Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall Reviews

We use the solution in a data center for security. 

When comparing this solution to others this one has better reporting, user management, and is easy to use.

No firewall is perfect but they could improve on the detections of threats.

They need to work on stability, it has not been the best in our experience.

We have been very satisfied with the customer service.

We have used other solutions in the past.

The installation was not easy at first but then after a while of doing installations, it became easy.

We do the implementation of the solutions, we have a team that does it.

We have found the price could be reduced. It is a little expensive.

I recommend this solution, we are going to continue using it.

I rate Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall a ten out of ten.

Our primary uses for Forcepoint are internet access, filtering, and intruder detection. We also use it for file sharing.

The most valuable feature is SD-WAN.

There is no support available in Fiji, and it would make it easier to have local support and somebody that we can speak with.

The pricing for this solution should be more competitive.

Forcepoint would be improved if there were more training available.

The vendor should make loaner units available for test and evaluation in test environments.

I've been using this solution for three to four months.

This solution is very stable.

With the SD-WAN capabilities, it is very scalable. We have about 6,000 users.

We were previously using a combination of Fortinet and Cisco, but have now upgraded entirely to Forcepoint. Fortinet did not have the same package available as Forcepoint that includes end-point security.

The initial setup is really easy. It is user-friendly and straightforward.

We had assistance from consultants when we deployed Forcepoint.

Forcepoint is very expensive but it's really secure.

My advice to anybody who is researching this solution is to consider the company's budget. Forcepoint is a very expensive solution but it is also very secure. For smaller companies, I would recommend Fortinet and Cisco, but if you have the money then you can look at Forcepoint.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We just use this firewall for security in terms of network access.

The support is great. They also have very good categorization. It's very good. It captures a lot of threats.

The first point to improve is just a matter of updates. We are moving to the cloud, so we want to use virtual licenses on the cloud. We need to move from on-premises to the cloud.

We would love to take another solution from Forcepoint, but unfortunately, the price is too high. That's why we are not considering using Forcepoing for our proxy and DLB. They have a very good DLB, but the matter, in the end, is the cost.

We have been using this solution for over five years.

It is very stable, especially the front end.

Yes, this solution is scalable.

I recommended Forcepoint to be implemented.

I would rate this solution as nine out of ten. It would be a full ten if it had integration with endpoints.

Our primary use case for this solution is as a perimeter between our internal and external networks. It is a critical security firewall.

We have an on-premises deployment.

The Security management console is fantastic.

The central security management center and the content management center are very good.

This solution would be improved with the inclusion of custom reporting. The pre-prepared reports are ok, but sometimes, perhaps once a month, I would like to create some custom reports.

In the next release of this solution, I would like to have an application proxy. In our previous solution, Sidewinder, we had this capability. For example, if you want to allow SSH traffic then you can set or restrict some features of this protocol, and you can look into the traffic using SSH Insight. Some examples of applications that I would like to see are Oracle and RDP.

The stability of this solution is absolutely fantastic. There have been no problems since we implemented this solution in 2015. It acts as the edge between our internal and external networks, and we see many attacks from the outside. They have all been blocked. There is no problem with this solution.

Scalability is fantastic. We are using an active-active cluster and there is no problem with adding another node. Currently, we have a two-node cluster, but there is no problem in adding a third node.

This solution protects approximately three hundred users.

The technical support for this solution is great. We have a support contract and we can create a ticket when required. They have solved our problems.

Prior to this solution, we used Sidewinder. That solution was discontinued and we were at the end of support for our hardware.

The initial setup of this solution is not easy. It is an enterprise solution that is very complex and not easy to set up.

When we replaced our previous solution, the process took approximately two days. However, there was a period of analysis after this that took about one month. The analysis involved our current system, our network infrastructure, and our data center.

We have three administrators who maintain this solution. One of them is on-premises and two of them administer remotely. It is not possible to manage the security system using only one person because it is too complicated. It requires a team to discuss problems when they arise, including how they should be solved, or how attacks should be blocked. Cooperation on these matters is necessary.

We involved our security partner for the implementation of this solution because it is very complex. Three people were required for the deployment, including a network specialist, our partner, and myself.

This is not a very expensive solution. The big advantage of this solution is that we can select the right model for our requirements, which is not too expensive. There are many hardware models and different appliances.

We have a license for an unlimited number of users because it is necessary for our solution. If it were not unlimited then we would have a problem. This is probably dependent on the appliance model.

Before choosing this solution we evaluated Check Point.

Forcepoint is my favorite enterprise firewall.

The security management center is the best part of this solution. It is always very simple to see the state of the firewall and to configure it to look for faults. The quality of this component is very high. Previous solutions were not very good with respect to the management center, but now, in this solution, it is very good. This is the main reason that I recommend this solution to others. This feature is absolutely necessary if you want to configure devices to prevent attacks.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

I like the Firewall and the IPS.

The network interface could be better, and it could be cheaper. It's very difficult for us to compete with Fortinet. I would like to see an Application Control feature in the next release.

I have been working with Forcepoint for more than ten years. But we first worked with them for Web Security, and we worked with the Firewall for about four years.

Forcepoint Next-Generation Firewall is a stable solution.

Forcepoint Next-Generation Firewall is a scalable solution.

It could be cheaper like Fortinet. 

I would tell potential users that it's difficult for us to compete with Fortinet's firewall. Fortinet offers good performance, a good price, and is stronger.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall an eight.

I work for a distribution company. We implement around 2,300 firewalls in Egypt for schools. We use the licenses to manage all these firewalls together and push policies for the firewall. We use it for security to restrict some rules for accessing the internet for students. 

The most valuable feature is controlling the traffic and the logging. They have real-time logins for traffic logs. Troubleshooting was very easy for me.

They should have a GUI on the product itself, not a separate management tool to be used on the management server or on a server to be used to manage the file. It should be all in one device. The device should be controlled through its own GUI. They also have to improve the learning center and the documents as the documents don't really help.

In the next release, they should improve the documentation.

The firewall is stable. We haven't had any stability issues.

It is scalable.

Technical support can be better. The support themselves are skilled but when you call for support you have to wait for a long time to get a response. They should improve their call center.

The initial setup was straightforward. It is done on the firewall itself. 

I recommended this solution mostly for large enterprises, a project that needs more than 100 firewalls to be managed. They have a very good management tool as security management centers.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

We are a platinum partner of Forcepoint. We work on most of the Forcepoint portfolio, such as web security, event security, and DLP at the endpoint level as well as at the laptop level. 

This solution can be used for different use cases. You can deploy it as an IPS near the data center zone. You can also put it in-line, which is recommended most of the time not only for Forcepoint but also for many other next-generation firewall vendors. Otherwise, you need to deploy it as a normal next-generation firewall and enable some specific IPS policies on the firewall itself. One of our customers needed encryption between remote sites.

We have a professional services team that handles the implementation of these solutions. We install the latest version of this solution. Most of the customers ask for an on-premises deployment. There are some customers who ask for a private cloud deployment.

It is a stable solution, and there are no issues so far.

Its management center should be easier to use. The management interface of Forcepoint is unique and a little bit different from some of the firewall solutions on which people might have worked before. Sometimes, the customers say that it is not very friendly, and we help them with how to use this management interface. It just takes a little bit of time, and after some time, it gets easy to manage or use. It is quite similar to Palo Alto, Fortinet, and legacy Juniper solutions. 

Their support should be faster. We have received complaints that they are not responding fast, which is not good for the vendor and us.

I have been working with this solution for almost five years.

It is stable.

We have around 50 users of this solution in our company.

Their technical support is not bad, but it is also not good at the same time. It should be faster, especially for the RMA. We understand the situation related to the pandemic, but their response wasn't good even prior to that. I believe it is something related to logistics.

The initial setup is of medium complexity. It is neither straightforward nor complex. If you want to implement a new firewall, you need to connect it to something called SMC or security management center, which is the main thing. It is the brain of the firewall, and without that, you cannot manage the firewalls. There are certain steps that need to be done on the SMC to do the configuration of the firewall. 

We are not a big company. We have two post-sales people who provide professional service. We have two to three pre-sales people as well as technicians.

I would recommend this solution in general. We have collected a lot of feedback from customers related to the management, which we will forward to Forcepoint, and then after some time, they will take action on that.

They have improved a lot since they were acquired from McAfee. Earlier, if you wanted to access SMC, you needed remote desktop access to the server or you had to install a small software from the SMC as a client to control the firewall. Customers used to ask us about why they cannot access the firewall management by UI or browser when most of the other firewalls already have such access. We received a lot of such feedback from customers, and when we escalated this to Forcepoint, they took a serious note of it. After some time, they released that option. You can now access the management center through UI, which is a good improvement.

I would rate Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall an eight out of ten.

Our customers use Forcepoint like a cluster, which is standby active and passive. They also use it for the perimeter firewall, so it's on-premises.

The primary use case for this solution is when a customer asks for something that does automatic optimization, as well as security at the same time. It also has high performance capabilities, including enabling the SSL decryption feature. I recommend Forcepoint for these customers. If the customer has another solution for deep packet inspection of SSL encrypted traffic, I recommend Palo Alto, because they already have a solution for deep packet inspection for the kind of traffic in the network. From my point of view, at this point they do not need Forcepoint, so I would recommend Palo Alto.

They are great in every single area except for the optimization feature. The optimization is not really ready. If you want very good optimization, you have to add it to the network. I think if they make some enhancements in that area, they will replace every other product in no time.

We also need more IPS detection rules.

I have a very good impression of this stability. 

After three or five years, if you want to change the model with a bigger model because of the network expansion, I think they support that. Our clients are huge enterprise businesses.

I've never actually contact technical support because I'm not the person who is responsible for that. I heard that they are okay.

The initial setup is straightforward. The installation is very easy. With full functions, it takes about five days to deploy.

We have a technical team that does deployment for Forcepoint, Palo Alto, etc. We do the  implementations of every security product that we provide. We use two people to deploy Forecpoint NGF: a senior engineer and junior engineer.

I believe the licensing fee is for one year, three years, and five years, or something like that. If you want to increase the support level from a simpler level to platinum, I think that there's a cost. There are differences between every kind of support, but I don't know the numbers.

They just need to make sure that their environment is ready for implementing the firewall. They have to prepare for about two hours of downtime because we need some downtime to do the initial configuration. They need to be prepared for the deployment plan. That's all.

The biggest lesson I learned is that you cannot provide everything in one box. You can provide everything in one box, but you cannot provide everything deeply with the same quality all in one box. You need to give up on something to gain another. I'm always telling the customer, what's your biggest issue? Is it security or performance? Is it task optimization? What is your biggest concern? Based on their answer, I recommend one of the vendors that we work with.

If he said that he does not have any problems with anything, he just wants to get everything, then I provide them with Forcepoint and tell them that they will have some issues in a certain area. If he is okay with that, we go with the product. If he isn't okay and cannot accept that risk or that point, then we go with another vendor.

What I learned from them is that you can provide everything in one box, but you cannot provide everything with the same quality in that box.

They have really good capabilities if you want to use it. So I do recommend them in some cases, when the customer needs some optimization, along with performance and security. If they want everything in one package, I recommend Forcepoint because they have everything. That's why I recommend Forcepoint in that situation.

I would rate the solution as eight out of ten. If they solve the problem of optimization and added those IPS rules, I believe that they would deserve nine of ten. Nothing is perfect, though.