We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and Fortinet Fortigate based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Fortinet’s lack of an option to deploy firewalls on multiple endpoints is a definite downside. Although Fortinet received better feedback for its support, Check Point is the winner in this comparison.
"Check Point is able to satisfy almost any security tool for enterprise clients. This allows us to deploy complex changes from a single management interface, get better visibility, and significantly reduce operational complexity."
"It offers a range of models to enhance network security and it can be customized to secure endpoint client machines or user devices by deploying features like malware detection, antivirus, and mail security blades."
"It excels in malware prevention, utilizing features like fan black pattern and vulnerability-driven detection, ensuring comprehensive security against evolving threats."
"Check Point offers virtualized systems, making it easy to scale."
"The ability to split single hardware into multiple virtuals along with support for dynamic routing using BGP is very useful for our environment."
"By far, it's the best security solution one can adopt for their organization."
"It is easy to use, and its management is the best. Check Point has a great unified management solution for firewalls and security products."
"The Smart Dashboard and other user interfaces are very easy to use and can be handled without any significant IT skills."
"Valuable features include the Web Application Firewall, and it even has DLP (data leak prevention)."
"It has improved our security capabilities."
"FortiGate is on the cheaper end, and it offers good value."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"I like Fortinet FortiGate's antispam filter, SPN, and clustering features."
"Security management tool that's easy to integrate and easy to work with. No issues found with its stability and scalability."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the rules and quality of service."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is load balancing. It can provide central management and VPNA. Additionally, it has enhanced our security environment."
"There have been a few requests/issues about the Identity Awareness feature."
"The solution could improve by keeping more up-to-date with technology. For example, if Amazon releases something in the security field, Check Point should have integration or adoption of this feature a bit faster than it is today. Sometimes we can hear a lot of the marketing information about an attractive feature, which we would like to have, but the feature will be released in two years. This timeframe should decrease."
"The Check Point support needs a lot of improvement."
"The tool must improve its support."
"They need to offer quicker resolution and maintenance during downtime."
"Sometimes debugging is a hassle."
"It's too expensive for mid-market companies."
"The SmartUpdate interface is a little bit crowded if your company has a lot of software items."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve by integrating the web application firewall and the DDoS protection part of the solution. Having a WAF feature, web application firewall, and proxy together would be a good benefit."
"The UI could be improved."
"If they could extend their fabric towards other vendor environments for integration, that would be great."
"If I had any criticism that I would give FortiGate, it would be that they need to stop changing their logging format. Every time we do a firmware upgrade, it is a massive issue on the SIM. Parsers have to be rebuilt. Even the FortiGate guys came in and said that they don't play well in the sandbox."
"The monitor and the visibility, in this proxy, is very weak."
"They should improve the interface to make it more user-friendly."
"There are a lot of bugs I have found in the solution and it is difficult to upgrade. These areas need improvement."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 277 reviews while Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4. 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 Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Azure Firewall, whereas Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and SonicWall TZ. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Fortinet FortiGate report.
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First of all, Check Point checks the rules to be configured before installing them in the firewall and this prevents the user from making mistakes and putting the company at risk.
Check Point is no longer expensive. It has many models and competes in performance and price vs. Fortinet.
Now web interfaces, like Fortinet, may have more bugs per top 10 OWASP.
We are using both but the GUI and clustering on the FortiGate side look better/easier/more comfortable.
And I do agree with others - Check Point is expensive and Fortinet FortiGate has many models offering less expensive implementation.
I have experience on both from Disti and channel experience. Please find below my comments (nothing new as such).
-Check Point GUI is a bit complicated,
-Application and Web filtering are better than Fortigate.
-IPS and AV are more effective than Fortigate. Overall more stable than any other firewall
Support: not up to the level like Fortigate and lack of trained resources (in the gulf).
Check Point is expensive.
Fortinet has many models and is more affordable than Check Point. It also provides outstanding support. GUI is more user-friendly.
We had this same discussion recently with my organization. It came down to the security of the platform.
Fortinet has had a number of breaches over the last 2 years and this was a key factor in our decision.
The challenge with Check Point will be the transition from our existing firewall and taking advantage of the various features across our organization.