Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) vs ShieldX comparison

The compared Check Point Software Technologies and Fortinet solutions aren't in the same category. Check Point Software Technologies is ranked #8 in Firewalls , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 2.6% mindshare in the category. Fortinet is ranked #10 in MS , and holds a 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Check Point Software Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Fortinet users who would recommend it.

Check Point Cloud Firewall ...

Read 166 Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) reviews

18,410 Views
11,230 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

ShieldX

Read 4 ShieldX reviews

1,032 Views
351 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Check Point Cloud Firewall ...

ShieldX

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security and ShieldX are two leading network security solutions. Users are generally happier with the support and pricing of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security, but ShieldX offers superior features that many users feel justify its cost.

Features: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security offers advanced threat prevention, seamless integration with cloud environments, and an intuitive user interface. ShieldX provides scalability, robust micro-segmentation capabilities, and enhanced security for dynamic cloud environments.

Room for Improvement: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security users report complexity in configuration, limited analytics capabilities, and the need for enhanced reporting features. ShieldX needs better documentation, improved integration with third-party tools, and optimization for performance in large-scale deployments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is praised for its straightforward deployment model and responsive customer service. ShieldX has a user-friendly deployment but receives mixed reviews regarding customer support.

Pricing and ROI: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is noted for its competitive pricing and favorable ROI, making it a cost-effective choice. ShieldX, while more expensive, delivers high ROI due to its advanced features.

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Firewalls

July 2026

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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 ...

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

166

Ranking in other categories

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

ShieldX

Average Rating

9.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Microsegmentation Software (10th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Security Systems solutions, they serve different purposes. Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is designed for Firewalls and holds a mindshare of 2.6%, up 0.5% compared to last year.
ShieldX, on the other hand, focuses on Microsegmentation Software, holds 2.2% mindshare, up 0.3% since last year.

Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)	2.6%
Fortinet FortiGate	14.5%
OPNsense	8.2%
Other	74.7%

Firewalls

Microsegmentation Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
ShieldX	2.2%
Illumio Segmentation	23.7%
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation	19.6%
Other	54.5%

Microsegmentation Software

Featured Reviews

Viral Shaa

IT Security Analyst at Eos Energy Enterprises, Inc.

Cloud security has unified hybrid policies and now protects critical energy workloads continuously

I would say Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is valuable due to its hybrid cloud security features. It offers granular policy management across the on-premises and cloud environments, giving administrators consistent control for configuration drift. We need to change the policy and the inbound and outbound traffic settings, indicating what traffic must be blocked or allowed, and this capability with Check Point provides significant input into our security strategy. Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) provides unified security management across both hybrid clouds and on-premises environments. Unified security management affects my security operations positively, as we maintain critical systems on the cloud that require strong security and air gap networks. This cloud-native routing and policy installation helps close gaps in protecting critical applications and environments from exposure to the public cloud. From an administrator's perspective, Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) enhances our organization with clearer and more intuitive logging, making decisions easier to understand without deep investigation. In the CloudGuard UI, I can see which threats have triggered alerts, and this information is available on the unified dashboard that provides details of the threat analysis upon alert. As a small team, we log into the console to check specific alerts for high or low network usage or machine shutdowns. If needed, I tune the configuration policy, and the visualizing tools with reporting functionality simplify tracking changes made on the firewall, including the relevant source IP or device names. We ingest logs into our SIEM for detailed oversight, which allows us to monitor any administrative changes. Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) has significantly reduced our organizational risk. We clearly understand our threat landscape and the associated risks. Onboarding the CloudGuard solution directly into our cloud environment has significantly lowered the risks throughout the network and it is easy to launch. When we assess our security posture with third-party assessments, we gain granular visibility into our network pre- and post-CloudGuard installation, showing how we have addressed significant risks and secured vulnerabilities.

Read full review

MichaelProcyshyn

IT Director at park holidays uk

Proactively monitors, blocks, and reports what it has blocked; and self-updates meaning there is zero maintenance

The most valuable feature is the automatic scaling. With its microservices, it scales both up and down, depending on traffic and throughput. The traffic through our website depends on holiday bookings. It's very quiet in November through January, and then our traffic picks up quite rapidly and, at our peak, we will take in excess of a million pounds of business a day through our website. The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides. Uptime on the system has been 648 days and we do very little to it because it self-updates and alerts. It does everything that we need it to do, so the administration side of it is zero. One of the beauties about ShieldX is that it's such a good "fire-and-forget" product.

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

"We were able to seamlessly extend our on-premise protection to Cloud and didn't require any effort."

"The features of the solution which I have found most valuable are its flexibility and agility. It's a fully scalable solution, from our perspective. We can define scaling groups and, based on the load, it will create new instances. It's truly a product which is oriented toward the cloud mindset, cloud agility, and this is a great feature."

"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 URL filtering provides a lot of added value compared to the Azure Firewall."

"It enabled us to move to cloud workloads safely while having the same level of security as we have on-prem."

"The most valuable feature is that we can use the same manager server that we use on our own Check Point firewalls. We integrated CloudGuard on that manager and we can use the same kind of protections that we use on the on-prem firewalls, like the IPS and antivirus policy. We can have the same kind of protection on the Cloud environment that we have on-premise."

"Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has helped us reduce our organizational risk significantly, and I believe in Check Point strongly because it has only four critical CVEs from 2020 to 2025, compared to its competition, which has had more than fifteen to sixteen critical vulnerabilities from 2020 to 2025, which proves that Check Point's secured firewall OS security is better than its competitors and it will provide the best security to its network."

"The solution, overall, has worked very well for our organization."

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

"For other security professions who are looking for something which is low in cost that does microsegmentation, they should look at ShieldX."

"It has helped us tighten our security posture. Now, staff can only access things that they should be accessing."

"The most valuable feature is the automatic scaling. With its microservices, it scales both up and down, depending on traffic and throughput."

"The Adaptive Intention Engine is fantastic. It allows us to develop security policies using the language of our internal customers. It's machine-learning applied to security workflows. That allows us to much more easily construct the policies that will protect those workflows."

"ShieldX has been designed from the very beginning to work well in cloud environments. It understands autoscaling, automation, and auto-configuration. These are the things which are important in today's operating environment."

"ShieldX makes it a lot easier and a lot simpler to define your policies and define your rules, and that greatly reduces the opportunity for user error."

"We were able to see what devices are talking to each other, giving us more visibility."

"The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides."

More ShieldX pros

Cons

"Check Point CloudGuard Network Security needs to improve the management of the actual firewalls. Improvement is also needed for the consolidated UI of different security aspects."

"The price of the solution could be reduced, it is expensive."

"Check Point has a history of moving fast with software release and upgrade cycles which are difficult to keep up with at times."

"I find troubleshooting a bit challenging with Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security); one area needing improvement is log clarity, as sometimes policy installation takes longer than expected, and resolving cloud-native routing conflicts requires advanced knowledge due to the differences in how AWS and GCP operate."

"They can improve their security features to the next advanced level so that their efficiency in catching the malware can become 100%, and there is no scope for any data loss or leakage from the system due to any issue."

"In case the device is inaccessible due to some issue such as CPU or memory, there is no separate port or hardware partition provided for troubleshooting purposes."

"I think the initial setup of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security can be simpler; onboarding could be more intuitive for new cloud teams, and it could also have more flexible custom reporting and better documentation examples."

"Ease of management and reporting would be crucial for capacity planning and budgeting. If I see capacity increasing, I want to be able to plan appropriately."

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

"We are having some issues with their LDAP and integrating it with the Active Directory. We can't seem to set it up."

"I would like better reports and in-depth reporting."

"They need to be consistent in performance and capabilities over time, given the fact that this is new and I want to see where this goes in the next year or so. As the vendor continues to evolve and add future functionality, we want to make sure that we are still keeping up with the integrations, etc. Time will be the key factor here. The proper support for some of the latest technologies, Docker containers, etc. They need to keep up with threat landscape, so we will see how the security get layered. This is what we are going to be keeping an eye on."

"They need to be consistent in performance and capabilities over time, given the fact that this is new and I want to see where this goes in the next year or so."

"With any kind of tool like ShieldX, where you're in the cloud instead of a traditional firewall, you're using CPU resources in those environments to provide the protection. So there's a cost associated with CPU resources. I'm pressing upon them to make the product much more efficient and use less CPUs to do the same thing."

"There should be a bit more customer care, with regular review meetings on it or regular reports. It would be nice to have a quarterly or biannual review of what ShieldX has blocked."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When customers compare it with Sophos or any other products, the price is on the higher side."

"CloudGuard Network Security's pricing is fine."

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

"The product is expensive but also valuable."

"They're a little high in price. The price could be lower."

"The licensing model has since transitioned to a cluster-based variant."

"The pricing and licensing have been good. We just had to do a license increase for our portion of it. We had that done within a couple of days. Given the fact that it's purely a software-based license, it ends up being even quicker than doing it for an on-prem firewall."

"Although I am not in sales and cannot comment extensively on pricing, it is known that Check Point’s licensing can be complex. However, it is a similar experience to other gateways and not particularly unique for cloud protection."

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

"We are actually expecting our costs to drop in the coming year, but it is just a matter of the licensing expiring. That is going to happen in the next six months or so. Then, we will start to see a decrease in overall spend."

"ShieldX ensures that we can have the separation needed for our environment to avoid drastically increasing the cost on the licensing side. From this perspective, it's been very positive and helpful."

"For other security professions who are looking for something which is low in cost that does microsegmentation, they should look at ShieldX. It might not be the big name out there, but it does everything that you are looking for in microsegmentation at a very low price."

"We are very happy with the pricing and licensing. It's about getting a site-wide license. One of the challenges that we've had with our previous vendor had been the cost of licensing."

"For a three-year deal we paid £55,000 plus tax... But, and this is a big "but," this was over two years ago. ShieldX had only just hit the market. We were the first company in Europe to buy ShieldX."

"ShieldX also enables us to migrate to cloud environments faster. That is an important part of it for sure because it takes the exact same policies that we would apply to our on-premise environment and enables us to simply apply them to the cloud. It becomes one policy for both on-prem and for the cloud."

"Security policies are now applied as applications are going up. Because it's automated, we don't have the three to four week delay. The insertion of applications in the cloud for us dropped from an average of three to four weeks to a couple of days."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Outsourcing Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	72
Midsize Enterprise	39
Large Enterprise	80

No data available

Questions from the Community

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

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is comparatively conservative in terms of pricing; it is not a very expensive product. If you are a Check Point shop with multiple ...

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What needs improvement with Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is definitely lagging behind its peers. I am not sure what the reason is. Compared to Palo Alto, they are not there in terms of cap...

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What is your primary use case for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is a cloud-native application protection platform and a suite of multiple products. We primarily use it for our hybrid multi-cloud ...

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Comparisons

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

Compared 7% of the time

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)

Compared 6% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate vs Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)

Compared 6% of the time

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

Compared 5% of the time

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)

Compared 4% of the time

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

Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) vs ShieldX

Compared 16% of the time

Illumio Segmentation vs ShieldX

Compared 15% of the time

VMware NSX vs ShieldX

Compared 9% of the time

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs ShieldX

Compared 9% of the time

Nutanix Flow Network Security vs ShieldX

Compared 7% of the time

More ShieldX Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)

July 2026

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) report

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

Buyer's Guide

ShieldX

June 2026

Download ShieldX product report

Also Known As

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

APEIRO, ShieldX APEIRO

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

ShieldX offers advanced, scalable security for cloud and data center environments, addressing dynamic threats with precision. Its robust framework enables efficient threat detection and response, safeguarding critical infrastructure.

Specialized in delivering comprehensive security, ShieldX is designed for organizations looking to protect their cloud assets and on-premises data centers. It integrates seamlessly within existing IT frameworks, providing multi-layered defense against cyber threats. ShieldX uses machine learning and AI to detect anomalies and respond to potentially malicious activities, ensuring data integrity and availability while maintaining regulatory compliance.

What are the most important features of ShieldX?

Dynamic Security Policies: Automatically adjust security measures based on current threats.
Micro-Segmentation: Provides granular control of traffic between workloads.
Automated Threat Detection: Leverages AI to identify and mitigate threats instantly.
Comprehensive Visibility: Gain insights into network activities across all environments.

What benefits should users look for in ShieldX reviews?

Scalability: Easily adapts to growing security needs without disrupting operations.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces overhead by streamlining security management processes.
Enhanced Compliance: Supports adherence to regulatory requirements with minimal effort.
Increased Uptime: Minimizes downtime by preemptively addressing threats.

ShieldX is widely implemented in industries like finance and healthcare, where data protection is critical. Its versatile security protocols are tailored to meet specific sector needs, fostering a reliable defense against sector-specific threats. Organizations in these fields leverage ShieldX to ensure client data confidentiality and operational continuity.

Fortinet

Sample Customers

Physicians Choice Laboratory Services, Helvetica Insurance

Iowa State University

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