Check Point VPN-1 UTM Gateway

Score: Ranges based on hardware platform

Editor’s note: This is a summary of our testing of this product, for a full rundown of how it fared in our testing across ten UTM categories, please see our full coverage.

Check Point and its hardware partners -- Crossbeam, IBM, and Nokia-- each submitted different hardware platforms for this test running a common application: Check Point’s VPN-1 software. Likewise, we used Check Point’s Smart Center management system, running on a dedicated server, to manage and monitor all four sets of gateways.

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Score: Ranges based on hardware platform

Editor’s note: This is a summary of our testing of this product, for a full rundown of how it fared in our testing across ten UTM categories, please see our full coverage.

Check Point and its hardware partners -- Crossbeam, IBM, and Nokia-- each submitted different hardware platforms for this test running a common application: Check Point’s VPN-1 software. Likewise, we used Check Point’s Smart Center management system, running on a dedicated server, to manage and monitor all four sets of gateways.

Since the late 1990s, Check Point has been a leader in the firewall market, largely because of its superior management application. Early out of the gate with the right security model and the right approach, Check Point has dominated the enterprise firewall space and done well for its customers by continuing to build VPN and deep inspection features into their products.

VPN features continue to be a tremendous strength for Check Point as well. Its remote access VPN capabilities are the most sophisticated of any of the firewalls UTM products we tested, and site-to-site VPNs are also easily managed and monitored. In fact, it’s our opinion that Check Point has almost no competition when it comes to the creation and control of very large and very complex site-to-site VPNs.

We looked the current version of VPN-1 software in two basic configurations: one integrated with Nokia’s IPSO operating system, and the other running on Check Point’s own Linux-derived Secure Platform operating system. VPN-1 is the same firewall in both cases, though Nokia’s Voyager management system for such features as high availability, dynamic routing and appliance management is more sophisticated and flexible than CheckPoint’s equivalent Web-based GUI.