What is our primary use case?
At the moment, most solutions I have been working on are cloud-based, so I do not know if it will be in any of the solutions being reviewed.
Based on what I usually used Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration for, it is an edge boarding solution to prevent spam, viruses, and other kinds of intrusions from gaining access from the internet to services that are published on the internet. It also protects internal networks, ensuring only the services that are supposed to be talking to each other do so, and provides VPN access for people who are working remotely. On the Harmony side, it was mainly email filters. After we organized it with the consulting company and set the first rules, after one week the system seemed to have learned the company's pattern. So at that time, we managed to achieve a reduction of almost eighty to ninety percent on spam and false emails, which was very good at the time. Later on, once Harmony also integrated with OneDrive, we were also able to stop viruses and files from getting infected inside the OneDrive services as well.
Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration has had a significant impact on phishing attack mitigation. It reduced phishing attacks quite a bit. One of the other preventative measures we implemented was teaching people how to detect those kinds of emails, and we were able to reduce phishing incidents quite a bit because the system was detecting most of the phishing emails that we were receiving. However, we still needed to ensure that on both sides, both the system and the user were able to detect those kinds of emails so they do not fall into traps.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration include the artificial intelligence, which even before artificial intelligence was popular, was very good because once we programmed the first rules, it learned automatically the patterns of trusted and untrusted emails. It was much easier to manage false positives and spam and those kinds of emails. As I mentioned before, it reduced eighty percent of spam and false emails. Overall, for applying whitelists and rules on it, it was pretty easy because it also integrated quite well with Microsoft's own security systems, especially in the case of Microsoft 365, so we would not have one system onboarding the other; they would work very well together.
I think artificial intelligence-powered threat intelligence in Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration acts pretty well on the preventive side, which allows us to be more proactive in terms of what domains are trustworthy and which ones are not. We had another case where initially it was blocking a lot of emails from China, but once we were able to filter out which domains were trustworthy, the system learned that those emails were trustworthy and would not tag them as suspicious. I thought it was pretty proactive once certain users get new emails from new domains they have never received before, where the first email does not characterize as suspicious but is monitored to ensure we are aware that this user is now receiving emails from this domain. If the patterns or the attachments inside the email show us to be untrustworthy, then it characterizes it as a suspicious email or, in the worst-case scenario, as spam or phishing email.
Robust inspection technologies in Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration have helped me safeguard shared files in my collaborative environment. They make us much more aware of the files that are coming in and out, and we have following rules to ensure that they meet the standards as well.
What needs improvement?
I think Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration could improve or enhance integration with other systems. I know at the moment it works pretty well with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Perhaps in the future, there might be solutions as well that work with on-premise email solutions. Also, in Brazil, if I am not mistaken, at the moment, there are still only servers in the US and Europe, so it would be nice if Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration had services in Latin America as well.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration for the past five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration was very stable and reliable for me.
I do not remember any outages or limitations with Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I evaluate that Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration was quite scalable. We started with one hundred users when we began using the solution. When I left the project, they were getting close to two hundred fifty users. It is quite scalable, but we just have to be aware of the licensing costs accordingly. Otherwise, as a cloud solution, we do not have to worry too much about resources other than paying for the necessary licensing.
How are customer service and support?
I mostly communicated with the consultants representing Check Point rather than with their technical support. I only communicated with them mostly about the firewall side, not Harmony, for most things. After everything was set up and in production, my communication was mainly for improvements and questions about new functionalities that were introduced later.
I did not have such serious issues that required me to reach out to technical support or customer support for Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration. The one time was when a user was looking for some emails that were not arriving. When we checked on Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration, we discovered the issue was on the Microsoft side, which was blocking the email. However, since Harmony integrates well with the security services of Microsoft, we can unblock those emails directly from Harmony.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration, we used to use the built-in tools that Exchange on-premise had.
We decided to switch from the previous solution to Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration because we needed to improve the way we reacted to emails. Since the company relies heavily on emails for both internal and external communication, we needed to ensure we had a good and viable solution that allowed us to concentrate on other problems as well.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup process for Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration was pretty easy to set up on the Microsoft side, both for the proof of concept and for the production environment.
What about the implementation team?
I participated in the initial setup of Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration.
Nothing offhand comes to mind regarding challenges or complexities during the setup process. We followed the instructions in the manual and from the consultants, and everything went smoothly.
What was our ROI?
I have definitely seen a return on investment with Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration. On the administrative side, both my team and I used to spend much less time troubleshooting phishing, malware, and other email-related issues because of that solution. We gained much more time to address other issues beyond troubleshooting.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
So far, the pricing for Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration is good for what it does. There is always room for improvements, but I think it is a fair price.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Other than Check Point, I did not evaluate other options or vendors extensively. I played a little bit with Acronis, which has a similar solution, but I had only done tests with it. They are mainly a backup solution but have also expanded into other services. Comparing Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration to Acronis, Acronis still has a couple of improvements to do, but Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration works pretty well on the detection of emails.
What other advice do I have?
I have not utilized the automated incident response feature.
I think we used Microsoft's own real-time URL reputation analysis. I do not remember if we ended up integrating Harmony or if it was part of the package or not, but I do not remember using it.
I was an administrator and I also helped integrate the solution.
I would rate this review as a nine out of ten overall.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.