Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade Reviews

Our customers used this product for internet security, anti-virus, and remote browsing. We are system integrators and worked with Check Point as managed service providers up until a few months ago. I'm a senior security specialist.

This solution is very efficient. 

If you face any configuration problems, you have to involve the Check Point team so they can verify their software.

Until recently, we were integrators of this solution for five years. 

The stability is generally good if there are no power-related issues. 

The scalability is very good. 

The customer support is excellent - if you're facing any problems, you can write to the Check Point team and you'll receive an immediate reply. 

The setup of this solution is complex because it has the concept of software blade instead of appliance which is something that only CheckPoint can identify. Deployment generally takes about a week and requires an engineer.   

Palo Alto is very expensive compared to other solutions. 

If you're a software company, I recommend this solution and rate it nine out of 10. 

It has helped us to avoid large amounts of spam, which consumed space in our online exchange. 

With this, we also avoid expenses and also protect our users.

Protection policies were easy to implement to protect us from existing threats.

This tool is very good. It can be included through the anti-spam blade in our Check Point Gateway and is an easy implementation. The product helped us avoid threats from non-permitted domains and control domains with IPs reported as fraudulent or as threats.       

Check Point solutions are very good. It's a fairly old solution. However, that has been updated over time to become one of the best manufacturers of security solutions.

Check Point Anti Spam is a very interesting and good tool. It has helped us a lot against modern threats, spam, and domains that are marked as threats. In this way, we have improved business security,

The solution has also been modernized in Harmony. However, this solution is included in our Gateway and makes it easier to use.

It's improved against email attacks greatly.

This tool provides several quite interesting features:

1- Ease of Implementation through Check Point Security Management makes it so that it can be implemented through your blade.

2- The blocking policies are very effective. You can provide denial policies by IPs or even by reputation.

3- Monitoring what happens in the perimeter helps verify the tool's behavior in the face of threats, in addition to improving some current vulnerabilities to debug better as we spend time with the tool.

It is an easy-to-use, very good tool.

The tool is modernized by Check Point Harmony anti-spam. They can also modernize the tool through their blade.

At the Check Point support level, it has a great slope since the support language is only in English. Service hours are sometimes difficult to find an agent in Latin American hours, so a support case may take longer to resolve than expected.

The cost is high when putting through Check Point Blade in your Gateway.

The documentation is not so easy to validate. Some new users in the Check Point environment have a hard time. Therefore, the guides should be more intuitive.

We currently have a Check Point Gateway administrator through the Check Point Infinity Portal, with the Smart Cloud, where we were able to easily add the anti-spam blade, used for a while with excellent results.

We used email security and anti-spam tools from Microsoft. However, we prefer to have all security solutions centralized.

The cost depends on the license that is acquired. Sometimes adding the license later is somewhat high.

I recommend getting a good  Check Point vendor so they can help you with the requirements and costs as they are not that easy to find.

We have tested and validated other solutions such as those of Microsoft. However, it is more suited to what is sought in these solutions with  Check Point.

The tool is very good. However, they must validate if it meets expectations. There are already more modern tools that do the same at the Check Point level.

We use the solution for perimeter safety and to protect emails. Initially, we activated Check Point to offer greater protection against spam and attacks so that our users are safe as our organization is attacked often.

We managed to give users a non-invasive tool so that they are protected. The solution protects us as long as we are not executing large workloads. It's simple to administer. It's helped our organization detect problems faster when analyzing events, and it is very efficient - even when implementing new functions or configurations within the established policies. 

It has provided us with an easy way to avoid invasive mail. When users are constantly receiving advertising attacks, it helps to offer verification of the domains from each of those alerts and to have filtering without the need to get directly to the user. It provides users with less noise when receiving emails. They do not get unnecessary emails and spam has largely stopped. 

Today, we have several solutions that give us added value in the catalog of services. While we often take advantage of Check Point's cloud part, including Infinity or Harmony, I would like to see products that directly deal with mobile or native environments or other operating systems that we have within the organization. 

I've used the solution for three years.

Our organization had the need for an efficient way to solve problems surrounding mail, as there are constant places or niches for attackers to strike. We were looking for a solution that could collaborate and integrate in a stealthy and minimally invasive way to protect each of our collaborators and work groups. We had the opportunity to use this solution to assist us with security.

Check Point Anti Spam and Email Security has given some of the most value to each one of the collaborators of our organization. Once it is installed, it is not invasive. It has not unnecessarily blocked or prevented the normal operation of the users. The product is easy to deploy, quick to configure, and gives added value to each of our users, our accounts, and our organization. It ensures we are protected at all times. It is one of the best solutions we can have in our organization.

One of the most outstanding characteristics it has given to our organization and each of our collaborators is that it is not very invasive. The installation has been easy for us and has given us better service than the last generation. It is no longer like the old applications where we had to install user-by-user. The functionality is better. You can place it on your computers, and it is faster when deploying and protecting each one of our accounts. It's helped us avoid a great number of attacks.

What I would like to see in the future are new features that can be implemented in this solution. Many would love to have this solution and be able to manage it from any device, including native applications or applications that can be installed on devices such as Android or iOS. We'd like to gradually adopt portability and teleworking capabilities so users can really be anywhere with administrators able to help and give value to our users inside or outside the organization.

I've used the solution for about two years.

It is one of the most stable solutions. It is worth emphasizing that one of my common uses is to have it established in one of the solutions that are in a cluster, and this gives double stability. 

The solution is quite scalable. It will depend a lot on the capabilities of the SOAP where I have that function enabled. It's fast and simple to scale if I need more computing power.

I had the need for specialized support in Spanish. However, there are only specialists in the English-speaking language, and that has, in some cases, limited support. It's an issue when it is carried out by a third party or a different technician who does not have the capacity or the fluency to speak fluently in English. It is worth emphasizing that the best experts have always given us the most concern in Spanish.

Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade is one of the valuable features that we have available in quantum equipment. It gave us that layer of protection and event solutions to safeguard the security of events and activities. In our network, it's analyzing everything that enters our network or leaves it.

Among the attacks that we had to avoid events by SMTP, POP, or DDoS, and additionally, protect ourselves from image or language attacks. We've been able to block regions by IP addresses or locations.

We currently have several regions blocked by blacklisted IP addresses or insecure domain senders, thus raising the level of protection that the institution has. We use this feature frequently due to our mail service, which is a hybrid service.

This solution helped us lock down and have our infrastructure easier to manage.

We've solved protection against buffer overflow that has caused our server to freeze or be slower when receiving or sending emails.

The anti-spam feature helps to verify the reputation of the databases in a reputational way. It manages to compare each request with a complete base of IP addresses. This layer eliminates around 70 percent of the attacks that enter through and are part of the most common attacks that our less expert users receive. We are now capable of differentiating this type of incident. This database is constantly updated to protect the equipment and thus validate if these addresses.

I would like this solution to be more integrated into other applications that Check Point has so that it could be managed quickly and safely from the Infinity Portal, thus being even more cloud-based in its management. Among the things that I would also like would be an application for cell phones where you can manage this type of event, if required, be it Android or iOS. It would thus be more disruptive by taking advantage of market demands and ensuring protection.

I've used the solution for two years.

The solution is easy to install and enable.

Its cost is quite high and its package is sold as an additional license.

We are using 5400, 6700 and 6900 versions of the hardware in our company. We have approximately 1,600 users.

I find the Next-Gen firewall with SandBlast technology the most valuable feature. It is good for stopping attacks.

In terms of anti-spam and email, the pattern that they use to filter the emails could be improved. There are too many normal emails being considered spam. There should be an option to learn the different patterns specific to the organization where it is being deployed.

I have been working with this product for more than three years.

The product is stable.

The product is scalable.

Technical support by Check Point is good.

We previously used a third-party product that was hosted in the cloud.

The initial setup is a bit complex. Training the IT admins how to use, understand, and configure Check Point Anti-Spam and Email is a bit complex.

We have four people in-house for maintenance of the solution.

The pricing of Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security is reasonable.

Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security is a good product. For a bigger organization, they should consider that the pattern for determining spam does need to be more developed or enhanced.

I would rate this product a 7 out of 10.

The primary use case is to protect the organization from any attacks generated via email. As most of the attacks in recent days are via email, the organization has to be equipped and ready to mitigate this type of attack at the perimeter level, before it has been delivered to the user's mailbox or an endpoint.

Basic anti-spam filters are not capable of protecting against the latest generation of attacks. Therefore, for protecting the organization against this sophisticated or targeted attack, we concluded that the next generation of email security solutions is a must. Ultimately, it should be able to protect against any attack that is sent via email. 

At first, it seemed like a good solution but it wasn't; we have the mail server on site.

After six months, the mail was in fits and starts and the Check Point infrastructure was not responding properly. We realized that we were under a strong spam attack and had to install another antispam product. We were lucky enough to be supported by the Check Point team of specialists, who helped us to identify and solve the problem.

In fact, even with analyzing the logs, it was not something that was evident at first sight

This product integrates well and is easy to manage.

It is certainly very beneficial for a small business and works best in combination with other Check Point blades, such as the Data Protection Blade that protects against data loss via email.

It is useful for having alerts on the e-mail traffic trends. 

This solution is ideal for a small business or if you have a mail server in the cloud and most of the spam is blocked by the provider. It is not good for large email flows. If you require or move to large mail flows, the solution needs to be changed. 

Determining areas for improvement is not a question that can be answered simply. 

We should separate the antispam engine into two parts; the first that breaks down mass spam, and the second for refinement.

It would be good to dedicate a separate core, at least for the first phase, so that it does not take away resources from the system. The ideal approach would be to enrich the product with more functions, however, this would likely also lead to an increase in cost.

It would be useful to have more logs and in aggregate mode, perhaps through a specific report, that can be more easily used for troubleshooting. 

I've used the solution for three months.

The primary use case is to protect the organization from any attack generated via email. As most of the attacks in recent days are via email, the organization has to be equipped and ready to mitigate this type of attack at the perimeter level, before it has been delivered to the user mailbox or endpoint.

Basic anti-spam filters are not capable of protecting against the latest generation of attacks. So, for protecting the organization against this sophisticated or targeted attack, we concluded that the next generation of Email Security solutions is a must. Ultimately, it should be able to protect against any attack that is sent via email.

This product prevents sophisticated attacks, such as:

• Phishing Email attacks such as impersonation, spear-phishing, and business email compromise
• Account Takeover protection, where the primary aim of an attacker is to steal user credentials
• Protection against malicious files, malicious attachments, and malware. The primary aim of this kind of email is to infect user machines and steal data, or injecting malicious code on a machine so that they can move laterally and infect other machines within the organization, or perform a ransomware attack 
  
• Protection against data leakage that can be caused by an aforementioned attack, which can result in financial loss or reputation damage to the organization 
  

This solution is hosted in an inline mode for the protection of inbound, outbound, and internal email communication. It does not require any change in MX entry on the DNS Server for routing traffic to the service provider for Email Security.

The complete solution can be hosted on-premises for environments where the organization has an on-premises email solution, and it will remain invisible to the attacker.

This solution can be integrated with SandBlast Technology provided by Check Point and its most effective solution is breach prevention. 

It can be extended to the cloud as well, for protecting cloud-hosted email.

The solution can be monitored on a single dashboard with actionable insights and reporting.

Our solution required multiple appliances, as a single appliance only supports up to 5,000 files. This means that depending upon the number of files that need to be processed, the number of appliances needs to be increased. Essentially, the number of appliances needs to be sized accordingly for complete protection. The increase in the number of appliances makes it difficult to manage in terms of physical connectivity and configuration.

The product performs only basic anti-spam capabilities, compared to CloudGuard SaaS, which provides more robust anti-spamming functionality than the on-premises solution. 

YARA rules can be added only using the CLI, rather than through the GUI, which makes it difficult for the administrator.

We are not using the Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade at this moment. 

This solution is stable.

This product is easily scalable and a number of devices can be added whenever it is required.

The support and our experience with the OEM were excellent.

Previously, we were using the email gateway along with an additional license to protect against email attacks on the same gateway.

Setting up the product is complex. In the case of a single appliance, it is simple. However, it becomes complex with several appliances.

The solution was implemented with our in-house team along with the OEM.

The setup is complex, as it is dependent on the number of files that need to be processed via the email security appliance.

The cost is competitive with other security products on the market. 

We evaluated similar solutions by Cisco & Trend Micro.

This solution should be designed to support all functionality, including use as an email gateway in case the functionality is required, as well as having a strong anti-spam module 

Our company works in the area of developing and delivering online gambling platforms. The Check Point Next-Generation Firewalls are the core security solution we use for the protection of our DataCenter environment, located in Asia (Taiwan).

The environment has about 50 physical servers as virtualization hosts, and we have two HA Clusters that consist of 2x5400 hardware appliances, managed by an OpenServer Security Management Server on a Virtual Machine (KVM), all running on R80.10 with the latest JumboHotfix.

The Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade is one of the numerous blades activated on the NGFWs and serves for security improvement in the area of email filtration and anti-spam protection.

We rely on the Check Point HA Clusters to secure the DataCenter of our company that is located in Asia (Taiwan). This software blade - Check Point Anti-Spam & Email Security - is enabled among the number of the others, and is responsible for scanning and blocking the potential malware email or the email that contain Spam messages. 

As the security administrator, I see that the Check Point Anti-Spam & Email Security works quite well. The logs and reports show the daily number of messages blocked, and it's amazing. 

From time to time, I manually check the blocked emails and can confirm that 99% of them are trash. I am confident that the number of False Positives is minimal for this solution.

1. I like the flexible configuration set, e.g. both the content-based and the IP reputation anti-spam are supported, but you may choose to disable the mechanism you don't like.
2. The databases of IPs and text strings are updated as per schedule, which can be adjusted in the blade options.
3. It is possible to create and use the custom block list for the anti-spam blade in the policy, which we have configured.
   
4. When you have the IPS software blade purchased and activated, the emails are checked by the email IPS protections, thus increasing the security level even more.

I think that the pricing for the Check Point products should be reconsidered, as we found it to be quite expensive to purchase and to maintain. Maintenance requires that the licenses and the support services be prolonged regularly.

Alternatively, they should create some additional bundles of the software blades with significant discounts in addition to the current Next Generation Threat Prevention & SandBlast (NGTX) and Next Generation Threat Prevention (NGTP) offers.

We have also had several support cases opened for software issues, but none of them were connected with the Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade.

We have been using this product for about three years, starting in late 2017.

The Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade is stable.

The Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade scales well with the gateways we use, since it doesn't affect the overall performance much after activation.

We have had several support cases opened, but none of them were connected with the Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade. Some of the issues were resolved by installing the latest recommended JumoHotfix, whereas some required additional configuration at the OS kernel level.

The longest issue took about one month to be resolved, which we consider too long.

No, it's the first NGFW with email protection we onboarded.

The setup was straightforward. The configuration was easy and understandable, and we relied heavily on built-in objects and groups.

Our deployment was completed by our in-house team. We have a Check Point Certified engineer working in the engineering team.

Choosing the correct set of licenses is essential because, without the additional software blade licenses, the Check Point gateways are just a stateful firewall.

No, we decided to stick with Check Point after the demo.

The primary use cases for Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade are anti-spam, anti-malware, anti-phishing, content filtering and threat prevention. 

Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade helps my organization by enhancing email security, increasing productivity, improving compliance, reducing IT support costs, and improving threat visibility.

Features like real-time threat detection and prevention, advanced threat intelligence, sandboxing, data loss prevention, and its user-friendly management console make it a very good solution.

The solution could be improved by reducing false positives, optimizing performance, improving the user interface, and integrating with other security solutions.

I've used the solution for two years.

The stability is good.

The scalability is good.

Technical support is okay.

Positive

No, I didn't use any different solution.

The initial setup was good.

Our internal team managed the initial setup process. 

The ROI has been okay.

I didn't evaluate any other product.