We performed a comparison between Check Point CloudGuard Network Security and Meraki MX based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Unified Threat Management (UTM) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Whenever I need something, Fortinet improves and updates the software for me."
"The usage in general is pretty good."
"I think that the UTM features are the most value, as it truly protects my infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is the simple configuration."
"What I like the most is the configuration and that it's simple, and straightforward to maintain."
"Overall security features and performance routing is good."
"Fortinet FortiGate's ease of management is the most valuable feature."
"FortiGate has a strong security topic which allows all of the Fortinet devices to communicate and share information which makes their security more powerful."
"Monitoring using SmartConsole and all its features is extremely easy, and I find SmartEvent an excellent monitoring tool for spotting threats and user behaviour."
"The most valuable feature I have found in CloudGuard Network Security is the flexibility to rebuild the firewall as needed."
"I like the tool's ability to manage cloud traffic locally without routing it through our data centers."
"The feature most valuable to me is the NDTX blade that Check Point provides, and I like how the solution is not vulnerable."
"Customers appreciate the CME plugin for automatically understanding assets within the cloud. This information appears in the manager, allowing users to tag the assets and adjust policies and rules accordingly."
"It's possible to sync the Check Point Management with the cloud portal, therefore allowing automated rules to be set in place whenever creating a new VM."
"The visibility, the one-pane-of-glass which allows me to see all of my edge protection through one window and one log, is great. Monitoring everything through that one pane of glass is extremely valuable."
"The most valuable feature for us is the simplicity of creating this environment. Even though our current cloud usage is limited, the process of setting up machines in the product and establishing an HR system was straightforward."
"We've had no issues with the scalability or the stability of this solution"
"It is easy to manage, which is one of the most important things for us. It is also flexible, stable, and scalable."
"The cloud management system is really valuable."
"The technical support people from Meraki are brilliant."
"It is very easy to configure."
"Since it has an integrated dashboard for all the products, customers can get complete network analytics regarding what the user is doing, monitoring, and observing."
"Intrusion detection and prevention (IDS/IPS): The best feature. It can detect malware, even a virus, and warn you by email about the device that has it. When the Meraki detects that something is wrong, it automatically blocks the connection or the intrusion, delivering a graphic report with all the necessary content."
"In general, Meraki MX is easy to work with."
"The reports are very basic."
"It is stable, but its stability can be improved."
"The graphical user interface of Fortinet's FortiGate product does not function well with text-based interfaces."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve the user interface. There should be more functionality and options through the GUI."
"I would like to see improvements in the support from Fortinet. Here in the Philippines, whenever we have problems with a Fortinet product, we mostly ask for support from distributors and resellers and not directly from Fortinet."
"I need user-behavior analytics, to find threat scenarios from inside the organization, insider attacks. That would be very helpful for us. In addition, I would like next-generation features for small and medium businesses. These businesses require UTM, all in one product. Fortinet must include it."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more storage in the hardware for log data."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"We have the product deployed on Azure China. One crucial concern is the version limitation; unfortunately, in Azure China, we are restricted to running version R80. Our architecture has a Load Balancer, VMSS CloudGuard, etc. The duplication in this setup prevents the application from seeing the original client IP. This poses a problem for certain applications that require the original IP for login purposes. Although we managed a workaround with a different architecture involving a WAF, it is not as straightforward as the standard Azure setup."
"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."
"We are at the place where we are looking at better integration with the management system. We use an MDS today, and it is self-deployed. We want to get to the Smart-1 Cloud, but we do not know what that looks like today because it does not support a multi-domain setup. Smart-1 should either be able to do multi-domain or there should be some form of taking a multi-domain environment and putting it in Smart-1."
"The user interface can be improved."
"It needs to cover additional kinds of infrastructure, like containers and serverless options. It's somewhat limited in that area."
"In future releases, I would like to see the data loss prevention (DLP) feature could scale along with the virtual machine scale sets."
"Improvements needed include better integration with Azure features to match on-premises capabilities."
"They are coming out with more SD-WAN express route support from a firewall perspective. That would be great."
"I do not have the kind of feature I need for SSL decryption in Meraki MX. It would be great to see the SSL decryption feature in Meraki MX."
"Right now, you can postpone the update but eventually, if you don't do the update, it will install the updates automatically for you and that's something that is not working for me."
"As far as what needs to be improved — nothing really comes to mind. It does what we need it to do."
"They need to improve the link between Meraki and Active Directory."
"The current lead time is longer for Meraki MX, and it needs to be improved."
"The problem is that the two licenses do not currently integrate. We have to create separate companies and do an interconnection."
"The product is quite complex to set up."
"Direct logging is something that can be introduced. In the absence of cloud management, the possibility of local configurations and on-premise logins becomes restricted. This limitation stands as a primary concern. When it comes to resolving issues, the inability to access login options hampers troubleshooting efforts. The stability is noteworthy; but when compared to alternative products, its stability is comparatively lower. Additionally, certain limitations are observed in terms of remote control. Price-wise, the solution stands out for its competitive and cost-effective nature compared to other alternatives. Operationally, it is user-friendly and requires minimal effort from administrators, making configuration hassle-free."
More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Pricing and Cost Advice →
Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is ranked 5th in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 119 reviews while Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 57 reviews. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is rated 8.6, while Meraki MX is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security writes "The solution has good threat emulation, threat extraction, and reporting features". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Meraki MX writes "Cost-effective, simplified, easy to manage, and reliable with advanced security features and granular visibility". Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is most compared with Azure Firewall, VMware NSX, Cisco Secure Firewall, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation and Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, whereas Meraki MX is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG, SonicWall TZ and Netgate pfSense. See our Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. Meraki MX report.
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