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Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall vs Juniper Session Smart Router comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

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

Forcepoint Next Generation ...
Ranking in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (24th), WAN Edge (11th)
Juniper Session Smart Router
Ranking in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Routers (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions category, the mindshare of Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is 2.3%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Juniper Session Smart Router is 2.1%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Juniper Session Smart Router2.1%
Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall2.3%
Other95.6%
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions
 

Featured Reviews

Ajit Pratap Kundan - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager Solution Consulting at Accops Systems Pvt Ltd
Unified security management has improved traffic control and simplified remote workforce access
Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall does help in vulnerability identification and response by providing a single unified console through which I am able to monitor and manage infrastructure. The URL filtering capability of Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall helps in blocking malicious sites. We have to take care of both known threats and unknown threats. The firewall takes care of known threats, and we protect ourselves from unknown threats such as malicious code and malware that we cannot create firewall rules for. With these routing capabilities and policies, only whitelisted things get processed or passed. The biggest advantages of Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall, especially as a partner, service provider, and integrator, are that it is very easy to integrate these APIs with our solution, and most of the features I am getting in the clientless mode. Even with the client mode, it is easy to integrate with our client, allowing the customer to get a single client to address all the features of the firewall as well as the GTNA perspective. The flexibility of deployment, especially for the government and defense sectors, is that they want an on-premises solution, while the rest of the PSUs or enterprise segment are comfortable with the cloud offering, which is the SaaS offering and the way to go in the future.
Esther Sultaana - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Consultant Storage at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Secure healthcare connectivity has protected patient data and supports reliable telemedicine
Everything can be improved. It could improve its security stack with malware detection, particularly in healthcare because of ransomware. Now you have IoT vulnerabilities, so something like advanced malware detection or threat analysis would help. This is something I worked with around 2016 to 2017. Perhaps they have added those features, but I know they didn't have it then. Some security profiles for specific medical devices would be helpful. Sandboxing would be good. Dedicated telemedicine routing profiles would be beneficial because we have a lot of telemedicine going on. Real-time sessions for clinicians may need pre-built templates for EHR and EMR. I think those would be good if they're not already there. I don't know what the latest router has, but I know they didn't have those features then. There can always be improvements because technology is constantly advancing. It is a very solid router, and that is one of many industries that could utilize it. Healthcare is one such industry, and if it works for healthcare, then that is a major plus for that router.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The central security management center and the content management center are very good."
"Forcepoint is my favorite enterprise firewall."
"Forcepoint is a very big company with a very good product line, and it fulfills most of the needs of the customers, especially enterprise customers in the financial sector."
"Forcepoint's stability is satisfactory, for the most part."
"When our customer needs some optimization, along with performance and security. If they want everything in one package, I recommend Forcepoint because they have everything."
"The simplicity of the solution is its most valuable asset. It's very user-friendly."
"Technical support has been quite helpful in the past."
"The product's initial setup phase is easy."
"The solution is especially Session's smart, application-aware, AI-based."
"I can share specific numbers; we achieved a 30 to 60% WAN cost reduction by reducing MPLS usage."
"Because we are talking directly to engineers in the US, the support is usually the best you can possibly get."
"Juniper Session Smart Router has positively impacted my organization because we have multi-cloud solutions that are extremely useful for our M365, Teams communication, Zoom communication, SAP applications, and Oracle-based applications."
"Juniper Session Smart Router has positively impacted my organization by achieving a 30% to 40% reduction in WAN cost, which means less reliance on MPLS, with a 40% faster failover with near-zero user impact during link issues, and 20% to 30% less time spent on troubleshooting, along with fewer outages due to dynamic path selection, which facilitates fast branch deployment."
"As compared to the other major vendors in the SD-WAN market, such as VeloCloud, Cisco, and others, the tunnel-free and secure vector routing technology is its major USP, which gives plenty of room to discuss with the customer why IPSec from 1998 is a bit outdated."
"Juniper Session Smart Router has positively impacted my organization by simplifying SD-WAN deployments, allowing us to operate with fewer staff, as its integration with Juniper Mist AI takes on much of the workload, thereby offering reliable performance and stability without software issues."
"Customer service is very prompt."
 

Cons

"When it comes to a complex deployment, the rules, firewall features, SD-WAN core features, and auto-scaling can cause the device to be not quite stable."
"We spent a lot of time and received help from different people, and it was still a failure in the end. We disposed of the product."
"The capacity for reading the users in a domain and the capacity to integrate the solution with the active directory or any kind of directory services need improvement."
"Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall should make some improvements because there is some instability with their software. Sometimes it could lag or become over-utilized, you need to clear some caches and do some restarts, and sometimes some traffic is being blocked and the reason is not entirely clear."
"Configuration is not easy because it has an old-fashioned interface. The configuration interface is highly complex, and it's been the same for years. They have to change the interface."
"They should have a GUI on the product itself, not a separate management tool to be used on the management server or on a server to be used to manage the file. It should be all in one device. The device should be controlled through its own GUI. They also have to improve the learning center and the documents as the documents don't really help."
"However, we did have a horrible experience with Forcepoint in the past."
"In larger companies with extensive infrastructure, retrieving logs for a longer period of time can sometimes take a bit longer than desired."
"One area for improvement that I have observed is related to the VPN, where I frequently notice VPN flaps or disconnections between Juniper Session Smart Router and the SD-WAN hub device in the data center, which should be addressed to prevent users from experiencing any downtime."
"My overall rating for Juniper Session Smart Router as a product is that earlier it was good, but currently, the replacement of the devices is very difficult, and the staff is also a challenge."
"Juniper Session Smart Router should have a more user-friendly graphical interface because the user interface is complex, and some upgrade operations are sometimes difficult."
"Regarding improvement, we still need to see what it can do."
"Juniper Session Smart Router could be better in several areas such as the steep learning curve because the session-based model is different from traditional networking."
"I found some weaknesses on their hardware. They are sometimes breaking very often."
"The UI of the SSR conductor is the main part where improvements can be done. Today, for every configuration step, you have to do a series of clicks."
"Everything can be improved. It could improve its security stack with malware detection, particularly in healthcare because of ransomware."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a license required to use this solution and we can purchase it for one, two, three, or five years."
"The solution is expensive."
"Forcepoint is very expensive but it's really secure."
"The pricing should be more competitive against other vendors in the market."
"It is an affordable product. We purchase its yearly license."
"We have found the price could be reduced. It is a little expensive."
"Everything in Forcepoint comes with an individual license, which is kind of a problem. In our last meeting, they said that it may change at the beginning of 2021, and they will try to merge some licenses together. Customers will get more features than what they got previously. We will wait and see."
"Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is reasonable, it is priced the same as other firewalls."
"We are currently renegotiating the offer for the licenses and the license bundle model. The license for an ISP has to be different from the license for an end customer. This is something we are currently renegotiating with Juniper, but, of course, the pricing for the licensing is always an issue when you want to get more customers."
"It is a simple bandwidth-based license and the orchestration comes bundled with the solution by default."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
21%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall?
In terms of price, I would say Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is not expensive. It is very much comparable to other vendors, and pricing is not a problem, especially for the Asian market, with...
What needs improvement with Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall?
The negative side of Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is that the ZTNA part is missing. For that, we have to integrate a third-party component with Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall to complet...
What is your primary use case for Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall?
The major use cases for Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall are in government turnkey projects where we require a lot of traffic coming from the public domain. That is why we are putting these fire...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Juniper Session Smart Router?
I personally did not do the pricing. I imagine it was okay because the company did purchase it. In a lot of instances, particularly as it pertains to healthcare, they don't want to spend too much. ...
What needs improvement with Juniper Session Smart Router?
I think the current Juniper focuses more on switching rather than routing, which is a weak point in the product. Currently, I and my customers have not utilized the Session Awareness feature of Jun...
What is your primary use case for Juniper Session Smart Router?
I have been running my own company and working with Juniper Session Smart Router for almost 10 to 12 years because Larsen & Toubro is my client who will use Juniper devices for switching and fi...
 

Also Known As

Forcepoint NGFW, Stonesoft Next Generation Firewall, McAfee Network Security Platform, Intel Security Network Security Platform
128T Networking Platform, 128 Technology SD-WAN, Juniper SSR Series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR)
Revation Systems
Find out what your peers are saying about Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall vs. Juniper Session Smart Router and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.