My main use case for Check Point Security Management is using it as a firewall, which ignores all my data threats, and it is useful to secure my inside IT infrastructure. It secures all the data and all the devices connected to the network. Actually, this is not the one I selected; I used Check Point 1800 Quantum Spark, which is not available in your content sharing, and for that reason, I selected this one.

Check Point Security Management helps with my daily operations as I use Check Point 1800, which is connected to the internet and all the networks. Nearly 200 to 350 people connect to the inside internet, and my ISP is connected to the firewall, which gives internet access to all the access points. Everyone who connects their laptop, mobile devices, or any kind of device with internet facility is secured because Check Point has internal visibility into end threats and will not allow any other DNS inside. Whenever any unauthorized access occurs with the devices, it gives me a pop-up, and I immediately go and block them. Check Point Security Management is very useful when compared to other devices.

One specific situation where Check Point Security Management really helped me catch or block a threat is its best feature: it segregates all the devices such as mobile devices, phone devices, tablets, smartwatches, laptops, and desktops. It shows each and everything in a segregation method. I have an old device as well, which shows everything in a single line, making it difficult to identify which one is a phone device and which one is a laptop. Check Point Security Management does not operate like that; it shows the mobile device, tablet, smartphone, laptop, and desktop separately so that I can easily find out how many desktops are connected, how many mobile devices are connected, and I can easily block mobile devices and free up the IPs. This is the main beautiful thing about Check Point 1800 Quantum Spark.

Check Point Security Management can be improved by addressing a negative challenge I face: sometimes it does not show internet utilization in the GUI. When I ask support, they tell me to upgrade the firmware, which happens quite frequently. Since I deployed the device in my on-premises environment 1.5 years ago, I have experienced this issue three times.

Check Point Security Management has not impacted my daily work or decision-making in any negative way. As an IT person, I occasionally need to check how much internet bandwidth has been used in the internal network over the past month, day, or week. During those times, when I open the data utilization column, it shows nothing available. Each time this happens, I need to upgrade to the latest version of the firmware, and this frequent updating affects my productivity negatively. If Check Point addresses this issue in the future, it will be beneficial for all customers using Check Point SMBs.

I have been using Check Point Security Management for the past 1.5 years.

In my environment, Check Point Security Management is stable, as I do not see any downtime. The only issue I face is with data utilization not showing, which I have mentioned previously. Other than that, everything is going well.

Check Point Security Management's scalability is quite sufficient for my organization with below 500 employees, and it functions very smoothly. Currently, it handles the network well, and I am unsure if the Check Point 1800 will work adequately if my organization increases from 500 to 600 employees, but so far, it has been functioning smoothly without any issues in the past 1.5 years.

I would rate the customer support for Check Point Security Management as four out of five, or seven out of ten.

Neutral

I previously used a different solution before Check Point Security Management, but I do not want to disclose the product name due to marketing strategies. I switched because that device hung every time when connecting to the network; it could only support 40 to 50 users, while my organization had 150 users when I joined.

The initial setup with Check Point Security Management is very straightforward and easy; we implemented the tools within a six-hour timeframe.

I have seen a return on investment with Check Point Security Management, as my security concerns regarding data production have been greatly diminished, and my time is also saved. Additionally, my reports that I send to management monthly are automated, which also saves time.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Check Point Security Management involves a bit of a challenge in pricing, as it is somewhat costlier than previous devices. However, it is worth paying extra for this product.

Before choosing Check Point Security Management, I evaluated other options including the same device I had earlier but in a newer version. I found that the latest version and Check Point 1800 have multiple variations and use cases. We checked three other devices as well, which could not match the capabilities of Check Point 1800 due to its significant improvements and multiple use cases. That is why we chose Check Point Security Management for our internal IT infrastructure.

I save significant time with the alert system and device management because it provides data in graphs and reports. Whenever a data threat arises, it alerts me when the threat comes inside the device or from the devices to the inside network. I receive alerts and block that device, preventing the threat from affecting the entire network. This is one of the positive aspects of the Check Point 1800 device.

My advice to others looking into using Check Point Security Management is to first assess your organization's needs regarding how many people will connect to the internal network. This decision depends on that number. If you have more than 500 or 550 people, please check whether this solution will be effective for you. It's important to take demos a few times from Check Point vendors or directly from Check Point before making a purchase.

I rate Check Point Security Management eight out of ten.

We work with multiple security tools, including network security and information security solutions. Our primary use case includes using Check Point and other tools like CyberArk for privilege access management, Cisco, and WebSight CloudSec.

The product helps in securing our complete organization. We have not received any alerts that were suspicious, which assures us that it's working as expected.

It's already helped secure our organization effectively. That said, the integration of all the firewalls should be centralized, which would make management easier.

We are not sure if there is a centralized security console available. It would be beneficial if all firewalls could be integrated under one management console.

We have been using the firewall for more than ten years.

We are confident in the security solution as we have not faced any alerts that were suspicious.

We have partner support that helps us mitigate vulnerabilities reported by our infrastructure team. Most of the time, we get good support.

Neutral

The first deployment takes two to three days. After setup, maintenance and updates are straightforward.

Since we are using it extensively, we get significant discounts during procurement. The tool is cost-effective.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

To make the tool better, I think we could have some sort of analysis similar to how some products offer information related to social media sentiments. If we could get that kind of assessment, some sort of analysis of some sort, I think that would be something that can really improve the solution.

In the future, I would like to see more frequent updates because of the changing security landscape. We should be seeing more updates in the tool, especially those that are not paid. The tool can also put in efforts in terms of maybe the community by conducting some sort of workshop or some sort of online event to bring the community together so that we can all meet. A community portal is needed.

I have been using Check Point Security Management for five years.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine to ten out of ten, especially for the cloud version. The on-premises version was a bit unstable, and I think I will give stability a ten out of ten.

Speaking about scalability, in terms of maturity, product security, and reliability, I would rate the tool an eight out of ten.

Around 200 to 250 people in my company use the tool.

I have experience with the solution's technical support, and I don't think the product is doing well. We have to reach out to the first level of support and then to the third level of support. I rate the technical support a six out of ten.

Neutral

The product's initial setup phase had no problems.

The product's installation phase was easy. The moment we transitioned from on-prem to the cloud, we realized that the on-prem version was a bit more difficult to use, and the cloud version was easier because it has some sort of configuration wizard. The provisioning was easy.

The solution is deployed on the private cloud version offered by AWS, but we use it across the company's group, and it is hosted in South Africa.

The solution can be deployed in an hour and a half. The deployment phase was not so bad.

I was not involved in the deployment since I had my tech team with 12 security engineers for it who can take care of the product and the firewall. My company's IT department has around 30 technical members but only 12 take care of information security matters associated with the tool.

In terms of the tool's financial and commercial aspects, we do a risk assessment every quarter. There is a huge cycle of risk assessment every quarter. As a part of risk assessment, Check Point reviews threats. When the risk team comes, it assesses the group. They give us some values about the threats that we are facing. They explain that since implementing the solution, this is the threat, and this is the value. Some empirical data is used.

Honestly, the tool is expensive. It's a good product, so definitely, it is expensive. I realized that the tool is a bit more expensive than the rest, at over 20 to 30 percent overall. If one will be very expensive, and ten means low price, I rate the tool's price as a three out of ten. There are so many other products out there that are more expensive than Check Point. There are also so many other products that are cheaper than Check Point.

Over the other tools in the market, my company chose Check Point even if it is a bit pricey, but it fits the bill. From a business requirements point of view, it fits the bill. With the tool, we have been able to restructure our infrastructure in terms of the IT landscape. We are also able to bring policies without any fear of infiltration. In a nutshell, it fits before a business case.

Check Point Security Management streamlines operations in our specific industry. We used to have a lot of instances, but because of the alerts that come from the kind of configuration the solution offers, we are now able to take care of instances even before they happen. Basically, the tool has really helped us reduce instances by about 40 to 50 percent.

The tool has a firewall and endpoint security to improve our company's security posture, especially for our mobile devices. Our company has a sort of principle where there is a need to bring your own device, so it is used to take care of things in terms of security. The security team within our department escalates things quickly.

Speaking about threat prevention in our daily operations, I would say that before the tool's implementation, we used to report a loss of about 50,000,000 dollars, but it has now gone down after the product was installed. It looks like it has helped capture those threats, alert in advance, and anomaly detection. It has been a very helpful product.

Speaking about the influence of Check Point Security Management on our IT infrastructure, I would say that we have implemented the product across endpoints, including mobile devices and devices that fall under the BYOD category. With Check Point, we were able to implement and allow our staff to bring their devices and work from wherever they want. Without Check Point, we would not have been able to do so, and that changes the landscape and trims down on the devices that we would have been acquiring centrally for our staff.

My company started the analysis on AI and areas like trends. The trends, especially transactional trends and all that kind of thing, are areas where we have already started some use cases for AI, about five of them, and I think the engine is still in the learning phase. I would say that we haven't really started using AI, but we already have it set up in Check Point, and it will be around the area associated with trends. Basically, we have not really explored the AI part yet.

I recommend the tool to others.

The tool's maintenance is done automatically on the cloud. When we were using the tool's on-prem version, we were happy to offer support for the product in our company.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

We utilize the security management solution to oversee all our Check Point products, including firewall, IPS, and antivirus policies. It serves as our primary tool for managing all Check Point devices.

Check Point Security Management excels over Forti Management in daily operations, policy management, and graphical interface. It is easy to open and edit policies, search within them, and view logs.

The only issue is that, you need to install an application instead of managing it through a browser. Thus, it requires installation. Additionally, it can be slow when multiple users access the manager simultaneously. Even with increased CPU and memory resources, some performance issues may still occur when multiple users check simultaneously.

I have been using Check Point Security Management for ten years.

Sometimes, we encounter crashes while working on Check Point Security Management, necessitating application restarts. We also face connectivity issues with certain firewalls, making it less stable than other products.

The solution’s scalability is good ; adding more CPUs and memory can give you more gateways.

20 managers are using this solution.

I rate the solution’s scalability a nine out of ten.

We currently have at least two or three cases open, and some are regarding demand. We struggle to find a good engineer who can truly help us instead of just sending some comments for us to run and provide feedback. They need to improve, especially in their initial client support.

Positive

The initial setup is complex.

Compared to Forti Management, Check Point Security Management involves much more work and is more difficult. You need to establish connections to all the firewalls manually, one by one. However, with the function manager, you point the firewall to the manager and accept it on the Management, and it's done. Additionally, you need to manage certificates on Check Point, making the process less straightforward than FortiManager. 

You depend entirely on the manager to edit the security gateway policies. If the manager encounters an issue with Fortinet, you can still access the FortiGate and delete policies. In Check Point, you cannot delete firewall policies directly on the firewall itself if you encounter a Management issue.

Deployment, including firewall synchronization, takes about four days to complete.

You usually need to create and use the VM Manager VM. So, you need to deploy the VM, configure the IPs, and install the Check Point console software. Then, you need to perform an SIP IT connection to all the firewalls to manage them. After that, you need to configure the firewall networks and public IPs. 

I rate the initial setup as seven out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy.

The product is more expensive than Fortinet. We need to pay the license for the Management. I rate the product’s pricing a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.

It enhances our daily operational efficiency. Therefore, all management personnel prioritizing working on Check Point policies over Fortinet would benefit. However, maintenance upgrades, backups, snapshots, and synchronization between primary and secondary management can become cumbersome. These tasks tend to be more challenging and time-consuming.

The learning curve for Check Point is quite steep. Sometimes, when we recruit new members to our company, they take a lot of time to understand how our Check Point system works, including the connection between the Management and the firewall, among other components. With Fortinet, it takes only two or three weeks for them to get acquainted with everything. With Check Point, they need at least three months to become accustomed to upgrades, managing policies, and maintenance of the Management system. So, it takes at least three or four times longer than with Fortinet.

AI is essential for correlating logs and presenting the ones that matter. They could strengthen how they present logs by giving more attention to the ones that matter most.

Check Point is easy to use, allowing users to drag and drop objects effortlessly. However, it's essential to note that deploying and maintaining the solution may require a bit more expertise than some competitors.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We utilize Check Point Security Management for our daily security operations, including managing firewall rules, reviewing alerts, and generating reports on a weekly basis.

We've integrated Check Point Security Management with some of our business associates' portals for HR, finance, and payroll activities, which are outsourced. Check Point alarms us about any version changes on these sites, allowing us to block unauthorized changes. So far, we haven't encountered any serious incidents that require immediate action. We receive incident reports, but they usually involve blocked or quarantined threats rather than major security breaches. Additionally, our internal management console provides us with alerts, adding another layer of security monitoring.

Over the past 1.5  years, we've started monitoring it more regularly, analyzing alerts closely. The most beneficial features for us are the alert classifications, which help us prioritize critical issues, and the detailed reports that provide insights into attack origins and purposes, such as TLS violations or content violations. 

While we use a cloud-based Security Control console, we primarily conduct in-depth analysis of reports on a weekly basis to enhance our security posture.

Check Point EDR has room for improvement, especially in the area of Data Loss Prevention where it currently lacks functionality. 

I'd also like to see enhancements in content filtering and categorization features.

I would appreciate the ability to restrict forwarding of confidential documents to specific groups, ensuring tighter security measures.

I have been using Check Point Security Management for the past 1.5 years.

I would rate the stability 9 out of 10. 

I would rate the scalability 8 out of 10. 

We faced issues, but with the help of tech support, it was solved. It took almost one week approximately to set the solution through firewall.

We rely on tech support to enhance our capabilities.

We have a small, focused team of four engineers.

Currently, we only use Check Point and are satisfied with its benefits in terms of time-saving and security performance, estimating a 30% time savings.

The pricing can be estimated around 3 or 4 out of 10 in terms of expense.

I have evaluated another product before Check Point but found the local account manager to be more aggressive.

I would rate the product overall at 8 out of 10, mentioning that while functionalities are there, improvements could be made to make it more user-friendly for laymen, such as incorporating drag-and-drop functionality.

One of the recent use cases for this solution has been related to a power company, which was facing issues but was able to get its infrastructure secured and get back its business continuity and growth. In addition, its management was able to get back its confidence with solutions or services provided by Check Point.

The client was able to quantify its security elements. As a result, a strong defensive framework was developed. Deployment of Check Point's solution resulted in the evasion of any existing and potential threats.

Check Point is not just a firewall. They deliver everything including IPS, application control, threat emulation and extraction, identity awareness, and more. In line with the quantum security gateways, other elements and services as provided by Check Point have also proven to be very helpful and reliable in keeping the company environment secured. The organization has also gone a great mile to tag itself as a proactive threat elimination expert in the industry viz a viz its competitors.

Harmony Endpoint is one of the great solutions by Check Point; it ensures compliance with policies and minimizes the risk of threats entering through endpoints. 

It's a great complete endpoint security solution that prevents the most imminent threats to the endpoint such as ransomware, phishing, or malware. 

It has proved to be very successful in identifying ransomware behaviors such as file encryption or attempts to compromise operating system backups and safely restore ransomware-encrypted files automatically. 

While the console and administration work well, they have to work on performance since it consumes a lot of CPU and memory. There is also latency in the administrative panel when entering. There has been a problem with updating licenses as well. There is ground-level feedback based on interaction with the relevant stakeholders that states implementing it would make a major difference in the overall experience.

I've used the solution for two years.

The solution has not caused major deviations and the historical experience has been quite good. The stability and reliability of the solution is pretty much appreciated

The overall impression of the scalability is good and impressive.

Technical support has been pretty good.

Positive

I have been involved with a lot of other partners in parallel, depending on the requirements of the customers.

I am not directly involved in the setup and deployment of the product.

The implementation was handled by an in-house team.

I've witnessed an ROI of 25% to 30%.

Users should actively evaluate the existing options available in the market and finalize the one that matches their requirements, budget, and priorities. Check Point can definitely be considered based on my personal experience.

The choice to evaluate would not be my personal decision but the requirement raised by the customers.

Our use cases are protection infrastructure in a financial corporate environment.

Check Point firewalls meet all the PCI guidelines that regulate players in the financial market.

The support is pretty incredible.

There is room for improvement in reliability. 

I have been using this solution for ten years. I worked from version 840 to 8120.

I would rate the stability a six out of ten.

It is very scalable. I would rate the scalability for this solution a ten out of ten.

I initially took Cisco training for routers, switches, and firewalls. I did actually work up the Cisco firewalls long enough to convert them to Check Point.

The initial setup was complex. But that was really the fault of Check Point just because we deployed it into the Google Cloud environment, and their environment is a little different.

We have security management deployed on-premises and on the cloud.

The pricing is about par for the enterprise-class firewalls.

Palo Alto and Cisco. And the reason for going with this solution was the price.  So, with Cisco, it was priced. We actually checked the overall price of the cost of ownership. When you talk about support costs and everything else, was cheaper than Cisco. And with Palo Alto, also had reliability issues that could not be overcome by their support.

I definitely recommend it, but unless you're fully trained and experienced on Check Point, you should get the better support program. 

Check Point has support rep programs that go all the way up to putting one of their own people in your business to help you. Then, they have support programs. If you're an expert, you just need to be able to download updated files and stuff. They have support programs like that, too. The worst possible situation is if somebody isn't really skilled with the thing and they cheap out on the support program, and they'll just flounder.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.