Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall vs Stormshield Management Center

Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall provides network security and SD-WAN connectivity for enterprise networks spanning physical, virtual, and cloud systems. Its Secure Management Center centralizes policy management, log analysis, monitoring, and reporting. Protection features include deep packet inspection, anti-evasion defenses, intrusion prevention, vulnerability exploit detection, and DoS/DDoS protection. Clustering supports active-active or active-standby arrangements with up to 16 nodes, and updates can be applied without interrupting service. Listed cloud infrastructure includes Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google, Oracle, and IBM. Virtual appliances support x86 64-bit systems, VMware ESXi and NSX, Microsoft Hyper-V, KVM, and Nutanix AHV. Integrations include SASE/SSE, CASB, and Web Security; remote access supports the Forcepoint VPN client for Windows, Android, and Mac OS, as well as standard IPsec clients. URL filtering requires a separate subscription, and local anti-malware scanning is unavailable on 110/115 appliances. Pricing is on request, and there is no free plan.

Stormshield Management Center (SMC) centralizes security administration for multi-site networks using SNS firewalls. It exchanges configuration and supervision data with those firewalls in real time, with confidentiality and integrity protection, and provides a graphical interface for managing security and filtering policies across them. Administrators can supervise firewalls and VPN tunnels and centrally deploy SNS updates. SMC also covers SD-WAN management and monitoring, including route-based topology, filtering rules, and link-quality monitoring. It manages VPN topologies and can create Virtual Tunnel Interfaces automatically; it also supports post-quantum encryption deployment using KEM and PPK. A REST API, scheduled or deferred scripts, authentication through a local directory or external server, and automatic backup and centralization of configurations round out its management capabilities. SMC can connect to Stormshield Log Supervisor and is available on the OUTSCALE Marketplace. It is paid, with pricing available from a reseller partner, and Stormshield directs prospective users to sales for a trial version. Listed platforms are API, Linux, self-hosted, and web.