Check Point Security Management Reviews

We use the solution for ensuring the on-premise and cloud-based infrastructure through the Check Point gateway solution. We're applying the solution to the endpoint and running all threat prevention technologies simultaneously, including full SSL traffic inspection, without compromising on security or performance. 

As compared to the other vendors like CISCO ASA, Juniper, and other vendors it's nice to see maximum futures in the single firewall. The site and remote VPN deployment are very easy and troubleshooting the issues is also very easy.

The cluster solution made our job easier any fault to the device will not halt entire internet connectivity. In that case of the performance, we have zero-downtime upgrades and VPN solution deployments.

Check Point Software Technologies (Check Point for short) is a company operating exclusively in the field of Information Security and covering four main areas:

1. Network Security on the perimeter and inside Data Centers.
2. Cloud Security: Public, Private, and Hybrid.
3. Endpoint Security for both Windows and Macs.
4. Mobile Security for Android and iOS devices.

The solution offers ClusterXL, Secure XL, and Core XL.

When working with it, you will encounter three main components: Security gateway, security management server, and Smart Console. 

Customer support is very good and they have depth knowledge on the particular technology which helps us in fixing the problems ASAP. 

Remote and site-site VPNs we can easily deployable and maintenance  upgrade of the tunnel parameters becomes very easy as this is having the simple smart console access to the gateways. 

Also the multi-domain smart dashboard is another capability to manage multiple firewall through the single console.

The application filtering and URL filtering could be better.

They need to improve on this kind of technology as the Palo alto is ahead of the application-based and zero-trust-based approach also the cloud-based application control also user identification through the LDAP and other user directory settings to provide the proper solution.

Check Point has a complex range of reporting tools, some of which can take time to learn and be comfortable with. 

It is advised to make the processes simpler.

Need to have simple scripting and automation methodology to automate the networking operations.

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

It's stable.

It's a good product that's scalable.

Technical support is nice.

I used Cisco ASA. Large-scale deployment and integration are very difficult in Cisco ASA.

The solution is straightforward.

We implemented it with the help of a vendor.

The ROI is good

I did evaluate ASA, Palo Alto, and Firepower solutions.

The solution is used to manage security gateways. We use the management server to manage our firewalls, one at DR and the other at HQ. 

The Management servers are also used to manage security policies to determine who or what system should connect to what. This allows us to block applications that are not needed per department. For example, Facebook is blocked for everyone except the marketing team. This helps keep people more productive. We also use the rules to prevent users from visiting dangerous and illegal sites.  

It has helped improve work in our organization. Check Point Management tracks a lot of activities on the network such as who is connecting to what sites and applications. 

It has also provided visibility into who is connecting to the corporate network via VPN and at what time which helps us keep unauthorized users away. 

The interface also makes it easy for us to configure the VPN from the GUI rather than the command line, which makes it easy even for less experienced engineers to work with. 

The management also gives visibility into licenses and device-related information to help track how long you have till licenses expire and the software and hardware health of devices. 

The smart event feature is the most valuable. The consolidated logs give full network visibility. 

The smart console has been able to provide us with good detailed information and reports ranging from bandwidth, risky applications, IPS reports, VPN reports, and infected hosts on the network. 

Reports help determine which machines may be infected with bots if they indicate that they were trying to connect to command and control servers, smart event helps determine these machines by IP address or username. 

The IPS also indicates what attacks and from where we're trying to hit our organization which helps us twerk our settings accordingly to have the most security we can get. 

It could improve by showing DNS-specific information for connections to unknown public IPs. 

Check Point could also improve management by not having applications for each version released because we have to install a new application for every version it is not very nice. They could do that by moving management to the web so that we do not have to install a client for every version. 

The fact that you have to connect to two different applications for management, does not make it the most usable. It could be great to have a system setting and policy setting done from one interface. 

I've been using the solution for four years.

It's a very stable solution and Check Point is always doing proactive support to avoid any future problems or failures. Checkpoint support fixes bugs that they discover before the implemented production systems are affected. By logging a call with the customer and helping them remediate problems before they occur. 

It is reasonably scalable as you are able to manage five gateways with one management server at entry-level.

The solution offers very good customer support. The engineers respond on time and are available to help even if it means setting up a call to help you in implementing the given instructions.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward. The prompt to install and the setup guide will get you through the process. When you're unclear, there are plenty of online resources to help.

We did the implementation in-house.

The solution is definitely worth it as it helps put policies that help people focus more on work than play to use company resources more efficiently.

I mainly use this solution for endpoint security, to capture data with a secure approach.

Our data is the most important thing, therefore, it's essential that it be secured. Checkpoint has been very effective in terms of threat management and comprehensive protection against vulnerabilities, and it has given us confidence that our data is not going anywhere. 

The tracking of new threats could be improved.

I've been working with this solution for a couple of years.

Check Point's stability is good.

My experience with technical support has been good.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The return on investment is that our data is safe, Check Point offer upgrades, and we get the best possible cost-effective price.

I looked at Sophos, but Check Point's security coverage is better.

I would definitely recommend this solution to anybody thinking of implementing it. I would give it a rating of nine out of ten.

This solution is used to control OPC's. You are also able to generate reports with it.

Our organization is now able to easily see if our computers are running smoothly or not.

This solution is easy to install and deploy. It is also user-friendly.

I would like for users to have more control over the platform in the next release. Right now, the system is very central and general requiring new rules to be created that better-suite our requirements.

I have been using this solution since 1993.

This is a stable solution.

This is a scalable solution, we currently have three to four hundred users.

We hardly contact Check Point support thanks to help from our partner. However, if there is an issue neither of us can resolve, we open a case with Check Point and they are able to resolve the issue quickly.

We were using Symantec for its antivirus and backup capabilities, but now that Check Point offers antivirus, we are only using Symantec for backups. And Check Point is one fourth of the price!

The initial setup was not complex. There was still a bit to learn with the program, but it was not complex. Initial installation took about a day and a half and it took one week for deployment in total after running some tasks.

We had support from a Check Point partner perform the initial setup. We now have four members of our technical group maintaining the solution.

Check Point is much cheaper than the competition ($4/server as compared to $17/server).

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten (nine for its antivirus capabilities).

We use Check Point Security Gateway GAIA R 80.40 as our secure gateway firewall. We have configured two gateways as active-passive in cluster mode. We also use R 80.40 as our security management server to configure the policies on the firewall. We use it primarily to control traffic and secure our network perimeter against unknown attacks. The different rules and policies for the SSL VPN connections are configured on the mobile access blade. We use the policies to segregate and filter the traffic flow. 

Check Point Security Management GAIA R 80.40 tremendously helped us in securing our network perimeter against various threats. 

We have used the access rules and application/URL filtering blades to filter and restrict unwanted traffic. 

The IPS blade, Antivirus blade, Anti-bot blade, Threat Emulation blade, and Threat Prevention blades are helping us tremendously in preventing attacks and thus take care of the threats at the gateways themselves. 

At the time of COVID, the Mobile Access blade has helped greatly in the smooth running of production.

We have found all the security blades very helpful. The IPS blade, Antivirus blade, Anti-bot blade, Threat Emulation blade, and Threat Prevention blades have been most useful in securing the network. 

With the antivirus, IPS, and Anti-bot blades signatures being automatically updated regularly on a daily/hourly basis, the network is always safe. 

The URL and Application Filter blade offers a daily update of the database which helps us control the traffic. 

Mobile access has helped us cater to more than 4000 users so that they can work from home.

The Security Management server could be improved. If it provided an inbuilt authenticator for multifactor authentication, that would be ideal. Currently, we have to depend on a third party for multifactor authentication. 

It would help us greatly in securing the remote access users if Mac binding can be done for remote access VPN users in mobile. It would be helpful if we could enable URL and application traffic control remote access. 

The logging and reporting are good, but it would be helpful if more report templates were available.

I have been using Check Point Security Gateway for more than 7 years.

The stability is great.

The scalability is great.

Technical support is good.

Positive

The company has been using Check Point for a long time. It's been more than 10 years. I have been with the company for past 7 Years.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We had assistance from our Vendor Team (ISecurenet). They are very good.

Our ROI has been above expectations.

The price is high but worth it.

Check Point is one of the top leaders in security solutions.

We use this solution to manage and configure all of our firewalls distributed across multiple remote locations. We can do it with a single interface where policies are created, managed, and distributed across all locations.

Check Point Security Management has improved our organization because all corporate firewalls can be managed with a single interface. Many objects are common in the policies of the various sites, thus saving time when it is necessary to create or modify access policies.

Check Point Security Management has a beautiful interface for viewing logs and access reports. You can create many filters and run queries from a modern graphical interface without resorting to shell commands.

The graphical interface is nice but it is a bit heavy. Even installing the policies is often a very slow activity. Sometimes it happens that the rules are scattered in several points such as global properties, security policy, and/or application policy and it is difficult to find the point where to intervene

I've been using Check Pont for 15 years.

We are using it on the cloud for cloud segmentation and as a VPN for users. We have been implementing Checkpoint on Azure's cloud for configuring scale sets for internal and external firewalls and as a gateway group active/standby for the VPN. The solution is implemented using a Multiple Entry Point feature. This allows us to use the same URL deplyed for all users and let them connect to the nearest node. We use other features like IPS, Threat Control, and Antivirus/Antibot for protecting our servers. We wanted to implement the SCV feature but it's not working. We've been working with support for months without a resolution.

It has allowed global worldwide access to our cloud infrastructure. It gives us the possibility to improve security on the Azure cloud as well. 

It features NGFW provided by checkpoint with all of the capabilities that are required to protect for Next Generation protection from attacks at perimeter level The module and security features that are provided as part of the base license with Checkpoint include the VPN, IPS, Application Control, and Content Awareness which offers strong protection for the organization. The main problem is that the support in terms of solving any issue is not very good.

The unique management using Smart Console for all Firewalls is very useful. Also, the management of policies and the log page allows for easy troubleshooting and configuration using a single pane of glass. The new release R81 allows a very fast installation of policies on the firewalls.

The MEP feature had a lot of problems during the implementation, needing configuration of TXT file via the CLI, however, at the end of the implementation, it is working well and has given us a very good advantage on the VPN solution in our company. I hope to see other useful features in the next release.

I've found the solution was a bit unstable. It would be better to improve the stability of the service. Another thing that needs to be improved is the Checkpoint support. Very often they were not able to solve the problems that we had. Sometimes to solve problems you need to install a new Hotfix or Custom release - and that can generate some side effects that can create instability problems. It's necessary to improve the support - especially the one that is provided in India.

We had done an upgrade 2 months ago.

It's improving with new releases.

It's very scalable.

The experience has not been very good.

Yes, we were using on-prem products with Cisco Anyconnect VPN solutions. We switched to Checkpoint and moved the VPN solution to the cloud.

Yes, it was a bit complex.

We had a good level of expertise, and we also used Checkpoint professional services directly.

We hope to have ROI in 3 years.

Licensing is very granular. You can easily select the best solution and feature that fits to you.

We did not evaluate other options.

They should improve the support and the stability of the system. When there are issues, it is not very easy to solve problems using the support they offer. Other vendors like Cisco have better support. This is very important for Enterprise companies - even more than new features.

We use it for both perimeter and internal defense.

It is good when it comes to access control, which is the basic feature that we use in a firewall appliance or solution. Check Point is effective when it comes to security control and threat prevention.

Support is the main area that they need to improve. Our support experience is not very smooth. We are based in Africa, and we don't know whether it is because of our region.

I would like a feature where there is a workflow to provide authorization to some users before they're able to create and apply rules. Such a feature should be integrated with the management. It should not be in the box that comes with it.

I have been working on the protection network since 2014. It has been around seven years.

So far, it has been stable, but stability also depends on your design and deployment. You might have a performance issue, especially when you have to deal with a lot of traffic. You also need to factor in maintenance in terms of the upgrades, patches, and hotfixes that you need to do regularly. When you're able to do that and take care of the maintenance, you'll have stability.

Scalability depends on your design. You have to properly scope your environment to know the amount of traffic that is expected to go through, pass, or transmit through the firewall. After you have a proper scope, you won't have any problems. Otherwise, you'll definitely be experiencing issues.

Our support experience is not very smooth. We are based in Africa, and we don't know whether it is because of our region.

As compared to other security and firewall solutions, its deployment is not that easy. The deployment duration depends on your project plan. It also depends on whether you are working just on the deployment, and there are no distractions.

In terms of those who manage the rules and administer the system, we have about ten people. They are administrators, and they create rules, manage the system, and provide support.

I wasn't a part of the team that did the evaluation.

I would advise others to properly apply good design concepts by engaging professionals. They should properly scope their environment to ensure that they are deploying the solution to optimized standards. They should also ensure that they train their personnel to be able to handle the first level and even second level support when it comes to the management of Check Point.

I would rate Check Point Security Management a seven out of ten considering the skills that are required and the ease of use and management.

We have a Check Point firewall to secure our perimeter as well as on the internal network. We also have our Security Management server on VM. Both perimeter & internal sets are managed via the same Security Management system.

Two separate packages are created for both perimeter & internal sets.

We are also managing a SandBlast device via Security Management.

Even though all of the work is performed by the gateway, Security Management plays a vital role in a three-tier architecture. Here, our primary use case is to push security policies & manage logs.

Check Point Security Management is one-stop for all operation-related activity on the Check Point Security Gateway (firewalls).

We have completed one-time implementation configurations, like clustering, using this tool.

Check Point has a very sophisticated log monitor, where troubleshooting is very simple. We just have to put the desired filter, and Check Point generates the reports that help us to understand the overall picture in our network.

We have created multiple users, and they each have a smart dashboard install on their machine.

The Check Point Management server is isolated from security gateways, which means that in case there is an issue, we have our configuration ready and we can directly replace the device and push the configuration. Logs are collected at the management server, hence we can preserve those as well. 

We can keep on adding new devices that can all be managed from a single security management server.

After the upgrade to R80, we have a single interface for all activities. Previously, we needed to configure using different applications.   

It is very difficult to recover policies from the gateway in case if you lose your security management server, and don't have a backup.

The backup functionality (Migrate export command), which covers policies, can not be operated from the GUI. Instead, we have to log into the CLI and generate a file then take it out. For those not familiar with the Command Line interface, there should be an option in the GUI for operating backups. There should also be an option to automatically schedule the backup. 

The smart dashboard is a very heavy application. If we could directly connect & manage firewalls from the Management server itself then it would make it very easy.

I have been working with Check Point Security Management for more than three years.

The stability needs to be improved.

Scalability-wise, it is very good, as it was deployed on VM.

TAC is very supportive but we face many issues with this product.

Previously, we had only firewalls & not a management device. 

The initial setup is not very complex & can be done easily.

We are the ones who implemented it.

This product can be used for 25 security gateways on a basic license. I think that this is good value for the money.

We wanted to implement Check Point and hence, we did not evaluate others.

Our company works in developing and delivering online gambling platforms. The Check Point Gateways are the core security solution we use to protect our DataCenter environment located in Asia (Taiwan). The environment has about ~50 physical servers as virtualization hosts, and we have two Check Point HA Clusters 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 Jumbo Hotfix Accumulators installed (Take 275). The Security Management server has the following blades activated - Network Policy Management, Logging & Status, User Directory, Compliance, SmartEvent Server, Provisioning.

The overall security of the environment has been greatly improved by the Check Point solution. Before implementing that, we have to rely on the Cisco ACLs and Zone-Based firewall that we had configured on the switches and routers, which in fact was just a simple stateful firewall, and all the devices had to be managed locally via SSH. Now, with the Check Point Security Management server in place, we have a central endpoint to manage all the security aspects for the environment - the SmartConsole. That helped to decrease the management overhead, as well as to improve the usability and feasibility of the security.

As the security administrator, who is responsible for the day-to-day tasks (e.g. creating new firewall rules, monitoring the security alerts and incidents etc.) and the maintenance (e.g. installing the new Jumbo Hotfixes), I find the Check Point Security Management R80.10 to be the great solution. 

Now everything is configured in one place - the unified SmartConsole, which helps me in saving the working time and not jumping from one console or dashboard to another constantly. The interface is cozy and modern. I especially like built-in searching capabilities - you may not just find the objects, but also see where exactly it is used across the whole security policy. Also, now the latest logs may be seen in the security policy as well, per matched rule. 

I like that the Compliance software blade is available for free with the Security Management server purchase, but it is free for only one year - after that, you have to buy an additional license to continue using it. I think such an important feature is vital for the management server, and should not be licensed separately. 

Also, the SmartConsole application used for management is currently available only for Microsoft Windows OSes. I think many administrators use macOS and Linux, so it would be nice to have native apps for these platforms as well.

My current company has been using the Check Point Security Management for about three years, starting late 2017.

The Check Point Security Management server version R80.10 we use is stable and mature solution.

One virtual machine we use for the Security Management is enough for managing 2 clusters, and there is a huge "space" if we decide to scale the DataCenter up.

We have had several support cases opened with the Check Point, but none of them was connected with the Security Management. In. general, I think some cases took to long to be resolved by the Check Point support team - up to one month.

We used local ACLs and Zone-Based firewall on Cisco switches and routers, that's incompatible with the centralized management solution like Check Point Security Management.

The setup was straightforward, and the configuration part was easy and understandable - we didn't use any consulting services for that.

The solution has been implemented by in-house team, since we have the Check Point Certified engineer among the technical team.

The Check Point solutions in general are not cheap, so your company should have a dedicated budget for security.

We didn't evaluate other vendors.

There's a demo of the Security Management available for free - just download and install the SmartConsole application, and you could see the interface and most of the features available.