We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and Cisco Secure Firewall based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Check Point users are happier with its VPN and with its pricing. However, Cisco Secure users are happier with its service and support.
"The pricing is great and very reasonable."
"The web filtering feature and the intrusion protection system are the most valuable. It is a resilient appliance. I never had an issue with it in terms of any security breaches."
"The product is very stable, easy to troubleshoot, and configure, so it has reduced the time it takes for support."
"Fortinet FortiGate's reliability is valuable."
"The next-gen features, the unified threat management capabilities are something that just about everybody is interested in at this point."
"The reporting and monitoring are very good."
"The base firewall features are quite valuable to us."
"We can detect any attack of viruses or malware at the first point of contact."
"The only area that Check Point still seems to excel in is their logging."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the Quantum Intrusion Prevention System (IPS). I also like the solution's functionality, like autonomous threat prevention."
"Being able to search in clear text is simple for the customer and for troubleshooting an environment."
"The scalability is very good."
"The uncomplicated configuration ensures that mistakes are avoided and rules are easily audited."
"The product is very scalable."
"While not being cheap, their pricing models are competitive."
"Check Point NGFW is easy to use, flexible and provides good performance. The security of the product is excellent, we do not have to do a lot of patching or upgrades because of vulnerabilities."
"For our very specific use case, for remote access for VPN, ASAs are very good."
"The technical team is always available when we have problems."
"Web filtering is a big improvement for us. The previous version we used, the AC520, did not have that feature included. It was not very easy for us, especially because the environment had to be isolated and we needed to get updates from outside, such as Windows patches. That feature has really helped us when we are going outside to pull those patches."
"Cisco Secure Firewall made it easier so that more than one person can handle things. We are able to have a bigger team that can handle simple tasks and have a smaller team focus on the deep-dive needs."
"Provides good integrations and reporting."
"The deep packet inspection is useful, but the most useful feature is application awareness. You can filter on the app rather than on a static TCP port."
"An efficient, easy to deploy and dependable firewall solution."
"The Packet Tracer is a really good tool. If someone calls because they're having problems, you can easily create fake traffic without having to do an extended packet capture. You can see, straight away, if there's a firewall rule allowing that traffic in the direction you're trying to troubleshoot."
"With the reports, you can see it, and you can get good feelings so upper management can go, "Oh, wow. That looks pretty." However, it's very basic."
"While FortiGate is cheaper than most other solutions, we're seeing increased license renewal costs. Most of our clients are asking for more significant discounts because the price is going up."
"The UTM filtering needs improvement."
"For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial."
"It does not have key authentication for admin access."
"There is room for improvement related to the logging and reporting aspect."
"I think there could be more QoS features"
"It claims it does DLP, but the degree and level of controls are very basic."
"There is a huge amount of revenue lost in the financial/banking sector due to cyber attacks, so we need to have something that can highly concentrate on future cyber attacks."
"Check Point solutions have always been more complex to deploy than their competitors."
"The price is middling. It's much more expensive than Fortinet, although not so expensive when compared with Palo Alto."
"The cost of add-on features is too high."
"The VPN setup could be simplified. We had to engage professional services for that. That's not a problem, but compared to other products we've used, it was a little more complex."
"Although they have it now, we don't have a license for it, and I think mobile device security should be a standard feature. I cannot control someone bringing their device to my network and what they do."
"While the logs are very good and easy to understand, when you want to download these customized logs, they don't have as many features compared to competitive firewalls."
"The end-user VPN could be improved. It could benefit from some modification."
"We use the FTD management platform for the boxes. The GUI that manages multiple Firepower boxes could be improved so that the user experience is better."
"Initial setup was fairly complex."
"The product would be improved if the GUI could be brought into the 21st Century."
"It could also use a reporting dashboard."
"Its implementation was not straightforward. It was mainly because we were running two projects together."
"I don't have any specific improvements to recommend. However, when you compare the throughput of a Cisco firewall to the competitors, especially Fortinet, what you find is that Cisco has lagged a little bit behind in terms of firewall throughput, especially for the price that you pay for that throughput."
"You have to know the ASA command line very well because not all operations are available in the graphical interface"
"VPNs are weak as this product still does not support route-based VPNs."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 275 reviews while Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Check Point NGFW writes "Good antivirus protection and URL filtering with very good user identification capabilities". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Azure Firewall and OPNsense, whereas Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and OPNsense. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Cisco Secure Firewall report.
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