Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs Cisco Secure Workload comparison

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. Cisco Secure Workload

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Check Point CloudGuard Netw...

Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security

5th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

161

Ranking in other categories

Firewalls (8th), Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP) (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (3rd), WAN Edge (3rd), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (3rd)

Cisco Secure Workload

Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security

8th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (15th), Microsegmentation Software (4th), Cisco Security Portfolio (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is 3.0%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 10.7%, down from 14.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud and Data Center Security Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Check Point CloudGuard Network Security	3.0%
Cisco Secure Workload	10.7%
Other	86.3%

Cloud and Data Center Security

Featured Reviews

Devraj Kc

network and security engineer at Max international

Cloud security has strengthened compliance and now protects internet access for our workloads

The best features Check Point CloudGuard Network Security offers are its threat emulation and threat extraction blade as well as bring your own license where you can use the on-prem Check Point CloudGuard and decommission it to use in the cloud. I believe Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has impacted our organization positively because it is one of the stable products that I have used till now, and we do not have to upgrade Check Point CloudGuard Network Security for any sort of CVE or bug in its OS and it is very stable. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has decreased the organizational risk because it provides compliance with HIPAA as well as PCI DSS by means of its compliance blade. It makes it easier for us to determine if we are compliant or not. It made me more secure because when you talk about security, Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is on top of the list with 99.8 in blocking malware according to the Miercom list. I believe it has had a positive effect and we have not had any incidents.

Read full review

Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

Discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map

We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration allows Cisco Secure Workload to learn about our networks and network tags, providing valuable insights into vulnerabilities related to the operating system and various applications installed on our servers. Recently, Cisco announced a new product called HyperShield, an AI-based autonomous micro-segmentation solution. While Cisco has not stated that HyperShield will replace Cisco Secure Workload, it represents a natural evolution for the company. HyperShield features dynamic policy discovery and enforcement; however, once policies are enforced, they do not change until a discovery occurs, requiring a re-enforcement process. This new platform operates autonomously, minimizing the need for user or security engineer intervention. I would have expected Cisco to incorporate more automatic discovery and enforcement features within the existing Cisco Secure Workload product. Instead of enhancing the current product, they have introduced a new solution. Cisco plans to honor existing Tetration licenses, allowing users to transition to HyperShield without additional costs, reflecting the investment enterprises have already made. From Cisco’s perspective, this represents a natural progression in their product line. While the product name changes, it seems more of a rebranding effort. The enhancements are greater autonomy, improved discovery, and automatic enforcement, which are now being introduced in HyperShield. Cisco Secure Workload offers automatic policy enforcement but cannot adjust policies dynamically as the application needs to change. Having used the platform for the past five years, the recent announcement has been reassuring. Cisco has confirmed that our investment in the platform will not go to waste. They will honor our existing licenses, providing a natural migration path to the new solution without any disruption

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The solution is easier to manage than an on-premise firewall. It is easy to manage. The use of dynamic objects for these gateways made it easy to create the right rules and the right policies. Integration with Azure is also easy where we have to just add the subnets. In an on-premise setup, we have to add everything from scratch. We can automate a lot of actions."

"We find Check Point valuable because they are 100% focused on security; it totally closes the potential vulnerability channel, we can check our mail and our attachments and scan everything easily, we get an immediate report about the situation of the attachments, can discover if the target's security attack was started from phishing, and we enjoy using the additional features that protect our internal customer from targeted attacks."

"We have very good visibility or granularity regarding security."

"Scale Set is highly beneficial. It is easy to upgrade and maintain."

"CloudGuard's intelligent tools help us automate many manual security tasks, guaranteeing our customers' environments will be secure."

"We do plan to continue to use the product as we've mostly been quite satisfied with it."

"The ease of deployment has been nice. It is like managing any of our on-prem firewalls."

"Some retail customers find the scale-up and scale-down features valuable, particularly with scale sets. This is useful for handling increased loads on devices and utilizing firewalls, similar to on-premises setups with active standby configurations."

More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security pros

"The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage. The telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent. It's complete. You see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network."

"Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."

"The solution is very user-friendly, which clients appreciate."

"Instead of proving that all the access control lists are in place and all the EPGs are correct, we can just point the auditor to a dashboard and point out that there aren't any escaped conversations."

"The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is security."

"Scalability is its most valuable feature."

"The product provides multiple-device integration."

More Cisco Secure Workload pros

Cons

"It needs to cover additional kinds of infrastructure, like containers and serverless options. It's somewhat limited in that area."

"Greater automation would reduce the need for manual configuration and management."

"We have Microsoft CASB cloud app security and it's one of the least compatible firewalls."

"The memory and hard disk capability could be strengthened."

"It's not a scale set. It's a single node. We'd need to look at the scale set to see if there was a way to get better performance."

"We are at the place where we are looking at better integration with the management system. We use an MDS today, and it is self-deployed. We want to get to the Smart-1 Cloud, but we do not know what that looks like today because it does not support a multi-domain setup. Smart-1 should either be able to do multi-domain or there should be some form of taking a multi-domain environment and putting it in Smart-1."

"Lacks the ability to integrate with other security solutions."

"CloudGuard Network Security's pricing is expensive. We have encountered issues with its licensing."

More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security cons

"There is some overlap between Cisco Tetration and AppDynamics and there are few DC tools, it would be great to have a single pane of glass, rather than have to jump between different tools."

"The product must be integrated with the cloud."

"They should scale down the hardware a bit. The initial hardware investment is two million dollars so it's a price point problem."

"Cisco Tetration needs more flags and system alerts that we should get with network capture."

"The multi-tenancy, redundancy, backup and restore functionalities, as well as the monitoring aspects of the solution, need improvement."

"The product should be easy to use, but it is not. Comparing it to other products, it was very complex."

"The interface is really helpful for technical people, but it is not user-friendly."

"The integration could be better, especially with different types of solutions."

More Cisco Secure Workload cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I quite like the way they priced it. It is very reasonable."

"Although I don't have specifics for pricing, based on my overall experience, I can conclude that Check Point provides the best pricing when comparing to other vendors."

"The pricing and licensing have been good. We just had to do a license increase for our portion of it. We had that done within a couple of days. Given the fact that it's purely a software-based license, it ends up being even quicker than doing it for an on-prem firewall."

"It is fairly priced, but it can be a little expensive from time to time."

"I like the flexibility because I am pretty sure you can use the same license on Azure or AWS. I forgot the name of the license, but there is a specific type you can use that lets you interchange them, and that is pretty good. I like that."

"You get charged only for what resources you choose and how much traffic actually passes through the firewall, which in turn saves a lot of money."

"We got discounts on pricing."

"When customers compare it with Sophos or any other products, the price is on the higher side."

More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security pricing and cost advice

"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."

"Regarding price, Cisco Secure Workload can be expensive if you don't have a budget. If you're not doing micro-segmentation, every extra security measure or enforcement you're putting on top of your existing environment will be an extra cost. It's not a cheap solution at all. But from my point of view, if you need to do micro-segmentation, this is one of the best tools I've seen for it. I can't compare that to Microsoft's solution because I haven't looked into it. I've looked into VMware and Cisco. Those are the only two that I know of. I didn't know that Microsoft could do micro-segmentation at all. Maybe they can, but I haven't heard anything about it."

"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."

"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."

"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."

"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."

"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Marketing Services Firm

Performing Arts

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	67
Midsize Enterprise	40
Large Enterprise	76

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	8

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

The tool's most valuable feature is its management console.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

Although I do not know much about the pricing or setup costs, Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is very cost-effective. If you want to secure your organization completely from all ends agains...

What needs improvement with Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security could be improved with faster policy propagation across large multi-cloud environments and more intuitive dashboards for complex rule sets.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Workload?

CloudStrike offers antivirus capabilities and firewall features for servers and VDI but lacks automatic policy discovery. This raises questions about the resources required to discover and write po...

What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?

What is your primary use case for Cisco Secure Workload?

When we onboarded Cisco Secure Workload, the usual use case was to discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map for Cisco ACI. As the network team, we chose to implement A...

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Product Reports

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security

Download Check Point CloudGuard Network Security product report

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security report

Cisco Secure Workload

Download Cisco Secure Workload product report

Also Known As

CloudGuard IaaS, Check Point vSEC, CloudGuard IaaS, Check Point Virtual Systems, Check Point CloudGuard Network Security

Cisco Tetration

Overview

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security offers centralized management, robust threat prevention, and seamless integration with major public clouds, ensuring consistent security for cloud and on-premises environments. It combines ease of use with flexibility across diverse IT infrastructure.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security provides comprehensive protection for IT infrastructures in AWS, Azure, and hybrid environments. It ensures firewall security, managing traffic and securing cloud infrastructures while maintaining network protection and compliance enforcement. Organizations benefit from its centralized security governance, enhanced visibility, and threat prevention for both perimeter and internal security. It offers seamless integration with leading cloud platforms, allowing for efficient deployment and scalability, aligning with modern cloud requirements.

What are the key features of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

Ease of Setup and Use: Provides a user-friendly setup process and intuitive operation.
Robust Threat Prevention: Offers advanced capabilities to safeguard against potential threats.
Auto-Scaling: Adjusts resources dynamically to meet demand without manual intervention.
Centralized Management: Ensures uniform security policies across cloud and on-premises environments.
Integration with Major Public Clouds: Seamlessly works with AWS, Azure, and other leading platforms.
Intuitive ACL Menu: Simplifies access control list management with an easy-to-navigate interface.
Customizable Policy Options: Allows for personalized security settings suited to specific requirements.

What benefits should companies look for in Check Point CloudGuard Network Security?

Enhanced Operational Efficiency: Through automation and comprehensive reporting, organizations streamline operations.
Consistent Security Management: Offers uniform policies across different environments, reducing complexity.
Improved Threat Detection: Increases the ability to identify and respond to threats quickly.
Scalability: Easily adapts to growing or changing infrastructure needs without compromising security.

In industries such as finance, healthcare, and tech, Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is vital for protecting sensitive data, managing compliance, and safeguarding daily operations. Its robust integration capabilities support diverse infrastructure setups, assisting companies in maintaining high-security standards efficiently.

Check Point Software Technologies

Cisco Secure Workload is a cloud and data security solution that offers a zero-trust policy of keeping an organization’s application workloads safe and secure throughout the entire on-premise and cloud data center ecosystems.

Cisco Secure Workload will consistently provide protection by discovering workload process anomalies, stopping threats immediately, minimizing the risk threat surface, and aborting any lateral movement.

Today’s ecosystems are very elastic, and in the application-focused dynamic of today’s aggressive marketplace, Cisco Secure Workload delivers a robust security solution that works effectively with today’s most popular applications. The solution uniquely surrounds each and every workload to ensure organizations are able to keep their data, network, and applications safe and secure at all times. Cisco Secure Workload ensures that enterprise organizations can maintain secure applications by consistently building firewalls around every workload level throughout the entire ecosystem. The solution can manage applications that are deployed on containers, virtual machines, or bare-metal servers.

Cisco Secure workload is able to meet an organization's busy needs and offers flexible options such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and on-premises options. Using the Secure Workload SaaS options, users receive all the benefits of Cisco Secure Workload protection without the hassle of having to deploy and maintain the platform on premises. Users are responsible for acquiring the necessary software licensing and deploying software agents. Using SaaS, Secure Workload runs in the cloud and is operated and maintained by Cisco. This option offers the ability to scale easily and is a popular choice for SaaS-first and SaaS-only clients. Many organizations find they get the best TCO and achieve the best productivity and profitability using the SaaS options.

When choosing on-premises options, organizations choose between hardware-based appliance models (large or small form factors). Platform selection is dependent on scalability goals, the desired fidelity level of flow telemetry, and the actual number of workloads. When a user chooses to configure Cisco Secure Workload for a conversation-only flow telemetry for all workloads, each platform has the capability to scale up vertically twice the default platform scale. Additionally, with Secure Workload, it is possible for the platform to be scaled horizontally in order to satisfy the demands of extra large widely distributed enterprise environments using federation capabilities.

Cisco Secure Workload also provides a robust disaster recovery (DR) tool, which helps to make it a complete, comprehensive solution. The DR allows for continuous restore and backup capabilities that enable users to quickly remediate operations and data to a standby cluster in the event of a drastic failure or disaster.

Reviews from Real Users

“The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage. The telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent. It's complete. You see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network. Other valuable features include vast support for annotations, flexible user applications, machine learning, automatic classification, and hierarchical policies.” - CTO at a tech vendor

Cisco

Sample Customers

Physicians Choice Laboratory Services, Helvetica Insurance

ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. Cisco Secure Workload