We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall and Check Point NGFW based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Azure Firewall seems to be a superior solution. All other things being more or less equal, our reviewers found Check Point NGFW to be rather expensive to purchase. Users of Check Point NGFW feel that the stability of the product could be improved. Additionally, some users are not so impressed by the technical support and training that it offers.
"The features that prevent internet connections, the filtering are the most valuable because we did not have any internet protection before."
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"In terms of security, we have not experienced any security flaws or loopholes, and it has proven to be quite stable."
"FortiGate firewalls are easy to manage through a user-friendly web interface. They also have advanced features like DDoS and DLP. However, I wouldn't recommend enabling all of these features on one device because it can cause performance issues."
"The interface is very user-friendly and I like it very much."
"The technical support in our region is excellent."
"The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtering testing applications, web filtering, and the new VPN."
"It has very easy management and an amazing ETM configuration."
"We use the solution for application and server deployment."
"The most valuable feature is the integration into the overall cloud platform."
"The initial setup is straightforward; Azure Firewall does not have a complex implementation process. It is very simple; you just need to enable the service within Azure. It does not require any maintenance because it is managed by Microsoft, that is, it is a fully managed service."
"Great security and connectivity."
"In terms of the reporting, it's beautiful. It integrates with Azure monitoring and with Azure policies. That piece is a big help. You can set governing policies and you can use the application firewall, as well as the Azure Firewall, to enforce those policies."
"Azure Firewall is a cloud-native solution that removes the pain of load balancers."
"The solution has many useful features. For example, the solution allows users to create virtual IP addresses."
"It's auto-scalable, which is a great feature."
"The tool provides great security."
"We have found the central management (Smart Console) to be very helpful in managing all the firewalls and keeping the software/hotfix versions up to date."
"Within the organization, the inspection of packages has given us great help in detecting traffic that may be a threat to the institution."
"The tool has solid firmware with very few vulnerabilities."
"The application control and URL filtering features are valuable since they allow very granular control of what is coming in and out of a network."
"Check Point provides dedicated blades to monitor network traffic, which helps while troubleshooting network and packet-related issues."
"It is easy to configure and it is a valuable antivirus protection. I especially like the IPS feature of this product."
"It is easy to control from the central management system. For example, if we have 10 firewalls, and we want to push that same configuration among them, we can use this solution's central management system to do that simultaneously. So, there is time saving in that way. The time savings does depend on the situation. For example, if I am running half an hour of work on each firewall, that will take around 300 minutes. However, if I do this work from the central management system, then it will only take 30 minutes to push the same configuration to those same 10 devices."
"There are just some services that aren't available. For example, the Ethernet or point-to-point protocols. They could add these services to their product offering - especially services for ISPs."
"The improvement is related to logs. Instead of the CLI, we should be able to have more insights into the logs of the firewall in the GUI."
"The command line is complicated, and the interface could be better."
"The UTM filtering needs improvement."
"The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware."
"Lacks training for new features."
"The solution needs to improve its integration with cybersecurity."
"Lacks sufficient security options."
"The solution doesn't offer the same capabilities of Fortinet. It should offer intrusion prevention and advance filtering. These are two very useful features offered on Fortinet that Azure lacks."
"It needs a lot of improvement, especially on intruder detection. They are working hard on that."
"Azure has new versions including a premium firewall. But I would like to see them not put the premium features on Azure Firewall Premium alone because it is quite expensive."
"There are a number of things that need to be simplified, but it's mostly costs. It needs to be simplified because it's pretty expensive."
"The tool needs to improve the onboarding and transition process for on-prem users."
"We find it's different implementing it region-to-region. It might help if it was universal across all regions."
"It is a cloud service, but the lending speed for each region is not always the same. For example, in China, the speed is slow. They need to think about how to make sure that the service pace or speed is always the same in all regions. It would be a great improvement if they can provide the same pace worldwide."
"Right now, with Azure Firewall, we cannot have a normal inbound traffic flow. For inbound, Microsoft suggests using application gateways, so the options are very limited. I cannot use this firewall as an intermediate firewall because of the limitations, and I cannot point routing to another firewall. So if I want to use back-to-back firewall architecture in my environment, I cannot use Azure Firewall for that type of configuration either."
"I would like to see an improvement of built-in monitoring capabilities such as throughput. Practically visualization of CPview outputs into beautiful pink GUI will do it."
"Internet load balancing provides either active/passive or active/active load balancing, however, I would like to see more options that provide SD-WAN capabilities while also allowing for more than two links."
"It would be great if the access management, the user management features, were improved in terms of the number of users that can be connected, and how users can access the various resources with the help of firewall authentication."
"In terms of what could be improved, we have a cluster with two nodes and usually we have some problems when process gets really high and it has to choose which services it keeps going. I would like to have a better solution here, like if instead of just one we could use both at the same time. It would be good if it could work together. Then when one has a failure or something like that, the other one is there to transfer, to take all the services and keep working."
"The main thing for a normal operations guy who is creating tools and firewalls, it is quite difficult to manage. It requires an expert level of knowledge in Check Point products to manage these scalable platform appliances and the virtual firewall that comes with it. We have to educate our guys and give them training on a regular basis to work on these products."
"The NAT services part needs improvement. It's not sophisticated. It needs functions like range assignment for NATing. The way you assign a list of IPs for NATing is too simple. It just allows you to use pools."
"There are some issues compared to other products. Ease of use is one."
"Error logs can be more specific."
Azure Firewall is ranked 21st in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 275 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Check Point NGFW writes "Good antivirus protection and URL filtering with very good user identification capabilities". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and OPNsense. See our Azure Firewall vs. Check Point NGFW report.
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Check Point firewall does a deep inspection of packets till Layer 7 and is more compatible with the organizational environment.
The Azure firewall is also a cloud-based security solution that also provides Advance Threat Protection.