Varonis Platform vs WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention comparison

Varonis and WatchGuard are both solutions in the Data Loss Prevention (DLP) category. Varonis is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.0, while WatchGuard is ranked #28 with an average rating of 8.5. Additionally, 92% of Varonis users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of WatchGuard users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention and Varonis Platform compete in data security and management. Varonis often has the upper hand due to its robust features and advanced capabilities.

Features: WatchGuard offers integrated data protection, real-time threat response, and ease of use. Varonis provides comprehensive data classification, advanced threat detection, and the ability to analyze user behavior patterns, offering deep data insights.

Room for Improvement: WatchGuard could enhance its data classification features, integrate more advanced analytics, and improve scalability for larger enterprises. Varonis might benefit from simplifying its deployment process, reducing false alerts, and streamlining interface usability to reduce the learning curve.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: WatchGuard features a straightforward deployment model with user-friendly setup and reliable support. Varonis, though complex due to its advanced features, compensates with comprehensive support and expert guidance.

Pricing and ROI: WatchGuard generally offers a lower initial cost and quicker ROI through operational savings. Varonis requires a higher upfront investment, justified by its robust capabilities and long-term benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed Varonis Platform vs. WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Varonis Platform vs. WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention

April 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

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Frederic Delos

Senior Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Offers the ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data

The most effective feature for me is its ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data, provided you have access, to determine whether it's a false positive or a true positive. That's the best thing for me, out of all of it. It's got everything, like other ones, but I like to be able to look at something if I'm doing forensics on the alert and say, "Okay, do I really need to do something with this?" For example, we don't want sensitive data in our OneDrive. So it identifies the sensitive data that's possibly in the OneDrive. And what I can do is look at it and identify whether it's actually sensitive data in Datalert or whether it looks like sensitive data, but I know it's a false positive. If it is a false positive, I can basically say ignore this pattern based on X, Y, and Z, you know, whether it's Redjax or keyword proximity. So I like that. With other tools, I gotta go through a whole process because it's a little bit more complex. Here, I can tag it and bag it in one shot. And the next good time I scan, it slips over it. So it helps in that.

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ScottEastman

Project Consultant at SEVERN HOSPICE LIMITED

Reduces the risks of sending data where it shouldn't be going

We use the solution to ensure that no data breach, such as credit card details and national insurance numbers, leaves the company. However, we have to allow some information to go through because we send a lot of information to the National Healthcare Service If we don't want specific data sent…

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The UI is good."

"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"

"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."

"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."

"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."

"What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering, so it's a valuable tool."

"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."

More Cloudflare pros

"The most important feature is remediation. In remediation support, there is no group permission. We'll go ahead and remediate the access from the Dell folder to the parent folder."

"The 24/7 support is the most valuable feature. They have been able to answer support questions pretty quickly."

"The solution ensures that users have not accidentally shared sensitive information with the wrong people or too many people."

"It can easily identify unusual behavior or access patterns that may pose a potential threat, while operating as a unified reporting system."

"On the Varonis side, technical support is phenomenal. Their ability to explain is very good, and they seem to be very knowledgeable. When I get an alert that doesn't quite make sense, they dive in there and kind of take me through it. That's very useful and very good. There are some false alerts, but it is better to have a false alert than no alert at all."

"Varonis Platform is transparent and captures everything in the environment without impacting the performance. The tool helps us unify data feeds into a single reporting system."

"The telemetry to capture everything and the reports are very easy to configure without having a developer degree."

"The analytics would have to be our most valuable feature."

More Varonis Platform pros

"I find that their tech support is excellent. And as a reseller, my relationship with my point of contact is also strong. WatchGuard does a good job of maintaining that."

"Basically, we have received a good return on investment."

"We have received a good return on investment."

"If we don't want specific data sent out, the tool will stop that data based on the policy we have allocated to it. It has reduced the risks of sending data where it shouldn't be. I haven't faced any issues with the tool's integration capabilities."

"It is something that we need for compliance, and it has been useful. Their support staff is also amazing."

"One of the most valuable features is that when we send emails and it gives a warning, you can configure those email addresses so that they can only send outside the email."

Cons

"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."

"The solution could be more user-friendly."

"One area of improvement is in the Access Rules. Hypothetically, if we wanted to block or challenge traffic outside of the United States, the only way to currently do that (as far as I know) is to enter every single country outside of the United States. That could be a labor intensive job. A solution could be to enable users to create a rule where traffic is only allowed within a certain country."

"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."

"If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better. I'm living in a remote area. I would like to connect to them without any kind of lag."

"It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal."

"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."

"Technical support is lacking."

More Cloudflare cons

"The GUI should be more functional. There should be a process for connecting through Chrome, Internet Explorer, etc."

"The solution's areas of improvement are the interface and the dependency on on-premises deployment for some components."

"The solution's interface is a little complicated with regard to setting up filters and reports."

"One area for improvement is the calculation engine. When applying rules in Varonis, especially for large datasets (terabytes of data), the calculations can be slow and require time to process. Speeding up this process would be beneficial."

"Varonis requires more access permissions for its core functions compared to competitors, which can be a concern for companies about data safety."

"The product is very complicated."

"The remediation process can be improved. There will be no existing permission group for the McAfee channel domains. We can create a new permissions group for the required folder."

"I would like it to have cloud integration."

More Varonis Platform cons

"WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention needs to improve its support."

"They need to stop the VLAN limitation. They have a VLAN limitation on the size of their boxes. It is the worst thing ever. They basically sell their boxes by the size and the number of VLANs it can handle, which is a real issue. You spend a couple of thousand dollars for a firewall, and you can only do 30 VLANs, which is extremely silly, as a matter of fact. It would be really great to have something for easier mass rule changes. It also needs a drag-and-drop function so that you don't have to constantly duplicate firewall rules. It would be nice to have such a feature because you got one WatchGuard, and you want to mirror its config and change a couple of things in another one and move some things around. It is not as easy as you would necessarily think. It is kind of expensive, and its pricing can be a little better for sure."

"The major problem is pricing and licensing loss. In India, the cost for renewal after three years is 75% of the hardware cost, which is a significant problem."

"Particularly in India, the cost for renewal after three years is 75% of the hardware cost, which is a significant problem."

"There is a problem with the RAM - it's eating up resources. The RAM utilization sometimes reaches up to 80% - 95%, and what we do is just restart the firewall."

"WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention catches so little. When I've implemented it, it just can't look at the traffic in a thorough enough manner to capture as much as it should. And I find that I'm disenchanted with all data loss protection solutions I've tested and looked at."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."

"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

"A free version of the solution is available."

"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."

"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."

"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The platform is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."

"Varonis Platform wasn't certainly the cheapest solution."

"It's expensive, kind of, really expensive."

"Licensing is on an annual basis. Maintenance and renewal fees are separate. Varonis Datalert is quite expensive."

"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."

"The pricing is good. It neither expensive nor cheap. It is average."

"You could do a subscription, where you pay yearly, or you could purchase it outright. The licensing cost is based on the number of users on the system that you are monitoring."

"It is kind of expensive. I buy it on the appliance. I always buy three-year total security."

"WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention's pricing is expensive. I rate it a seven out of ten."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?

Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...

See all answers

What do you like most about Cloudflare?

Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.

See all answers

What do you like most about Varonis Platform?

The solution has significantly improved data security and compliance posture by allowing us to track and monitor acti...

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What needs improvement with Varonis Platform?

Varonis started as an on-premises solution and is transitioning to cloud. It hasn't fully moved yet, which is an area...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Varonis Platform?

The primary use case for Varonis Platform is data discovery, specifically for discovering sensitive data in our organ...

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What needs improvement with WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention?

The basic problem is that for every firewall in India, there is a need for a one-year or two-year subscription. That ...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention?

The major problem is pricing and licensing loss. In India, the cost for renewal after three years is 75% of the hardw...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention?

I don't know the current cost. It's all imported products. It's not assembled in India. It's expensive us here.

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

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Microsoft Purview Data Governance vs Varonis Platform

Compared 18% of the time

Cyera vs Varonis Platform

Compared 12% of the time

BigID vs Varonis Platform

Compared 12% of the time

Wiz vs Varonis Platform

Compared 6% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon vs Varonis Platform

Compared 3% of the time

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No data available

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

May 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Varonis Platform

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Data Loss Prevention (DLP)

May 2025

Download WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

WatchGuard DLP

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

Varonis Platform specializes in network security and data monitoring with modules for alerting, data classification, and access management, benefiting environments like Microsoft 365.

Varonis is designed to secure data by auditing and tracking data movement. It leverages data alert and classification modules to identify and manage sensitive information. The platform enhances network security by alerting users to unexpected data modifications and deletions, crucial for effective data loss prevention. It supports unstructured data management, ensuring proper data access and permission controls. Known for its 24/7 support, Varonis offers comprehensive analytics and unified reporting, helping prevent data overexposure and facilitating compliance efforts.

What are the key features of Varonis Platform?

24/7 Support: Provides round-the-clock assistance.
Data Monitoring: Tracks data activities efficiently.
Unified Reporting: Consolidates data access reports.
Data Classification: Identifies sensitive data effectively.
Permission Management: Simplifies managing access rights.
Behavior Analytics: Detects abnormal behavior patterns.

What benefits should be highlighted in user reviews?

Enhanced Security: Improves data protection measures.
Compliance Support: Assists in meeting compliance standards.
Data Transparency: Offers clarity in data access activities.
Access Control: Ensures proper access to data.
Centralized Remediation: Eases remediation procedures.

Varonis Platform is widely utilized in industries needing stringent data confidentiality and management, such as finance and healthcare, for tracking data modifications and unauthorized access. Enterprises deploy it to manage permissions within large datasets, benefiting Microsoft 365 environments. While Varonis requires enhancements in cloud integration, the current deployment is often based on-premises, with attention to addressing the security needs and effective data handling for critical infrastructure.

Varonis

Data breaches pose a serious threat to organizations of all sizes, as the number of incidents and associated costs are on the rise. Whether a data leak was intentional or not, it can also cause permanent reputation damage to your organization. WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is a comprehensive service that helps keep your confidential data private. It prevents data breaches and enforces compliance by scanning text and files to detect sensitive information attempting to exit your network.

WatchGuard

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Nottingham Building Society

Royal Yachting Association, Sunray Engineering

Buyer's Guide

Varonis Platform vs. WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention

April 2025

Free Report: Varonis Platform vs. WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention

Find out what your peers are saying about Varonis Platform vs. WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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