Check Point Security Management Reviews

Throughout my professional career I have operated, implemented, and designed solutions with Checkpoint's NGFW for clients of all kinds - public and private, small and large.

For all scenarios, there is a suitable solution with this manufacturer. Its decades of experience make it one of the undisputed leaders in the industry.

In recent times, the platform has evolved significantly to meet the latest threats. I would recommend at least valuing it as an option whenever an opportunity arises to cover cybersecurity needs.

Having a central point to manage all its capabilities makes it much easier to react quickly and accurately to a threat, which is essential in this day and age where attacks can be lethal to our network if not dealt with quickly.

I have actively participated in the defense of very important customers who were able to overcome the challenge thanks to the great visibility that the console offered them. The other additional capabilities that we can integrate into the platform are also a very important added value.

One of the features that attract me the most is being able to activate different functionalities through its blades, having centralized point access to all of them, and being able to activate and deactivate them as needed.

In addition, the fact that everything starts from the same unified management console makes it very easy to integrate new equipment or functionalities once the operator has become familiar with it, as everything will follow similar management or operation mechanisms.

This is one of the aspects I value the most.

In my experience, the place they can improve the most is in the technical support where I have had some serious problems that could not be solved in time due to a lack of knowledge of the assigned engineer.

It would be a good policy to try to assign senior engineers when it has been verified that an incident is critical and urgent for a client and not to resort to less-experienced technicians that can put at risk the recovery of the attacked assets.

Apart from that, at the architectural level, it is a very competent and versatile solution.

I've used the solution for more than 15 years.

Overall, it is a very mature and stable solution.

With the arrival of Quantum Maestro, the platform's expansion capabilities have increased tremendously. Its new architecture is promising.

In general, they work very well, however, it should be prioritized and they need to assign senior technicians when the issue has been verified that it is very critical for the customer.

Due to working in an international MSSP, I have worked and continue to work with all manufacturers.

We always try to do the implementation work with our own SOC of experts.

It depends a lot on each case and on the customer's needs and capabilities.

It's not the cheapest solution, but one of the most advanced and competent.

We always evaluate alternatives and try to see what fits the client best. Fortinet, PaloAlto, Checkpoint, Cisco, et cetera.

I work for one of the biggest Australian banks that rely on Check Point firewalls for security enforcement across several points in the infrastructure environment.

The Security Management platform is a key component for our operation, in that it enables efficient central management for configuration and security troubleshooting. This centralised component facilitates and adds value to our daily operations, creating a single place for configurations and a platform that can present security logs that are used for the troubleshooting of security issues.

Check Point Security Management improved the speed at which security access permissions are granted across our environment through its centralized and easy-to-use nature. The possibility of re-using objects across different policies and also having the drag and drop capabilities are great. 

Moreover, having one single platform managing multiple firewalls reduces the time (and cost) of the provisioning of infrastructure services. This boosts the productivity and efficiency of teams across the board.

The Check Point Security Management platform provides a central location for the management of domains and firewalls in the environment. The nature of the product brings valuable returns to the operation, increasing efficiency when configuring and troubleshooting.

The intuitive interface also allows new team members to adapt to the technology if they are not familiar with it initially. It doesn't take much for one to familiarize themselves with the product.

Another great feature is to have available logs in a central location, enabling the troubleshooting of security issues anywhere in the environment.

One possible improvement for the platform would be the import of security policies via CSV or CLI. Even though the platform is simple, and creating security policies is a fairly quick task, creating a bulk of policies at once (ie. for a migration) could be a useful tool. This is probably possible through scripting, however, having an easy-to-use "import CSV" button would be beneficial.

Another feature that could be improved is the export of configurations to CSV. This is often useful to map current firewall policies or NATs. I understand that this feature is available currently, but would CSV bring objects with names (but not IPs) and groups (but not the members). The improvement of this feature would surely be welcomed.

I have been using Check Point Security Management for around 4 years.

The most recent software versions are very stable and trouble-free.

We have a very good impression of it so far. The possibility of adding firewalls to the fleet and keep a central management point makes it simple to grow the operation.

The experience with the Check Point Professional Services team, and TAC, couldn't be better. The team that works with my organization is extremely knowledgeable and is always willing to go the extra mile in order to find the best possible solution for any kind of goal we need to achieve. The TAC team is also always helpful and provides us with many valuable inputs in hard times. 

I have used different solutions from other vendors, but not on the exact same places. The Check Point Security Management platform was mostly used alongside others.

Perhaps because I lack experience setting it up from scratch, the initial setup seemed quite complex.

We had a vendor team assist with the setup.

Overall, the ROI is great. It is a solid and easy-to-use platform that adds a huge value that justifies every penny.

I most definitely recommend this platform when it comes to cost. The available list of add-ons creates great flexibility to the technology and is also easy on the budget - since you only pay for the features you use.

This is not applicable to my role.

As part of the Bank's Network Security Infrastructure team, it is our responsibility to manage different security products and devices that lay the foundation of the Bank's Security Infrastructure Network. Part of that responsibility also includes the implementation and policy update requests arising from different business and support teams to make sure that application services comply with the security standards to protect all services of the bank and maintain the reliability of the services across an environment.

With a centralized Check Point Security Management solution, it makes it easier for our day-to-day operations to manage all Security Gateway Firewalls across the bank. 

The Check Point Security Management has improved the management of all our Security Check Point Gateway Firewalls across the bank. 

With Security Management we are able to simplify our response and support for all our security network devices, which, compared to other products that need to be managed individually, the Check Point solution is far better and less daunting. 

The Security Management also includes the management of logs far that are more efficient, as it provides all the needed information required to investigate and understand how the gateways are accepting or blocking traffic. 

The Main Domain Log Management Server is what I find to be the most valuable feature for the Security Management of our environment. With the Main Domain Log Management Server, support teams are able to check and verify the information required to determine if any traffic is getting blocked or denied due to specific policy rule implementation. It can even identify any traffic getting spoofed or any other related events on the gateways. It has a central management log server that helps us to easily identify faults and issues in the environment, especially during outages and incidents during the implementation of policy rules.

It would be great if the SmartView Monitor could become integrated into the SmartView Console Platform. As it stands, it will still open the old R77 SmartView monitor session, which is a bit flaky and slow. If the SmartView monitor could be integrated into the R80.40 and R81 versions, that would be great. It would help us in unpacking the trends and graphs and see how traffic is observed when hitting the different Check Point Firewall Gateways that the Security Management controls. It will help support teams to identify capacity limitations and have oversight into what's happening in the environment at any given point in time.

I've been using the solution for one year.

The solution is very stable and manageable as there's a centralized management server that takes care of the rest of the Check Point Gateways across our infrastructure.

The solution is very scalable since you can increase the number of gateways in your infrastructure and still manage them in just one centralized SmartView Console.

The technical support team is very knowledgeable and supportive of all our issues and incidents in the bank. Their expertise and reliability are what bring the products of Check Point under complete lifecycle support, which aims to maintain our infrastructure reliability and stability.

At the moment, we have a co-existing infrastructure with other security network devices, and we can definitely see the benefit of having the Check Point Security Management application in our infrastructure.

The setup and operational management of Security Management is very easy. This helps us to train people quickly in terms of managing our bank infrastructure in order to maintain reliability and stability in the network.

We have a professional service provider that implements the solution and he is very knowledgeable in terms of his expertise of the product. I would rate our professional service provider to be a 9 out of 10.

I would advise others that it's definitely a great investment to have. It's great to have Security Management across your infrastructure. 

We have other options with other vendors such as Juniper, with their Security Director, and JSpace, but nothing can compare with how Check Point Security Management performs.

If you have a manageable security infrastructure, the cost, pricing, or licensing will be far outweighed by the reliability and stability. It's great in terms of what a properly managed environment can bring.

As part of the Bank's Network Security Infrastructure team, it is our responsibility to manage different security products and devices that lay the foundation of the Bank's Security infrastructure network. Part of that responsibility also includes the implementation and policy update request arising from different business and support teams to make sure that application services comply with the security standards to protect all services of the bank and maintain reliability of the services across environment.

With a centralized Check Point Security Management solution, it makes it easier for our day-to-day operations to manage all Security Gateway Firewalls across the bank.

The Check Point Security Management has improved the management of all our Security Check Point Gateway Firewalls across the bank. 

With Security Management we are able to simplify our response and support for all our security network devices, which, compared to other products that need to be managed individually, the Check Point solution is far better and less daunting. 

The Security Management also includes the management of logs that is far more efficient, as it provides all the needed information required to investigate and understand how the gateways are accepting or blocking traffic from the gateways.

The Main Domain Log Management Server is what I find to be the most valuable feature for the Security Management of our environment. 

With the Main Domain Log Management Server, support teams are able to check and verify the information required in order to determine if any traffic is getting blocked or denied due to specific policy rule implementation, or even identify any traffic getting spoof or any other related events on the gateways. 

It has a central management log server that helps us to easily identify faults and issues in the environment, especially during outages and incidents during the implementation of policy rules.

It would be great if the SmartView Monitor could become integrated into the SmartView Console Platform. As it stands, performing a smart view monitor will still open the old R77 SmartView monitor session, which is a bit flaky and slow. If the SmartView monitor can be integrated in the R80.40 and R81 versions, that would be ideal in understanding the trends and graphs of how traffic is observed hitting the different Check Point Firewall Gateways that the Security Management controls. It will also help support teams to identify capacity limitations and have a foresight of what's happening in the environment at any given point in time.

I've been using the solution for 4 Years.

The solution is ideal for use and deployment in a large infrastructure environment.

The solution is very efficient. You can add more gateways in the environment and manage on the same management server as it has a centralized design.

We have diamond support and they are very helpful and detailed during explanations for any issues we are facing. The diamond support that we get definitely provides full life cycle support. It brings reliability to the product when you have great support from Check Point.

At the moment, we have a co-existing infrastructure with other security network devices, and we can definitely see the benefit of having the Check Point Security Management application in our infrastructure.

The setup was straightforward as the SmartConsole associated with the Security Management is GUI-friendly and anyone can easily access and manage it.

One of the Professional Service members we work with is very attentive to detail and ready to support our team during difficult times - including the implementation and consultation of the Check Point Products. The professional service on offer is really great as you do not often get someone from a vendor that knows the inside and out of the product dedicated to your own infrastructure.

I would advise others that it's definitely a great investment to have Security Management across your infrastructure.

We have other options with other vendors such as Juniper, with their Security Director, and JSpace, but nothing can compare with how the Check Point Security Management performs.

If you have a manageable security infrastructure, the cost, pricing, or licensing will be far outweighed by the reliability and stability of how a properly managed environment is.

Our primary use case is to have a centralized server to manage all of our Check Point firewalls, which are around 30 clusters of firewalls. We also use it to have a place where we can see, call, and centralize the logs.

Every day we have new projects and new applications that need to be delivered. We need to open flows on the firewall from one point to the other. Check Point helps our security team to create the policies in a centralized way, where we can even copy policies from one firewall to the other.

It saves us a lot of time, and it's very easy to use. We can clone objects and drag and drop. It's much easier than a few years ago where we used to have Cisco firewalls and we needed to do it on the command line. Check Point is much easier. We can very quickly place trainees to work in policy creation.

The features we like and find the most valuable are the ways we can manage the policy, create objects, and drag and drop objects in our daily operation. It makes our daily operation on the firewall management much easier than going, for example, to one firewall, then going to the other. We have a centralized point of managing the firewall in terms of firewall policy and in terms of threat prevention policy where we can easily review the antivirus policy. It has a good description of which protection we are applying to the IPS on the antivirus. It's very clear and easy to use.

The SmartConsole chooses which application communicates with the manager and allows us to create the policies and also look at the log of the traffic that is crossing all the firewalls. We can manage and also see the logs of what is happening on the firewalls.

I would like for Check Point to add some features like the Smart Monitor on the R77 that are available on the SmartConsole of the R80. Now, we need to open a different application to have access to it. There are some applications that worked in the past but were not too integrated with a new application that communicates with the manager. There are some applications that should be integrated into the SmartConsole. I don't know if they will be, but everything should be on the SmartConsole and we shouldn't need to open another application.

The migration from R77 Manager to R80 is a major upgrade. It's not very easy to do. There should be some kind of Wizard for a direct upgrade from the R77 to the R80. There should be an easy way for the customers to do the upgrade.

We have been using Check Point Security Management for three years. 

It has been very stable. We don't have many complaints about stability. Once every three months or so, there are some processes on the management server that we get stuck on and we need to restart the services. After we restart, we get back to normal.

It's very scalable for our use case. We have two security managers. We have one primary and one backup to manage all of our firewall infrastructure, and we have no problem with it. We always have a new firewall. 

There are around eight people who work with this solution in my company. They're network engineers. 

My colleague and I are responsible for the maintenance. 

We have a 100% adoption rate for all of the Check Point Firewalls. We all use this manager to manage the Check Point infrastructure.

We don't have any issues with support. The support is very good, especially if you work with the Israel group, but on this specific product, as this is a core product of Check Point, I would say all of the groups work fairly well.

We also have experience with Fortinet but it's like comparing apples to oranges. 

The initial migration from R77 to the R80 was a bit complex. We had the help of a third-party company for the migration phase. We needed to export from the old manager and import it to the new one. There were some modifications we needed to do. It's not very straightforward. They had more experience in those kinds of migrations. 

We have already done some upgrades and they are very easy and straightforward. For this migration, we needed to prepare the servers side by side to the old one, and we needed to do the initial configuration. It took like at least one week to prepare and to migrate it that way.

We do see ROI because we save a lot of time and we can have new team members working with the firewall very quickly. We save at least eight hours a week.

The pricing is in line with its competition, like Fortinet. 

Sometimes applying licensing in products gets a bit messy. We will apply for a license on the manager, specifically for the firewall, but you still see the firewall complaining it doesn't have any rights. In this case, we need vendor support to fix this kind of situation.

We need to devise whether we need to have remote sessions with regard to why the firewall is complaining. There must be some kind of protection for the people not to flip licenses that they shouldn't. Sometimes when you buy a new firewall, the licensing is not straightforward to apply. After we fix it, we never have issues again.

This solution is overall our favorite Check Point product. It's a product that you need to have if you have a Check Point Firewall. If you have a Check Point Firewall, you need to have to Check Point Security Management. You cannot manage the firewalls directly, you need to have the manager.

I think it's the best product Check Point has and is the one that makes the difference. When you compare it to, for example, Fortinet, which has a manager that is web-based, it's not as easy to use and easy to drag and drop objects. The way to see the logs is not as good. It works better than web-based FortiManager, for example.

Palo Alto is also web-based, but me and my team, all of us prefer the SmartConsole over the way we have to manage FortiGate. It's very easy to search for rules on the policy, Check Point is much easier than the competition.

The competitors work well but Check Point works better.

If you refresh the page, you will lose what you did. Even the screen resolution is dependent on the browser. Drag and drop is not as good as with Check Point. It's by far the best product we have to manage firewalls. I think the thing that makes the difference on the other Check Point firewalls.

My advice would be to try the SmartConsole before deciding if you want to go ahead with buying Check Point Firewalls and the manager. You can install the application in any Windows, computer, or Windows server and try the SmartConsole in demo mode.

I would rate Check Point Security Management a nine out of ten. 

We are using this product on a daily basis for creating policies, managing gateways, and managing licenses. Currently, our Check Point Management Server version is R80.40.

Our current use case with R80.40 is Geo policy. We have applied Geo policies to block traffic from some malicious countries such as China, but over the past few weeks, we observed suspicious activity in our logs. There are some IPs showing as Singapore-based addresses, but when we checked in details, they are showing up as IPs from China. Due to that, the traffic is being dropped as per our configuration.

We have configured multiple gateways in a single dashboard. Currently, we have four gateways that are all clustered on our Security management server. We are easily managing all of the location gateways, so it is very easy for us and helpful to create the same rules, groups, or objects. We have to create only a single object and we add that onto a rule, which is the best way for us to manage.

We are also managing all device (gateway) logs on a single dashboard, which is very helpful for us.

The most valuable feature for me is Identity Awareness.

Earlier, we were creating policies with a machine IP-based policy. Whenever a user's machine was changed we had to manually change that machine IP to streamline the user access without their work being interrupted. That was a very hard task for me but now, with this identity awareness blade, we are creating users with their user ID.

If any user changes desk location or something else, we map the user ID-based access. It is a one-time activity and we are very happy with it.

Currently we have option to create rule with Access Role, but it is also asking network as well, so my suggestion if we mapped user and machine both then the network should be not compulsory. 

This will reduce our effort to creating rules.

Above is only my suggestion for access role rule type

We have been using Check Point Security Management for the last five years.

This solution is stable, although there is some room for improvement.

We have to perform each task in a different environment before publishing new features.

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

If you have Check Point in your perimeter,  the security management server will reduce your incidents by 30%.

We did not evaluate other options.

Overall, this is a very good solution.

Check Point plays a crucial role in enhancing our security firewall solution in our company. It has brought significant improvements, including features like spam and anti-spam measures, intrusion prevention (IPS), and advanced filtering.

The most valuable feature for me is the firewall. Whether it's five stars or even higher, the analytics reports it provides are truly impressive. They offer valuable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that shed light on various situations and different logs.

They could offer educational courses to help individuals improve their knowledge and skills.

I have been working with it for two years now.

It provides good stability features. I would rate it eight out of ten.

I would rate its scalability capabilities nine out of ten.

In my previous company, I had experience using Fortinet and Palo Alto.

I find that the setup process is somewhat distinct from other solutions. I believe that having some guidance from the website or tutorials would make it easier.

I strongly recommend this solution because it's a highly effective and reliable choice. I would rate it nine out of ten.

Thanks to the new Check Point management, we were able to manage our environments decentrally with a server or from the Check Point Infinity Portal. This management is handled separately and provides greater ease of implementation and backups. You can have your gateways separated from the control server. You can even lose the management server, and easily, with a previous backup, you can restore all the policies that had been generated so that you never lose the operation of the GW.

Our Check Point implementations are quite important in our environment. With them, we were able to shield our infrastructure from modern vulnerabilities.

The separate management provides greater security and peace of mind. In the face of events in which we can lose communication with the management server, the operation of the Check Point gateways continues unaffected.

We also like the ease and intuitiveness of the management server since it allows you to generate policies in a straightforward way. Its logs and monitoring provide the necessary information so that those responsible for security can make decisions and improve security even more.

The control is intuitive, it's an excellent tool.

The monitoring is excellent. It helps a lot in making decisions.

Finally, the additional tools or blades implemented in this console are great. You can go from basic security implementation to a fairly advanced one with all the blades you have available.

The separate environment of the Check Point gateways is one of the most important features. The separate management allows for the continued use of the gateways.

As for the support, it is not the best. 

The hours are different from those in America. They generally respond to us at dawn. They are not as fast or efficient, and they could improve in this area.

Every manufacturer must have enough documentation for client implementations and proof of concept. However, Check Point has many outdated manuals. These should be simpler for users and help them to manage their environments with the best practices.

They should improve the ease of licensing.

We've used the solution for more than three years. We started using Check Point Security Management and have had very good results in a manufacturer's architecture with excellent performance.

Previously, we had WatchGuard to provide security. However, it does not meet the parameters required for our organization.

It is important to value the support of a Check Point partner to validate the tools, in addition to seeing the product more closely.

We researched to find the security tool that best suits our requirements.

For us, there are more benefits than failures; it really is an exceptional tool, and I recommend it.

The security management platform monitors the performance of applications and the security demands that can secure our data. 

Check Point Security Management has helped us to set secure points across all sectors to filter out harmful content that can destroy confidential information. 

The software has given the IT team access control in setting firewalls and securing cloud-based servers efficiently. 

This product provides comprehensive security coverage services that reduce operational costs. 

This tool has educated our teams and advanced our knowledge of setting effective security.

This software has improved the security situation in the organization and guarded the most confidential information against landing in unsafe areas. 

Check Point Security Management is the leading threat prevention system that ensures the networking system is protected from external attacks. 

All the departments can easily access security situations on set programs and come up with a suitable strategic plan. 

The reporting system provides real-time insights into the security situation and measures that can be taken to protect our data.

The set threat prevention tools have advanced the security monitoring systems and set up reliable data management platforms. 

Security analysis has helped teams in the organization plan and deploy the best security systems for protecting data. 

The malware detection feature has enabled the organization to block unauthorized attacks that can destroy data and leak confidential information.

Check Point Security Management has reduced operational costs and improved overall data security performance. 

Most set features have contributed to security stability in the organization, and I highly recommend this platform to other organizations.

This security control system has efficient features that have transformed the company to help it achieve set international standards. 

Most of the features provide excellent services that cannot be extracted from other platforms. 

It can be scaled down to provide services based on the company's demands and lowers operational costs. 

Sometimes the security system slows down when it is overloaded. Poor configurations have led to data leakages and weakened security signals. 

The overall performance has impressed all the team members and provided a secure environment for better workflows.

I've been using the solution for 12 months.

This platform is highly stable and I recommend it to others.

Check Point Security Management is excellent for setting security plans.

The customer service team has performed well since we started engaging with them.

Positive

I have no experience with other similar solutions.

The setup was straightforward.

Implementation was done through the vendor.

Our ROI has increased from 45% to 65% since we deployed this application.

The setup cost is efficient.

I have not examined other related applications.

I have observed great performance since we deployed this platform.

With Security Management solution, we can manage and distribute security policies to firewall gateways. In large environment where there are dozens of Check Point appliances from Headquarter to branches, I deployed the Security Management with thousands of rules for an enterprise. I created different security packages for each gateway/cluster pair for administration purpose while maintaining separation and ease of policy installation. With every change request, we just need to configure the relating package and install to right gateways. Besides log dashboard in smartconsole is very useful and convenient for monitoring and tracking. It provides intuitive interface to search log, operation to filter is very to understand

With Check Point Security Management, we can:

- Manage and configure cluster for Check Point Gateways. Define security zones (internal, dmz, external) on interfaces.

- Add, modify, delete security rules, objects and install to gateways.

- Activate or de-activate blades like Mobile Access, IPS, URL Filtering, Application Control, Identity Awareness, Antivirus,... to the selected gateways and configure the security settings on them.

- Track and monitor security logs.

- send commands to the Management API. Supporting Management API helps automated tasks for daily operation or integrate with third-party solution SIEM/SOAR.

The most valuable feature is Management API. It has been supported since R80 and above. Why? For firewall administrators who handle many tasks daily on not only Check Point systems. They are flooded with their boring manual tasks but always got stuck with request tickets. For security analysts who work with numerous logs from many sources and take actions to stop attacks. Can analysist and protection be highly effective if they must take much time in implementing policies? All limitations above can be solved with Check Point Management API. The administrators can automate and improve their productivity in operation by scripting. The security analysts can immediately apply security settings on the firewall while saving their time and concentrate on their research job. This feature is very useful and Check Point works great job to support many security aspects with easy-to-understand guide.

In complex environment, the Security Management system manages many firewall gateways. There are thousands of security rules in the server and there are also other security settings about Check Point blades. Database in the server becomes large. Hence installing policy takes very long time to complete. Imagine that the administrators must process their daily tickets. They make configuration changes in Smart Console of Management Server for the first ticket, and while waiting for installation completion, then they receive the second ticket, a critical case, what should they do? This is only one of the situations that the administrators are facing in operation. Hope that Check Point can improve the processing time of installation.

More than 5 years

Check Point TAC team is very professional.

Positive

Only manage Check Point gateways by using Check Point Management Server. I used other firewall vendors like Cisco, Fortinet but Check Point is much better about stability and performance. So using central management for Check Point is best choice.

Easy of setup

I always implement by myself because it's very easy to implement.