I use Check Point CloudGuard WAF for CSPM and posture management. In some places, I use native app protection-related management, and in other places, I use it for runtime protection. These are all some of the use cases I have utilized it for. I also use it for CASB in some locations, compliance assessment, adaptive access control, UEBA, policy enforcement, and threat protection. I have performed all of these functions using firewalls.

Traditional WAF with Check Point CloudGuard WAF has some features that could be integrated inside the WAF that might be helpful. I normally use a separate tool for API security, and I used to perform OWASP top 10 or 20 assessments. Not everything falls under WAF.

However, if it is included, especially in today's market where AI-related features are all integrated, that would be tremendously helpful. AI and modern viruses such as token theft, tool poisoning, command injection, unauthorized access, and prompt injection are all concerns. If you have prompt injection detection in Check Point CloudGuard WAF, that would be the greatest help for the market. I would give you one more thing called a rug pull attack. Prompt injection is critical to address. Today everything is prompt-based and AI-based, and there will definitely be some bots. Those bots will definitely cross this WAF. There are some modern AI-based vulnerabilities such as token theft and tool poisoning. Tool poisoning means that some malicious command will be hidden inside, and then passwords will be saved insecurely. This happens everywhere, sometimes by mistake or unintentionally, but these mistakes are what allow hackers to penetrate. Token theft, tool poisoning, token passthrough, command injection, rug pull attack, unauthenticated access, and prompt injection are all seven major problems for people like me, CISOs.

I have worked as a customer, partner, solutioner, and implementer. I have been with Check Point since Check Point NG's time. Check Point launched the new generation around 2000 if I understood correctly, and I have been with Check Point since then.

These kinds of Israeli products are strong, clever, and powerful tools. They are all strong, clever, and powerful tools compared with American products, to be honest and upfront. Palo Alto has beaten Check Point in the recent past by bringing these creamy layers of Israeli companies into their organization, if I understood correctly.

I am a CCSE by the way. Check Point Certified CCSE. I have been holding this certification for quite some time. In short, Check Point CloudGuard WAF is a powerful tool. In short, its look and feel is also not something everyone will like. People like me, a rare breed, will like Check Point CloudGuard WAF. Not everyone, to be honest.

There are some scoring companies I have worked with that focus on security scoring, risk scoring, and prioritization. These are all very good in Check Point CloudGuard WAF, I would say. Advanced threat detection is also fine. Check Point CloudGuard WAF also provides threat intelligence for us, which includes actionable information about current and emerging security threats. Check Point CloudGuard WAF produces all kinds of reports that involve collecting, analyzing, and sharing data about threat actors and their TTPs and IOCs. It is also strategic, tactical, technical, and operational. I like their threat intelligence products. It is strategic, tactical, technical, and operational.

There are some API gateway and API securities I mentioned. If these are incorporated with AI-related features, particularly those seven key vulnerabilities I mentioned—token theft and tool poisoning—that would be beneficial. AI-related features are not included yet in Check Point CloudGuard WAF. However, they are present in FortiGate. That is the advantage of FortiGate now. FortiGate is stopping all AI-related vulnerabilities now. FortiGate has this capability. It is unfortunate that even Palo Alto also lacks one or two of these features.

Check Point Quantum is very good, without a doubt. However, their capabilities are not in comparison with Palo Alto. There are some features, but there are some gaps in comparison with Palo Alto.

I have been using this solution for a few months only.

I have not encountered glitches. There is something called implicit deny. Until I face any issues on the network as a CISO, such as issues due to the firewall being down or glitches, or if any vulnerabilities penetrated in, then I would be worried. However, by default, Check Point CloudGuard WAF will not be configured in that way.

Based on what the customer is requesting, if the customer wants some third-party integration, such as Wazuh, which is a SIEM tool, or they want to deploy with some open source product, then complexity comes in. However, if we are only installing Check Point CloudGuard WAF, the deployment is very nice and very cool. Check Point CloudGuard WAF has very nice videos, deployment documents, and deployment guides available. I have seen it, run it, and installed it in various operating systems and appliances, as well as virtual appliances in the cloud.

I have seen ROI. However, when I am not worrying about the cost, I am also not worrying about the ROI. Selling a product is not my job. I am a CISO for a service organization. If you want, I will create the solution. When someone is requesting a solution, if that someone is also requesting ROI information, then I will give all of those metrics. However, it is a rare case that they will request ROIs, because I am not going to worry about the cost of the product. I am worrying about the features and vulnerabilities. Reduction of vulnerabilities is important. I hope you understand.

Check Point CloudGuard WAF is expensive. It is a little bit expensive. You cannot avoid this from an Israeli product. Israeli products follow a certain pricing model. If they could reduce the cost a bit, then they can compete with Palo Alto. Palo Alto is leading, Cisco is down, and Palo Alto is coming up. There is something peculiar in the market. Cisco for the last three or four quarters has been very down. In fact, last year they made very less profits. However, Palo Alto was somewhere in the cloud. Check Point CloudGuard WAF is also coming up, but not the Palo Alto.

We do not care about alternate solutions. We never care about the cost. There is something called pair-wise comparison. I am a CISO, by the way. When any of the clients are in a process of deploying a firewall or global firewall for their organization, they will come to me and request, "CISO Krishna, why can't you give me the top three or four firewalls in the market?" I normally say the first one is Palo Alto, FortiGate, and then Check Point Quantum. These are the three top firewalls I usually recommend. I have a readymade PowerPoint deck in comparison, a pair-wise comparison with these three. In that comparison, there is the cost of each one and everything.

Cost is normally something I do not worry about. I will explain to the client, and it is their responsibility. Finally, they will choose the cheap one. Many people are going with FortiGate. And some people come to Check Point CloudGuard WAF. Rare people go for Palo Alto, or someone is really worried about their security, like banking organizations or financial institutes, those people go for Palo Alto.

I will not give any total cost of ownership about the product. I will give the features for this cost. I will explain the advantages, disadvantages, pros, and cons of each product, and then I will present it to the customer. It is up to the customer who will select the product, and we will also recommend. Sometimes we recommend Palo Alto, sometimes we recommend Check Point CloudGuard WAF, sometimes FortiGate, and sometimes other firewalls. In many places, we will not recommend. We will give it as it is. That is called pair-wise comparison. We will compare it and give it to the client, and it is the client's responsibility to choose their own product.

I also use Orca and Palo Alto. With the four products — true positive, false positive, true negative, false negative — these are problems everywhere. That is the reason I recommend this tier-one firewall companies to the client. Out of ten, maybe one or two might be false positives.

I am using not only Fortinet, but I am also dealing with other vendors as well, such as Check Point. I am working with email security by Check Point. I have a little bit of experience with Check Point CloudGuard WAF, as we ran a proof of concept here.

The efficiency improvements provided by Check Point CloudGuard WAF are something I can describe. It was fairly easy to set up Check Point CloudGuard WAF if you are looking at the basic configuration. It was pretty acceptable with setting up rules, and so forth. If you were looking for advanced configurations, then you had to go for a different setup, and that made it a little bit complicated.

In terms of efficiency, Check Point CloudGuard WAF is very straightforward to set up rules because you really do not need to do much customization, as it is the case with all Cloud WAFs.

I have been familiar with Check Point CloudGuard WAF for about six months.

Check Point could improve or add more flexibility when it comes to migrating to different sites. Multi-tenancy is an area where Check Point has room for improvement.

From what I saw, the customer support by Check Point was pretty good, but they were trying to sell it to us, so I would rate it eight out of ten.

I have experience with FortiWeb, although we just stopped using them. We used to have FortiWeb for the last few years, but now we have actually stopped using them.

The price of Check Point CloudGuard WAF is not expensive, as it was the cheapest solution we found. There is good competition for Check Point CloudGuard WAF at the moment, with big players in the market.

If we selected Check Point CloudGuard WAF, which we did not, it would certainly be much cheaper. I would recommend Check Point CloudGuard WAF to others at a rating of seven out of ten. I would recommend it if you have a simple setup, then it is cheaper and it does the job. My overall review rating for Check Point CloudGuard WAF is seven out of ten.

I can use Check Point CloudGuard WAF for multiple purposes, as I am using it as our cloud security posture management tool. I have started using it since cloud security posture management was sold to Wiz. Wiz is another product these days. I have started using Check Point CloudGuard WAF along with bot protection and API protection.

Check Point CloudGuard WAF provides great visibility and flexibility to use multiple FQDNs in a single load balancer. I am using multiple products with a similar solution, such as F5 and Check Point CloudGuard WAF. F5 operates with the discovery module and the API protection module only on a number of FQDN basis. This is a great, flexible option where I can implement multiple applications using a single load balancer.

The total cost of ownership has definitely reduced for my application firewall because there is no limitation on the load balancer for implementing FQDNs. FQDN is a fully qualified domain name. For example, I have an application on the load balancer with a.novaktech.one, and similarly, b.novaktech.one is another application, while c.novaktech.in is a third application. I can implement multiple FQDNs in a single load balancer.

Regarding the false positive rate, Check Point CloudGuard WAF has helped to reduce it as it gives more true positive cases rather than false positives. The technology leveraging Check Point's security provides threat intelligence where I can get DDoS and attack signatures and all AI/ML-based signatures. The false positive rate is very low. The approximately reduced false positive rate is about seventy percent. No product will give one hundred percent accuracy, but it detects seventy percent.

I see areas for improvement primarily on the reporting functionality front, as there are very limited functions in the reporting section. For example, I want to run a consolidated dashboard for the last six months, but it is not available.

Reporting functions alone have limitations, and sometimes this portal has latency issues when loading pages. Since I am using it as a SaaS platform, sometimes the loading pages take more time.

Regarding the Breach Reduction feature, I had a discussion with the Check Point account manager and pre-sale representative, but they have not yet provided a proof of concept demo. We are still in discussion.

I am using the product for more than six months.

Regarding stability, I see no issues. Check Point CloudGuard WAF is quite stable and very reliable.

I would say scalability is not a challenge with Check Point CloudGuard WAF, and there are no issues with scalability.

The technical support from Check Point is good, especially since I am new to this particular product. They are providing good support currently.

Check Point CloudGuard WAF is easy to deploy.

If I were to rate the support from zero to ten points, I would give them nine points.

If I were to rate Check Point CloudGuard WAF on a scale from zero to ten points, I would give it nine points.

Regarding the solution's ability for preemptive blocking of zero-day attacks and detecting hidden anomalies, zero-day protection with Check Point products is very less compared to all other vendors. For example, I am using Fortinet and F5 as well. Every forty-five days, I have to forcefully update my firmware and other aspects, while I have never seen much zero-day vulnerability on Check Point CloudGuard WAF. Yearly, I only do the patch management and firmware upgrade. Compared to other service and security providers, the zero-day vulnerability on Check Point is very less. I know this because I am using all the products and understand the challenges. Check Point CloudGuard WAF has very low zero-day vulnerability, which is evident in security reports. My overall rating for this solution is nine out of ten points.