Check Point 1600 Next-Gen firewall review

Suppose you’re in a real zero-trust, high-traffic environment. You’re required to monitor every traffic flow, in multiple branch offices. They must be able to connect centrally, while being easy to monitor. Oh, and you need to be able to defend against newly-created attacks. Sounds like a job for the Check Point 1600!

The Check Point 1600, and the 1800, are fairly new appliances, and the largest in the Quantum Spark family of firewalls.

It’s important to understand that Check Point’s focus is on prevention rather than detection. In other words, blocking known and unknown cyber-attacks to ensure business continuity.

The list of security features is long, and impressive. To name a few, there are site-to-site VPN, remote access VPN, IoT device recognition, intrusion prevention, antispam, and intrusion prevention.

There’s also application control, advanced URL filtering, IPS, antivirus, anti-bot. In addition, there’s email security, policy management, monitoring and event management.

Highly customizable

The Check Point 1600 is not intended to be as plug-and-play as some other vendors. However, if you decide to simply use the default setting, you can be up and running in just a minute or two. Setup can be done in minutes using pre-defined security policies and a step-by-step configuration wizard. The Quantum Spark series, like the 1600, are easy to manage locally via a Web interface. They can also be managed centrally with a cloud-based Check Point Security Management Portal or R80 Security Management.

However, Check Points are devices you build around and customize into your environment. And that customization is the beauty of the Check Point 1600. The thing is, you can use the defaults if you like. But, if you do need to tune the system to do something just for your environment, you can do so with the Checkpoint. This granularity also gives you better visibility into your environment that many other vendors.

And, they have an excellent Engineering and Professional Services team in place to help you to realize your goals. So there’s no guesswork; no crossing your fingers and hoping it works. These professionals will get you there. Just remember, to get the very most out of the Check Point 1600, you’ll need someone with an IT background. Or at least a good technical acumen. But, there’s so much you can get out of one!

Tech Support

Their support teams are top of the line. They are highly trained to take those deep dives with you. They will understand your needs. This truly is one of Check Point’s strengths.

By the numbers

The Check Point 1600 moves Threat Protection Throughput at 1.5 Gbps, Next-Gen Firewall Throughput at 3.2 Gbps, and IPS Throughput at 3.5 Gbps. Firewall Throughput is 4.8 Gbps. Lots of holes across the front, with 16x 1GbE LAN switch ports, 1x 1GbE copper/fiber DMZ port, a console port, two USB ports, and a GbE copper WAN port.

The great thing about Check Point is that because of its central architecture, you can very quickly pinpoint where the attacks are coming from. It gives you comprehensive reporting when the attacks start and when they’ve stopped. So you can see the complete, end-to-end picture: where the point of attack is, at what time, and what host. It can track all of that. One of the main advantages of having Check Point firewall is definitely that it gives you absolute in-depth visibility.

Why not give Corporate Armor a call at 877-449-0458, or reach out at [email protected]? We would love to help you decide what sort of security solution is a perfect fit for you. And we have a great deal of experience as a Check Point partner! Thanks for reading!

Highlights of the Check Point 1600

3.2 Gbps Next-Gen firewall throughput
1.5 Gbps Threat Prevention
4.8 Gbps Max Firewall Throughput
3.5 Gbps IPS Throughput