GigaOm’s Cloud Network Security Radar Ranks Check Point as the Industry Leader

The cloud provides great power, including agility, scalability and flexibility, potential cost savings and faster time to market. Moving to the cloud is a challenging undertaking for all organizations, including the great responsibility of securing assets and workloads in one or more dynamic and ephemeral clouds with multiple new attack surfaces and threat vectors.

Organizations evaluating cloud security solutions have multiple considerations, including pricing and TCO, multi- and hybrid-cloud support, and ease-of-use – read more about these considerations in the Buyer’s Guide to Cloud Network Security.

One of the main considerations is industry recognition:

• Is the solution vendor highly rated by independent industry analysts and third party security testing companies?
• Can it meet your SLAs?
• Does it have a proven track record?
• Can it provide added value, such as network security advisory services?
• Can it support your global operations?
• Is it committed to innovation so its solution will be future-proof?
• Is its software mature, with few vulnerabilities, and does it deliver timely fixes?

This article introduces GigaOm’s inaugural Radar for Cloud Network Security and explains why Check Point was ranked as the Leader as well as a Fast Mover. It also refers to other accolades, recognitions and lab test results supporting Check Point’s industry leadership.

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security

CloudGuard Network Security wears two “hats”:

Firstly, it is the cloudified version of Check Point’s on-premises network security, from which it inherits the software code as well as 30 years of security gateway intellectual property and cybersecurity technology innovation. Customers deploying it in the cloud get all the great features of Check Point’s gold standard security management from a single pane-of-glass, receiving the same security technologies (“blades”), policy management, visibility, logging, reporting and control​ that we have built to our customers’ requirements and needs since 1993.

Secondly, we made it cloud-native so it is always integrated with all the cloud vendors and up-to-date with their latest services​, easy-to deploy, elastic, agile and highly scalable. Check Point partners with all the leading cloud vendors, and CloudGuard integrates with their infrastructure and all of their popular and newest services, which ensures that customers always have the best cloud-native user experience. ​In other words, Check Point’s network security is completely cloud-ready.​

You can read more about CloudGuard Network Security here.

GigaOm Radar for Cloud Network Security

The Radar report, published on November 16, 2023, was researched and written by Andrew Green, who specializes in networking and security.

The report reviews 10 key cloud network security vendors and “equips IT decision-makers with the information needed to select the best fit for their business and use case requirements. The vendors and solutions in the Radar report all have the following “table stakes” capabilities:

• Vendor agnostic integrations
• Service insertion
• Service orchestration
• Log aggregation
• Centralized management
• Cloud awareness

According to Flexera 2023 State of the Cloud Report: 87% of respondents (cloud decision-makers and users from around the world) run on multiple clouds. Therefore, “multi-cloud support” may also be a minimum capability, although Green does not explicitly state this.

The focal point of the report is the Radar chart (below), which “plots vendor solutions across a series of concentric rings, with those set closer to the center judged to be of higher overall value. The chart characterizes each vendor on two axes—balancing Maturity versus Innovation and Feature Play versus Platform Play—while providing an arrow that projects each solution’s evolution over the coming 12 to 18 months”. In other words, the Radar chart provides a comparative graphic summary of the research.

GigaOm Radar for Cloud Network Security chart

Earlier in the report, GigaOm explains how it reaches these conclusions by using three tables which quantify how the vendors perform in areas that GigaOm considers differentiating and critical:

• Key criteria: focuses on features and capabilities
• Evaluation metrics: outlines non-functional requirements that influence a purchase decision and each solution’s impact on the customer
• Emerging technologies: reviews technologies that are expected to become more widespread in the next 12-18 months

Check Point’s scores are very high in all categories, with “Exceptional” ratings (i.e., outstanding focus and execution) in almost all areas of consideration.

The report researched a broad range of features and functionality, with some questions extending past CloudGuard Network Security’s core capabilities. Fortunately these questions were well answered by other capabilities of the CloudGuard platform, including CloudGuard Posture Management (CSPM), CloudGuard AppSec (WAAP) and CloudGuard Intelligence (CDR). This is one benefit of Check Point’s consolidated approach to security.

Other recent industry accolades for Check Point network security

The last 12 months have included notable recognition in several other industry reports, including:

• Named a Leader in Gartner^®Magic Quadrant™ for Network Firewalls (23 times)​
• Ranked 1^st in Public Cloud Use Case in Gartner^®2023 Critical Capabilities for Network Firewalls​
• AAAin CyberRatings Cloud Network Firewall​
• Leaderin Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Firewalls​
• Recommended AAA CyberRatings Enterprise Firewall​
• Leaderin GigaOm Radar for NGFW​
  Leader in GigaOm Radar for DNS Security​
• Best-in-Class by Frost & Sullivan for NGFW​
• Leaderin Miercom NGFW Security Efficacy​

Unlike analyst reports, Miercom provides extensive testing lab assessments. Earlier this year, Check Point earned the highest marks in their objective third-party testing of security efficacy, in comparison with three competitive solutions. One of the test results can be seen below.

Malware Prevention vs Detection-Only Zero+1 Day Malware

For a deeper explanation of the assessment and the chart above, please download the report.

How secure is your security?

There is a self-referential aspect about security solutions: they are meant to protect organizations from threats, but they also may contain security vulnerabilities, making them the source of the threat at the same time.

From January 2020 to June 2023, we tracked the software vulnerabilities of Check Point and three competitors, based on the relevant security advisories webpages. The chart below shows how Check Point has fewer critical and high vulnerabilities and took much less time to fix these.

Security vendors’ critical and high SW vulnerabilities and the average time to fix them

These statistics are as a result of mature software code and a swift response to software vulnerabilities, and are a benefit of Check Point’s comprehensive approach to security.

Conclusion

The GigaOm Radar for Cloud Network Security ranked Check Point as the Leader as well as a Fast Mover. Check Point’s position is closest to the center of the Radar chart and thus judged to be of higher overall value.

“Check Point is one of the only vendors featured in this Radar that delivers on all the capabilities described in the report. Their platform can provide true end-to-end network security for cloud environments,” said Andrew Green.

This report is one of many industry accolades for CloudGuard and Check Point’s network security in the last year from analysts and testing labs , emphasizing an unrivaled combination of security efficacy, features, strength of platform, ease-of-use, maturity, and innovation.

Organizations looking for a cloud network security solution should put CloudGuard Network Security on their short list.

And customers of Check Point network security who are moving to the cloud experience the easiest, quickest and most secure cloud migration with lowest total cost of ownership and lowest organizational risk.

Schedule a demo today and to see CloudGuard in action, and get personalized expert guidance on meeting your organization’s cloud security needs.

If you would like to schedule a deep-dive personalized workshop around CloudGuard or best practices for secure migration, please fill in this form and a cloud security architect will contact you to discuss your needs and schedule next steps.

If you have any other questions, please contact your local Check Point account representative or channel partner using the contact us link.

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