We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and Cisco Secure Firewall based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Check Point users are happier with its VPN and with its pricing. However, Cisco Secure users are happier with its service and support.
"The next-gen features, the unified threat management capabilities are something that just about everybody is interested in at this point."
"One of the valuable features is a standardized OS."
"The interface is very user-friendly and I like it very much."
"The most valuable features are SD-WAN, application control, IPS control, and FortiSandbox."
"We can use our devices to check all of the perimeters. It secures email websites."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are it is one of the most mature firewalls in the UTM bundle."
"Security solution with a straightforward and quick setup. It's a stable and scalable product."
"We were looking for the VPN feature and controlling the inflow and outflow of all the traffic within the site and across the sites. We are also using it for the VPN and VLANs."
"The performance has been very good."
"When applying application control, we can ensure user access to the internet in accordance with company policy and easy implementation if some users need exception access."
"It provides access to the Internet for corporate resources in a secure manner."
"The only area that Check Point still seems to excel in is their logging."
"The packet inspections have been a strong point. Our identity collectors have also been helpful. In many ways, Check Point has been a step up from our SonicWalls that we had in-house before that. There's a lot of additional flexibility that we didn't have before."
"All policies can be deployed and managed in a very simple way."
"One of the solution's best features include a packet-filtering firewall that examines packets in isolation."
"The biggest thing is the central management. It is quite good and allows us to manage the different firewalls from it. We can implement and configure many firewalls and push our policies to them as well."
"One of the most valuable features of Firepower 7.0 is the "live log" type feature called Unified Event Viewer. That view has been really good in helping me get to data faster, decreasing the amount of time it takes to find information, and allowing me to fix problems faster. I've found that to be incredibly valuable because it's a lot easier to get to some points of data now."
"I like the Cisco ASDM (Adaptive Security Device Manager), which is the configuration interface for the Cisco firewall."
"Among the top features are integrated threat defence and the fact that each virtual appliance is separate so you get great granular control."
"The high-availability and remote VPN features are most valuable."
"It's the VPN side of things that has been most useful for us. It allows us to secure our users even when they're working from home. They are able to access all of our resources, no matter where they are in the world."
"The most valuable feature of the Firepower solution is FireSIGHT, which can be easily managed and is user-friendly."
"The stability of Cisco ASA is excellent compared to other products on the market. Because of our customer experience as an integrator company, our clients never report any performance problems. We have a good performance reputation with Cisco ASA."
"It's got the capabilities of amassing a lot of throughput with remote access and VPNs."
"The solution lacks sufficient filtering."
"Bandwidth usage in reporting could be improved for Fortinet FortiGate."
"Palo Alto has a feature called WildFire Analysis that is unavailable in FortiGate. WildFire is better than a sandbox because it can address zero-day threats and vulnerabilities. It can immediately identify zero-day threats from the cloud."
"Usually, we sell the bundle with the UTM or threat management piece with IPS, IDS. Other providers, such as Palo Alto, are ahead in terms of safe functionality. So, for me, delivering truly safe service is probably something that still needs to be improved."
"I think that the infrastructure for the VPN could be improved. The way that it is bundled also made it difficult to use and sell as it is too expensive."
"This product could be improved with Active directory integration and better handling in IPsec and GRE Tunnels."
"The cloud features can be improved."
"There are SD-WAN network monitoring, SD-WAN features, Industrial Databases, Internet of Things, Detection, etc., however, we do have not licenses for those features. We thought that if you bought a product, you should have all of the features it offers. Why should you need to make so many extra purchases to enable features? They should have one price for the entire offering."
"Although they have it now, we don't have a license for it, and I think mobile device security should be a standard feature. I cannot control someone bringing their device to my network and what they do."
"Check Point could improve the time for delivering requested features from customers."
"The source package is a bit more expensive than its competitors."
"IoT should be considered in future development."
"It will be good if the product is rack-mounted."
"The firewall can improved to make it more user-friendly."
"We looked very closely at ArcSight's solution because it's a multi-vendor solution. With ArcSight we could have Check Point, we could have RSA, we could have any brand and integrate several brands, from a security point of view. With Check Point, you cannot do so, you can integrate with Check Point products."
"There needs to be advanced troubleshooting."
"The scalability is a bit limiting, to be honest. In terms of when you look to changing landscape in terms of threats, I think to me, my personal it's a bit limiting."
"We would really like to see dual dual power supplies for some Cisco Firewall products."
"It would be nice if you didn't have to configure using a command-line interface. It's a bit technical that way."
"Most users do not have awareness of this product's functionality and features. Cisco should do something to make them aware of them. That would be quite excellent and useful to organizations that are still using legacy data-center-security products."
"The initial setup was a bit complex. It wasn't a major challenge, but due to our requirements and network, it was not very straightforward but still easy enough."
"Firewalls, in general, were not really designed for normal IT personnel, but for firewall and network experts. Therefore, they missed a lot of options and did not provide any good reporting or improvement options."
"One area that could be improved is its logging functionality. Your logs are usually displayed on the screen, but if you want to go back one or two days, then you need another solution in place because those logs are overwritten within minutes."
"They could improve by having more skilled, high-level engineers that are available around the clock. I know that's an easy thing to say and a hard thing to do."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 277 reviews while Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Check Point NGFW writes "Good antivirus protection and URL filtering with very good user identification capabilities". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Azure Firewall and OPNsense, whereas Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and OPNsense. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Cisco Secure Firewall report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.