How has it helped my organization?
McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator improves our general endpoint security - wherever a user might be tricked into clicking on a link or downloading a file or bringing a file on an external medium or getting it from somewhere on the internet. After having detected that it could be malicious, it blocks it. That's the main reason we protect our endpoints.
What is most valuable?
McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is our general endpoint protection platform. The agent is deployed to all of our endpoints and according to the endpoint's purpose, e.g. industrial or office-like, it is configured properly and is managed centrally. That's quite all there is to explain about that.
The feature that I have found most valuable is its general purpose of protecting our endpoints from infections, malicious files, and all those kinds of things. Also the fact that there are organized policies and policy inheritance. The general management, in fact, nothing particular.
What needs improvement?
In terms of what could be improved, I would say the impact of the agent on the endpoint's performance - the resources it takes. Additionally, the difficulties we experience with inheriting and breaking inheritance on the organization's structure breakdown for policy inheritance and then for rules inheritance. We are actually struggling with this.
As for what I would like to see in the next release, that is related to the disadvantages, the drawbacks as I would call it. Some tuning of the inheritances for policies and things, so that we can extend policies to a lower level in the organization or in the structure. Inherit and extend rather than break the inheritance and start again on a lower level, because then, when on a higher level, and something changes, it has to be replicated on a lower level, rather than being taken automatically into account which complicates the management. Additionally, some performance tuning on the endpoints to make sure the agent does not take too much resources or it could be further granularly customized. Something like it should not take more than X percent of memory or of CPU in office hours, business hours, and could take more outside of those hours. So some tweaks, improvements, and configuration options in these areas.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator for four or five years. It's still our current platform.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is quite stable. We're not having any issues with that.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is scalable. That's not an issue.
All the endpoints are protected with the platform and the servers, as well. It is something like 8,000 endpoints and 500 servers, quite a lot. In our Belgium branch of the company we're actually talking about almost everyone, we're like 5,000 employees, so that's only for Belgium. But there are more endpoints than the number of employees, of course.
There are the general workstations. Some users have more than one endpoint assigned to them, or a business or team's endpoints that are used in common within the team. That explains the larger number of endpoints compared to the number of employees we have in Belgium. There are different levels of the management who use this.
We have one guy in our team, in our Belgium site, that is almost fully dedicated to managing the antivirus product on the endpoint level, the workstation level. And then another person who is partially occupied, one third or half of his time for the server component. But as I told you, the endpoint workstations are being managed on a higher corporate level. There is also at least one person who concentrates some of his time on the management level. So, in total, for Belgium, let's say, two FTs.
I don't think we have any plans to increase because in fact, all our endpoints are covered. It grows and shrinks with the number of endpoints we have. The percentage stays the same.
How are customer service and support?
That's a question I can't answer because I haven't had to deal with them, personally. In general, when we're having issues, we turn to the higher corporate level, the Europe level, to know what their approach to the problem we might experience is. I've not noticed us having to deal directly with McAfee's technical support.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was long before I arrived. Sorry, I couldn't tell you more.
The deployment is strongly dependent on our environment's size, the number of workstations to deploy on and to deploy new versions on. But in general to get to 90% coverage when we have to deploy a new version, it takes at least a month. That's mainly due to the number of endpoints and then to manage and to control them, to make sure they're communicating correctly, that they're powered on, and that they're on the network.
What other advice do I have?
McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is a well-known product. It is a big one. It is quite easy to compare on those different criteria. It's not a new kid on the block, it's a known value, it's been there for a long time. In my point of view, it's worth comparing it to other products to see if it integrates with something you already have, because now there is a tendency to have more ecosystems of endpoint protection and server protection.
The Microsoft ecosystem, or parts of the Microsoft ecosystem, are already in place in the organization. There will be eventual integration with a corporate data center or pyramid in firewalling. Whether they are already in place or not, it is important to consider these elements and to make a decision after these considerations. Not that I would advise particularly for or against McAfee, but there are a lot of elements to take into account.
I think it serves its purpose, that's fair and square. But there are always things that could be optimized. Whether it's the performance impact on the endpoint, or the management, in general. No solution will ever fit 100% to an environment, whether it's your own or another, it will not always fit 100%. There will always be little drawbacks, little things that could be optimized. Then it's a question of how to handle it.
You have to live with some minor inconveniences. There are advantages, there are the things that are good. In general, it's a good product. I would not advise against it.
On a scale of one to ten, I would give McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator a seven because of the reasons I told you. It does the job. It's quite solid. It's stable, of course. It's not something new, something experimental, it's proven itself already. And yeah, why not higher? Because of the things I told you already.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
