The Check Point UTM-1 comes fully loaded with firewall, intrusion prevention, anti-virus, anti-spyware, URL filtering, web security and anti-spam. This appliance can be further customized with additional features and functions, such as data leakage prevention to meet the needs of the environment.
We found this appliance to be simple to deploy, but quite difficult to configure. The initial deployment of the product is done by connecting the appliance to the network and accessing a web-based interface. This interface includes a setup wizard that will get a basic configuration in place. After the completion of the wizard, the administration applications must be downloaded from the appliance. Once installed on a management computer, all administration is done through these applications. We found the management applications to be quite awkward to use and it took us a while to get the hang of setting up and configuring the various functions of the device.
This appliance requires configuration from scratch. While there are many predefined signatures for functions such as IPS, getting firewall policy set up and managing other functions is nonintuitive. We found this links directly to the awkwardness of the interface itself. We found ourselves clicking around the interface many times trying to find how to configure the various aspects of the appliance.
Documentation provided with this product included a lot of various PDF manuals and guides. Almost every function of the device had its own administrator guide. We did find these guides to be well organized and they included many step-by-step instructions, screen shots and configuration examples.
Check Point offers various options as part of its support program. These can range from 20 percent to 40 percent of the install base price and include various levels of phone, email, onsite and update support. There is also no-cost support available on the website in the form of a knowledge base, forum and live chat.
At a price of $4,800, we find this product to be an average value for the money. While it does provide a lot of functionality, we find that it is difficult to configure and manage, which adds to its overall cost of ownership.
