Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) Reviews

I like the tool's ability to manage cloud traffic locally without routing it through our data centers.

The product needs to improve technical support.

I have been using the product for four years. 

The tool's support has been excellent. We can maintain our Check Point Firewalls effectively, both on-premises and in the cloud.

The tool's monthly costs have undergone a significant reduction, dropping from approximately 12,000 euros to around 4,000. This represents a cost reduction of over 60 percent. However, it's essential to note that while costs decreased in some areas, they increased in others due to shifts in our environment. As our overall environment has grown, currently connecting 50 accounts to the cloud, it's challenging to directly compare costs with the state of our setup three years ago.

Initially, we faced some challenges, especially with the AWS transit gateway, involving manual routing configurations and complex setup tasks. I rate the overall product a nine out of ten. 

For the Azure platform, especially Azure endpoint protections and other network aspects, we utilize CloudGuard Network Security to secure the egress connection. This includes configuring and maintaining express route connectivity between on-premises and Azure.

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 tool is cloud-based and scalable. As our resources scale up or down, the system automatically adapts. This reduces the need for manual work, allowing us to manage the entire cloud infrastructure with a smaller workforce. It helps with automation. 

Regarding CloudGuard Network Security's integration with various resources like application gateways and application-based security groups, there's room for exploring dynamic access in those areas. A significant concern is the upgrade process. Unlike an in-place upgrade, upgrading the tool in Azure requires deploying a new resource, which can be hectic and less reliable. We have to spend something new to have the tool's latest version. 

I have been using the product for four years. 

Stability is generally good, and I don't have many complaints due to its scalability. When there are hardware issues, it automatically sets up a new, healthy instance. Overall, it contributes to a stable environment for us.

The solution's scalability is excellent, but we do encounter some restrictions with the API on the cloud platform. This occasionally causes issues with the frequent pulling up of new resources.

Our deployment model involves VM scale sets. We have set up instances across three environments: production, staging, and development. This structure allows for easy testing in the development environment before moving on to the production environment. We utilize Check Point's professional services to integrate, deploy, and build a cloud platform for CloudGuard Network Security.

We have seen a return on investment from CloudGuard Network Security. As more workloads shift from on-premises to the product, the costs associated with on-premises infrastructure decrease. Additionally, its dynamic and scalable nature in Azure allows us to maintain control. 

The solution's licensing is based on the number of users of the VMs. We follow a pay-as-you-go model. Its pricing is competitive. 

CloudGuard Network Security can manage security for both our hybrid cloud and on-premises systems. Currently, we have separate solutions for on-premises and the cloud. We also use Smart-1 Cloud from the Infinity portal. We haven't integrated the tool with both Azure and on-prem environments. 

I have about an eight out of ten confidence level in our cloud network security with the product. It is because of Azurre's robust and dynamic nature. It is easy to incorporate anything new that comes up. We can integrate any new steps in Azure concerning the blades, CloudGuard Network Security, and Check Point. 

Cloud-native firewalls lack functionalities such as IPS, which are exclusive to products like Check Point or other vendor-specific solutions. This is why we opted for CloudGuard Network Security as an additional layer, complementing the limitations of Azure's native or any cloud-native firewalls.

We are already using Check Point for our on-prem environment. The cloud solution was easy to integrate with our existing infrastructure. 

I rate the overall product a six out of ten. Due to certain limitations in the integration between Azure and CloudGuard Network Security, I currently rate the experience as a six. However, I'm hopeful that Check Point is working on its new release. 

We have used CNAPP on our OpenShift test cluster but are planning to deploy it in our production clusters. We used CNAPP to enhance the visibility of our cloud-deployed applications. It offers various modules to do so. For example, the Posture Management module shows you exposed secrets and security misconfigurations and also gives you hints and ready-to-use JSON configuration files to fix them. 

Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) gives you visibility and management automation of identities, roles, entitlements, and privileges in your cloud environments. This helps you find and fix identity- and role-related security holes by constructing a complex privileges graph, which shows you granted permissions and enforced ones, suggesting you enforce the stricter and more secure enforced ones over the ones you granted.

The various CNAPP modules have granted more visibility of our cloud applications to our system engineers and developers. Doing so helps our transition to the cloud by making the management and administrative tasks of our cloud and system engineers easier, as well as suggesting and helping to prioritize patching and updating.

The most valuable features include the Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) module, Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), and Cloud Workload Protection (CWP).

The costs are really high if you want the entire capabilities of the platform. However, it is really motivated by the great value of the product. Moreover, you can buy individual licenses for the different modules if you don't need some of them.

I've used the solution for one year.

We use Check Point firewalls and SMS servers in on-prem DC and in multi-cloud environments extensively. These are used to protect the perimeter, DMZ, and internal network to protect and inspect network traffic.

The firewalls are best of breed and provide extensive rich features and a diverse range of protection against DDoS, malware, ransomware, and zero-day attacks. Also, it is used for terminating client and mobile VPN tunnels, URL filtering, IDP, DLP, etc. 

The environment is Internal and a multi-tenant hosted for external clients which is a complex setup.

The new Check Point firewalls are best-of-breed and provide next-gen firewall features with AI and ML capabilities. This helps to reduce the operational support overhead and protects against new emerging threats.

Previously we used Juniper, Cisco, and other firewall platforms which have very limited capabilities and offer no inspection or threat-prevention features at all. 

Check Point has changed this dynamic completely and offers a complete security solution to protect all digital assets which is immensely helpful.

Identity awareness, URL filtering, IDS, DLP, Content Filtering, VPN, and Application Control are all excellent. They provide features to inspect internet traffic, data protection compliance, and DDoS attack detection and protection.

The Check Point firewall product that we picked up has an excellent feature set and all the required licenses, it's a nicely engineered firewall technology and has a great support team to escalate.

Features like threat prevention and protection are good to have to protect against zero-day attacks, malware, and ransomware.

Software bugs and OS releases can be very fast to keep up with. Check Point has a history of moving fast with software release and upgrade cycles which are difficult to keep up with at times.

New features should have a single-pane-of-glass view for on-prem DC and cloud environments. 

Licensing costs are very high compared to other vendors. Check Point needs to be competitive to keep the cost down for the customers and partners. 

The previous Check Point OS model had to support multiple OSs which was difficult and cumbersome (i.e. SPLAT, IPSO, GAIA).

I've used the solution for ten years.

We did use a different solution and wanted to have better security capability and visibility.

The solution is expensive but feature-rich.

We looked at other options and checked if the firewalls had all the security and compliance features required by the organization.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has a beautiful threat emulation different from the market. They have a threat extraction feature. The solution's zero phishing feature is pretty much commendable. The solution has one of the best reporting any vendor has in network security. The solution also has a CSPM or posture management tool inbuilt into CGNS or network security.

The solution’s technical support, DNS security and training could be improved. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security's training and reachability to the customer can be done a bit better. One recommendation from my side is that the handover of the tasks can be a bit better. If an engineer is on a ticket and their shift gets over, the smooth handshake between the two engineers can be a bit better.

I have been using Check Point CloudGuard Network Security for more than one and a half years.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is a stable product.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is a scalable product. I would recommend the solution to small, medium, and enterprise companies because it has a scalable model. The solution is over the cloud and can be integrated with any company.

Previously, I worked with Palo Alto, a direct competitor of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security. CloudGuard Network Security's threat extraction features, reporting features, and threat emulation are better than Palo Alto's. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is more user-friendly than Palo Alto. On the other hand, Palo Alto has a bit better DNS security than Check Point CloudGuard Network Security.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is easy to deploy, and if you are unable to do it, you can get support from the OEM.

The solution's implementation depends on the customer's network scenario and policies. The initial setup doesn't take more than 30 minutes, and the rest can be done later.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security's pricing is far better than Palo Alto's because Palo Alto is very expensive. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security comes at a price that even a small business can manage to buy, whereas Palo Alto would restrict you to enterprise customers. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security's licensing cost changes from country to country. The solution has different discount models across the globe in regions like Asia and Ireland.

People who want to implement Check Point CloudGuard Network Security should focus during the planning phase. If planning is done correctly and the prerequisites are matched perfectly, they won't face any challenges during deployment. But it's very important to check the prerequisites' limitations.

Overall, I rate Check Point CloudGuard Network Security nine and a half out of ten.

We use the solution to protect workloads and users on the cloud, including both internal and external users. The solution must monitor user roles, the overall posture of the cloud application, and database and web servers that are exposed to the internet. It is an improvement over the default Amazon AWS security posture because it is sensitive to the context in which the application is being used, such as whether it is being used by a public user or an internal user who is managing the system on the cloud.

We used on-premises solutions until recently. However, we are now moving to the cloud for all of our applications. Posture management tools are now essential, and we must have them, regardless of whether they are from Tenable, Check Point, CrowdStrike, or another vendor. This solution is cost-effective, so we chose it, but we may change it in the future.

Embedded machine learning in the core of the firewall to provide in-line real-time attack prevention is most valuable. This is because analytics and machine learning capabilities come much later. In a high-volume situation, things can go bad quickly. Therefore, an in-line alert mechanism is much better than any other.

Visibility is the most important part. On the cloud, shared resources can make it difficult to see all of the resources that are deployed. This solution helps to keep everything visible, and it also alerts us if something is wrong, such as if someone opened extra ports or services that they are not supposed to. This is a valuable tool for monitoring and maintaining our cloud environment.

The solution is also capable of controlling resources, but this is a highly controversial and context-aware area. If the platform takes too much control, it could potentially stop our applications from working. Therefore, we limit its use to monitoring and visibility only.

Check Point must provide a multi-cloud facility where AWS, Azure, and GCP can seamlessly work together and display posture in an integrated manner. Instead of showing separate AWS, Azure, and GCP environments, the solution should provide a single integrated view. This will make it easier to decide which issues to fix first and will reduce the amount of technical work required.

Check Point is always adding new features. However, we are sometimes confused about how to use the features that are already available. There are so many features and we are unable to use all of them.

I have only been using Check Point CloudGuard Posture Management for a very short time, not even a year yet. Earlier, we were not using the cloud very much, so there was no need for such a product. However, after we shifted a few of our applications to the cloud, we started using the solution.

The solution has been quite stable for the past year. However, I cannot say how it will behave in the future, as it may experience a bigger load and a wider variety of workloads. The stability of the solution is subjective and will depend on the specific environment in which it is used.

We have not yet tested the solution at that scale. It is just a starting point. We may add more applications and more load to it. We will have to see how scalable the solution is.

The technical support is good. They sometimes call people from outside India to help us, because we are longtime Check Point customers. We have been using their hardware, software, and firewalls for about two decades. This solution is a new addition to our support.

Neutral

We are still using a variety of firewall solutions, including Juniper and Cisco, throughout our organization. As a government organization, we are required to purchase the cheapest option available. Therefore, we must utilize the solution that is the most affordable in each case.

I am involved in the deployment of the solution. I am not the technical hands-on person for this project. I manage the deployment process.

It is very difficult to measure the return on investment for security measures. Security is not an investment in the traditional sense, as it does not generate direct revenue. Instead, security is a safety measure, similar to insurance. As such, it is difficult to quantify the ROI of security measures.

It is difficult to contextualize the pricing because we are used to Indian pricing and licensing. In India, there is very little interaction with North America and the private sector regarding pricing.

We evaluated all the firewalls including Juniper and Cisco.

I give Check Point CloudGuard Posture Management a seven out of ten.

The solution claims to provide a unified platform that integrates all security capabilities. However, there are on-premises issues, cloud issues, and hybrid issues that make this impossible. No tool can ever provide such capability.

We are not a small office. Therefore, I have no experience with how the solution helps small offices. However, for us, the solution only helps us with our cloud posture management. We still use different tools on-premises. And maybe in the future, we will go directly to the cloud.

I have doubts about the value of looking for the cheapest or fastest firewall. There is always someone who is coming out with a new product that is faster or cheaper than the current one. However, it is important to consider the overall security capabilities of a firewall, not just its speed or price. A firewall that is slower because it is doing more analytics may actually be more secure than a faster firewall that does not do as much analysis. The best firewall for you will depend on your specific needs and requirements.

This is my first time at an RSA conference, and I find it very confusing. There are too many vendors, too many products, and too much to see. I only had a few hours to visit today, and it was overwhelming. I think the conference would be better if it were split into two or three parts, with one part focused on the Asia Pacific and another part focused on North America. Most of the vendors here are focused on North America, so it would be helpful to have a dedicated space for vendors from Asia Pacific. I will try to visit the RSA conference in Singapore next year, and I hope it will be more manageable.

The RSA does not impact our cybersecurity solution purchases. The Indian government's procurement process is completely independent of vendors and their products. Our purchases are based on our needs and requirements, and the solutions must be supported in India.

We are using Check Point CloudGuard Network Security for protecting our Office 365 mail.

The solution has improved our company because our Office 365 solution is secure. Most of our Microsoft solutions are now more secure than before when they had spyware and malware. We no longer have these problems as before.

The most valuable feature of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is the increased mail protection including spam.

The price of the solution could be reduced, it is expensive.

I have been using Check Point CloudGuard Network Security for approximately one year.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is very stable.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security can scale but it will cost you more.

We have approximately 2,000 mailboxes using this solution.

The technical support from Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is very good.

Positive

We did not use another solution prior to Check Point CloudGuard Network Security.

The initial setup of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is not difficult, it was simple. However, someone else might have difficulties. The whole implementation took approximately one day.

We had the Check Point CloudGuard Network Security team help us remotely with the implementation.

We have a service level agreement with some vendors for the maintenance, but we rarely call them, because we handle it mostly in-house.

The price of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is very high compared to other solutions, such as Fortinet FortiMail. For the over 2,000 mailboxes we use with the solution it is very expensive.

Here in Kenya, the cost of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is approximately $160,000.

I rate the price of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security a three out of ten.

We evaluated Fortinet and Barracuda, but Check Point CloudGuard Network Security was better. I found it uses very few resources.

This is a good solution, but they have to be ready to pay the high costs.

I rate Check Point CloudGuard Network Security an eight out of ten.

Check Point CloudGuard Intelligence provides network security through machine learning analytics and visualization and detecting and spotting the threat entrant detection and providing threat intelligence security proactively for restricting the endpoints at the entry stage and securing the system in the best manner possible. 

The security application works proactively and diffuses the endpoints in real-time, ensuring swift action in restraining the threat entry into our IT system.

This application supports almost all kinds of cloud and hybrid platforms and is spot on during integration with other systems.

Check Point CloudGuard Intelligence has significantly improved the revenue stream for my organization. Earlier, we had a third party for overall IT security and it was costly for us. We were looking for something with less cost. 

The CloudGuard intelligence helps in the proactive detection of security threats across an IT device or server and immediately takes corrective and remedial action so that the data and security loss is not to minimal. It is one of the masterpieces which is quite advanced with current market requirements and is available at affordable prices.

The solution offers proactive threat detection and immediate remediation of the same.

Threat hunting is easy with this application as its false negative rate is extremely low, and its performance is fantastic.

It offers affordable costing and an easy renewal process for continuing the agreement.

It can work seamlessly with any kind of cloud servers and platform without any tech hassle or disturbance.

Multiple users can access and monitor the application working with a single login, which is quite advantageous and works really well for us.

There is no shutdown or slowdown of the application while in operation.

I strongly advise that the multi-layered security system of Check Point often undergoes updates and new versions keep coming. It is absolutely fantastic and is worth admiring. Every now and then, we feel that their team's training and orientation process on orienting the clients and partners is low and needs to be strengthened so that every single individual is completely aware and informed of the features and their utilities. They are not clueless in utilizing the services to their maximum. We just need more focused training.

I've been using the solution for almost foud to six months.

It is a stable product.

The solution is scalable.

They offer strong and supportive customer support.

Positive

We were using a third-party solution earlier, which was quite localized and was having limited utility in terms of system security. We switched to Check Point due to peer feedback and advice, as my peers were extremely happy after trial use and pushed us to try the solution due to its numerous utilities, which are customizable. It is quite affordable in comparison to its other competitors in the market.

The initial setup is easy and not complex at all.

We had assistance from the vendor team only.

We've seen an ROI of almost 70%.

We thoroughly examined the software and market offerings and found that CloudGuard solutions are reliable and dependable for their good work and globally accepted happy feedback by partners and users.

The setup cost is low and the implementation process is quite smooth.

Pricing is low in comparison to various competitors in the market.

Licensing and renewal of the agreement are effortless.

We evaluated other options, such as McAfee and Trend Security solutions. 

I'd advise potential users to go for the CloudGuard Intelligence solution and strengthen their IT security. It is the best available solution in the market with strong tech support and wider acceptability globally.

I work with the solution for patching over all the cloud vulnerabilities. We have a different monitoring team that monitors all the alerts on the solution. They send us a report, and we work on that report to patch all the vulnerabilities of our cloud environment, such as Azure and AWS.

The solution's main benefit is that it automates all the patching and reporting parts and generates an automated report. The solution automatically notifies you whenever any alert comes into your cloud environment via mail or message.

Sometimes, the solution provides us with false alerts of vulnerabilities that are not present in our cloud environment. The solution should include an auto-remediation feature, which most tools currently provide.

I have been using the solution for three years.

Apart from the occasional false positives in the reports, we haven't had any issues with the solution's performance or stability.

Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP is a scalable solution.

The solution is implemented in multiple locations, and each location has around 300 users.

We contacted the technical support team during the deployment phase, and their support was very good and responsive.

Positive

We previously used CrowdStrike. We switched to Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP because CrowdStrike lacked many features. Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP is a more advanced version of CrowdStrike, integrated with AI capabilities. It also provides different automatic reports, such as compliance reports.

Around three to four people were involved in the solution's deployment. Since there are multiple environments in the cloud, it takes an entire day to deploy the tool.

The solution's cloud security posture management scans your cloud environment and cloud-configured policies and gives you a report of all the loopholes in your cloud environment. You can also get compliance reports from the solution, and I am completely satisfied with its effectiveness.

The solution's cloud security posture management identifies risks most critical to the business and segregates them into low, medium, and high categories. The solution's workload protection capabilities provide protection for VMs. The scanning provided by the solution's workload protection capabilities helps us identify problems before they go live.

We can schedule the solution to scan our cloud environment daily for vulnerabilities. The solution takes 20 to 25 minutes to scan the entire cloud environment. Earlier, it used to take an entire day because we had to perform all the manual tasks to find out all the loopholes in our cloud environment.

Before using the solution, we used to spend an entire day finding all the loopholes in our cloud environment. Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP automated most of our tasks by providing automatic reports to our security team. We also use the solution's CDR capabilities.

The visibility we get from the solution's CDR capabilities helps simplify incident investigation time or process. After providing all the loopholes in our cloud environment, the solution provides a step-by-step remediation plan to fix particular vulnerabilities. We extract the report from the tool and work on the patching part.

We perform intrusion detection and threat hunting from the same console. Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP is a SaaS-based solution. All the configurations have gone through the secret key we fetch from the cloud environment and integrate with the solution. From there, it fetches all the configurations for the entire cloud environment.

I would recommend the solution to other users.

Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten.

We mainly use it as a CSPM solution.

It gives us clarity.

The most valuable feature is the ability to see our customers' environments if they use more than one cloud provider, such as AWS, Google, and Azure.

Also, CloudGuard CDR's intrusion detection and threat hunting capabilities are good enough. They help us detect anomalous behavior and respond to threats before they become an issue.

There are regulatory requirements. I would like to be able to pick the regulation I would like to scheck compliance with and it would tell you where you stand on that regulation and what you are missing to reach compliance. And it shouldn't matter which cloud we're dealing with; we would have these possibilities.

I have been using Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP for about two years.

Scalability really isn't an issue with everything in the cloud. That's the essence of a cloud product: the scalability you get compared to on-prem.

Their technical support is perfect. When we contact them, they answer immediately. Their support knows the platform very well.

We did not use a different solution before.

It's very simple to set up because it's all in the cloud.

We have seen a return on investment. It can reduce the human resources we need. Also, there is ROI from everything connected to the fact that it's in the cloud: I don't need someone for management or to pay for on-prem resources, such as CPU.

If I compare the price of CloudGuard, Palo Alto is more expensive and others are less expensive. CloudGuard CNAPP is in the middle.

We looked at other solutions, but with CloudGuard everything is located in the cloud. It's very convenient for us to manage our assets in the cloud.

If they could reduce the price and provide more capabilities, it would be better.