What is our primary use case?
Its use case involves protecting our external services in the business.
It is a necessity because of the different security standards that our company has to comply with.
How has it helped my organization?
Our services are protected, and I have not seen any breaches that would impact our systems. The systems are stable, and I can very clearly see all of the malicious actors outside trying to access our systems.
It helps with troubleshooting immensely because the solution protects not only from threat actors outside of our business but also from internal actors or partner clients accessing our systems. Those requests are also validated inside Radware Alteon. I can see client partners or users accessing some systems in the wrong way or any misconfiguration inside our systems. Radware Alteon prevents our systems from breaking down because of those wrong requests. It has saved at least 40% to 50% time.
The integrated application protection on the other side of the load balancer is great. There is the caveat that it is not easily pre-configurable on that side, but everything after that is easy. When the services are up and running, the feedback, the insight, and the forensics of the happenings inside are very easy to understand and work with. The system automatically suggests what needs to be configured and what can be mitigated or refined in configuration. All of those are making my day easier.
Its implementation time took about half a year, and it took us about a year and a half to realize its benefits.
What is most valuable?
I find the best features to be the flexibility and ease of use. The configuration is very straightforward.
What needs improvement?
In my experience, Alteon is very dynamic software. They keep integrating new features that sometimes break our production, but we use clustered systems, so we can test those software releases. However, sometimes they take a while to reach us. We have had to work with Radware to remedy issues on their side that they have verified. On the other hand, they have been very proactive in remedying those problems. We have solved some critical issues within a month, but the release verification channel requires some updates.
The support channel is also an issue. Moving through tiered support can be challenging at times. Even when I go through the authenticated portal where I have registered my devices with their serial numbers and all known details, they ask to verify the specified device. I have already included that in the ticket support system.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Alteon since around 2018. It has probably been five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We have experienced some issues. I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is hard to tell, but I have had some performance issues. I cannot say whether they were because of Radware. I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.
We have a hybrid environment. It is very spread out. In terms of its users, we have tiered access. We have solution appliance administrators, and then there are users who monitor their services inside the clients. So, we have a couple of administrators and the rest are application admins. Overall, we have less than ten people.
How are customer service and support?
In general, I would rate their support a nine out of ten because the first level of support sometimes requires re-verification. We have to escalate a bit to have some momentum. However, local third-party support is reachable for us at any moment. There is a dedicated expert answering even the toughest questions. If needed, he re-routes us to the Radware support, and he takes care of the support communication for us.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
In the current scope of systems, I have not used any other solution. I have used different systems in different projects but not in this context.
How was the initial setup?
The setup is local, not cloud-based. The deployment time to fully implement was half a year.
In terms of implementation strategy, we are very step-based when it comes to infrastructure. We evaluate and point out our needs. We rely heavily on third-party support. Radware is not directly supporting us in Latvia. We have third-party support locally, and they help us very much in this regard.
Radware provides free training on their site, but we heavily rely on third-party support. They do not hide anything from us. For every task and request, they freely advise us on how to perform better. The online portal also supports that motion.
After we established our requirements such as what we wanted to protect and where we wanted to deploy it, moving services to the solution took up to half a year.
Our implementation is not very advanced. There is an option to include very heavily scripted environments, but our use case is very straightforward. We have some customizations, but new team members require a month or maybe two to get onboarded. This is generally the time a user requires to get familiar with any system.
In our field of work, maintenance is almost a must. We do quarterly updates and health checks to verify that systems are working as intended. Maintenance is very fast, but the preparation work is the worst. We have to read all the changes and what is affecting us or not. Sometimes these releases or software updates break something, but in general, the maintenance tasks are very easy. They take about 15 minutes.
What about the implementation team?
Our team consisted of two people. I was not the one who did the deployment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is not the priciest and it is not the cheapest. For our solution, it was right in the middle of price performance.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We have reviewed others. We actually have a solution with support from another vendor, but we are not utilizing them or paying for another solution.
What other advice do I have?
We are using Alteon's Integrated WAF. We are in the process of evaluating moving to the cloud for more distributed protection from DDoS attacks and other threat actors.
I would definitely recommend it. It is very understandable. The interfaces and descriptions of various settings are straightforward. There are some misunderstandings here and there, but the basics to get it working are great. Overall, I would rate Alteon a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
*Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
