Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) Reviews

I am using Check Point Next Generation.

The solution boasts a host of features that we like. 

Tech support should be improved. There are times when the technical team fails to understand things at the ground-level. 

The dashboard can stand improvement. 

The solution is overly expensive. 

The initial setup is a bit complex. 

The solution is scalable. 

Technical support could be better, as the tech team at times does not manage to understand ground-level issues. 

The setup is somewhat on the easy side, but certain things are complex. While the solution is a little easier to manage than Palo Alto, I was forced to make comparisons between the two products. 

The price is too high. 

The solution is geared towards organizations hosting more than 50,000 employees.

We use a remote access VPN, and this is a perimeter firewall for our data center to secure our servers and internal applications. We are using model G-6600.

Check Point is awesome from a security standpoint. Based on our experience and also the experience of the other customers, it is a very stable appliance.

It should be user-friendly from an implementation point of view. Its setup is a little bit difficult.

I have been using this solution for four years.

From a security standpoint, it is very stable, and I would rate it a nine out of 10. I don't have any issues with it.

At present, we have 30 for our distribution. So, it is pretty scalable.

Their support is good. Their L1 and L2 support across the globe is great. L3 support is with the Israel team, and they have the right competency to troubleshoot it. Sometimes, when something needs to be done in the software in detail, we need to wait for people to come online from Israel. I would rate their L3 support a six out of 10 because we need to wait for the team from Israel to come online.

It is a little difficult to set up. We need a really skillful engineer to manage it. After we have onboarded it correctly, it is very easy to manage, and it is very secure. Initially, we had some challenges and issues, and when we got the right resource and support from the vendor, they all got resolved. It took four or five days.

It should be user-friendly from an implementation point of view. I would rate it a six out of 10 in terms of implementation.

I would recommend this solution. From a security standpoint, Check Point is the best product, but a customer should have the right skillsets to onboard and manage this.

I've been working with multiple customers in India, and I don't see any specific features that they need. It has covered pretty much everything.

Overall, I would rate it a seven out of 10.

We use the solution for a perimeter firewall, an internal segmentation firewall, and a routing device in our organization.

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.

The solution could improve by keeping more up-to-date with technology. For example, if Amazon releases something in the security field, Check Point should have integration or adoption of this feature a bit faster than it is today. Sometimes we can hear a lot of the marketing information about an attractive feature, which we would like to have, but the feature will be released in two years. This timeframe should decrease.

I have been using Check Point NGFW for approximately nine years.

The solution is stable.

This solution provides service for 50,000 employees in my organization.

We have premium support which is different from regular support. We have had good experiences with the support.

We have used BitScaler previously and use Check Point CloudGuard Network Security.

The installation is easy. It can be installed through an image very quickly.

The solution has saved us a lot of costs from an operational perspective.

There is an annual license required for this solution.

I would recommend this solution. However, I would advise everyone to carefully evaluate their needs against this vendor and compare them with the competition. There is a lot of strong competition between Palo Alto and Fortinet. One could have an advantage over the other for a customer's specific use case.

I rate Check Point an eight out of ten.

The user interface is very good.

The level of security is excellent. It protects our organization well.

It's a good overall product and we have a high level of satisfaction with the features on offer. 

Technical support could be improved. It's hit or miss in terms of the level of service and getting the answers you need.

I've been using the solution for ten years. 

We have hundreds of users that use the solution currently within our company.

We aren't 100% satisfied with technical support. Sometimes you get the help you need and sometimes you don't. Sometimes it's absolutely amazing. Sometimes they're great. However, you can't rely on them being like that all the time. We'd like the service level to be more reliable.

I can't speak to the installation process, as it was handled by an outside firm.

We had an integrator that assisted us with the implementation. 

I'm a customer and an end-user.

I would recommend the solution to other organizations especially if the company is looking for a certain level of security.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

We implement Check Point in the front end to protect internet platforms and security platforms. 

Check Point provides very good performance with many solution options and many kinds of modules.

I'd like to see more integration with other solutions. 

I've been using this solution for a couple of months. 

This solution is stable and scalable.

We've rarely used support but they've been helpful when we needed them. 

We migrated from Cisco to Check Point. Check Point is easier for the administration console.

Before migrating to Check Point, we tested it in several environments. We used a consultant for deployment and we now have 800 users in the company and six engineers responsible for maintenance. 

We pay an annual license fee. 

I recommend this solution and rate it a 10 out of 10. 

It's our main firewall and the first line of protection from outside attacks. We use it to interconnect our remote locations (that use different vendors and equipment) and let the employees work remotely. We're a small site with 300 users and this equipment is more than enough for us. We use almost all the blades and the equipment has run smoothly for years. This NGFW monitors all the traffic outside of the main network, prevents malicious activities, and lets us easily manage network policies to shape our connections.

We have a lot of flexibility now, and a leg up identifying zero-day threats. We have multiple ways of doing policies now that we didn't have before. The options are more robust than previous products and I would say that we're pleased with the product. The reports I'm getting are that we're satisfied, even impressed, with the options Check Point offers.

There is a scope of improvement in detecting zero-day threats using the SandBlast technology, by introducing emulation of Linux-based operating systems. We have also observed issues while using the products with SSL decryption. There is room for improvement in application-based filtering, as with other firewalls available in the market today. Check Point has improved its application filtering capabilities in the recent past and their latest version, R80, is more capable but still, creating an application-based filter policy is a little cumbersome.

It's a NGFW with all of the capabilities required to protect for next-generation attacks at the perimeter level. The module or Security features that are provided as part of the base license with Check Point include (VPN, IPS, Application Control, and Content Awareness) which itself is strong enough to protect the organization.

The packet inspections have been a strong point. Our identity collectors have also been helpful. In many ways, Check Point has been a step up from the SonicWall that we had in-house before that. There's a lot of additional flexibility that we didn't have before.

I would like there to be a way to run packets that capture more easily in the GUI environment. Right now, if we want to read packet captures, we have to do so from the command line.

The biggest improvement they could make is having one software to install on all three levels of their products, so that the SMBs, the normal models, and the chassis would all run the same software. Now, while there is central management, everything that has to be configured on the gateway itself works differently on the three kinds of devices.

I started using the solution 3 months ago.

The web interface was easy for me. The configuration is logical, so it's easy to use and easy to understand how to protect, how to open a port, how to manage, and how to route a device. That's why I prefer Check Point. It's robust and I never have issues with the hardware.

The scalability is quite good. You can scale well across locations for not too much cost. If a company needs to expand, it can do so relatively easily.

Also, cost-wise, it's very affordable to scale up. It's not expensive to add hardware and licenses as needed. They make upgrading very cheap.

We have 200 people on the solution. That said, they are using it with an IPsec tunnel. They don't use all of the capabilities of the hardware. They are using it just to encrypt tunneling between the sites.

Technical support has been excellent

Yes, we were previously using SonicWall but security is less robust in comparison to Check Point.

The initial setup is very easy.

We implemented it through a vendor called S G Informatics India Pvt Ltd.

The level of expertise I would rate at 10 out of 10.

I would recommend going into Check Point solutions. Although Check Point has the option of implementing your firewall on a server, I would advise implementing it on a perimeter device because servers have latency. It's best to deploy it on a dedicated device. Carry out a survey to find out if the device can handle the kind of workload you need to put through it. Also, make it a redundant solution, apart from the Management Server, which can be just one device. Although I should note that, up until now, we have not had anything like that ourselves.

We have looked into Sophos.

The most valuable features are the security blades and the ease of managing the policies, searching logs for events, and correlating them.

Check Point is very strong as compared to the other vendors in the market.

The solution offers a very good centralized management console. 

It works well even for small deployments. 

The perimeter security is excellent. 

It works well even for cloud environments and has been very useful during COVID when people weren't necessarily in the office. 

The creation of policies is simple. It's easy to configure them when we need to.

We have found the troubleshooting process to be very easy and helpful.

The GUI is simple and straightforward. 

The sandbox environment on offer has been great. 

The support has been super-helpful. They've always been great, even at a pre-sales level.

The initial setup is very straightforward. 

From a stability standpoint, sometimes when upgrading to a new version, there are some stability issues. The device occasionally may stop responding. 

It would be beneficial if they offered better load balancing. 

They could make the licensing a bit easier to deal with, especially for enterprise-level options. 

We primarily use the solution for security, as a next-generation firewall that we use in our environments. It is very good at detection and prevention. However, we are still exploring use cases.

While the solution is mostly stable, we do find that we have stability issues moving to different versions. You run the risk of the device not responding in some cases. 

The scalability is possible, however, it's based on requirements. When we get a new solution, we plan out for the next four or five years. It can scale so long as you design it properly at the outset. 

Technical support is helpful and responsive. We're quite satisfied with the level of service we can expect. They are very good.

I've also worked with Palo Alto and Cisco. 

The initial setup is extremely straightforward. You don't even have to be overly technical to manage it. They make it very easy. It's not overly complex or difficult.

The licensing is okay. Clients can go for a one, three, or five-year license. 

Sometimes it's complicated to put new licensing on existing devices. If we have issues, we can raise questions with the sales management team and they are always very helpful. Larger, enterprise-level devices, in particular, can be a bit complex to deal with. 

We are integrated partners and we provide services to the customers.

I didn't get any chance to work on version 80.40, however, a lot of the customers are on versions 80.10, 80.20, and 80.40.

I would encourage users and companies to use Check Point. It's quite a good solution. I find it to be a better solution than, for example, Palo Alto.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for perimeter security - including DMZ and as an internet firewall. We use Check Point Firewalls as the first line of defense from the internet and they are also used to segregate the internet, DMZ, and internal networks. Check Point VSX technology is used to split the hardware into multiple virtual firewalls to cater to different environments so they are well segregated. We have BGP running on the firewalls, such as all of our network devices in our environment, to learn and advertise routes. Check Point does a decent job with BGP and does an excellent job as a perimeter firewall.

Check Point was brought into our environment as a perimeter security device to replace the Juniper NetScreen which was originally used as the perimeter firewall. When Juniper announced the end of life of NetScreen devices, we decided to go with Check Point mainly because of the ease of management and also because Check Point was an Industry leader and Juniper was still in the initial stages of building their own firewalls using JunOS. With the introduction of Check Point with the VSX features, we could use BGP instead of the tedious static routes that we had in place with the old NetScreen.

The VSX has been great. The ability to split single hardware into multiple virtuals along with support for dynamic routing using BGP is very useful for our environment.

We like the management console. The Check Point smart dashboard has made things easier for administration and we've been able to manage all the Check Point devices from one place which is very useful.

The operations support is great. There is a smart log system that is very good for troubleshooting and reporting. We also use the CLI for troubleshooting purposes (for the likes of FWMonitor and tcpdump) while the FW rules are managed via the smart console which does wonders for operations support.

It is common for any network device to compromise on stability when more and more features are packed into it. It may work for small organizations when they want a single device to do everything for security. However, it is a big issue for us as a large financial institution when even a small outage costs dearly. Check Point, being our perimeter firewall, has failed quite a few times mainly when handling BGP. I would like less CPU-intensive features to be introduced to replace the existing heavy-duty processes. They may already have a lot of features, so the enhancement of existing features could focus on robustness rather than introducing new features.

I've been using the solution for three years.

With the upgrade to R80, the solution has become more stable. We have had outages because of the gateways failure while running BGP with older versions. After the upgrade, we havent had such outages.

With the latest upgrades of R80, Check Point has bettered its performance, and hence, scalability has improved a lot. Also, there are multiple NG features that can be utilized that makes it more suitable for multiple solutions.

They offer very good customer support; they're always available and capable.

We previously used NetScreen and they were at their end of life.

Check Point has its own design that is a little complex compared to other products. This has a 3-tier architecture and we need management servers and gateways separate. I would still say its not much of a hassle building it.

We handled everything through Check Point PS. They were very good.

I can't really comment, as I do not have much idea about this space.

The solution is priced well in the market in order to compete with the other products.

I wasn't in the organization when the evaluation happened. However, I know Juniper SRX was one of the solutions looked at as we are using them for our internal firewalls.

I have been designing, deploying, implementing, and operating Check Point's Security solutions including NGFWs and EndPoint security as well as Remote Access VPNs, Intrusion Prevention systems, URL filtering, user identity, UTMs, et cetera, for around 12 years. 

I have also used VSX and MDS/MDLS solutions. In my organisation I am using over 150 virtual and physical appliances and also MDS for virtualized/contanerized central configuration management and also central log management MDLS/MLM. We are using this not just for NGFW but also for other Perimeter security solutions.

This solution has helped keep the security posture of my organization in the best possible shape. Check Point's solutions stay a cut above its competitors to make sure your IT infra Cyber is safe from both known as well as zero-day attacks and malware. 

From an operations point of view, Check Point solutions are the best in terms of providing central configuration management and also central log correlation and management. Additionally, Check Point's virtualization solutions around VSX are super-efficient and very stable.

I found Check Point's software ability to provide for all the perimeter security solutions including next-generation firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, identity and access management, and URL filtering. They are all excellent. Check Point's Central configuration management, central log correlation, and management solution are a cut above the other vendors and are the best in the industry. Check Point's virtualization solutions are also very efficient and can be scaled. They are highly stable solutions (MDS/Domain Managers & MDLS).

To be very very honest, I do not see any major gap or improvement area for any of Check Point Cybersecurity solutions, whether it's your enterprise be cloud-based only, on-prem (Private cloud or Legacy infrastructure), or hybrid infrastructure. Check Point's solutions are highly cost-efficient, have low OPEX costs, are very stable, are safe and secure, and helps maintain the enterprise's security posture. 

Check Point's security solutions are a cut above the other vendors, not just today but for the last 30 years. Without having to mention any gaps, Check Point's development team works hard to stay ahead of technology in the cybersecurity space.

I feel the only thing that I see as a possible improvement in Check Point software is the lack of ability to create "static discard routes" which makes it difficult for NAT ranges to be advertised via BGP to neighbors. Although Check Point has an alternative of creating a dummy interface to introduce "directly connected" routes for NAT ranges so that they could then be advertised up/downstream, having the ability to do so using "static discards" would be a great thing to have.

I've worked with the solution for a little over 12 years.

The product is very stable.

The solution is highly scalable.

The sales, pre-sales, professional services, and tech support are all very nice.

Yes, and we switched because Check Point proved to be more reliable.

The initial setup is absolutely straightforward.

We implemented it through an in-house team.

Every dollar spent is worth it.

Yes, we looked at Cisco, Juniper, and Palo Alto.

Not at the moment.

We use Check Point for VPN access for all employees, as a rule. We also used it as a filter, a firewall, and it's the front line of our access to the Internet.

It has VPN access for our employees and it controls access, barring intrusion for non-authorized access.

The URL filter is activated to filter access to our employees. We use filtering for VPN access.

The configuration is one of the best features of this product.

When this product was purchased approximately 12 years ago it was the top of the line.

The product has been working very well.

I don't have any issues with the software of this solution. It works as is expected.

I would like to see more integration with other infrastructures. We are considering Cisco because it is more integrated, and the network limits of the solution are better.

Recently, we experience a problem with the hardware because it was too old, it was blocked. The hardware failed, but the software did not. With older hardware, it is a problem because our network is growing every year. The solution is not at maximum performance. 

It does not have the performance that we require. The network is not the same as it was 12 years ago. There are several logs.

We are looking for a cheaper product that is more integrated than our Cisco Network appliance.

It may also need to support other types of architecture.

The only reasons we are looking at other solutions are price and integration.

Check Point was installed in the company approximately 12 years ago.

The stability is good.

We are a company with 1,200 employees, and approximately 700 are using this solution.

We have five HP Servers, and we have a cluster in different geographic locations. 

Check Point has been installed in an HP-certified server. It is not an appliance, it is an HP Server.

We have one or two professionals who work on the platform.

It is not a cheap solution, which is why we are looking for another one.

We are currently evaluating new firewall solutions because the Check Point that we have was installed approximately 12 years ago, and wanted to change to a next-generation firewall.

The HP Server works fine without any maintenance, but it needs to be taken care of. We did not, which caused a disk to fail. We have one or maybe two that are working. I don't have any complaints about the HP Server. It was sized for that network load at that time.

I would rate Check Point a ten out of ten. It works as expected.