We performed a comparison between Check Point CloudGuard Network Security and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security provides a range of valuable features including VPN Blade, IPS Blade, URL filtering, and Applications Control Blade. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls excel in areas such as embedded machine learning, robust security capabilities, and a unified platform.
Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has room for improvement in its support system, cluster creation on AWS, data protection visibility, DLP feature, user interface, integration, cost reduction, documentation, and flexibility in deployment. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls could benefit from improvements in customization, network performance in the Middle East, advanced features, integration, usability, GUI interface, training materials, SSL inspection, and external dynamic list feature.
Service and Support: While some customers appreciate the technical support provided by Check Point, others are dissatisfied with the response time. Palo Alto Networks has customers who praise their knowledgeable support team, but there are also complaints about long wait times and issues with their support ticketing system. In summary, the customer service quality for both products differs among users.
Ease of Deployment: While some find it easy, simple, and straightforward, others mention that it may be complex and require technical expertise. Users generally consider the initial setup of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls to be straightforward and not complex. They find it easy and user-friendly.
Pricing: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is known for its higher setup cost, however, it provides strong security measures and good value. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls may have higher pricing compared to other options, yet it is regarded as dependable and offers high-performance capabilities.
ROI: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security delivers a significant return on investment, ranging from 80-85%. Users have experienced the advantages of this solution within a short timeframe. Palo Alto NG Firewalls provide enhanced visibility, reporting capabilities, and overall security measures, leading to a robust return on investment.
Comparison Results: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is the preferred option when comparing it to Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. Users appreciate its user-friendly interface, centralized management, and ability to scale. It also focuses on cloud security and offers advanced threat prevention and detection. Additionally, it provides auto-scaling, malware prevention, and exploit resistance.
"Good performance, stability, and virtual domain ability."
"Consolidated our network environment at all locations, but mainly at our datacenter."
"The flexibility and ease of configuration are the most valuable features."
"The technical support is great."
"The most valuable feature is the bundled subscription, which is IPS, TV and web filtering."
"A strong point of FortiGate is that the graphical interface is complete and easy to use, especially if we think there is a list of operations that we are able to perform inside."
"The most valuable features are that it is very simple to configure and to manage."
"You can purchase switches and you don't need to do anything with them. You just put in the firewall and the switches get all the policies and rules that you already have in the firewall. With Fortinet, you just connect the FortiSwitch to the Fortinet and that's it."
"The most valuable feature for us is the cluster support."
"The solution helps protect network security by offering threat prevention, addressing vulnerabilities, and utilizing blades."
"The 24/7 online customer support services enhance effective operations and provide quick services in case of a system failure."
"Auto Scaling is one of the features that make me want to choose CloudGuard over actual HW."
"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."
"I like the firewall and the virtual machine. I also like that it's compatible with Amazon Web Services and Azure."
"The query feature is going to be a game-changer for us as we move forward."
"The Identity Awareness blade and dynamic tagging in Azure are valuable because they make access management automatic. Instead of manually setting up access for each new resource, it happens automatically based on the same access policy. This dynamic setup is scalable."
"The strengths of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are application visibility and application awareness. Their strong point is identifying applications for traffic. So all of the policies that are configured are related to the application and not to a port."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the robust firewall, which we can also use as a UTM device."
"The sandboxing is valuable and they are frequently updating their signature database. We get new updates every five minutes. That makes it easy to detect new and unknown attacks."
"There are many valuable features, such as wireless cloud features."
"The technical support is great."
"The user ID, Wildfire, UI, and management configuration are all great features."
"The solution does a great job of identifying malicious items and vulnerabilities with URL filtering."
"I like that Palo Alto does a good job of keeping the firewall updated with the latest threat signatures."
"The firmware needs improvement because there are bugs when a new release comes through. Sometimes, the configuration changes, and it's a bit harder to see where the fail is. The first time that you have the firmware, it tends to have some issues, and it's better to wait a bit to update the equipment."
"There is room for improvement related to the logging and reporting aspect."
"They sometimes hide some features and if you want to enable them, you have to go in the CLI, enable the feature and configure it through the CLI. Customers, typically, like everything to be done by the GUI."
"Stability and technical support are the two major issues I have found with Fortinet."
"We would like to see a better training platform implemented."
"It could use more templates for third-party site-to-site VPN setups other than FortiGate and Cisco."
"FortiOS is not simple."
"They have to just improve its performance when we enable all UTM features. When you enable all the features, the performance of FortiGate, as well as of Sophos and SonicWall, goes down."
"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."
"The costs are high."
"Its architecture and user interface need improvement. The user experience for this solution also needs to be improved, particularly in implementation, management, and operations."
"Check Point Virtual Systems is a complete solution, but pricing can be better."
"It is a very expensive program and there are additional costs despite the standard licensing fees."
"It's meeting our needs at this time. If I could make it better, it would be by making it more standalone. That would be beneficial to us. I say that because our current platform for virtualization is VMware. The issue isn't any fault of Check Point, it's more how the virtualization platform partners allow for that partnership and integration. There has to be close ties and partnerships between the vendors to ensure interoperability and sup-portability. There is only so far that Check Point, or any security vendor technology can go without the partnership and enablement of the virtualization platform vendor as it relies on "Service Insertion" to maintain optimal performance."
"It can be difficult to install properly without prior training"
"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."
"Customers don't want to buy extra things for extra capabilities"
"The data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities need to be beefed up."
"Its stability can be better. Their technical response from the support side can also be better."
"The only area I can see for improvement is that Palo Alto should do more marketing."
"There has been a recent change in the graphical interface. For the monitoring part, they could have a better UI."
"The solution would benefit from having a dashboard."
"I believe it would be beneficial if the solution could integrate with Google Chrome, especially for students who use Chromebooks. However, as far as I know, the solution currently does not support Google Chrome."
"I would like a collaboration system and reporting ASA policy needs to be smarter."
More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Pricing and Cost Advice →
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Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is ranked 8th in Firewalls with 117 reviews while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 161 reviews. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is rated 8.6, while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6. 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 Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls writes "We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis". Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is most compared with Azure Firewall, VMware NSX, Cisco Secure Firewall, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation and Trend Micro Deep Security, whereas Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Netgate pfSense. See our Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls report.
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