Go CCIE Go!! - A Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert

I believe that there is no inherent security advantages of whether a firewall is or is not a proxy. (Whether you actually terminate a TCP/UDP session isn’t important, as long as you ensuring that the session is conforming to good behavior.) Conversely, if you have a proxy or inspection engine that doesn’t know what to look for with a given protocol, it will still replicate that bad session or forward it to the inside of your network assuming that protocol is allowed. For the purpose of this discussion, please take the term inspection engine loosely, as I am certainly not saying that inspection of firewalls is equivalent to inspection engines in IDS/IPSs.
Historically, it was “easier” to inspect traffic if you terminated the sessions. Now, as inspection techniques have evolved, most would argue that an equivalent level of security can be obtained without the overhead of terminating the sessions. This is VERY important once you get to 10G. Remember, just because you have 10Gbps interfaces doesn’t mean your throughput is 10Gbps.
I have found that customers who historically required proxies are beginning to drop this as a requirement, as they realize that this requirement is based upon a vendor implementation rather the actual security posture that can be attained by looking at all the available solutions on the market. More or less, a requirement of “must use proxy” may as well be “must use Sidewinder” since they are really the only major vendor who uses this technique as their primary method of function. (By dropping this language, this opens up the customer options to Checkpoint, Cisco, and the other players which likely will ensure that the best solution will be chosen for that customer which will result in the most secure implementation for them.)
Granted, this comes from someone on the Cisco side. I’m sure if you asked someone from Secure Computing, they may have a different perspective of the world.
Thanks, Mike
—–Original Message—– From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of Sharifi, Reza Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 5:02 PM To: David Tran; joe@affirmedsystems.com; sushilmenon2001@gmail.com; Kevin.Phillips@FTIConsulting.com; gabriel.bryson@minx.com Cc: diptanshu.singh@gmail.com; beyer@optonline.net; ccielab@groupstudy.com; security@groupstudy.com Subject: RE: ASA vs Checkpoint
Since we are on the subject of firewall comparison, can you guys comment on G2 Sidewinder 10G firewalls? I have a customer that requires Proxy, and Sidewinder is one of very few venders that can do that. BTW, what are the benefits and advantages of proxy?
Thanks, Reza
—–Original Message—– From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of David Tran Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 5:42 PM To: joe@affirmedsystems.com; sushilmenon2001@gmail.com; Kevin.Phillips@FTIConsulting.com; gabriel.bryson@minx.com Cc: diptanshu.singh@gmail.com; beyer@optonline.net; ccielab@groupstudy.com; security@groupstudy.com Subject: RE: ASA vs Checkpoint
“Recently I had a meeting with a large blue chip company that had been using checkpoint exclusively, As they were purchasing various Cisco Routers and switches from us, I was asked to attend a meeting were there security manager, who had Checkpoint believer wanted to ask a few questions about the ASA. After the Q&A session I could see that lots of what he said were related to the old Pix limitations, I then opened my laptop and connected to a ASA we have in a lab and demonstrated the ASA and let him play…They just purchased two ASA’s to replace their Checkpoints.” I don’t know if you ever work in a large enterprise or a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) but I would like to know if you can convert a Checkpoint security policy with over 25,000 objects and 800 security rules on a Secureplatform gateways with 20+ interfaces. Add about 100+ crazy NAT rules in the policy and let see if you can convert this CP security policy into ASA security policy. Think you can do it? By the way, cisco TAC couldn’t do it either. I had a meeting with a Cisco SE in 2005 and that he really touted both ASA and MARS on how this product are much better than CP and Juniper. After I sat him down and showed Checkpoint Provider-1 and requirements for my environment. ASA and CSM could not meet the requirements. Checkpoint has lots of drawback as well but overall it is much better firewall than Cisco, especially for large enterprise and Service Providers. It’s like owning a Porsche and owning a Honda Civic. Owning a Chevy is very easy. You just need to change oil, for the most part and everything will be fine. Owning a Porsche is much different. You need to have the money and the time to take care of that car. It is not that simple. Checkpoint is the same way. Checkpoint is like a Porsche and ASA is like a Honda Civic.
— On Wed, 7/23/08, gabriel.bryson@minx.com wrote:
From: gabriel.bryson@minx.com Subject: RE: ASA vs Checkpoint To: joe@affirmedsystems.com, davidtran_mclean@yahoo.com, sushilmenon2001@gmail.com, Kevin.Phillips@FTIConsulting.com Cc: diptanshu.singh@gmail.com, beyer@optonline.net, ccielab@groupstudy.com, security@groupstudy.com Date: Wednesday, July 23, 2008, 4:08 PM
After reading along all day at what people had to say about the ASA vs Checkpoint, If I was a complete novice that went exclusively on what was said in this forum, I think I might go with the ASA?? There is a plenty said on the checkpoint side about licensing, hardware, patching problems, more expensive, not great support from the manufacturers, and all that was said about the ASA is that does not have a fantastic enterprise management solution, oh and the ASA vpn solution is rock solid??? I think from my own experience the vast majority of people are put off the ASA because of the old PIX, its command line and horrible GUI (PDM), which the ASA have now revamped and replaced, making it just as easy as the Checkpoint to configure. Recently I had a meeting with a large blue chip company that had been using checkpoint exclusively, As they were purchasing various Cisco Routers and switches from us, I was asked to attend a meeting were there security manager, who had Checkpoint believer wanted to ask a few questions about the ASA. After the Q&A session I could see that lots of what he said were related to the old Pix limitations, I then opened my laptop and connected to a ASA we have in a lab and demonstrated the ASA and let him play…They just purchased two ASA’s to replace their Checkpoints. PS check out the Miercom report on the ASA compared to its competitors??? Just google Miercom ASA
My 2p worth
Gabriel
—–Original Message—– From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of Joseph Brunner Sent: 23 July 2008 17:49 To: ‘David Tran’; ’sushil menon’; ‘Phillips, Kevin’ Cc: ‘dip’; ‘Bill Eyer’; ccielab@groupstudy.com; security@groupstudy.com Subject: RE: ASA vs Checkpoint
David,
Time and time again you save me millions of brain cells. Thank you…
God Cisco has its sh*t in a twist… that server is massive to not be able to run CSM like google.com…
WOW
;)
—–Original Message—– From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of David Tran Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 10:30 AM To: sushil menon; Phillips, Kevin Cc: dip; Bill Eyer; ccielab@groupstudy.com; security@groupstudy.com Subject: RE: ASA vs Checkpoint
“CSM is still new but yet another piece that Checkpoint and Juniper have been doing for a while. Cisco never really offered a solution to manage firewalls, maintain objects, and standard policies across and enterprise.”
This product is absolutely horrendous. I installed it on a Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition with 16GB RAM and quad processors with quad-core and it is extremely slow. Totally unworkable across the VPN. The system becomes very slugglish after 5 users logging into the system. At the moment, I am having issues with installing Performance Monitor on the CSM. In other words, it is a broken product.
“Companies may not be ready to jump into buying a SIM as it may not be a requirement for that company but being able to store firewall logs and search for them is a core function of an enterprise firewall product”
Could not disagree with you more on this. The good thing about Checkpoint centralize management is that the management piece can manage multiple firewalls. If you have multiple firewalls between the source and destination, the log, in real time, can tell you which firewalls accept the traffics and which one drop the traffics. When it comes to trouble shooting, nothing beat tcpdump. Cisco capture function is no where near tcpdump capabilities.
“MARS is a great product if you want a SIM”
If you have a “cisco” shop, then MARS is a great solution for you. However, if you have a heterogeneous environment, ArcSight or EIQ is a much superior solution.

— On Wed, 7/23/08, Phillips, Kevin wrote:
From: Phillips, Kevin Subject: RE: ASA vs Checkpoint To: “David Tran” , “sushil menon” Cc: “dip” , “Bill Eyer” , ccielab@groupstudy.com, security@groupstudy.com Date: Wednesday, July 23, 2008, 9:41 AM
This is quite a funny post as I have been beating up my Cisco SE’s on exactly this point. I think they get it, but Cisco doesn’t.
A few years ago if you wanted a firewall, hands down it was Checkpoint partly because of their AI. Today they all do the same, they pass or deny traffic based on defined criteria. Sure one firewall may be faster than the next vendors, but what is setting it apart for me is the management.
MARS is a great product if you want a SIM, but if you want firewall events then you just need logs, Checkpoint and Juniper get this and have been doing this for years. Cisco never really offered this in their product line and when they decided to add it they went leaps and bounds ahead by going to MARS. MARS is not a firewall log tool, it is a SIM, it does event correlation and a lot of other features. Companies may not be ready to jump into buying a SIM as it may not be a requirement for that company but being able to store firewall logs and search for them is a core function of an enterprise firewall product.
CSM is still new but yet another piece that Checkpoint and Juniper have been doing for a while. Cisco never really offered a solution to manage firewalls, maintain objects, and standard policies across and enterprise.
—–Original Message—– From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of David Tran Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 7:01 AM To: sushil menon Cc: dip; Bill Eyer; ccielab@groupstudy.com; security@groupstudy.com Subject: Re: ASA vs Checkpoint
“checkpoint support sucks big time as compared to cisco. see when u get stuck in live network all u care of some good guys to help u out of it this is where no one can touch cisco for sure.”
This part I completely agree with you. Checkpoint TAC supports suck big time. This is one area where Cisco is really good at.
— On Wed, 7/23/08, sushil menon wrote:
From: sushil menon Subject: Re: ASA vs Checkpoint To: “David Tran” Cc: “dip” , “Bill Eyer” , ccielab@groupstudy.com, security@groupstudy.com Date: Wednesday, July 23, 2008, 2:17 AM

i think it depends on what are u looking for.
from cisco point of view the few advantages and disadvantages i feel.
cisco is lot cheaper than checkpoint. in checkpoint the biggest pain is the licensing model. u need license for everything so the cost of it goes very high.since it;s a pure software u will have to invest on hardware again like if u are thinking of secure platform then good ibm or hp server plus their support as well.
checkpoint support sucks big time as compared to cisco. see when u get stuck in live network all u care of some good guys to help u out of it this is where no one can touch cisco for sure.
though checkpoint is famous for it;s gui that;s the only best thing i find in it. because it can be deployed on many different hardware configuration on different hardware is tough because for most of the hardware u don;t even get a documentation for free like nokia and crossbeam u need login access to just view the documentation there are hardly any good configuration examples that u could use.
there is nothing very great that checkpoint does that cisco cannot do. except for few things like running vpns and running protocols in active/active mode.
but whereas vpns are concerned i find cisco vpns much scalable and easy. in checkpoint u have something called as communities and according to communities u will have to decide u want to have a mesh or star like vpns. in asa it;s upto u can configure the way u want need not worry abt any communities.
ofcourse for good management point of view seeing the logs in nice format and all u can go for checkpoint.
if u are really looking for options i would say rather try juniper or fortinet. they are even better than both cisco and checkpoint.
especially fortinet provides everything in a single asic based box. they have got ips,anti-spam,url-filtering,anti-virus,content-filtering all in a single box and their license cost is very less . their anti-virus has been winning 3 consecutive awards in anti-virus bulletin. they can do souce based routing,., source interface based routing, policy based routing and many more features .
they have got their fortimanager like checkpoint to manage all the boxes from a single point and they have a fortilog analyser for consolidating all the logs at a single place.

On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 7:56 AM, David Tran wrote:
” But there are downsides. It is software running on a computer, so you have some form of Linux or Windows under the hood. We run ours on a Nokia platform. The model we currently use is diskless, but some of our older ones had a harddisk that seem to fail regularly. Plus keeping up with patching means not only patching Checkpoint, but also patching IPSO, which is Nokia’s version of Linux.”
You should be using Secureplatform instead of Nokia. With Secureplatform, you go to a single vendor, Checkpoint, for support with both OS and Checkpoint. Nokia is overprice and overrated.
Ins’t RAID-1 supposed to resolve this issue? My Secureplatform has been up and running for almost five years with two reboot, because I upgraded it to HFA_17 and HFA_20.
You will run into the same thing with Cisco as well. I can tell you from Pix version 7.2(x) alone, there are about 28 different versions out there.
Checkpoint FireFly is high-end running on IBM x3650.
Checkpoint can terminate VPN in active/active but Cisco ASA can not,
Checkpoint is expensive and cisco is not
Imagine managing a firewall with 20+ interfaces with Cisco, a very difficult task indeed. There is no cisco centralized management like CP Provider-1 either, unless you count Cisco Security Manager which run on crappy windows. This product is horrible. Even Cisco TAC recommends Solsoft over Cisco CSM.
If you have the money, go with Checkpoint. Otherwise, go with Cisco.
As someone put it, Checkpoint firewalls is like driving a Porsche or Audi while Cisco is like driving a Ford Pinto. Just like everything in life, you get what you pay for.
— On Tue, 7/22/08, Bill Eyer wrote: From: Bill Eyer Subject: Re: ASA vs Checkpoint To: “dip” Cc: ccielab@groupstudy.com, security@groupstudy.com Date: Tuesday, July 22, 2008, 7:34 PM

Dip,
For what it’s worth, at our company we use a mix of Checkpoint and Cisco firewalls, the ASA, FWSM for 6500 and some older PIX units. This is deliberate design solution on my part to provide diversity.
Both manufacturers have advantages and dis-advantages, and I will give you my rant on both of them.
The Checkpoint is great for a couple of things. The Management interface is still the best. Even I, who have never been to school on it can easily configure and push policies. The logging system, while proprietory, is really nice. If my firewall engineers had their way, we would use only Checkpoint firewalls.
But there are downsides. It is software running on a computer, so you have some form of Linux or Windows under the hood. We run ours on a Nokia platform. The model we currently use is diskless, but some of our older ones had a harddisk that seem to fail regularly. Plus keeping up with patching means not only patching Checkpoint, but also patching IPSO, which is Nokia’s version of Linux. Our Checkpoint reps recently told me they are coming out with their own appliance, that will feature integrated patching.
Checkpoint is also “rental software”. To legally keep it running you
have to re-license it periodically. You also have to have a dedicated PC as a management server, and yes this has it’s own license. Lastly Checkpoint support is really expensive, although third party support may be available from the appliance manufacturer. We get ours from Nokia. Unlike Cisco TAC, Nokia does draw the line at some support requests. For example I asked them to walk me through installing the R55 patch and they told me I had to hire a VAR to do the work. I got around it but it was painful.
Smart Defense, which is their version of IPS also adds extra costs and since it is implemented in software, has a dramatic effect on throughput.
All and all it adds up to a higher cost than ASA.
ASA wraps good things into a single box, and the cost is lower. However, the management gui is not as easy to use (although recent generations are definitely better). Logging is also horrible. The logs on the built in gui are not nearly as nice as Checkpoints, so you will probably find the need for some type of Enterprise logging tool. The good new is that it is syslog so any enterprise SIM tool should work. We actually use CS-MARS, but the staff still doesn’t like it as much as Checkpoint.
That’s my rant anyway. If you have the money to pay for it, Checkpoint is really nice, but support is higher, both in cost and in time.
In our case in the Data Center we use Checkpoint as a perimeter firewall, then sandwich our DMZ between the outside and inside firewalls. The theory is that if there is a vulnerability in one manufacturer a hacker can’t exploit it to get all the way inside the enterprise. The inside firewalls are FWSM blades. For small sites we use ASA because cost is the driving factor there.
Long post, and maybe off topic, but I am certain that other engineers will have their own opinions.
Sincerely,
Bill
dip wrote: > Hi Guys, > > i have to evaluate between Cisco ASA and Checkpoint for a big enterprise. I > think this is a better place to ask since lot of people would have worked on > both products. > > Please provide me all the plus points which you saw in checkpoint which you > think currently Cisco ASA doesn’t have or vice versa. > Also what feature’s checkpoint has which you think should be must in cisco > Firewalls . > > > > Thanks > Dip > > >