We performed a comparison between Check Point CloudGuard Network Security and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security provides a range of valuable features including VPN Blade, IPS Blade, URL filtering, and Applications Control Blade. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls excel in areas such as embedded machine learning, robust security capabilities, and a unified platform.
Check Point CloudGuard Network Security has room for improvement in its support system, cluster creation on AWS, data protection visibility, DLP feature, user interface, integration, cost reduction, documentation, and flexibility in deployment. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls could benefit from improvements in customization, network performance in the Middle East, advanced features, integration, usability, GUI interface, training materials, SSL inspection, and external dynamic list feature.
Service and Support: While some customers appreciate the technical support provided by Check Point, others are dissatisfied with the response time. Palo Alto Networks has customers who praise their knowledgeable support team, but there are also complaints about long wait times and issues with their support ticketing system. In summary, the customer service quality for both products differs among users.
Ease of Deployment: While some find it easy, simple, and straightforward, others mention that it may be complex and require technical expertise. Users generally consider the initial setup of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls to be straightforward and not complex. They find it easy and user-friendly.
Pricing: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is known for its higher setup cost, however, it provides strong security measures and good value. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls may have higher pricing compared to other options, yet it is regarded as dependable and offers high-performance capabilities.
ROI: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security delivers a significant return on investment, ranging from 80-85%. Users have experienced the advantages of this solution within a short timeframe. Palo Alto NG Firewalls provide enhanced visibility, reporting capabilities, and overall security measures, leading to a robust return on investment.
Comparison Results: Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is the preferred option when comparing it to Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. Users appreciate its user-friendly interface, centralized management, and ability to scale. It also focuses on cloud security and offers advanced threat prevention and detection. Additionally, it provides auto-scaling, malware prevention, and exploit resistance.
"FortiGate SD-WAN facilitated a smooth transition for our customers between their two internet service providers, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity without any downtime."
"Unified Threat Management (UTM) features."
"Our project needs to link two sides through the internet. One of these was in Cairo and the other in another city. We used FortiGate as the integrating solution between the two locations, i.e. the Fortinet 30E & 100E."
"The tool is a nice product and easy to handle. The software's user interface is also good. You can easily implement remote access in the solution."
"The most valuable features are that it is very simple to configure and to manage."
"The VPN is the most valuable feature."
"The feature I like most is the SD-WAN. It allows you to manage more than one ISP at the same time. And there is a high-availability mode, so if one of your ISPs is down, you still have a backup."
"SSL-VPN is very useful for us and has been very reliable."
"It makes securing our cloud workload super easy, and we are able to push any sort of policy changes we need pretty quickly"
"CloudGuard's intelligent tools help us automate many manual security tasks, guaranteeing our customers' environments will be secure."
"We have complete visibility of attacks originating from email including spear-phishing, spoofing, etc."
"It really is a pretty complete solution."
"Identity awareness, URL filtering, IDS, DLP, Content Filtering, VPN, and Application Control are all excellent."
"The 24/7 online customer support services enhance effective operations and provide quick services in case of a system failure."
"It offers remarkable flexibility in how we configure and utilize the resources."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring. We can easily monitor what kind of stuff comes over to our network and we can then check the dashboard and work accordingly."
"It is critical that Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls embeds machine learning in the core of the firewall to provide inline, real-time attack prevention. In my environments, we have an integration with a third-party vendor. As soon as there is new information about new threats and the destination that they are trying to reach on any of our network devices, that traffic will be stopped."
"The most valuable feature is WildFire, which blocks sophisticated attacks and distinguishes it from other traditional firewall functions."
"Their Prisma log collection is pretty great. Our product collects the logs, and it definitely makes the configuration of log collection easier."
"It's a next-generation firewall and it's pretty stable. You don't have to worry about if you restart it for some maintenance. It will just come back."
"The ease of use and the ease of configuration of our policies are the most valuable features."
"All the features are valuable, but my main one is the straightforward and well-designed GUI. I'm over 50 and have been in this business since the internet started. I'm not a GUI guy; I prefer using the command line. The product's GUI is excellent, and so is the threat intelligence. It's also straightforward to configure and flexible. The solution even has good networking, such as VLAN and subinterfaces, which is great because, in my experience, if the firewall is good, then the router usually isn't and vice-versa, but Palo Alto has both."
"URL filtering and WildFire features are most valuable. It is very user-friendly. It is a very solid product, and it definitely works."
"The application control portion of the solution is its most valuable aspect."
"They sometimes hide some features and if you want to enable them, you have to go in the CLI, enable the feature and configure it through the CLI. Customers, typically, like everything to be done by the GUI."
"There aren't really any negative aspects to discuss."
"Fortinet needs more memory to save the log files. We need it to save the logs on the hardware and not in the cloud. I know this feature is available in FortiCloud, but if we need this log locally, it is not available."
"While FortiGate is cheaper than most other solutions, we're seeing increased license renewal costs. Most of our clients are asking for more significant discounts because the price is going up."
"The logging details need to be improved."
"With FortiGate, the main complaint that I have heard is about the technical support."
"I don't like that anything more than very basic reporting is not included."
"The cloud features can be improved."
"The business and product development team should introduce a high-end feedback collection mechanism and analyze the customer requirements constructively."
"It needs to cover additional kinds of infrastructure, like containers and serverless options. It's somewhat limited in that area."
"In the next release, including VRF support would be highly beneficial."
"I would like to see a step-by-step initial installation of the firewall. That would be really helpful. Like in Oracle appliances, when you start it asks you, what's your current IP address? An initial setup should be a step by step and intuitive process. You click on "begin," it asks you some simple questions. You fill in the blanks - your current IP address, what you want to do, you want to set up a site to site VPN, for example, that kind of thing. That would be the smartest thing to have."
"The main issue that I have noticed is that for deployment, it still requires a dedicated management server, and the gateway is completely different. That sometimes can cause issues."
"The initial deployment using the ARM template in Azure was straightforward, but migrating to Terraform added complexity, although we managed to make it work."
"Check Point has a history of moving fast with software release and upgrade cycles which are difficult to keep up with at times."
"The initial setup is complex and could be made simpler."
"They can improve the handling and management of User-ID. They should also improve its price. Their technical support can also be improved."
"Technical support can be faster at responding."
"The solution doesn't support routing in virtual firewall creation, and we want that to be enabled."
"There has been a recent change in the graphical interface. For the monitoring part, they could have a better UI."
"I would like integration with Evident.io and RedLock."
"The only problem that I see with the Palo Alto NGFW being an all-in-one appliance is that because of the different features that are being put into a single appliance, the OS tends to be beefier. Over the eight years, we have seen that the number of features or analyses being put into the appliance itself has a tendency to slow down the appliance, especially at the time of bootup. So, any time we are doing maintenance work, the time required for the appliance to boot up and be fully functional again is significantly longer than eight years ago. They could find a way to make this all-in-one appliance faster."
"I think they need to have a proper hardware version for a smaller enterprise. We had to go to a very high-end version which is very expensive. If we chose the lower-end version, it would not meet our goals. A middle-end is missing in its portfolio."
"I would like the option to be able to block the traffic from a specific country in a few clicks."
More Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Pricing and Cost Advice →
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Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is ranked 8th in Firewalls with 121 reviews while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 162 reviews. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is rated 8.6, while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Check Point CloudGuard Network Security writes "Highly reliable, great visibility, and centralized management". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls writes "We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis". Check Point CloudGuard Network Security is most compared with Azure Firewall, VMware NSX, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Cisco Secure Firewall and Cisco Secure Workload, whereas Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Netgate pfSense. See our Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls report.
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