AlgoSec Reviews

We use FireFlow, AppViz, and AppChange. We use them mainly to visualize our firewalls.

We have three data centers, but we are also providing the public cloud as well.

We implemented it to get a better, clearer view. It has supported us very well.

The solution provides us with full visibility into the risk involved in firewall change requests. This is very important for us because we are regulated according to the FDA. It shows us which changes have been made and why. So, it has worked very well for our compliance needs.

AlgoSec is a tool that really supports our work in compliance and our customers' requirements, fulfilling their FDA requirements.

Our security has been stronger due to AlgoSec. We don't have human errors.

The most valuable feature is its ease of use.

It provides a very good, clear view. I really love the product. 

Overall, it gives a better overview of our firewalls. This is a tool that we cannot live without because it is easy to view and maintain.

I have been using this solution for four years.

Overall, the stability is good. It supports our work. We are happy and our customers are happy.

It has very good scalability.

The technical support is fast and very good. I would rate the support as six or seven out of 10.

We have seen ROI on time. AlgoSec has reduced the time it takes to implement firewall rules in our organization. It used to take around an hour, and we can now implement them in 20 minutes.

It is a good investment due to the losses that a customer will have if they are not aligning with the FDA. That would be in the millions, so it is a good investment from our side and the customer's side.

Quality has a price. 

We have tried other vendors. This is the best solution that we came up with due to our requirements and demands.

It is good for integrating with leading security vendors.

I would rate the solution as eight out of 10. If you have requirements with very strict alignment for firewall rule processes, then I would really recommend this product.

Our primary purpose right now is Firewall AlgoSec Analyzer so we can ensure that our rules are nice and tight. We also use the configuration report to make sure that the firewall configuration is nice and tight. 

We are starting to use modeling. AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer enables us to input details about what we would like to do to see what firewall changes would be required, if any. Also, if we are having problems with getting an application running across the network, then we can use that to establish what firewall rules might be giving us problems.

As a small branch office focused on wholesale banking, we have a very flat network that we are trying to improve upon. Over the course of last year, everything has been flat and accessible. Now, we are breaking into VLAN segmentation. That is where Firewall Analyzer will really come into good use, because it will help us to limit the traffic to only what is necessary. 

We have some cloud. Our core banking is with a different organization, which is in the cloud. We also have a couple of other treasury cloud applications in the cloud. However, a fair amount of our network is within our data center and office. So, we have a hybrid model.

We are very simple. The benefit of AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer right now is to give us skills that we don't already have with our people. Also, when we get into our periodic reviews, AlgoSec enables us to do it without adding additional staff. Something that we are not able to do because that is controlled in the Chilean head office. So, we need to make the best use of the best tools to secure our environment with a minimal number of people.

AlgoSec reduced the time it takes to implement firewall rules in our organization. Before, our firewall rule review was always done manually. When we installed the appliance and ran the report, we quickly found half a dozen areas where we were more exposed than we needed to be. The manual process used to go on for weeks. The AlgoSec process right now, as we develop and become better with it, takes only a matter of two or three days. We can have a good solid review, then we can get into very specific details about any rule or configuration with the objective of ensuring least privilege. Only the things that are needed to support business activities are allowed.

We are a regulated industry: financial services. We are obliged to at least annually review our firewall rules for risk. Are they too permissive? Are they not needed? Because we have this tool, we can now do that once a quarter. Before, we only did it once a year. 

We are a small branch of a much larger organization in Latin America. The rules that were set up allow free flow of information back and forth, i.e., network connections. Right now, with ransomware being what it is, we are starting to review those rules because they are too permissive. Another way that AlgoSec is helping us, internally, is working with our head office to make sure that they are treated with least privilege. Something that is not normal. Something that didn't happen, "Just because."

I have been with this organization for about two years. All the wide-openness of the network communications was just a bad event waiting to happen. AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer has given us the great ability to dig down into the details and work at a level above the skills that we already have, making sure that we are in a process. It started months ago and will continue for seven more months. That network traffic in and out of our perimeter is the least that it should be.

We work with multiple security vendors. For just IT alone, we have three primary vendors and a couple others that pitch in when needed. AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer helps us to make sure that we allow only what they need and that we keep them to the internal assets. They are external third-parties. We have high assurance that they are only able to access network assets that are part of the contract. Another vendor manages our firewall. The reason we have them do it is because we don't have the expertise amongst our people. So, the addition of the AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer enables us to have the intelligence of what is good and what is less than good. Thus, we can help keep that third-party on the rails, that they are doing good things for us, and we have the evidence to prove it.

We are getting into using AlgoSec to implement and manage micro-segmentation initiatives. One of our audit concerns was the flat network, and we started to work based on what we already know to create a test segment. However, AlgoSec is helping us to validate the traffic that will be allowed into that new segment, restricted to only that which we need. No sense in creating an isolated network if bad things can still flow back and forth between test and production. So, AlgoSec is a tool that is helping us make sure that we have all the isolation that we need. But, because of the syslog counters, we can also tell over time whether we did a good job in the first place and whether the remaining rules that we configured to be nice and tight are still needed for business purposes.

The most valuable is helping us determine where our rules are too permissive. Based on previous human review of our rules, they are very cursory. We know why we do something, but we don't get into the details of whether the rule is nice and tight. What Firewall Analyzer lets us do is understand the risks presented by our rules. The tool does a calculation of all the traffic that could be allowed and we can match that to whether it should be allowed. Another thing that we have recently started to do, but only about 100 days ago, is collect syslog events from the firewall that now tell us whether the rules that might be well-configured are actually being used by people or traffic. Our next step will be to start eliminating well-formed rules that just aren't needed.

The overall visibility that AlgoSec gives me into our network security policies is perfect. We think about separation of duties. As the information security officer, I shouldn't be logging into the firewall and playing around. What AlgoSec does is give me the ability to see everything about the firewall: its rules, configurations, and usage patterns. It gives me all the visibility that I need to make sure that we are doing what we should do to keep it tight. There is no perimeter anymore. We have to be very careful what we are letting in and out, and Firewall Analyzer helps us to do that.

Another very useful feature of the AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer is it will alert us to changes in firewall rules and configuration. So, we have a third-party who manages our firewall. AlgoSec gives us notification, if they go in and make changes either to the configuration or rules, so we can keep track and make sure that only authorized changes are occurring.

We are using AlgoSec directly against our Cisco Firepower. At first, AlgoSec didn't work with Firepower. It didn't know how to read the logs. So, improvement has been made. Now, the feature that was available on the older generation firewall is available on the current one, but this is a problem which has already been dealt with.

I became familiar with AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer way back in 2004. I was trying to do some independent consulting, and part of that is a good firewall review. So, I started to look for tools. That is when I had my first discussion with AlgoSec. Since then, I have used it a couple at different organizations, including the one where I work now. It has been quite helpful with making sure that our firewall configuration is all that it should be.

It is set and forget. I don't have a lot of Linux or Unix experience, at least not in the last 20 years. So, that has been removed from me. The appliance comes and we connect to the command line. Anything I need to do is menu-driven. So, it is easily maintained by people whose skill set changed from hands-on to management quite awhile ago.

Scalability is not something that I have had to concern myself with right now.

Currently, we have five people who use it to either tune the rules or find out answers to questions about the network and flows.

We have a customer success manager, Matt, who is terrific, very responsive, and always there for us when we need it, providing quick answers. This also applies to the support desk if we raise a ticket. I did have a problem after we installed the A32 version, where I was getting some errors in the email. The engineers got into the code and found some code that needed to be corrected. I don't remember exactly what the problem was, but it took less than two hours to find and correct it. So, the support has been superb.

At this bank, it replaced the manual solution, where if you were not a Tier 3 Network Engineer, then you were probably not going to be able to get into the details and nuances of any of the rules and configurations. So, they get glossed over. The firewall review done manually is more of a sanity check. "Do we need the rule at all?" is really the question that gets asked, not whether the rule is done correctly to support privilege and least access.

The setup was quite easy. 

if I were to take out the fits and starts that were our responsibility, the installation was less than four hours. Then, the upgrade was done because we went from version A30 to A32. That took about an hour and a half. It was very simple and straightforward. Now, when I need to do regular releases, i.e., patches, I can do them myself. It is menu-driven. It's pretty easy.

AlgoSec's support was there for us. We worked with them. They did all the heavy-lifting. It was easy to schedule as well as very flexible, as we got our act together. Organization is important. 

One staff member would have been sufficient for deployment and upgrades, but I made sure that our IT staff population representation was there so they understood the tool, where it was going, and how it would be used. However, it easily could have been done with only one person on our end.

In the end, I did a calculation. When I think about the number of people, when we did the manual way, who had to be involved, and how long did it go? Did we risk being out of compliance with regulations? There is a big cost to that. It is cheaper operationally to work with AlgoSec than to try to do this manually.

AlgoSec has absolutely helped to simplify the job of our security engineers. It gives us a level of expertise that we didn't have within our own staff. AlgoSec showed us that what our staff could do wasn't good enough. So, it is a force multiplier. It enables us to have the expertise that we don't have, but it also gives us the cycles, e.g., the actual ability to extract the rules, evaluate them, and then assemble them into a form that we can present to auditors and regulators, if needed. This greatly helps us. As a tool that has so many features, there are certainly more that we can grow into, but the ones that we are using right now have been of a substantial value to us. This is even being commented by our auditors from one review period into another.

The staff enjoy it. There is always that dynamic between security and IT. IT has projects to do and serve the business. Security isn't quite seen in that same light. So, they enjoy it because they don't have to spend the time to go through the rules, trying to reverse-engineer what is going on, and it takes care of a lot of the documentation for them. It keeps them in the zone that they are used to working with the correspondence that belongs to the rule, allowing them to understand the details. This has helped us understand ourselves better, how we operate on the network layer, and saved us the time of actually doing the rules. So, we are much better with our compliance, audits, and regulatory requirements, but we are also better in our security. Two things that an ISO always has to be concerned with - compliance and actual security. This tool acts like another person on staff, increasing our ability to be very fine-tuned on rules. We will be using it for a while to come.

I am a fan of AlgoSec for its pricing. As a small branch, getting any amount of money, is very difficult. Less than a thousand dollars, that will take some effort for two reasons:

1. Asking for money.
2. It wasn't in the budget. 

The price came in where we really didn't even need to have much of a discussion. That was very good. There are also options regarding what you want to pay for. It wasn't really pushed on me that I have to get all of it or else I can't be an AlgoSec customer. 

There are training and support levels that come in beyond the product itself, and we did subscribe to the training. We also have the support. The pricing has been very approachable, and that is why we have it here.

I have looked at other options along the way, like Skybox. AlgoSec came to the market before the alternatives did. When I become aware of it and something is good, I stick with it. Why change? 

I went to the Gartner page and looked at who the competitors were. I looked at customer reviews and things like that. However, because I have had such a good experience with AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer, I continue to use it. I have found no reason to go with any of the other alternatives.

Our local policy is that I have to be able to compare at least three products when I go to management to ask for money. I did exactly that. I took three alternatives and brought them to our management team. I explained the whys and wherefores for why I was promoting AlgoSec. Now, we have it here in our environment.

I would recommend, "Do it," in regards to implementing AlgoSec. I wouldn't have been with it since 2004 if it wasn't among the best tools. I have tools in vulnerability scanning and SIEM/SOC as well as tools for authentication. There are a lot of tools. As a security guy, I have been doing this since 1997. When you find a product that delivers, you stick with it, and AlgoSec is that type of product.

I have been so pleased with the tool. It sounds cliché, but I haven't gotten to a point yet where the tool hasn't provided for me. This is why I always come back to it. For an organization as small as ours, it gives us a tool that is affordable, easy to implement, and the expertise that we were lacking.

When I need it, it is there. If I have a question about an endpoint or protocol, I am trying to resolve audit points about what ports are listening and why, or I have to figure out how to isolate something more than it already is, AlgoSec is the tool that I go to first to get information and answer some of these questions. In most cases, all the details and rules are all right there. It has been great.

I have seen the capability for AlgoSec to enable us to manage multiple or dispersed environments in a single pane of glass. Because I am such a supporter and have seen the value that AlgoSec can bring to more than one organization, I invited the CSO office in Chile to attend a work session with us so they can start to see everything that AlgoSec might do for them. I knew that it was on their task list, and they have a need to get into the same area. The potential is there that our head office will begin to use the tool, having seen how it has been helping us in just our local office. They need it more because they do have a broader array of firewalls, connections, and things like that. So, I'm looking forward to that.

I know for a fact we are not getting all the value out of the appliance that we can. I know for a fact we are getting more value out of the appliance than we intended when we licensed it. Those are good things. The visualization of our network is helping me. There are diagrams that can be drilled into which help me. When you are small, going over to IT all the time and asking questions isn't always the best thing. It is disruptive. Then, I have to worry whether I got the right answer or not. AlgoSec removes those things. I see what is happening and I know that it is based on the facts. There are five of us using it. I am sure that we use it every week, probably not every day to answer questions, and we are running monthly reports, which are automated, so we have a good history. So, we have the opportunity at any point to identify problems and resolve them.

What we have learned from using AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer: We didn't understand our risk with our firewall. It is good that we relied on a credible third-party, but what we saw was rules could be better configured. These are our protection to the outside world between the bad world outside and inside, between our head office and us. I worked for a Wall Street firm, and we didn't trust anybody. It is a big deal now with zero trust. This tool will help us to get there, dialing things down.

For the AlgoSec experience (the company, product, support, and people), I want to give it 10 (out of 10). Nobody trusts that, but they have been very good to me. The boss who didn't like spending money is very happy with the results. I brought it back to him and showed him what we have been able to do past our manual efforts, and it resonates with him. It makes sense to him. He reads the paper. He sees how quickly ransomware can spread across a network. One of the things that we can do to help protect against that is make sure that we have good segmentation and only the endpoints which really need to talk to each other are allowed to do so.

I use AlgoSec for compliance reports and security purposes. I also use it for monitoring. Monitoring is the best part of using AlgoSec, as I can monitor and connect again in security mode.

AlgoSec has improved the functionality and the comfort of my organization. Whenever I have any issue, there is a chat box from the AlgoSec team that can help me whenever I need it. It's very easy to use, and I have done integration with it.

AlgoSec allows me to monitor who is making a change on my Check Point device. It is very easy to monitor.

I cannot think of anything that could be improved. Everything is good.

I would like for there to be more AI functionalities.

I have been using AlgoSec for about two years now.

There are zero stability issues. It's stable.

It is scalable.

The customer service and support are satisfactory. I am satisfied with it.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward and took about forty-five minutes. I didn't have any issues when implementing it. 

There are two of us in our team, myself and one colleague.

The pricing is moderate. It's not that cheap and it's not expensive.

I would recommend Algosec to all. It is very easy to deploy, scalable, and enables us to monitor.

I would rate AlgoSec a ten out of ten.

App Flow, Firewall Analyzer, and FireFlow are utilized. For gap-cleaning efforts to improve the firewalls and to gain visibility into firewall rules, we use AlgoSec. In order to maintain a clean environment, have a set of firewalls that are optimized, and then automate the deployment of firewall rules, we also employ the solution as a firewall assurance tool.

Our goal is to increase our understanding of firewall regulations. We utilized this tool to conduct a gap-cleaning project and tidy up our firewalls. Furthermore, we rely on this solution as a firewall assurance tool to ensure our rules are optimized and up to date. Additionally, we use this tool to automate the entire process of deploying firewall rules, ensuring a smooth change process in FireFlow, and allowing us to automatically deploy the firewalls on our appliances.

Security policy management entails far more than simply inspecting a device and applying certain rules. It is all about improving and automating time-consuming security processes so that staff can concentrate on more strategic responsibilities. AlgoSec FireFlow, for example, enables enterprises to process security policy changes in minutes or hours rather than days or weeks. It automates the entire security policy change process, from design and submission to proactive risk analysis, implementation, validation, and auditing, using intelligent, highly customizable processes.

The most valuable aspects of the solution include:

Dealing with misconfigurations. Automating manual processes reduces misconfigurations and prevents nearly all firewall breaches caused by misconfigurations, rather than flaws.

Automation as a strategy. Network policy automation is not an end unto itself. Rather, it supports the business strategy of maintaining security, ensuring SLAs, increasing cooperation, and reducing friction between departments. It improves competitive differentiation through better customer engagement, e.g., by moving applications to the cloud. Network policy automation aids regulatory compliance, and frees IT time from housekeeping so it can be applied to digital transformation and supporting strategic initiatives.

Understanding visibility requirements. With the help of advanced NSPM tools, network administrators and security managers can gain a deeper understanding of their network devices and business applications. By analyzing traffic flows across various vendor devices and hybrid infrastructures, they can identify security vulnerabilities, simplify troubleshooting, and uncover new applications and services.

To provide comprehensive instructions on product integration, a manual page can be added to the dashboard at the integration point. This will make it simple for the system administrator to incorporate new goods, even if they are unfamiliar with them thoroughly. Every time we integrate a new product, we shouldn't have to wait for coordinated work with a product specialist.

Due to the fact that AlgoSec's user interface is less friendly than that of other programs, it might not be appropriate for persons with little experience in security or IT. It does, however, allow for more customization. As a result, the interface can be regarded as more sophisticated.

I've been using this solution for the last two years.

For cybersecurity, AlgoSec automates application connectivity flows reliably.

The scalability is available via:

High-Availability. AlgoSec appliances can be clustered for fault tolerance, ensuring availability if system components fail.

Disaster Recovery. AlgoSec appliances can automatically synchronize data with offsite appliances to provide redundancy and ensure data preservation in the event of a failure at the primary site.

Geographically Distributed Architecture. AlgoSec appliances can be deployed across distributed sites for the local collection of logs and rulesets.
This data is then efficiently transmitted to a central appliance for processing.

Load Sharing. AlgoSec appliances can be clustered to share data workloads across multiple appliances for faster data analysis and reporting.

It was a wonderful experience dealing with customer service and support.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward.

We implemented the solution in-house.

We've noted ROI in the following ways:

Automation. By analyzing the firewall rulesets, the network topology, and your corporate security policy, FireFlow can save more than 50% of the time required to process a firewall change. From automatically pinpointing the exact devices that need to be changed, to proactively assessing the risk and designing the change in the most optimal way. With AlgoSec’s ActiveChange technology, administrators can also automatically execute the change on the firewall and save even more time.

Accuracy. As much as 30% of requested firewall changes are not required, and many others are implemented incorrectly. FireFlow can automatically identify and close “already works” requests, and also ensure changes are performed exactly as requested.

Auditing. In order to meet regulatory and internal security requirements, IT find themselves spending a lot of time ensuring each change is properly documented to address any questions an auditor may have. FireFlow maintains a detailed history of every step of every change request and saves precious time. It even identifies changes that were performed without a formal request.

AlgoSec is a useful firewall management tool for organizations that require management of multiple firewall levels.

One of the standout features is its ability to provide visibility and control over security policies. The product offers a centralized dashboard that gives an overview view of the entire network infrastructure, including firewalls, routers, and switches, regardless of their vendor or location. This unified view enables administrators to easily manage and modify security policies from a single platform, eliminating the need for manual, error-prone processes. 

AlgoSec also provides a powerful rule analyzer that detects and highlights any redundant, overlapping, or conflicting rules, helping organizations optimize their security policies for maximum efficiency. AlgoSec also allows administrators to define and enforce a standardized change management process, reducing the risk of unauthorized or misconfigured changes.

AlgoSec's compliance management capabilities have helped a lot in my organization. It offers predefined compliance frameworks, such as PCI DSS and HIPAA, and assists organizations in mapping their security policies to these standards. AlgoSec can generate comprehensive reports that demonstrate compliance with regulatory requirements, simplifying the audit process. 

It also provides continuous compliance monitoring, alerting administrators of any of policy violations or any changes that may impact compliance.

The visibility of security policies and automation is the most valuable feature of AlgoSec. It offers a range of automated workflows and processes that accelerate security policy management. For example, it can automate the process of rule recertification, ensuring that rules are regularly reviewed and validated. 

AlgoSec also facilitates policy optimization by automatically suggesting rule modifications based on industry best practices or specific compliance requirements. By automating these repetitive tasks, AlgoSec frees up valuable time for security teams to focus on more strategic initiatives.

AlgoSec offers almost everything that clients want and has a robust set of features. That said, there are a few areas where it could improve. The user interface, although functional, could benefit from a more modern and intuitive design. Additionally, the initial setup and configuration process may require some technical expertise, which could pose a challenge for organizations with limited security resources. A simple tutorial about the initial configuration on Youtube could provide a lot of help. Even a self-guide link inside the GUI would be helpful.

I've used the solution for two years.

The initial setup was complex.

The implementation was handled in-house.

We use the solution for rule optimization. We had almost 100+ firewalls in our network. AlgoSec helps us to manage the firewalls more effectively.

AlgoSec made our work simple in managing the multivendor firewall rule. Audit-ready reporting is an awesome feature.

The most valuable aspects of the solution include policy optimization, rule cleanup, and network discovery.

They need to do some improvements in multi-vendor firewall policy migration. They need improvements in network discovery. The solution could fix some bugs in the A32. Fireflow needs to be a little more user-friendly.

I've used the solution for the past four years.

The scalability is good.

We previously used Firemon. AlgoSec has more functionality and is user-friendly to manage our firewall more effectively.

The initial setup is good.

The ROI is good.

AlgoSec provided the best price and the team helped effectively with the support and A32 migration.

We did look into Tufin.

The solution is the best in the market.

We have implemented the AlgoSec ASMS solution with the AFA Firewalls analyzer, AFF Fireflow, and AppViz application security,

We are using all these modules to have a more tightened and secure environment. The AFA we are using is it to optimize and clean the firewalls' rules and to comply with the cybersecurity policies and standards. 

The Fireflow is integrated with the ticketing system to simplify and facilitate the opening of tickets process and document it for later reference.

The AppViz module is used to secure and optimize access to the applications in a secure way.

The solution has allowed us to:
• Easily prove compliance during internal or external audits
• Has reduced resources needed to manage firewall changes

With the AlgoSec firewall analyzer, it now takes us half the time to deploy firewall changes and policy optimization.

The AFA also provided us with the flexibility and intelligence that reduces human error and risk.

It allows the security compliance team to focus more on providing a better level of security and compliant devices than on the process and changes.

AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer offers great security policy visibility and the analysis has changed the firewalls management and operation, including firewall rulesets cleaning, optimization, tuning, and ensuring compliance with the company and PCI-DSS requirements.

Also, the fact that this firewall management solution will reduce the resources needed to manage the firewall changes the management processes and audits.

It leads to a quick response to any type of audit whether it's an internal audit or an external audit.

Releasing hot fixes or patches is late compared to other security products.

Also, the integration with the Cisco FTD security group tagging is still not supported, so we cannot get the rules with SGT-ACL, and still there is no clear roadmap to support such a feature.

The user interface can be more friendly. They could work on enhancing it by adding step-by-step guides in the GUI of the AlgoSec AFA.

It's better to give some priority to the integration with other security systems and enhance this capability.

I've used the solution for about two years.

I did not use another solution previously.

I did not evaluate other options. 

We use it for planning firewall changes and traffic simulation queries.

We use AFA (AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer) and FireFlow. Our network environment is mostly on-premises.

It has improved the way our organization functions in that, for our change process, we now require all changes to be planned using AlgoSec so that the security team has visibility into the changes and we're aware of any risks. We also are using the covered rules and risky-rule detection to improve our security posture.

We haven't fully implemented the processes, so we haven't measured any reduction in human error as a result of using the solution, but subjectively, it has reduced human error.

It has also helped to simplify the jobs of our security engineers.

The most valuable features for us are the functionality it provides for our two main use cases: planning firewall changes and traffic simulation queries.

We haven't used it yet to prepare for audits and ensure our firewalls are in compliance, but I think it will be very helpful for that. That's one of the main reasons we bought it.

We are using it with a couple of Cisco technologies and we're also sending events out to our Microsoft Sentinel workspace. We have a couple of other security technologies in there as well. AlgoSec integrates well with the Cisco ACI environment and with our Firepowers, our FTDs. There are still some bugs but it generally works well.

The overall visibility it gives us into our network security policies is pretty good but it has some bugs and shortcomings. It doesn't support all features on our firewalls. For instance, planning changes, which include net rules, doesn't work. It didn't integrate so well with the ACI network. It doesn't work with all firewall rules or with net rules on our firewalls.

For about 70 percent of firewall changes it does show us the risks, while for 30 percent of the changes, we can't plan because of these bugs and shortcomings.

I have been using AlgoSec for about a year.

The stability is good.

We've had no problems in terms of scalability.

I'm sure we will continue to add firewalls to it and we want to do more with the FireFlow.

Their technical support is good but it can be slow.

Neutral

The initial setup was straightforward.

We have about 10 engineers using it, and just one person who looks after it, maintenance-wise.

We used their personal services to help us set it up. We had an onboarding package. It wasn't me doing the configuration but it seemed straightforward with their support.

Our experience with them was good overall. We had some frustrations and surprises in the early days with the product not being completely compatible with our environment. But over the last year, they've been fixing the bugs which is making it much more usable. When we started, it had a lot of problems with our environment. We were only able to plan something like 40 percent of the changes, and the traffic simulations weren't working with our network environment. But now, we're up to close to 70 percent.

It took about nine months before it was properly integrated and enough of the bugs had been fixed for it to be helpful.

We are not measuring the effort saved or the errors avoided, but we think it's a good investment.

Initially, it was more expensive, but we managed to negotiate the price. It's about average now.

In addition to the standard fees, we bought the Jumpstart package to help us configure it.

We looked into Tufin. We chose AlgoSec because of its support for Cisco ACI. Tufin was just releasing that and we felt that AlgoSec was a more mature product.

At the moment, it hasn't reduced the time it takes to implement firewall rules in our organization. It's being used to improve the quality of the changes we make and improve visibility. But we haven't fully implemented the FireFlow features. That's our problem, rather than the tool. We just haven't finished implementing it.

We're only using AlgoSec for on-premises, but we do have environments in the cloud and we plan to use it for those in the future. It would help us manage these multiple environments in a single pane of glass, but for the moment we aren't using it in that way. However, we do have a number of firewalls that we have onboarded from acquisitions, so we are not just using it for our data centers. We're using it for smaller acquisitions' firewalls as well to understand the security posture of companies that we are purchasing.

My advice would be to make sure that the solution is completely compatible with whatever infrastructure you have. We should have spent more time evaluating its support for our infrastructure to avoid some of the problems or surprises we had when we implemented it.

We have around 200 firewalls that we manage through AlgoSec. We use it for automation purposes in certain cases. We have 10 to 12 team members who use AlgoSec.

We have around 100 plus on-premises devices. However, we are moving over to the cloud. At present, we mainly have Microsoft Azure, and we are going to deploy AWS and Google Cloud soon.

We use AlgoSec FireFlow as well. 

The amount of time spent on doing simple tasks, such as adding a particular rule or giving access to a particular person, or doing the same repetitive task has been reduced. We don't have to manually look into duplicate rules or look into traffic that is not getting hits. It will be automatically taken into consideration by AlgoSec, and the information will be given to us so that we can take action on that part. It saved us a lot of time.

When the staff is doing the same repetitive task all the time, there will be errors. AlgoSec helped to reduce human error and misconfigurations to a great extent.

One of the features that I like about AlgoSec is the topology table. It helps us understand where the traffic flows through, where it gets interconnected, and how the traffic flows from our device to the other device.

The other good feature that I have come across is that it suggests best practices. For example, we had a case where there was a legacy rule that was a wide-open rule. AlgoSec identified what IP traffic got hit and based on that suggested allowing those particular IPs instead of maintaining a wide-open rule.

In terms of the overall visibility that AlgoSec gives into our network security policies, I like the best practice assessment in terms of compliance. It helps us deal with wide-open rules and duplicates, and provides suggestions on how the rules can be written, restructured, and reordered.

AlgoSec reduced the time it takes to implement firewall rules. Also when it is upgraded, which we are in the process of doing, when a user tries to raise a ticket, that ticket will be associated with AlgoSec FireFlow. Then, the user will be able to access it themselves.

We work with multiple security vendors, but not all vendors integrate with AlgoSec. As a result, our team has both AlgoSec and Tufin. In terms of integrations, it's going well so far.

AlgoSec helped to simplify the job of our security engineers. For example, a new user who tries to gain access will have to raise a case, and automation will take that into consideration. It helped us to disable rules that are not being utilized, merge any duplicate rules, and reorder rules based on traffic hits to have a good flow. Any rule works from top to bottom, and AlgoSec will place the major items at the top. These helped to reduce latency as well.

Certain firewalls don't integrate with AlgoSec, and it would be great if this bug could be fixed.

AlgoSec looks into compliance and is helpful. However, it would be nice to have validations that can run before the changes are posted and implemented. Now, if something goes wrong the user would need to reach out to us, and then we would have to troubleshoot. Instead of that, if there are validations for simple tasks, it would be great.

I've also heard from our AlgoSec vendor about a feature that is coming up in the future. With the topology table, we can see the interconnected devices to understand the traffic flow. I was told that with this new feature, if we find a blockage, maybe on a firewall, that we would be able to go to that firewall and allow traffic through a specific rule. This would be done just by right-clicking on that particular device and getting the change implemented through automation. This would be a helpful feature.

I've been using AlgoSec for about a year.

The stability has been okay so far. There are a few bugs, but no device is perfect.

We previously used FireMon and switched to AlgoSec because we were not satisfied with it. FireMon was good but was not user-friendly.

I recommend AlgoSec because it has good features and is more user-friendly than FireMon. AlgoSec has fewer options in terms of tabs, so you'll be able to navigate and explore everything. From a technical point of view, AlgoSec is good for a newcomer. Therefore, I would give AlgoSec an overall rating of eight on a scale from one to ten.

AlgoSec provides a secure connection between applications and helps customers maintain regulatory compliance.

The benefit depends on the type of client. Our banking customers are impressed with the compliance features, automatic policy installation, and FireFlow. They also realize performance improvements of approximately 20 percent. 

AlgoSec has simplified the work of security engineers. If I had to give that a grade, I would give it a nine out of ten. We used the solution to implement and manage micro-segmentation initiatives. Still, it has been limited since this is a private cloud version, and many of our customers use regular firewalls. 

We deal with customers with a mixture of environments, including private cloud, public cloud, and on-premises. Many of them have on-premises and private cloud environments. AlgoSec provides a single pane of glass for managing these mixed environments, making management more effortless. 

The most valuable feature of AlgoSec is integration because it needs the be integrated with vendors' firewalls and other security products. AlgoSec has intelligent policy tuners. 

It's easy to integrate AlgoSec with solutions from other vendors. It's currently integrated with the products of three or four vendors. We integrate AlgoSec with AppViz and other products to get complete visibility into our network policies, and FireFlow helps us manage risks from firewall change requests. It has reduced the time it takes to implement firewall rules by about 20%, according to the ROI calculator on the AlgoSec website. It varies, depending on the structure of the customer's environment. 

AlgoSec also helps us audit complex environments to ensure firewalls are in compliance. The benefit is marginal if there is only one firewall and a few policies, but it's significant when you have three firewall clusters and 60 devices. 

The documentation could be better. 

I've been using AlgoSec for six years.

AlgoSec is stable.

It's a scalable solution but there is room for improvement in that area. It has a high-availability structure, but some features need to be distributed using a collector, for example.

I rate AlgoSec's support eight out of ten. I don't use it much, but it has improved greatly in the last two years. 

Positive

Setting up AlgoSec isn't complicated. You can install it in half an hour, but the configuration time depends on the environment. Sometimes, it takes a day, but it could take up to a week to analyze the files, etc. We have a two-person team responsible for deployment and maintenance, but we also have partners. In all, we have about 10 technicians supporting our customers.

I don't know about pricing because I'm a technical guy. I can say the licensing model is straightforward and should be in the future. It isn't an issue for our customers. 

I rate AlgoSec an eight out of ten. I would recommend AlgoSec, depending on the client's structure and requirements. It's a good solution for regulatory compliance and analytics.