Overview
What is WatchGuard Network Security?
WatchGuard Network Security is a network security and firewall software. WatchGuard includes secure Wi-Fi, multi-factor authentication, and network intelligence products and services designed for SMB’s.
WatchGuard 2024
The right value!
WatchGuard Security Services and Firebox
WatchGuard Systems Security
Loving my WatchGuard
WatchGuard appliances
Best Firewalls for the $$
WatchGuard Network Security Implementation for Mid-Sized Businesses
WatchGuard Network Security Review
Great Product
WatchGuard Network Security Review
WatchGuard Network Security Review
A Review of WatchGuard Cloud Products
WatchGuard should be your go to when choosing network security.
How WatchGuard Network Security Differs From Its Competitors
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WatchGuard Cloud
WatchGuard Partner
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Cloud
WatchGuard Partner
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Cloud
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Cloud
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WatchGuard Partner
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Cloud
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Cloud
WatchGuard Partner
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Cloud
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Cloud
WatchGuard Partner
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Cloud
WatchGuard Partner
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Cloud
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Cloud
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Cloud
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Cloud
WatchGuard Partner
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Cloud
WatchGuard Network Security Partner
WatchGuard Network Security Packaging and Licensing
WatchGuard Network Security Partner
WatchGuard Network Security Packaging and Licensing
WatchGuard Partner
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Cloud
WatchGuard Partner
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Cloud
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Cloud
WatchGuard Partner
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Partner
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Cloud
WatchGuard Partner
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Cloud
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Partner
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Partner
WatchGuard Unified Security Platform
WatchGuard Cloud
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Popular Features
- Policy-based Controls (415)8.787%
- Firewall Management Console (409)8.787%
- Content Inspection (402)8.686%
- Reporting and Logging (406)8.080%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Features
Firewall
A firewall is a filter that stands between a computer or computer network and the Internet. Each firewall can be programmed to keep specific traffic in or out
- 8.6Identification Technologies(382) Ratings
Policy-based visibility and control over applications, users and content
- 7.5Visualization Tools(378) Ratings
Visualization tools present administrators with data on applications traversing the network, who is using them, and the potential security impact.
- 8.6Content Inspection(402) Ratings
Inspecting permitted application traffic by means of threat prevention, URL filtering and data filtering
- 8.7Policy-based Controls(415) Ratings
Firewall policy controls enable administrators to create firewall policies controlling what data is allowed to traverse the firewall
- 8.5Active Directory and LDAP(349) Ratings
Integration with Active Directory and LDAP directories
- 8.7Firewall Management Console(409) Ratings
Either command-line or web-based interface for centralized control and management
- 8Reporting and Logging(406) Ratings
Custom and summary reports, and log files enabling analysis of security incidents, application usage and traffic patterns
- 8.9VPN(399) Ratings
VPN's implement encryption and anonymize IP addresses
- 8.7High Availability(359) Ratings
Built-in capacity to prevent exposure if primary firewall stops working
- 9.1Stateful Inspection(376) Ratings
Stateful inspection analyzes packet headers and contents of packets
- 9Proxy Server(269) Ratings
A proxy server changes your IP address and masks the origin of your network traffic
Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- Downloadables
- FAQs
What is WatchGuard Network Security?
WatchGuard Network Security Features
Firewall Features
- Supported: Identification Technologies
- Supported: Visualization Tools
- Supported: Content Inspection
- Supported: Policy-based Controls
- Supported: Active Directory and LDAP
- Supported: Firewall Management Console
- Supported: Reporting and Logging
- Supported: VPN
- Supported: High Availability
- Supported: Stateful Inspection
- Supported: Proxy Server
WatchGuard Network Security Screenshots
WatchGuard Network Security Videos
WatchGuard Network Security Competitors
WatchGuard Network Security Technical Details
Deployment Types | On-premise |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Windows, Linux, Mac |
Mobile Application | No |
Supported Countries | Global |
Supported Languages | English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Chinese |
WatchGuard Network Security Downloadables
- WatchGuard M270 & M370 Datasheet: UTM performance, ideal for small and midsize organizations with up to 150 users looking for a rack-mounted solution.
- WatchGuard M270 & M370 Datasheet: UTM performance, ideal for small and midsize organizations with up to 150 users looking for a rack-mounted solution.
- WatchGuard Network Security Case Study
- WatchGuard Corporate Brochure
- WatchGuard Total Security Suite Brochure
- WatchGuard M4800 & M5800 Datasheet: Typically deployed at the corporate headquarters, these appliances serve as the “hub” appliance, responsible for managing and securing all communications between the head office and all remote employee and small business sites.
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(793)Attribute Ratings
- 9.6Likelihood to Renew32 ratings
- 9.1Availability2 ratings
- 9.1Performance2 ratings
- 9Usability114 ratings
- 2.3Support Rating26 ratings
- 8.2Online Training3 ratings
- 9.1In-Person Training4 ratings
- 9.4Implementation Rating263 ratings
- 10Configurability1 rating
- 9.1Product Scalability2 ratings
- 7.3Ease of integration1 rating
- 9.1Vendor pre-sale1 rating
- 9.1Vendor post-sale1 rating
Reviews
(1-3 of 3)- Next-Gen Firewall Services
- Multi-Factor Authentication
- Hardware Firewall Appliances
- Wireless Access Points could use improvement
- GUI could be updated
- Identification Technologies
- 90%9.0
- Visualization Tools
- 80%8.0
- Content Inspection
- 90%9.0
- Policy-based Controls
- 90%9.0
- Active Directory and LDAP
- 100%10.0
- Firewall Management Console
- 90%9.0
- Reporting and Logging
- 80%8.0
- VPN
- 70%7.0
- High Availability
- 90%9.0
- Stateful Inspection
- 90%9.0
- Proxy Server
- 80%8.0
- Inexpensive compared to competition with equal or better features
- No intrusions since we started using it
- Ease of use and management
- Next-Gen Firewall
- Multi-Factor Authentication
- Site-to-Site VPN
- SD-WAN
- Secure Private Cloud
- Endpoint Security (Panda)
- Secure Wireless Access Points
- ATP
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
- Implemented in-house
- Changing security policies corporate wide
- Online Training
- In-Person Training
- WatchGuard Dimension
- MFA
- SD-WAN
- VPN
- Naming Convention of Multiple Devices
Totally satisfied
- Ease to use
- Affordable
- Gret traffic visibility
- Lower TCO
- Integration of the entire product portfolio to technologies like Splunk. Some features of endpoint security are not integrated yet.
- Identification Technologies
- 100%10.0
- Visualization Tools
- 100%10.0
- Content Inspection
- 90%9.0
- Policy-based Controls
- 100%10.0
- Active Directory and LDAP
- 100%10.0
- Firewall Management Console
- 100%10.0
- Reporting and Logging
- 90%9.0
- VPN
- 100%10.0
- High Availability
- 100%10.0
- Stateful Inspection
- 100%10.0
- Proxy Server
- 100%10.0
- WatchGuard has supported well the ROI in these last 10 years of use
- WatchGuard's ease to use has improved the user confidence on connecting applications out of office in this pandemic times
- The Firebox continuous and stable packet processing has allowed us to use the network anywhere, free of concernings.
- Tech support
- GRC Analysts
- Office Administration
- Deployment
- Marketing
- Sales
- Data Science
- Cloud Security
- Human Resources
- Alliances and Partnerships
- Post-sales analysts
- Pre-sales analysts
Experience in:
- Management and Operation of any UTM/NGFW platform;
- Complete higher education in Computer Networks, Information Security or IT (provided that the curriculum has depth in the subjects in question). It is essential to have broad expertise (full level) in: MFA, Digital Certificates, Firewalls (Policies and Security Features), Detection and response to security incidents (SIEM platforms), Threat Intelligence Platforms, EDR Platforms, Protocols and Network Connectivity (TCP/IP)Routing (Static, dynamic routes and routing protocols); Switching (Segregation using Vlans, etc.) Minimum proven experience of 5 years working in the Cyber Security area.
- Certifications related to the Information Security area;
- Desirable certificationsSystems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP) Certified Cyber Professional (CCP)Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP)
- Network Security and VPN for remote access
- Wireless Secure Access in our office
- Multi-factor Authentication for access the work applications
- Customers were surprised with the lower TCO
- Ease to use and manage
- It started do support integrations with other vendors like Splunk
- The Endpoint Detection and Response is a good way to go for a near future
- Integrate the data correlation from sources like the EDR tools with events management
- Attending regulatory compliances lihe LGPD (Brazil)
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
- Implemented in-house
- We had no significant issues
- Online training
- The Dimension tool
- The advanced security tools present in the Total Security subscription
- The new visibility and report for user groups
- MFA integration with apple devices
- Splunk
Security events monitoring
User activities monitoring (AD)
- Proofpoint
- Cyberark
- Single Signon
- More traffic speed
- New chipsets were well incorporated
- Not sure of what other benefits are expected from the next upgrade.
- WatchGuard System Manager and centralized management is the key to low TCO
- Security solution efficacy is critical. A solution that is only 95% effective is not good enough.
- Partner support is good and enables us to be able to deliver quality solutions that are consistently functional
- Partner enablement. WG focuses on the channel as they know that the skill of the integrators is what makes the difference between a default appliance and an effective security solution
- Partner communications on technical issues. For example the undocumented feature of SDWAN hidden route. There is still no documentation on that.
- Too infrequent communications about high incidence technical support issues. We do not want to have to be encountering known issues and then having outages or problems that we then have to put in tickets about.
- Pay attention to your most highly technical partners, not just those that sell a lot of equipment. The highly technical partners can and do provide very usable feedback that can make the products better.
- WG wants partners to build relationships with people inside WG so we can drive solutions to problems, but too frequently, we get no response to emails sent to the proper internal resources about legitimate issues.
- Identification Technologies
- 100%10.0
- Visualization Tools
- 100%10.0
- Content Inspection
- 90%9.0
- Policy-based Controls
- 100%10.0
- Active Directory and LDAP
- 100%10.0
- Firewall Management Console
- 100%10.0
- Reporting and Logging
- 100%10.0
- VPN
- 100%10.0
- High Availability
- 100%10.0
- Stateful Inspection
- 100%10.0
- Proxy Server
- 100%10.0
- Our business is very WatchGuard-centric and we value our relationship with WatchGuard more than any other manufacturer
- Fireboxes comprise the CORE of everything we do in terms of network layer security. So you literally cannot do a secure environment without a Firebox. Therefore, nearly every single client we have or ever have had has Fireboxes.
- We have been able to consistently prove value by our network layer security techniques we implement on Fireboxes. We are able to have a viable SIEM logging solution and security incident alarm notifications because of Dimension.
- Many of our largest and most valuable customers have come to use through WatchGuard partner finder
- WatchGuard has sometimes very poorly executed aspects of their marketing plans or technologies that have cost us business. For example, they solicited our customers on behalf of competitors repeatedly. WG's wireless technologies were very poorly executed during the controller to wifi cloud transition period for about a couple years. This caused us major problems which caused us to walk away from WG wireless for that time.
- Fireboxes ARE the network
- Fireboxes provide all the hardcore network layer security we need
- WatchGuard technologies represent a comprehensive ecosystem for network layer security, visibility, awareness and monitoring
- We were one of the first organizations to use autoblocking technologies. We have been using that innovation successfully since 2009.
- We are one of the only WatchGuard partners in the entire world that successfully uses Fireboxes for hardened network layer security microsegmentation and intra-VLAN packet inspection which creates a network security layer at the endpoint level
- We use real time alerting for all network layer security type issues that we think we should know about in real time. As such, we can offer clients a security operations center type of service.
- We review all network security reports for all client sites weekly and are able to identify trends, areas for further investigation, or areas of configuration changing
- For any prospects that contact us, we will use WatchGuard solutions to provide them the most security effective and cost effective cybersecurity kill chain solutions available in the SMB space.
- We plan on using DNSWatchGo and the Access Portal technologies more.
- We plan on using WatchGuard's MFA solution AuthPoint more than we are using it now.
- We also think that WatchGuard has worked out the bugs in their Wifi Cloud solution and it is now a mature product worth adopting.
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Third-party professional services
I do not believe that in-house IT for any organization of less than 5000 employees would ever have the adequate network security architecture and engineering skill to properly implement core network security strategies. Companies should be looking to partner with a qualified WatchGuard partner for their needs.
- Educating users and executive management that network layer security is an absolute necessity
- Educating users and executive management that whitelisting websites that they want to access is not only unnecessary but an incorrect security approach
- Educating users and executive management that the Firebox and our security is not the problem. In many cases, the website developers of websites that they access are not maintaining secure website hosting or they are simply utilizing insecure methodologies. And that is the true source of the issues.
- Online training
- In-person training
- Self-taught
As long as we are asking questions of WatchGuard partner support that is within the scope of what is appropriate to ask them about, we are always able to have more than adequately sophisticated conversations about whatever the technical problem is. This results in problems being solved.
Literally, in 25 years of being in the IT industry, I have not had this experience with any other manufacturer of software or hardware.
As a network security architect, it is my job to design NIST SP-800 cybersecurity framework hardened network layer security solutions. These strategies are combined with a comprehensive cybersecurity kill chain plan inclusive of email, network, phone, printer, cloud, server, and endpoint layered defense strategies.
As part of the design decision, technologies that consistently have extremely high efficacy while having a low TCO are absolutely essential for this solution to be manageable, effective, and affordable. WatchGuard has been our choice for network layer protection for more than 10 years. We also use their endpoint protection agent technologies and authentication solutions.
In doing so, we have been able to deliver high levels of security effectiveness at an affordable price to organizations ranging from one user to 500 users.
- Firebox System Manager and Firebox Policy Manager are the essence of effective troubleshooting, monitoring, configuration auditing, and configuration management. 98% of breaches occur due to a misconfiguration. Firebox Policy Manager, in the hands of a skilled network security architect can reveal network layer security misconfigurations faster than any other solution on the market. As such, it also eliminates network layer security misconfigurations.
- Dimension is an excellent visibility product
- WatchGuard's network discovery product is extremely helpful and easy to use
- There are areas of Policy Manager where no import/export or reordering function is available. This feature has been requested for years, but WatchGuard has not invested effort into improving Policy Manager. They are trying to move to WatchGuard Cloud. Unless they provide feature parity at least, then WatchGuard Cloud will never be able to replace WSM.