Check Point Quantum Security Gateway Next Generation Firewall 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

Incentivized

For fast-growing or SME companies, pfSense is quite suitable because pfSense already had many advanced features such as VPN and multiple WAN / LAN. As a result, we just need to pay for expensive router frequently to upgrade our infrastructure.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• pfSense is an excellent firewall - It logs all of your traffic. It has packages you can install to snort bad traffic.
• pfSense has a tool called "p0f" which allows you to see what type of OS is trying to connect to you. You can filter these results and you can also block a specific OS from connecting to you.
• pfSense is an excellent load-balancer: (Multi-WAN and Server Load Balancing) The fail-over/aggregation works very well. This is perfect if your business uses multiple ISP's to ensure your customers are always able to access their data. Also helps with bandwidth distribution as well.
• VPN's - I am not entirely sure if this package was free with pfSense, but it does offer the ability to use OpenVPN which is what I am familiar with.
• They also have IPsec in the settings as well, but I am not familiar with that enough to go into any detail with it.
• As I mentioned I do use OpenVPN the only thing I don't care for with it is I can create OpenVPN configs for each user I want to be able to VPN into the network and I assumed each one would be "unique" but this does not seem to be the case. I could be doing it wrong, but if I create a config for a specific employee I would expect only that employee should be able to use that config, but I have been able to login to everyone that I made using my credentials.
• I mentioned earlier that pfSense had a GUI.
• I personally really think it is cool because it has a bunch of reporting graphs for monitoring your networks. I think when I become the full-time admin at the company I am going to try to talk them into getting me a TV I can mount on the wall and display all the graphs and real-time info pfSense shows so I can monitor what is going on with the network(s) at all times. Plus I think it would look rad.

Incentivized

• 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

Incentivized

• There is no API for making changes. This can be a hindrance in environments where auto-deploying something needs firewall rules or HAProxy configs updated. Since all settings are stored in an XML file and then configs are generated from that, even manually updating config files cannot be done.
• Beware that some network cards can have issues. pfSense is based on FreeBSD, so it's best to look on their compatibility list before deploying.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Before pfSense we were using consumer and small business rated network appliances from Linksys, Cisco, Buffalo and Netgear. We were replacing them on average of every 6-12 months because they'd fail or would offer poor wifi availability. Switching to pfSense allowed us to use professional grade switches and wifi access points, offloading all of the services that the consumer grade products took care of, onto pfSense (DHCP, DNS, routing, firewall, VPN, etc).

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Moving to a FWaaS solution installed on a decent computer the initial investment was moderate to cover 50 to 250 users, but still being cheaper that a Fortinet, Cisco ASA, or a Sophos UTM.
• Paying only for support can be a double edge knife, cause you need to identify what's the goal of the request, or your drown into a an endless list of requirements.
• To stay in the top with the half of a regular investment pFSense gives a wide variety of plugins that will give you a deep knowledge of your security flaws and strong points.

Incentivized