Check Point Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways vs. ClearVPN vs. pfSense

1) For huge DC environments and complex networks 2) Where clients were consistent up-time like FSI and healthcare 3) Application-aware client req. and preventing day 0 cyber attacks. 4) Securing East-West traffic, hyper-scaling capabilities 5)Some advantages - Best Security meets Ultimate Hardware and SandBlast Zero Day Protection out of the box, Modular hardware 6) High Performance CPUs

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I believe PFSense is well suited for both home lab environments as well as up to small to mid-size business environments on a tight budget. However, I would implore that anything in production requires the use of the authorized hardware that PFSense sells to receive support. However, in my experience, PFSense is a solid set-and-forget firewall solution.

• SSL inspection provides more effective mitigation of threat and data leakage with the ability to inspect and analyze encrypted traffic.
• Threat emulation and extraction provides protection against zero-day threats without compromising the data of infected files.
• 'Office mode' VPN provides a seamless connected experience for remotely connected individuals.
• Application control features provide granular restrictions to the type of application traffic than can pass through the network.

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• Easy to use. Good user interface design! Easy to understand and easy to set up.
• Lower hardware requirement. 3 years ago, we used an old PC to run it. Now, we have changed to a router device with Celeron CPU and 8GB RAM. It runs smoothly with a 1000G commercial broadband.

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• HTTPS Inspection -- The firewall has troubles re-packaging the packet in a way that some websites are able to interpret correctly
• Support -- Even getting support directly from Check Point isn't the easiest of experiences. They are more concerned about how fast they can close a ticket out, rather than fixing the problem.
• Custom reports -- Custom reporting is extremely limited

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• I did kind of mention a Con in the Pro section with OpenVPN.
• When I create a config for an employee other employees are able to login to that config.
• I could be doing something wrong when I am making it - I am not afraid to admit that as I am pretty new to all of this, but it seems like it builds a key and I would think the key would be unique in some way to each employee, but I could be wrong.
• I actually do not have a lot of Con's for this software - I did not get to set this up on our work network so I am not sure of any downfalls when installing.
• I installed this on my personal machine in a Hyper-V environment to get a feel for it before I started working on it at work and it seemed pretty smooth. I didn't run into any issues.

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Operational efficiency is very high compare to all other vendors.TAC Support is good

The pfSense UI is easy to navigate and pretty go look at. It is much better than some high dollar firewalls that just throw menus you you. The pfSense UI is quick and responsive and makes sense 99% of the time. Changes are committed quickly and the hardware rarely requires a reboot. It just runs.

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Check Point has a variety of support options that can be used to optimize your investment in the product. Companies with a larger information security and certified checkpoint engineer employee base can benefit from a standard SLA, while companies with a smaller security engineering footprint or more critical implementations can opt for premium, elite or diamond packages that even include the ability to provide on-site engineers for major security incidents. Check Point PRO support also provides the ability to outsource maintenance concerns by automating case creation and follow up when application components fail.

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pfSense+ basic provides "As Available" email support. pfSense+ Pro offers 24 hr turn around email support. pfSense+ Enterprise offers 24/7 phone support.

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In a heterogeneous environment, we wanted to keep multiple vendors for multiple purposes. CP was found very good in handling basic Next generation firewalls features along with handling of VPNs.

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Meraki has a unified management login for all devices, which is nice. It also has decent content filtering, both areas where pfSense is weaker. Where pfSense far ouclasses Meraki is in the ease of use and the other width of features. These include features such as better VPN interoperability, non-subscription based pricing, auditability, not relying on the infrastructure of a third party, more transparency of what's actually going on, easier to deploy replacements if hardware fails. Additionally, the NAT management for pfSense seems to be a bit better, as you can NAT between any network segment and not just the LAN segments out the WAN interfaces.

• Although there are better alternatives out there, Check Point delivers results for the price we paid for the system.
• Since implementation, we have not have any major issues with the product, minor issues were resolved in a timely fashion.
• Check Point currently fulfills our need for an outside facing firewall, when our organization grows larger, we will be looking at higher level enterprise solutions.

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• pfSense can be installed on commodity hardware with no licensing fees. With a simple less than 10 minute restore time, on most hardware, it's an extremely inexpensive way to achieve the same results that some of the more expensive vendors provide.
• The easy to use interface has allowed configuration management to be preformed by lower level technicians with quick and easy training.

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