SMB ZTNA / SSE comparison. Check Point Harmony SASE (formerly Perimeter 81) is compared against its top commercial plan (Enterprise). Pricing and plan names are intentionally omitted.
Cipherscale is an AI-native Security Service Edge (SSE) platform for SMB and mid-market teams. It unifies Zero Trust access to private apps, SaaS, and the internet on a single platform. Its defining architecture is a customer-owned data plane: traffic stays end-to-end encrypted between devices and customer-deployed Gateways — Cipherscale's control plane never touches the data, delivering native data sovereignty. Administration is conversational: admins describe outcomes in the Intent Bar, and the AI Copilot plans changes with human-in-the-loop Action Validation before bounded MCP services execute them. Continuous posture checks (OS, certificates, disk encryption, antivirus, processes, geo, time of day) gate every access decision. Universal ZTNA is delivered by the same on-prem Gateways for both remote and on-premises users, eliminating hair-pinning.
Check Point Harmony SASE (formerly Perimeter 81, acquired by Check Point in late 2023) is a cloud-native SASE platform that consolidates ZTNA, Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS), DNS filtering, and data loss prevention (DLP) for the distributed workforce. The platform provides identity-driven access to internal resources via Connectors deployed inside private networks, plus per-tenant dedicated cloud gateways with static public IPs in many global regions. Identity integrates with major IdPs (Okta, Microsoft Entra ID, Google Workspace) and supports SAML 2.0; device posture checks gate access based on OS, antivirus, certificates, and other factors. The Enterprise tier adds full-mesh connectivity, advanced threat prevention, custom compliance tools, increased log retention, and DLP. The platform is delivered through vendor-operated cloud PoPs, with optional dedicated tenant gateways that customers can place in chosen regions but that are still operated as part of the Harmony SASE cloud.
Choose Cipherscale if you want a customer-owned data plane where your traffic never traverses the vendor's network, AI-native intent-based administration, and Universal ZTNA without hair-pinning — particularly when data residency, sovereignty, and a lean conversational operating model are top priorities.
Choose Check Point Harmony SASE if you want a fully managed SASE stack (ZTNA + SWG + FWaaS + DLP) delivered as a vendor-operated cloud with global PoPs and the option of a dedicated per-tenant cloud gateway, and you value the Check Point ecosystem (threat intelligence, Harmony endpoint, ThreatCloud). It is a strong fit for SMBs and mid-market teams that prefer a single managed-cloud security vendor with a broad consolidated stack.
|
Capability |
Cipherscale |
Check Point Harmony SASE (Enterprise) |
|---|---|---|
|
Architecture & Data Sovereignty |
||
|
Category |
AI-native unified SSE (ZTNA + SWG + SaaS protection) |
Full SASE: ZTNA + SWG + FWaaS + DNS filtering + DLP |
|
Data plane location |
Customer-deployed Gateways (on-prem, IaaS, VPS). Vendor control plane never sees traffic. |
Check Point–operated cloud PoPs; optional dedicated per-tenant cloud gateways |
|
Customer-owned data plane |
Yes |
No — dedicated tenant gateways are still vendor-operated |
|
Static public IPs at enforcement points |
Yes — customer's own Gateway public IPs |
Yes — dedicated tenant gateways with static IPs (not available in all plans) |
|
Underlying tunnel protocol |
WireGuard® |
IPsec / WireGuard / OpenVPN (multiple supported) |
|
Universal ZTNA (single policy, on-prem & remote, no hair-pinning) |
Yes — local Gateways enforce policy |
Traffic generally backhauls to a vendor PoP or dedicated gateway |
|
Administration & AI |
||
|
Conversational / intent-based admin |
Yes — AI Copilot, Intent Bar, Prompt Catalysts |
No (admin via centralized management console) |
|
Human-in-the-loop change validation |
Yes — Action Validation |
Standard change workflows; no AI confirmation layer |
|
AI-driven cloud gateway deployment |
Yes — conversational GCP / Azure |
Not applicable — cloud gateways are vendor-provisioned |
|
Conversational Root Cause Analysis |
Yes |
No native conversational RCA |
|
AI auditing & least-privilege recommendations |
Yes |
No native AI policy recommendations |
|
Bounded AI execution (LLM separated from deterministic services) |
Yes — MCP services |
Not applicable |
|
Zero Trust & Identity |
||
|
OIDC support (Google, Microsoft) |
Yes |
Yes |
|
SAML 2.0 SSO |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Multiple IdPs active simultaneously |
Yes |
Yes |
|
SCIM user provisioning |
(coming soon) |
Yes |
|
RBAC roles |
Owner, Administrator, Auditor, User |
Owner, Admin, Manager, Member with granular permissions |
|
Device posture: OS & version |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Device posture: disk encryption |
Yes (native) |
Yes |
|
Device posture: antivirus running |
Yes (native) |
Yes |
|
Device posture: specific application/process |
Yes (native) |
Yes (via posture profile) |
|
Device posture: digital certificate present |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Location-context (geo) policies |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Time-of-day policies |
Yes |
Limited via context policies |
|
Identity-based microsegmentation |
Yes — dynamic firewall rules at Gateway |
Yes — via tunnel / network segmentation policies |
|
Access Use Cases |
||
|
Private application access (TCP & UDP) |
Yes — via Gateways; configure by domain or IP, restrict by protocol |
Yes — via Connectors |
|
SaaS protection by Gateway-IP pinning |
Yes |
Yes — via static IPs on dedicated tenant gateways (not available in all plans) |
|
Internet access security / Secure Web Gateway |
Yes |
Yes — integrated SWG |
|
Content filtering (categories) |
(coming soon — 43+ categories) |
Yes — broad category-based filtering |
|
Known malicious IP / domain blocking |
(coming soon) |
Yes — Check Point ThreatCloud intel |
|
Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS) |
Gateway-level firewall enforcement |
Yes — full L3-L7 FWaaS (not available in all plans) |
|
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) |
Not provided natively |
Yes (not available in all plans) |
|
Clientless / agentless web app access |
Not a current capability |
Yes — agentless web access supported |
|
Networking |
||
|
IPv4 / IPv6 dual stack |
Yes |
Yes (IPv4 primary) |
|
CGNAT IP range for internal operations |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Active-active load balancing & failover |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Site-to-site full-mesh |
(coming soon) |
Yes — full-mesh interconnect (not available in all plans) |
|
Distributed enforcement selected by RTT |
Yes |
Vendor PoP selection |
|
Observability & Operations |
||
|
Connection & access logs |
Yes |
Yes — increased log retention (not available in all plans) |
|
Admin / configuration audit logs |
Yes |
Yes |
|
SIEM streaming |
(coming soon) |
Yes |
|
Public API for automation |
(coming soon) |
Yes |
|
Email alerts for critical events |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Client platforms |
Windows, macOS, iOS, Android (Ubuntu coming soon) |
Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Linux |
|
Enforcement-point deployment options |
AI-driven GCP/Azure, Terraform, CloudFormation, Docker, Ubuntu/Debian |
Cloud gateways (vendor-managed) + Connectors (Linux/Docker/cloud images) |
"Coming soon" reflects Cipherscale's own documentation as of May 2026. Check Point Harmony SASE feature attribution is to the highest commercial plan (Enterprise); features marked (not available in all plans) are reserved for higher commercial tiers.
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