AlgoSec Reviews

My client is from a finance background and has more than 100 firewall clusters deployed, that too from different OEMs, for added security. Thanks to historical reasons, some of the firewall policies are poorly managed with tons of rules, and nobody knows what policies are in use and what are not, what policies are redundant, and what are vulnerable.

On top of this, the client Info-sec policy enforces strict one-to-one rules, which, considering the size of the business, leads to the implementation of hundreds of new policies every week.

Firewall Rule analysis & New rule implementations were a challenge, and there comes the AlgoSec.

We started using AlgoSec to review existing firewall rules. To our surprise, thousands of policies were redundant, and many risky rules were also present.

Due to their large rule bases, firewalls used to have high CPU usage during peak business hours. The client was able to remove redundant rules and strengthen risky rules to save the network from compromises.

Implementing firewall rules was another challenge. The same rule had to be implemented on multiple firewalls from different OEMs. AlgoSec made our life easy.

In our company, we primarily use AlgoSec to analyze and optimize firewall policies. This solution is invaluable for cleaning up rules and objects. It allows us to identify which rules are redundantly covered by others, detect unused objects in rules or groups, and pinpoint duplicated objects. Additionally, AlgoSec aids us in reducing overly permissive rules that have accumulated due to legacy changes.

Our environment consists of several systems with different policies, all managed under a single management console. This unified approach helps us maintain a clean and efficient object rule base across the board. 

By using AlgoSec, we can ensure our firewall settings are both streamlined and effective, significantly enhancing our security posture. Furthermore, the insights provided by AlgoSec empower us to make informed decisions about which rules are necessary and which can be consolidated or removed, ultimately optimizing our network performance and security management process.

AlgoSec has significantly improved our organization by streamlining our firewall management process. With the use of AlgoSec FireFlow and AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer (AFA), we have been able to maintain clean and efficient firewall policies. AFA has been instrumental in helping us clean up existing firewall rules, ensuring that our policies are optimized and free of redundancies. By identifying and removing obsolete or duplicate rules, we have improved our network's security and performance.

FireFlow has been particularly beneficial in automating policy change processes, allowing us to keep our firewall policies clean and up-to-date. This automation not only reduces the potential for human error but also speeds up the implementation of necessary changes.

AlgoSec has saved us considerable time and energy when it comes to various tasks, such as risk analysis and assessing the impact of potential changes. By providing clear insights into which rules are already implemented and effective, we can focus our efforts on areas that truly need attention, ensuring our resources are used efficiently. Overall, AlgoSec's solutions have optimized our security management, enhancing both our operational efficiency and our ability to protect critical assets.

Our primary use case is identifying unused tools and junk rules, including objects that are created but whose exact user and traffic cannot be tracked. I've deployed AlgoSec to address this use case, as it performs its job well by allowing me to block multiple unused rules and objects while permitting only the required traffic.

AlgoSec has helped streamline our environment by interacting with risky users and managing risky traffic. It has minimized manual involvement while providing clear, readable reports based on compliance standards.

We use app flow, Firewall Analyzer, and FireFlow. We use AlgoSec to gain visibility on firewall rules and for gap-cleaning projects to clean up the firewalls. We also use the solution as a firewall assurance tool to stay clean, have an optimized set of firewalls, and then automate firewall rules deployed from start to finish.

We have on-prem data centers and 180 sites all over the world.

Additionally, we use cloud services, infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, and software as a service. The majority of it is standardized on Cisco networking with Fortinet security solutions, except for the data centers, which are Check Point.

The purpose is to gain visibility into firewall rules. We used it to go through a gap-cleaning project to clean up the firewalls. We also use the solution as a firewall assurance tool to stay clean and to have optimized firewall rules. In addition, we use the solution to automate firewall rule deployment from start to finish, so we have a complete change process in FireFlow and can automatically deploy the firewalls on appliances. For that, we also built a connection with BMC Remedy because that's the main tool used for change management.

AlgoSec has improved our organization through a safer firewall rule base and better time-to-market IT services provided to the rest of the organization. Those are the two main improvements. In general, AlgoSec has provided a better security posture.

My primary use case to use this solution was to get visibility into my multi-vendor network environment into a single pane of glass making it easy to have compliance and audits done seamlessly. 

Also, it is letting me know if any changes are required over different network devices if I bring a certain new application in the environment (discovering its dependencies) and then push the changes from the single console. Also, it needed to verify if there are any unnecessary rules with the attribute "any" over all the firewalls that the solution was able to cover.

It helped me in managing the multi-vendor network devices with also mapping the required network level prerequisites for my application to be able to handle their network needs in an automated and seamless manner. It also removed the need for multiple approvals with Fireflow. 

It also made compliance and audits very easy for my organization. It was able to give visibility of the changes on the firewall with a who-when-what scenario. It helped me to document all the risks related to any change request that I made.

We resell AlgoSec, and I provide professional service for AlgoSec. Our customers get good value from it. Our clients are usually large businesses, between 25,000 to 40,000 employees.

The primary use cases are for:

• the optimization of firewalls,
• getting reports, 
• compliance for ISO 27001 and PCI DSS.

It helps us to see what changes users make on a firewall by the users. AlgoSec identifies in real-time any changes on the firewalls. It also optimizes the firewall policies, rules, and objects. 

There is a compliance that is required where we need to provide a report for the optimization of firewalls that is part of PCI DSS and ISO 27001. So now many organizations use AlgoSec to monitor and optimize their firewalls. 

In addition to compliance, they also use AlgoSec to ensure that their environment is well-secured. They can see what changes are being made to the firewalls and by who, which is part of the compliance. They use AlgoSec to achieve that and also to track real-time changes. 

One of the problems that I've used AlgoSec to solve is to identify what's blocking a particular rule, object, or network traffic with the AlgoSec network simulator. It has a traffic simulator and a query simulator, where you can input the destination, the source, and the service, and then you can do a simulation of that traffic and see what firewall, object, or rule is blocking that traffic from going through. 

AlgoSec is easy to use and very easy to implement. Within three hours after downloading AlgoSec, you can start to see value immediately. Within that same time, you can generate reports almost immediately. 

Another valuable feature is the way it produces reports. It checks to see if you pass a particular policy. It also shows you recommendations to fix it. That's a very good feature. 

I like the traffic simulation too and queries. I'm not sure other solutions provide that. You can also use it to get a network topology and network map of your environment and see what's happening. 

These are some of the good features that make AlgoSec stand out.

AlgoSec support is exceptionally good. They have very good support. I use several solutions because I'm a security engineer. I implement security solutions for my customers and AlgoSec stands out in support. You can always rely on their support.

AlgoSec was used as a firewall setting, but we had issues with change management, approvals, and the workflow to deploy firewall rules. The tool covers the technology and intelligence, but we had a lot of manual work to convince sponsors and correlated areas that used AlgoSec or needed to open a firewall rule.

AlgoSec has a feature that provides intelligence on which rules are correct. It was crucial in helping us understand which rules were important and which ones could be turned off or removed, simplifying the structure. It helps prioritize actions and performance needs. The performance boost we had was huge. We were considering buying new firewall structures, but with AlgoSec, we just organized the rules and avoided spending more money on the environment.