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Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs Cisco Secure Workload vs VMware NSX comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is 2.0%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 13.1%, up from 12.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware NSX is 11.7%, down from 17.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud and Data Center Security Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware NSX11.7%
Check Point CloudGuard Network Security2.0%
Cisco Secure Workload13.1%
Other73.2%
Cloud and Data Center Security
 

Featured Reviews

Martin Raška - PeerSpot reviewer
Unification of security features strengthens network protection
The overall network security is good. It's big-picture, all in one bundle. It's valuable to have everything in one place instead of spreading across different products. Unified security management positively affects a company's security operations. They have one unified view of the security. I can connect multiple gateways to the management and have it in one place. I can have reporting and views in a single pane of glass on the consolidated platform. It's easy to use. The management is the best on the market. It's very easy to work with, read, understand, and navigate. It helps increase our customer's security posture. We can see in some cases CloudGuard improves our customers' posture overall.
Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
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
MagdyRaafat - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced security and streamlined management drive efficient connectivity
Open source is a standard solution where you take a gray box or white box and put the software from your end. You can do programming with Ansible and make the network work in the software-defined mode, providing automation and management capabilities. I am currently working with VMware. It integrates easily with everything and can work with any system. When discussing micro-segmentation, it enhances security, providing more secure data in your data center while allowing for extra layers of security outside your data center. If you have an ACI, there is communication between locations, keeping your data secure in your data center and throughout the path it takes, such as to SD-WAN or the cloud. I work with cloud solutions including AWS, Azure, GCP, and private cloud. My overall rating for VMware NSX is 8.5 out of 10.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The few times I needed customer service, I was very happy with it."
"The network security has positively affected our confidence in secure cloud deployments and mitigation."
"The central management feature is a big plus, allowing us to manage both local and cloud gateways from one platform."
"The feature most valuable to me is the NDTX blade that Check Point provides, and I like how the solution is not vulnerable."
"Auto-scaling and zero touch are valuable features."
"Its integration and use of features, such as advanced threat prevention, have helped us a lot with malware prevention and also with avoiding exposure to false positives."
"Implementing CloudGuard has resulted in an excellent return on investment over one hundred percent ROI."
"I find it really useful that CloudGuard supports all the main players on the Public Clouds market including AWS, GCP, and Azure, as well as some exotic ones like Alibaba Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and IBM Cloud."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is security."
"The product provides multiple-device integration."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network."
"Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."
"Scalability is its most valuable feature."
"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."
"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."
"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."
"Provides protection for virtual machines."
"VMware NSX is a very good solution. It's also a scalable solution."
"It is easy to implement it."
"The dashboard is comprehensive and easy to use."
"One of the big improvements between the NSX-V and NSX-T is that in NSX-T you are no longer dependent on V-Center anymore."
"The ability to scale from different clouds. At the moment, the scalability of the product is the number one thing that I saw."
"The initial setup was straightforward. It follows a certain structure and you won't miss a step. It's all on the same level, step by step."
"I have found VMware NSX to be easy to use."
 

Cons

"The pricing is sometimes more expensive than some vendors."
"When upgrading the firewall, the old VPC containing the firewalls needs to be destroyed. After that, a new firewall is redeployed in the setup. Additionally, there's a need to separate the routing, and the routing from the old VPC has to be recreated in the new one."
"We miss full blade support for all blades that are compatible with the cluster. Especially notable is the lack of support for Identity Awareness in active standby environments for customers. In our setup, transitioning to Connective clusters would be preferable for maintaining connections during failover situations."
"The networking system updates, when delayed, can lead to misconfigurations and data loss."
"Documentation might become too complex or too spread out, especially for newcomers."
"Easier optimization techniques can definitely help with better performance of the OS, as using the vanilla software doesn't actually showcase the real capability of the software."
"Some more built-in marketplace templates would be nice. It would be nice to see more vendor assistance in deployments and backup of recoveries versus having customers rely upon that themselves. That would make it a lot more seamless and aligned with the standard on-premise model that is there. Check Point can extend the same posture that they have to CloudGuard and make that transition very seamless."
"The migration to TerraForm is a little more complicated, but we made it work."
"The integration could be better, especially with different types of solutions."
"There's room for improvement when it comes to Cisco Secure Workload. A couple of internal areas could be refined a little bit. They are trying to solve it, depending on where you suppose the agent is. Suppose you have the agent on both the server and the client, which could be the front-end server or web server connecting to the. In that case, if those two are communicating on RPC, the server can look into its configuration. It could go down and find the configuration file on the FTP server and then set the policies to it. But there are a lot of different FTP servers out there. It's also a complex case for the tool to support all FTP servers."
"It has an uninviting interface."
"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 multi-tenancy, redundancy, backup and restore functionalities, as well as the monitoring aspects of the solution, need improvement. The solution offers virtually no enterprise-grade possibility for monitoring."
"The product must be integrated with the cloud."
"It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."
"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."
"The solution could improve by having a more streamlined setup."
"The initial setup for VMware NSX is a bit complex; it's not as simple as it could be."
"Since most people are very much used to physical networking, they find it difficult to use VMware NSX in the initial stage."
"Its licensing model could be VM based."
"They could branch out to the physical layer."
"It lacks full knowledge of physical side of the network topology."
"I think that one of the more important things to see better integrated into the NSX product would be an IDS/IPS type solution."
"Our technical team is always looking for the solutions that they work with to offer more convenient integrations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It is not expensive."
"The price of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is very high compared to other solutions, such as Fortinet FortiMail. For the over 2,000 mailboxes we use with the solution it is very expensive."
"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."
"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."
"On average, it is normally on the lower end, being less expensive than Palo Alto or Cisco."
"It is the most expensive part of the product. There is a lot of room for improvement. Security comes with a price, but it is still a big chunk just for the service."
"We pay approximately ‎€150,000 ($166,000 USD) per year."
"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."
"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 pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."
"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."
"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."
"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."
"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."
"VMware NSX is a cheaper product compared to its competitor, Cisco."
"You can scale NSX if you have the resources, but it's usually expensive and complex to scale up."
"We haven't had to hire a dedicated network engineer because NSX handles 90 percent of it. The reduced overhead in terms of managing networks has been the biggest plus."
"If five is a good price and one is a high price, I would rate the price a one out of five."
"I'm unable to give information on the pricing or licensing cost of VMware NSX because I've never been someone who looks into the economic part of any security or virtualization solutions. That's handled by an entirely different team, and I don't even have the slightest idea about the costs associated with the solution, though I've heard pricing for VMware NSX is on the higher side."
"The implementation of VMware NSX can be cost-intensive, especially if an organization is looking for a comprehensive solution. The costs can vary based on factors like the level of conversation and discounts obtained during negotiations. Some government organizations, for instance, may find the prices relatively high, leading to concerns about budget hikes, especially when deploying the solution across the entire organization. Regarding maintenance and support, they are typically included in the standard licensing costs for enterprise-level businesses. While these costs can be significant, many companies opt for standard licensing to ensure they have access to necessary support and maintenance services."
"I was not involved in the purchase of the solution but I hear it is on the expensive side."
"VMware NSX isn't cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Performing Arts
7%
Computer Software Company
23%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise75
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise68
 

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?
Pricing in Jamaica is a major issue, with users often citing it as a reason for not using Check Point.
What needs improvement with Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?
They could improve the documentation. The interface is fine for me since I have been using it for some time.
What do you like most about Cisco Secure Workload?
The product provides multiple-device integration.
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 discov...
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?
We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration a...
What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
There are some very major differences between both the Products and to name a few. -Cisco ACI have physical network g...
What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
Once you know your way around the Cisco ecosystem, using Cisco ACI is not so difficult. It is a global product, so wh...
What do you like most about VMware NSX?
The product has valuable features for security and network extension.
 

Also Known As

CloudGuard IaaS, Check Point vSEC, CloudGuard IaaS, Check Point Virtual Systems, Check Point CloudGuard Network Security
Cisco Tetration
VMware Nicira, Lastline Defender
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Physicians Choice Laboratory Services, Helvetica Insurance
ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)
City of Avondale, Lumeta, Kroll Ontrack, Heartland Payment Systems, Baystate Heallth, Exostar, Tribune Media, iGATE, NTT Communications, Synergent, California Natural Resources Agency, Bloomington Public Schools, Columbia Sportswear, Join Experience S.A, Schuberg Philis
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai, SentinelOne, VMware and others in Cloud and Data Center Security. Updated: September 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.