CheckPoint vs. FireMon vs. Symantec Advanced Threat Protection

CheckPoint performs well as an internal firewall between network zones, providing policy control and deep inspection of internal traffic. It works well for a multi network setup like ours across multiple sites. It is however not a fast changing interface and time needs to be taken to perform changes. It's not a quick as other vendors

Incentivized

FireMon is best used in a large environment (for example, I have >100
firewalls in my environment). It's best used when trying to improve
security posture and showing changes in firewall security over time. It
might not be the best choice for smaller environments or those that aren't concerned about security management.

Incentivized

It is valuable software for when it comes to a large or medium organization, since it helps to protect the endpoints, but as the number of servers increases its value increases. However, it is important to keep in mind that when it comes to low end devices, its protection can affect their performance. This is because it is not a software with a very light agent.

Incentivized

• Threat Prevention better than Fortinet
• Granularity of security policy can be customized to the maximum
• hardware performance is really good
• Bugs are less as compared to other vendors
• support is excellent
• modules work as expected
• Features can achieve out of box requirements

Incentivized

• Give good real time reporting for anyone making a change to any of our firewalls
• Provides good reporting tools that are out of box
• Provide good customization tools that is specific to our needs
• Upgrades are a simple process and support does relatively well with assisting us.

Incentivized

• The incident management piece is the heart and soul of the product. A single area where all data in relation to network and email protection is available.
• Works well in conjunction with the standard Symantec Endpoint product.
• URL Protection is advanced and very helpful
• Technical support is great and definitely the best I have ever seen for a "anti-virus" type product.

Incentivized

• In my experience, notifications are completely broken and non-functional
• In my opinion, confusing UX for the cloud portal
• Don't try and import 100's of endpoints when onboarding because it will create a mess
• When installing the CP client you have to remove Microsoft Defender and if that fails, CheckPoint technical support goes, "Not my problem, sucks to be you!"

Incentivized

• Some features could be added to the existing functionality which include NAT rules usage
• Rule expiration normalization from firewalls rather than entering them in rule documentation
• .csv exports of the files from the firewall pane only gives usage for 30 days by default and that should be increased

Incentivized

• I don't like that I have to maintain the client and keep it up to date. Updating the client is not a very easy process.
• Deploying the client could be easier. They have a deployment tool, but it doesn't really get to all PCs, which means I still have to manually deploy it.
• Because the product has so much customization, it can also be very difficult to set up and understand.

Incentivized

Every dollar to CheckPoint is a wasted dollar.

Incentivized

The shell is locked out and we can't run any general centos commands. The implementation and maintainence of the arch is very complex. Even with the right identifiers on log messages the log collection keeps failing. The warning messages on the device are ambiguous. The log messages on firemon are a bit confusing and don't show the exact issue.

Incentivized

Symantec Advanced Threat Protection has done a sufficient job at identifying true positives. However, the UI could be improved and the amount of false positives is a little too frequent for my liking

Incentivized

the solution offer the most improvement about the usability by management more firewall in the same context or multicontext instead. The shared database allow to use one object for more than a package target of a cluster or more of gateways firewall. The management remain isolated from traffic pass through the firewall so the disruption is limited at minimum.

Incentivized

It save me time and I'm able to have the review - review the rule independently with using my time.

Incentivized

There is a small learning curve, but compared to other AV products it is fairly simple and easy to catch onto

Incentivized

FireMon has been relatively stable overall. However, there have been a handful of times where we had issues with the console. For example, we couldn't update which devices to include in a security assessment. The initial suggestion from support was to just reboot it. It seems like there weren't many other options available such as to restart services before going to the extreme of a complete reboot.

Incentivized

I'm not sure we have the largest implementation of FireMon out there but we do have a few 1000 devices being probed by FireMon. Overall, the system's performance has been rock solid. The console refreshes quickly and reports are generated within an expected timeframe.

Incentivized

FireMon technical support is awesome! They respond quickly to our requests and they are well trained and very knowledgeable about the tool. Some issues have to be referred to the development team, but technical support largely provides solutions for any issues that we may have.

Incentivized

Support responds fast for higher priority issues, they have always been good at solving the problems we encounter.

Incentivized

Implementation is fairly simple. Most issues can be resolved by referencing manuals.

Incentivized

No, besides to review documentation prior to beginning. That is what helped lead to a smooth implementation

Incentivized

The CheckPoint Firewall and Cisco ISR router serve different purposes. Our organisation uses both devices, but in different areas of the topology. The Cisco ISR is a remote device and its function is to relay information to our edge firewall, which then passes to our internal firewall (CheckPoint) to securely control traffic requests.

Incentivized

I has worked with AlgoSec and while they are very similar product, I find the FireMon is easier to understand and get rolling with. While both require some learning, FireMon is by far the easier one. Once you have an understanding of how things are arranged and labeled you can easily import firewalls and begin to work on them to improve them

Incentivized

Frankly, the other products were too expensive to make the change from Symantec so we continued with the tried and true protection. We don't have the funding to move to a more expensive product and the manpower that it would take to implement a new solution.

Incentivized

Firemon Is easily scalable and maintainable with any size team. Although it requires some tech debt, it is well worth the time to invest to ensure compliance is visible and reports are accurate. Although our environment is very large we do not fully utilize the scalability of the Firemon product.

Incentivized

• Smart console with lower operational overhead
• Compliance with Hipaa, PCISSS and saving on compliance plenties
• Less compatibility issues
• licensing model is costlier at the beginning
• Some modules require special training
• False positives may occur

Incentivized

• FireMon's Compliance Reporting provided an immediate and tangible benefit
• FireMon helps identify egregious or erroneous rules quickly across multiple platforms
• FireMon took our audit process from an Excel spreadsheet into a far more advanced process with readily available context for reviewers

Incentivized

• Some digital assets were lost due to failures to detect various threats.
• We had to use other products in combination in order to trust that all threats were actually detected, taking extra time. We couldn't use just SATP.
• Ability to quickly manage/deploy via AD made maintenance of the application itself quick and easy.

Incentivized