Cyberguard or Checkpoint

[krupted]

Hi people. Need your help on this. I'm not too sure which is better. Cyberguard Firewalls or Checkpoint firewalls. As I know, Both has their pros and cons. Can somebody point out their pros and their cons?

[draziw]

Well, each have their uses and misuses and situations where they are beneficial and situations where they are useless. (in short, I'm trying to say it really depends on what you are using it for, who's admin'ing it, and a whole host of other things)

To me, it'd be like me walking in to a baker's convention and saying "wheat or sourdough?"

However, in my professional opinion (as a CCSA/CCSE), I think CheckPoint is a decent, easy to use firewall system (though highly overrated). It's simple enough, in fact, that it's very easy to misuse or compromise - particularly to those without a security background/understanding (and I think CP tends to try to sell their products as "easy administration" with the emphasis that you "don't need" a security person in order to deal with them). Also, their VPN solution is, well... I wouldn't use it.

My personal favorites in the firewall industry? Gauntlet and Sidewinder, to name two... both require someone with decent security and/or system administration knowledge, however.


If you're interested in a firewall solution, however, I'd recommend that you make a few calls to a few sales organizations and see if they will bring out a sales person and an SE or three and demonstrate their product in your office(s) - don't forget to bring out your own IT manager, security personnel and appropriate system/network admins. Once you have it narrowed down to a few that you like and you think are useful, you might try posting more specific questions to these forums with your ideas as to why you like them and why you might find them more useful than any others. You'll probably get a lot better feedback that way...

At least, in my own opinion...

[krang]

Cyberguard is a lot simpler, you will probably need to read the manual for CP.

Krang

[gold eagle]

draziw offers reasonable advice. You can visit the other forums on firewalls etc to gain perspective. Research twice, buy once.

[SoggyBottom]

Your decision on which Firewall to go for may depend on whether you want it to perform stateful inspection or not.

My personal favorites in the firewall industry? Gauntlet and Sidewinder, to name two... both require someone with decent security and/or system administration knowledge, however.

I remember reading that Gauntlet will soon no longer be supported.

[krupted]

thanks for all your advice people. really appreciate it. Will ask the people to come over for a demo and I'll post the results here.