Palo Alto vs Checkpoint

The CheckPoint and Palo Alto Networks as two of the best next-generation firewall (NGFW) providers and cybersecurity firms overall.

Potential NGFW purchasers frequently make this comparison, with a good reason. Gartner just released its Magic Quadrant for network firewalls, and just Fortinet joined Palo Alto and CheckPoint as Leaders. Cyber Ratings found both companies’ firewalls to be highly effective. Users also give high marks to Checkpoint and Palo Alto, so those who decide to purchase security software from either of these companies may rest assured that they are obtaining high-quality protection. 

Both are, perhaps predictably, more expensive than alternate, more cost-effective options. Both are intended at organizations that have higher than average security requirements, and for certain use cases, they provide. However, there are distinctions among the two that we will discuss below. 

Before diving into the specifics, here is a high-level breakdown of the industries best served by each vendor:

• Check Point is a popular choice because of its adaptability and simplicity of use in both small and big networks.
• If your business needs a comprehensive, integrated security solution for intricate and hybrid settings, Check Point is an excellent option. Through Palo Allto Certification Training you can learn more about it.
• Palo Alto can service these markets too, but also provides an edge in the cloud, container and FWaaS applications, in addition to a full security product range.
• Palo Alto’s solution is a good fit if you place a premium on functionality, management, and reliability. 
• Either one is going to do if all you need is a secure firewall, as they both have received high marks from Gartner, users, as well as independent testers.

Comparison between Palo alto vs checkpoint

Here we will compare and contrast the solutions’ primary features and discuss their relative merits and shortcomings.

• Most user-friendly: Check Point

Users rated Palo Alto at an excellent 4.7 on Gartner Peer Insight for Integration & Deployment during the past year, while Check Point only managed a 4.4. Both were equally simple to set up, however CheckPoint won out for G2 in terms of user and administrative friendliness.

Reviews of both firms’ firewalls include phrases like “simple to use,” “user-friendly,” and “intuitive,” demonstrating the significant improvement in usability over the past few years.

The Palo Alto Networks cloud-based firewall supervisor, utilized for distributed-office with centralized-management applications, is not comparable to on-premises administration, according to Gartner’s December 2022 Magic Quadrant. The Prisma Access product line as well as ‘generation 4’ types of hardware make extensive use of its cloud-based management.

In comparison to Palo Alto, assessments of Check Point tend to emphasize its user-friendliness more often. Although Palo Alto has a strong reputation for security, some customers have complained that it can be difficult for a non-expert to manage. Learn more about it with Palo Allto Certification Training.

Operators of both systems report that their setup necessitates more expertise and forethought than that of competing systems. Once the solution is functioning properly, many Check Point customers highlight its user-friendly administration interface. Users of Palo Alto’s firewalls gush about its robust administration tools, but others note that mastering them takes practice.

• High Security: Check Point

Both providers provide top-notch security, with excellent results across the board in third-party evaluations.

According to Gartner, Check Point’s portfolio of network, mobile, as well as endpoint security products makes it an ideal fit for businesses that want to take an integrated strategy to security.

Check Point was evaluated as a Leader in the current Gartner Magic Quadrant (MQ) for future generations firewalls. Nevertheless, it was not as successful as Palo Alto. According to Gartner, Check Point is a strong contender for enterprises with a hybrid of on-premises as well as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) security requirements because of the breadth of its security offering.

New features in recent editions include a knack for automatically increasing or optimising performance based on factors such as peak workloads or critical applications, as well as the prevention of threats using artificial intelligence (AI) Deep Learning engines as well as the introduction of an SD-WAN blade.

In its most recent next-generation firewall Magic Quadrant (MQ), Gartner also positioned Palo Alto within the Leaders quadrant and awarded it the top ratings. A Forrester Wave analysis of enterprise firewalls ranked it as a leader. With proper Palo Allto Certification Training, learn how Palo Alto Networks has a high level of client fulfillment as well as is a formidable competitor for all companies, especially when considerations of functionality and management quality trump those of cost.

Pan-OS is Palo Alto’s platform operating system. It has developed WildFire threat detection plus prevention, AIOps, URL filtering, DNS security, a cloud access security broker, Internet of Things (IoT) protection (including protection for medical IoT devices), enterprise IoT, with zero trust OT, among other features. For NGFW clients looking to make the switch from legacy in-house proxy options to a unified management and security framework, it has offered natively incorporated web proxy functionality. Each month, the NGFW’s AIOps system analyzes 29 billion metrics from more than 50,000 firewalls as well as alerts clients to 24,000 misconfigurations along with additional problems that need fixing right away.

Check Point also dominated recent Miercom security benchmark testing that it sponsored, with a 99.7 percent malware block rate compared to the closest competitor’s 72.7 percent. Check Point also had a phishing prevention rate of 99.9 percent as well as a false-positive detection rate of only 0.1 percent.

Most Affordable: Palo Alto

Price-wise, Palo Alto and CheckPoint are comparable, but we prefer Palo Alto for reasons we’ll discuss below.

Palo Alto firewalls aren’t inexpensive, of course. Starting at roughly $1,000 for the PA-410, the Palo Alto PA hardware firewall series goes all the way up to the high-end PA-7000 range firewalls (which can cost considerably more with support as well as subscriptions). A ruggedized version is just one of many available alternatives. Additional services, such as AIOps and SD-WAN, are available from Palo Alto in addition to its virtual, container, as well as cloud firewalls.

Check Point’s pricing scales with the complexity of the network, with the entry-level Quantum gateways costing less than $2,000 and the more advanced variants costing $200,000 and up.

Both suppliers’ prices fall within a reasonable range. Therefore, if you’re choosing between Palo Alto and CheckPoint primarily on price, you’ll save money some of the time.

However, Cyber Ratings’ evaluations of enterprise firewalls along with cloud network firewalls show that Palo Alto has a lower overall cost of ownership per megabits per second than Check Point.

The Top Choice for Cloud and Advanced Applications: Palo Alto

Meeting the requirements of complicated businesses, Palo Alto also excels in cloud-based use cases. Palo Alto offers a wide variety of firewalls to meet the requirements of a variety of different settings, from small offices as well as campuses to large corporations and all in between.

Palo Alto’s cloud lineup shines out, and it also has the edge in containers as well as cloud firewalls. Support for AIOps as well as SD-WAN are additional notable additions. It’s no surprise that mid-sized and large businesses make up the bulk of Palo Alto’s clientele. In addition, it has introduced Cloud NGFW for AWS, a managed next-generation firewall solution, to help businesses move more quickly to the cloud. It also stands out for being a one-stop shop for all things firewall-related (hardware, software, cloud, FWaaS) for its customers.

Check Point has a big number of large enterprises as customers, yet it also has a sizable base of smaller companies that appreciate its simplicity and reliability. The scope of the company’s products and services is wider than that of Palo Alto’s, yet not by much. Both have a lot to offer in terms of cloud capability and virtual appliances, making them both viable options. When it comes to container firewalls, Check Point lags behind industry leader Palo Alto.

 Conclusion

In terms of usability, safety, feature breadth, and small and medium-sized business applications, Check Point is superior. By identifying, allowing, blocking, or limiting usage of apps and the functionalities within them, Check Point’s NGFWs provide secure internet use and guard against threats as well as malware. Access billions of log files across several time periods as well as domains in real time with the help of the company’s SmartLog analyzer.

In recent years, Check Point extended its NGFW product lines with the release of additional high-end platforms, as well as unveiled the Check Point Infinity Security Architecture, that is meant to safeguard a company’s complete IT infrastructure. With proper Palo Allto Certification Training, learn how Autonomous attack protection, streamlined configuration, as well as TLS 1.3 support with bogus Server Name Indication (SNI) detection are only some of the characteristics of this software.