secure Workload can be expensive if you don't have a budget. If you're not doing micro-segmentation, every extra security measure or enforcement you're putting on top of your existing environment will be an extra cost. It's not a cheap solution at all. But from my point of view, if you need to do micro-segmentation, this is one of the best tools I've seen for it. I can't compare that to Microsoft's solution because I haven't looked into it. I've looked into VMware and Cisco. Those are the only two that I know of. I didn't know that Microsoft could do micro-segmentation at all. Maybe they can, but I haven't heard anything about it."

"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."

"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Construction Company

Marketing Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	67
Midsize Enterprise	41
Large Enterprise	76

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	8

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

The tool's most valuable feature is its management console.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

Although I do not know much about the pricing or setup costs, Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is very cost-effective. If you want to secure your organization completely from all ends agains...

What needs improvement with Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security could be improved with faster policy propagation across large multi-cloud environments and more intuitive dashboards for complex rule sets.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Workload?

CloudStrike offers antivirus capabilities and firewall features for servers and VDI but lacks automatic policy discovery. This raises questions about the resources required to discover and write po...

What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?

What is your primary use case for Cisco Secure Workload?

When we onboarded Cisco Secure Workload, the usual use case was to discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map for Cisco ACI. As the network team, we chose to implement A...

Azure Firewall vs Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)

Comparisons

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VMware NSX vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 9% of the time

Cisco Hypershield vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 8% of the time

TrendAI Deep Security vs Cisco Secure Workload

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Product Reports

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)

Download Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) product report

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) report

Cisco Secure Workload

Download Cisco Secure Workload product report

Also Known As

CloudGuard IaaS, Check Point vSEC, CloudGuard IaaS, Check Point Virtual Systems, Check Point CloudGuard Network Security

Cisco Tetration

Overview

Check Point Cloud Firewall delivers advanced threat prevention and administration ease with centralized management of hybrid clouds. It offers seamless cloud platform integration, maintaining consistent security policies and enhancing efficiency.

Check Point Cloud Firewall is designed for comprehensive cloud security, ensuring perimeter protection, traffic inspection, and threat prevention. It is often used for safeguarding workloads and applications in public cloud settings like AWS and Azure. The firewall effectively controls both east-west and north-south traffic and supports hybrid cloud setups. Utilizing features like VPN, IPS, and URL filtering, it secures environments across multiple platforms, helping manage compliance effectively while addressing latency, API integration, and onboarding challenges.

What are the key features?

Advanced Threat Prevention: Defends against cyber threats across hybrid clouds.
Auto-Scaling: Automatically adjusts resources to meet demand.
Unified Security Management: Centralizes management for consistent security.
REST API Automation: Enables seamless integration with existing workflows.
Robust VPN Capabilities: Ensures secure data transmission across networks.

What benefits to expect in reviews?

Ease of Administration: Simplified management processes across environments.
Operational Efficiency: Enhances productivity by reducing risk and complexity.
Consistent Security Policies: Maintains a uniform security posture between clouds.
User-Friendly Interface: Streamlines user interactions and task completion.

Check Point Cloud Firewall sees frequent use in sectors needing robust perimeter protection, such as finance and healthcare, where compliance is critical. Its capabilities suit businesses utilizing public cloud infrastructures, managing complex hybrid models, or requiring strong VPN services and traffic control.

Check Point Software Technologies

Cisco Secure Workload is a cloud and data security solution that offers a zero-trust policy of keeping an organization’s application workloads safe and secure throughout the entire on-premise and cloud data center ecosystems.

Cisco Secure Workload will consistently provide protection by discovering workload process anomalies, stopping threats immediately, minimizing the risk threat surface, and aborting any lateral movement.

Today’s ecosystems are very elastic, and in the application-focused dynamic of today’s aggressive marketplace, Cisco Secure Workload delivers a robust security solution that works effectively with today’s most popular applications. The solution uniquely surrounds each and every workload to ensure organizations are able to keep their data, network, and applications safe and secure at all times. Cisco Secure Workload ensures that enterprise organizations can maintain secure applications by consistently building firewalls around every workload level throughout the entire ecosystem. The solution can manage applications that are deployed on containers, virtual machines, or bare-metal servers.

Cisco Secure workload is able to meet an organization's busy needs and offers flexible options such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and on-premises options. Using the Secure Workload SaaS options, users receive all the benefits of Cisco Secure Workload protection without the hassle of having to deploy and maintain the platform on premises. Users are responsible for acquiring the necessary software licensing and deploying software agents. Using SaaS, Secure Workload runs in the cloud and is operated and maintained by Cisco. This option offers the ability to scale easily and is a popular choice for SaaS-first and SaaS-only clients. Many organizations find they get the best TCO and achieve the best productivity and profitability using the SaaS options.

When choosing on-premises options, organizations choose between hardware-based appliance models (large or small form factors). Platform selection is dependent on scalability goals, the desired fidelity level of flow telemetry, and the actual number of workloads. When a user chooses to configure Cisco Secure Workload for a conversation-only flow telemetry for all workloads, each platform has the capability to scale up vertically twice the default platform scale. Additionally, with Secure Workload, it is possible for the platform to be scaled horizontally in order to satisfy the demands of extra large widely distributed enterprise environments using federation capabilities.

Cisco Secure Workload also provides a robust disaster recovery (DR) tool, which helps to make it a complete, comprehensive solution. The DR allows for continuous restore and backup capabilities that enable users to quickly remediate operations and data to a standby cluster in the event of a drastic failure or disaster.

Reviews from Real Users

“The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage. The telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent. It's complete. You see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network. Other valuable features include vast support for annotations, flexible user applications, machine learning, automatic classification, and hierarchical policies.” - CTO at a tech vendor

Cisco

Sample Customers

Physicians Choice Laboratory Services, Helvetica Insurance

ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) vs. Cisco Secure Workload