Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) vs Symantec Data Center Security comparison

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) vs. Symantec Data Center Security

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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

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

244

Ranking in other categories

Firewalls (8th), Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP) (1st), Vulnerability Management (5th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (3rd), Container Security (6th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (5th), WAN Edge (3rd), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (4th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (5th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (5th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (4th), Compliance Management (5th)

Symantec Data Center Security

Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security

11th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

4.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is 7.7%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Data Center Security is 3.4%, up from 1.8% 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 Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security)	7.7%
Symantec Data Center Security	3.4%
Other	88.9%

Cloud and Data Center Security

Featured Reviews

Oscar Nunez

Ingeniero en redes y Telecomunicaciones at K-IT

Centralized management has reduced policy time and provides reliable multitenant protection

What I would like, what I think they should improve a little is the management of objects at large scale. When you work with multiple domains, there are thousands of network objects. Detecting duplicates and consistency across domains is a very manual process that should be more automated. Another thing: the SmartConsole interface is very powerful and very good, but the learning curve, compared to other solutions in the market from other manufacturers, could be modernized. I think it does not necessarily have to be done from a client application; it could be done via web, because via web I know that not all the options you have in SmartConsole are available. So it would be good if it could also be done from the web and all the options were available. Another thing that I would really like is more automation with Ansible or Terraform. I know it has improved in recent versions, but I think it is still not mature enough. Compared to other manufacturers that do have a bit more in terms of automation capabilities in integration flows with Ansible or Terraform, Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) could improve. Another thing that could be improved a little would be the TAC response time, because when there are very complex cases, I think there should be more speed initially, more ownership of those urgent cases, and not leave the customer waiting. This has happened to me: when I have cases open with Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) TAC, sometimes they do not respond and I have to keep insisting, and I think that part should improve. I do not know if it depends on who takes the ticket or on the severity of the ticket, but sometimes I have had to insist a lot, and that would be the only problem. Once they attend to me and become involved in the case, the responses they give are very professional and really help directly resolve the problems when there is a bug or troubleshooting to do. As I said, I would like to see a specific improvement in SmartConsole. I think if they improved it—how to say it—gave it a facelift so you could access all the options directly from a browser, that would be great, because sometimes, for one reason or another, you cannot download SmartConsole or, for some reason, the SmartConsole client does not start correctly, and you could do it directly from the browser. I think that would be a good option to improve. Another thing would be that in multidomain environments, I would like a global search function for objects and rules. That is, you could enter and search across all domains at once, because right now you have to go domain by domain, and in environments with many customers, you spend quite a bit of time; you have to exit one domain and enter another. So those would be the improvements I would like to see.

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Muhammad Ejaz ul Hassan

CEO at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Continuous server hardening has protected critical legacy workloads and simplified security control

Symantec is lagging on the reporting side. I have been working for 10 years and I have identified many gray areas. As a user protecting your infrastructure, you need to sell the value to your management. Management buys the tool for preventing threats, and it works for them. However, you cannot sell it because every solution needs to show what happened in the last few years or how you will be protected in the future. Reporting is the most important thing for the CIO level, not the admin level. I have seen Symantec really lag in this area. I am creating my own tool to build a dashboard to share with the CIO level because they want to know what happened last week, last month, and last year. These reports will tell you about activities. Symantec changed the licensing when Broadcom acquired the company. The question of who will provide support became unclear. Support has now changed and they are making money. I have seen that most of the time when you ask implementation questions, they do not answer you. If you have a problem, they give you a low-level engineer at the first level. This delays resolution. Support has to be better.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It offers remarkable flexibility in how we configure and utilize the resources."

"Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP has positively impacted my organization by making a clear difference in reducing the time spent tracking down cloud misconfigurations and helping teams focus on the issues that matter most."

"We have very good visibility or granularity regarding security."

"Check Point CloudGuard is quick to deploy and easy for the customer to use."

"It provides a huge benefit in many ways, offering a boost in confidence for secure cloud deployment and migration."

"CloudGuard's best feature is real-time detection. We can detect incidents and vulnerabilities in our code with one click."

"Most of the features are pretty valuable, whether that's a description of the attacks or the attack graph showing the vulnerabilities. If a single tool does all this work, the value is centralizing all these functions on a single tool. These are the cloud-native applications we talk about — containers, Kubernetes, and cloud infrastructure — and all those things are the primary focus of the CNAPP solution."

"The ability to drill down to individual hosts on an account and see which ones are affected is valuable."

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

"Overall, this is a pretty good product."

"The monitoring in the management console allows us to find out what is going wrong, and it gets reports even before the user reports it."

"We have not reduced manpower, the number of servers has gone up, but the number of incidents has tricked down to single digits."

"The most valuable feature is the centralized console, which can handle different products that we have."

"The advantage of Data Center Security is its ease of use and that it serves as a single unified platform, where I can apply all my security policies to protect that server."

"The file integrity monitoring features are the most valuable features of this product."

"Symantec Data Center Security, as a name, represents the perfect solution if you want to harden your servers."

"We use the product to prevent unauthorized access to data, systems, and servers. It provides essential features for data center security."

More Symantec Data Center Security pros

Cons

"The stability of the solution could be improved, but this is the problem of all the solutions in the market. This isn't just a problem specific to Check Point."

"For major upgrades, it's still necessary to destroy the VMs and re-create them again. Doing that would mean new public IPs as well."

"It needs to cover additional kinds of infrastructure, like containers and serverless options. It's somewhat limited in that area."

"The product is quite quick, but when it comes to communication, there is some lack of communication regarding escalation and related matters."

"There is a limitation with the version upgrade. We are using version 81.10 and from what I understand, it is problematic to upgrade this version. I do not know if that is true."

"I would appreciate a way to receive periodic updates, like through email. I am the kind of person who likes to receive data passively."

"Making basic rules is easy, but it's complex if you want to do something a little more nuanced. I've been unable to make some rules that I wanted. I couldn't evaluate some values or parameters of the components I look for. I haven't always been able to assess them."

"We were demotivated by the lack of native automation modules for the Terraform and Ansible tools."

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

"The product blocks certain processes, even after allowlisting them."

"There is plenty of room for improvement with this product, and it could start with platform metrics."

"Since the acquisition of Symantec, our customers have not been satisfied with this solution."

"Agent management is a challenging task."

"There is room for improvement in enhancing its graphical user interface for a more user-friendly experience."

"Adding more compatibility with common products like Microsoft would be a plus."

"I think that technical support in general is not really capable of doing their work. They don't have enough knowledge to provide quick solutions, so we usually try to resolve problems within our team."

"They need to develop a more flexible product that can be scaled such that it fits well into a small business or a bigger, enterprise-level solution."

More Symantec Data Center Security cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I suggest that you pay attention to the product pricing because while there are no tricks, and the licensing model is transparent, the final numbers may surprise you."

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

"The tool's pricing is good. Customers want it to be cheap. I consider the pricing to be elastic. CloudGuard Network Security is perceived as cost-effective compared to using the built-in tools provided by the cloud."

"I would advise taking into account the existing number of devices and add a forecast of the number of devices to be added in the coming year or two, to obtain better pricing."

"Licensing and costs are straightforward, as they have a baseline of 100 workloads within one license and no additional charges."

"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."

"We are using our BYOL. We are using our existing Check Point discounts to work with licensing. Overall, it is very competitive. Its pricing is reasonable to me."

"My experience has been extremely positive. It was not a concern because I had an account team that fought for pricing for our company. They were not pushing me to professional services for certain help. I was instantly getting a CloudGuard architect to help us out."

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

"The product is a bit costly."

"It is notably more expensive when compared to other solutions."

"Compared to some other solutions, such as CrowdStrike, Symantec is more expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Outsourcing Company

16%

Construction Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Outsourcing Company

19%

Construction Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	131
Midsize Enterprise	54
Large Enterprise	145

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	5

Questions from the Community

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

Since we use a unified standard for using policies and modules in Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security), we can clearly plan which modules we need to activate on a parti...

What needs improvement with Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

The main limitations of Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) are not in Check Point itself but in the cloud platforms on which it is deployed. Because not all clouds ha...

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

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) is the main manager that provides network security in different forms in my organization. The primary task that Check Point solves ...

What needs improvement with Symantec Data Center Security?

What is your primary use case for Symantec Data Center Security?

As a partner support, we handle all Symantec products for various clients. Currently, we work with DLP, Symantec Endpoint Protection, Data Loss Prevention, Data Center Security, Email Security, and...

What advice do you have for others considering Symantec Data Center Security?

I am still a Symantec partner. Price rating is five out of ten. Symantec Data Center Security is a perfect solution, but it needs to elaborate its functionalities and functions to the market. Peopl...

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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

Symantec Data Center Security

Download Symantec Data Center Security product report

Also Known As

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

No data available

Overview

Check Point Cloud Firewall, previously known as CloudGuard Network Security, provides advanced threat prevention, centralized management, and VPN capabilities, enabling robust cloud security across various platforms including Azure and AWS.

Check Point Cloud Firewall delivers seamless cloud integration with advanced automated threat prevention and centralized management to enhance security posture. It offers auto-scaling for dynamic environments and a comprehensive policy enforcement framework in hybrid settings. The unified interface streamlines administration across cloud infrastructures, ensuring consistent protection and reducing risk.

What important features does it offer?

Advanced Threat Prevention: Safeguards against sophisticated threats.
Centralized Management: Simplifies control for cloud infrastructures.
Auto-scaling: Adapts to changing workloads seamlessly.
VPN Capabilities: Enables secure connections across environments.
Integration with Azure and AWS: Ensures compatibility with leading cloud services.
Visibility Tools: Enhanced monitoring and management for security enforcement.

What benefits can users expect?

Enhanced Security: Comprehensive threat management reduces risk.
Operational Efficiency: Automation capabilities streamline processes.
Cost Management: Efficient resource usage with auto-scaling reduces expenses.
Integration Flexibility: Adapts easily into existing cloud platforms.
Simplified Administration: Unified management reduces complexity.

In manufacturing and conglomerate sectors, Check Point Cloud Firewall is utilized for protecting cloud environments and implementing network segmentation. It supports secure cloud migration on AWS, Azure, and GCP, ensuring compliance, perimeter defense, and traffic inspection, facilitating sophisticated threat prevention strategies.

Check Point Software Technologies

Symantec Data Center Security provides comprehensive server protection with features like hard disk protection, file integrity monitoring, and centralized management, making it suitable for securing legacy systems and preventing unauthorized access.

Focusing on server integrity and data protection, Symantec Data Center Security delivers robust intrusion prevention, system lockdown, and specific control over server access. With a customizable rule set, it enhances server hardening by fine-tuning access controls without relying on IPS signature detection. While offering significant advantages for managing legacy infrastructure, it also requires improvements in platform metrics, compatibility, speed, and integration with third-party products. Users face challenges with false positives, policy complexity, and compatibility issues, particularly regarding Microsoft and virtualization improvements.

What Key Features Does Symantec Data Center Security Offer?

Built-in Hard Disk Protection: Safeguards data through advanced protection measures.
Centralized Console: Manages diverse product lines from a single interface.
File Integrity Monitoring: Ensures data integrity by tracking changes to files.
Efficient Endpoint Protection: Provides strong defense against endpoint threats.
Robust Intrusion Prevention: Prevents unauthorized access with advanced threat detection.

What Benefits Should Users Consider?

Enhanced Security: Offers comprehensive protection for critical data.
Customizable Rule Set: Provides flexibility to adjust security policies to specific needs.
Centralized Management: Simplifies operations and improves efficiency.
Improved Server Management: Enhances control over server access and permissions.
Comprehensive Integration: Complements other security components like antivirus and anti-malware.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and technology, Symantec Data Center Security is implemented to protect server integrity particularly in environments using Docker containers and legacy systems. It supports remote operations, enforces stringent access policies, and locks down systems while offering valuable audit capabilities for code changes, especially on Linux.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Physicians Choice Laboratory Services, Helvetica Insurance

Information Not Available

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) vs. Symantec Data Center Security