The best features Check Point Application Control offers include next-gen application visibility with the help of application controls and the sync with the cloud, which continuously keeps track of the application signatures and known applications. Whenever a new application is identified, the signature is embedded into the application control signature database. The next-gen application visibility and cloud sync features are valuable for us because they allow us to provide granular controls over the traffic that is flowing in and out. Earlier, when we had the visibility up to Layer 4, we could only take action based on the IP addresses and the ports. If we were allowing HTTPS, we would allow HTTPS for all the internet websites. But now with Check Point Application Control, we can specifically control which applications we want to provide access to our internal users and which ones to be blocked. Check Point Application Control has positively impacted our organization because productivity has increased through putting bandwidth limits and restrictions to non-legit or less productive applications. The people in the organization are bound to have their time diverted towards other productive applications. The bandwidth control on streaming applications was limited, which saves bandwidth for the production workloads, helping to increase efficient communication among the organization resources. From the bandwidth perspective, earlier there was a specific site where the bandwidth was choking during peak hours. Currently, it is just 70 to 80% utilized even during peak hours, due to implementing bandwidth control policies along with the application control from the firewall devices. This has helped us reduce a load of around 20-30%.
