Forcepoint ONE Reviews

My main use case for Forcepoint ONE is for data protection in the cloud. I use Forcepoint ONE for data loss prevention, specifically data loss prevention in the cloud for my client. Forcepoint ONE helps me in data protection for a particular case of my client.

I use Forcepoint ONE for data protection in the cloud, and the CASB feature stands out for me as it allows me to view how the data is managed in the cloud. The features of Forcepoint ONE for data protection in the cloud are very useful and are very easy to configure for use cases; I think it is easier and safer. Forcepoint ONE is very positive for my organization because with this product, I know how the data and information are working around the company, and I can have all the information for this.

Forcepoint ONE could be improved.

I have been using Forcepoint ONE for more or less three years.

Forcepoint ONE is a stable solution.

Forcepoint ONE is very scalable because it is located in the cloud, and I don't have to manage the machines or anything with the infrastructure.

Customer support for Forcepoint ONE is very good because they help a lot of the time.

Positive

I did not use a different solution before Forcepoint ONE.

My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

It is very difficult to measure the return on investment, but the control for the data is very important for companies because without an application similar to Forcepoint ONE, there is no control. My company needs to deploy regularization and controls, and I find Forcepoint ONE very useful for this.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is positive; the pricing is better than all, and the setup cost is very simple, making it very useful to deploy the solution and manage the use case.

My company evaluated other options because it didn't have all the investment in Microsoft before choosing Forcepoint ONE.

It would be very useful to have the product available in the Azure Marketplace. My advice for others looking into using Forcepoint ONE is that it is a very useful solution, and in one console, you have all of this. The review rating for Forcepoint ONE is 7.

The primary use case of the product is to ensure security and protection in a SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) environment. It serves multiple purposes, including securing roaming users and protecting users accessing resources outside the office. Another key aspect is safeguarding Insight applications using ZTE (Zero Trust Exchange) and preventing data leakage. In daily operations, it is primarily utilized through ZPA (Zero Trust Network Access), ensuring users have secure access to the internet. It involves protecting corporate devices from advanced threats and malicious sites and enforcing data isolation policies to prevent unauthorized data access or leakage. Additionally, the solution facilitates the secure transfer of sensitive data through various applications like Dropbox, utilizing policies set within the SSE (Secure Web Gateway) solution, potentially incorporating a model such as CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker).

The most valuable features of Forcepoint include Zero Trust Network Access and remote user protection for private applications. These features prioritize data security regardless of the user's location, ensuring that data is always protected. In terms of threat defense, the thread detection feature stands out as particularly valuable. It includes various capabilities such as web isolation to isolate unknown static, blocking access to malicious sites, and employing intelligence-driven checks based on configured policies. Integrating third-party sandboxing further enhances threat detection and response capabilities, providing comprehensive protection against advanced threats. It collectively contributes to a robust defense mechanism, safeguarding organizations against various security threats.

Areas for improvement for the platform include addressing scalability and architecture concerns, especially for large deployments involving more than 500 or 1,000 users. 

Additionally, integrating sandboxing features directly into the solution, either on-premise or in the cloud, is crucial for comprehensive threat detection and response. It would eliminate the need to rely on third-party sandboxing solutions, streamlining security operations and enhancing overall efficiency and effectiveness in combating threats.

We have been using Forcepoint ONE for 14 months.

Regarding stability, I have confidence in Forcepoint's technology and its ability to perform well in the market. However, being hosted on AWS has its architectural challenges, as is typical with any cloud-based solution. While it has the potential to overcome these challenges and further enhance its capabilities, it's important to acknowledge the inherent complexities that can arise in a public cloud environment.

We have around 5,000 Forcepoint ONE users. Scalability is one of the product's notable strengths. Its architecture facilitates rapid scalability, particularly its polytexture architecture deployed on AWS. Spinning a virtual machine (VM) in any location is almost instantaneous. It gives it an edge over solutions like Zscaler, which may require setting up entire private data centers for expansion. While Forcepoint's scalability advantage is evident, it still faces challenges inherent to its architecture.

By consolidating multiple security functions into a single client, particularly incorporating Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and Secure Web Gateway (SWG) functionalities, Forcepoint has streamlined our security infrastructure.

Resolving issues has sometimes taken longer than expected. While the initial response time has been problematic, support effectiveness improves upon escalation.

Neutral

We previously used a different solution before transitioning to Forcepoint. The decision to switch was driven by various factors, including the need for improved sandboxing capabilities, especially regarding onboarding. Additionally, Forcepoint's deployment in a public cloud environment posed challenges for organizations needing to utilize AWS, such as those favoring the Google Cloud Platform. This discrepancy in cloud provider compatibility influenced the decision to transition to a solution that aligns better with our organization's cloud infrastructure preferences and requirements. 

The initial setup was straightforward, primarily because everything was managed from the Forcepoint side, requiring no additional maintenance efforts. Deployment was relatively simple, especially when the organization clearly understood its objectives and requirements. The process took little time as long as the objectives were well-defined. However, if the organization needs to be clearer about its needs, it could prolong the setup process. In general, the technology was simple, and anyone could become proficient in managing it properly. Therefore, while the setup could vary depending on the clarity of objectives, the technology itself was relatively easy to implement.

Integrating services within Forcepoint has significantly enhanced our organization's security posture by enabling seamless authentication, centralized monitoring, comprehensive data correlation, and compatibility with third-party technologies. It ensures streamlined access management, proactive threat detection, informed decision-making, and cohesive security operations, ultimately fortifying our defenses against advanced threats and maintaining a proactive security stance.

Its data protection capabilities have greatly benefited our organization by providing comprehensive protection for our intellectual property and sensitive data. With Forcepoint, users accessing corporate applications and the internet are shielded from accessing malicious sites or falling victim to threats. It ensures that our data remains secure, whether in motion, use, or rest. It safeguards against data leakage, whether intentional or unintentional, by monitoring and controlling data transfer through various channels such as private apps, public SaaS applications, or third-party emails.

Forcepoint ONE shows significant potential for improvement while still being a commendable product. I would give it around an eight out of ten.

Forcepoint ONE's primary use case involves safeguarding the browsing activities of users who bring their laptops home. Specifically, we aim to protect their internet navigation while in their residences. Additionally, we need to secure specific applications to ensure that sensitive data and resources remain protected.

While we have some product information available, there are instances where we need a comprehensive understanding of all the features. We encounter challenges in determining whether certain features for blocking certain file types or preventing automatic downloads are functioning correctly. These particular areas need improvement.

We require high availability of 99.9%, and we believe the platform can effectively meet this requirement.

I rate the scalability of Forcepoint ONE as around seven. It was easy to scale, but as we expand our user base and deployment, we anticipate the need for further exploration and optimization. We expect it to be scalable, but we have yet to deploy the solution fully.

The initial setup was easy to deploy. However, configuring certain features presented challenges.

The platform's feature that has been most beneficial for our web security is its capability to replicate rules. This functionality allows us to maintain consistent navigation policies for users, even when they transition between working from home and in the office. By replicating rules, we can effectively extend our border access control.

With the data protection features, we have noticed a considerable improvement in our control over security incidents. Specifically, we have enhanced control over blocking malicious applications and preventing access to websites with a poor reputation.

I recommend Forcepoint ONE to others. It's a simple and highly useful solution, albeit with room for improvement in certain features, such as application blocking. For instance, blocking applications like Skype, Teams, WhatsApp, or similar could be enhanced.

I rate it a seven out of ten.

We use Bitglass for real-time scanning and its unique VM that enables reverse proxy capabilities. Bitglass can also act as an IDP for us when we don't have an identity provider.

The solution enforces our devices no matter where it is located even across our cloud devices reducing the manual work we have to do.

By default without a policy, Bitglass has the capability to notify the admin of multiple or simultaneous logins across a wide range of geographical regions. The solution will take action if the same credentials are used in multiple regions at the same time, preventing unauthorized access.

Bitglass integration with some IDP providers needs improvement. Currently, the solution is not compatible with Azure AD for third-party authentication. The fraud proxy in the SmartEdge agent is not compatible with Forcepoint DLP or a web hybrid agent. I would like the developers to consolidate multiple agents across systems for better integration.

I have been using the solution for seven months.

The solution is stable. I have not seen any performance or availability issues with the solution.

The solution is extremely scalable. The solution can increase as our resources increase. One of our customers has 15,000 users.

The initial setup is straightforward. The solution is a soft application so the portal that is generated gives us access and the vendor does everything required. We get our login as a master administrator and from there we can onboard more addresses. The last step is to integrate with the cloud application.

Bitglass provides a good return on investment eventually.

When considering only the cost, the solution may appear to be costly; however, when evaluated in terms of commercial value, Bitglass is not expensive.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

Bitglass is a good solution that can be consolidated with other solutions from the same vendor.

There are several use cases that we use it for:

• DLP purposes. 
• Multi-factor, step-up authentication. 
• In conjunction with Okta. We have a lot of sensitive data that goes back and forth into the cloud. Also, to some cloud offerings where our mail is, with Office 365 being one of them. Bitglass helps us secure that traffic. It allows us to see where our data is going, who's accessing our data, and what people are trying to access our data.

It will alert us of somebody trying to knock on the front door (perimeter) and one of my end user's account is compromised. We are in the Orlando area and also across the state of Florida. However, if I know this person is in Orlando, then 10 minutes later, they're trying to log in from Tampa, that can't be done. I have tried. I have tried to drive as fast as I could to get from Orlando to near Tampa. It just didn't worked out.

Logging in from Orlando and shifting to Tampa, that's a very real scenario where we had a staff member who was compromised. We were able to stop that based on the multi-factor, step-up authentication because the solution noticed the geographic locations were so disparate.

It gives us that extra set of eyes and ears, especially now with the pandemic. We don't have the amount of staff that other organizations have, since we're a nonprofit. The bad guys count on that. This solution gives us another layer of protection when it comes to end users, who are the people already behind the perimeter. It greatly helps us. 

In the cloud stuff, we set up all the rules and policies on one page based on the applications and things that we have rolled out. In this past year, we have been able to move from an on-premise Exchange Microsoft environment to Office 365. This is by its very nature what people use Office 365 for. Bitglass was able to help us secure this as a communication tool and also add the governance piece and enforce it.

The biggest thing that I like about this product is that it's easy to use and teach. When we have somebody new starting to work with the product, it's easy to teach them. It's also easy to use the product as it does so much.

I'm into looking at the DLP rules and finding out where our data is going and who is accessing it, especially now that our organization has gone remote. When typically only one section of our organization has been remote (our caseworkers), now everybody is remote. Therefore, we need to know for everyone else:

• How is data governance being performed? 
• Where can we increase our security posture by ensuring policies, procedures, and compliance are being taken care of? 

Bitglass is a big part of where our data is going. Then, the fact that I can make it unusable if it goes to places that we don't think that it should, by using digital rights management (DRM).

Integration into different multi-factor authentication tools. On their page, they tout Duo, but I don't use Duo. I use another vendor. Not that they don't interact, but it takes a little bit more doing. Any amount of efficiencies here would help.

The one area of improvement that I would suggest: Integrating to some on-prem things, like Active Directory. That would be helpful, but then I would need to have a third-party piece to do things automatically, not manually. 

This is the second organization that I've implemented Bitglass. So, we're talking three years.

I've not had any problems with Bitglass going down. I've not had any issues with the AJAX-VM agentless protections at all. This is good tech.

I'm not seeing any latency with the traffic flow at all. Some of the biggest bottlenecks would be when folks are in the field and what wireless network that they connect to, e.g., are they using free WiFi? That is what prompted the need for a CASB. It was based on the data sets that we use. When our people go out, then they stop at a Starbucks or McDonald's because they have deadlines and things that they have to do. So, if they don't have a wireless access point or a MiFi, then they jump on these free WiFi things and we need to be able to secure their data. Bitglass allows us to do that.

We're at 99.99 percent uptime. The only outage had to do with when AWS had an outage and that lasted a short amount of time.

I don't think there has been a problem with the scalability. I can scale what I need. Of course, there's a licensing fee involved, but I think they can handle whatever I throw at them. We're not a very large organization, but some of the organizations that I've met along the way that are a lot bigger than me don't seem to have a problem.

Right now, we have 1,800 employees working from home, so now I have 1,800 offices. Anything that is going out of our environment or perimeter, wherever that perimeter may be, we need to know:

• How are they using our data? 
• How has it changed? 

People are more confident in their own confines. In their house, they're very confident because that's their domain. So, they may not be following our data governance or best practices. Bitglass alerts look at:

• How the data is being pushed.
• How the data is being accessed.
• Who's accessing it. 
• Where it's being accessed from. 
• Who are they sharing it with. 

We see all of that. It's all based on whatever rules we can think of.

Previously, we had a 25,000 full-time staff and faculty, and more than 220,000 students going through Bitglass.

If I do have an issue or a support need, the organization is responsive. I'm on the East Coast, and they're on the West Coast. You really couldn't tell, because they're right on it and been there. They've been what I call a strategic business partner in both instances that we put this on.

I had an issue at the previous company that I worked at. We are on the East Coast, and they are on the West Coast; they're in California, and we're in Florida. So, we had an issue at seven o'clock in the morning. It turned out that we had a certificate expire in ADFS. We called over there because we had no idea what was going on, as the initial troubleshooting was going to the Bitglass portal and blocking people from logging in there. So, we're getting people on the phone just so we could come to a conclusion to get a root cause. Not only did my account rep call me back and get somebody on the phone, the support engineer was called and was working with the team before I talked to our account rep. Then, we had a senior VP and the CEO call me within an hour. I also had some other folks call me within an hour to make sure that we were okay. That is the type of business that Bitglass is.

Before, when I first got to the organization, things happened. People were compromised. Outlook accounts were indicators of compromise. To this date, I'm not finding those as often when I'm being alerted.

The initial setup was pretty much straightforward. We did some integrations to get it all done and implemented, then you're off and running. 

The biggest drawback to the implementation was the organization. It took a little bit of time to buy because this is a different type of technology that the organization has not used, so going through the multiple meetings to give the benefits and what this provides us. That's a drawback in running the implementation.

The application only took a night to deploy. I'm talking about a few hours, but that was once everything was approved to go through.

We started with the critical data in the cloud. These type of datasets include the regulated data, such as HIPAA or PCI.

We used our deployment managers. We took the training, then we used them. We didn't use any outside people.

There are two and a half people on my infrastructure team, including a consultant (who is not full-time). I am managing a lot of this solution myself by going in, cleaning up, and deactivating users. Users who leave the organization free up their places.

We are not a large IT shop. Anytime we can gain efficiencies and don't have to track down any false positives or false alerts, then we see ROI. With a small team, there's always that alert burnout where there can be so many alerts happening that it's just easier to do nothing. We don't find that. We find that we're able to get in and do a lot more of the infrastructure and things because the product works the way we expect it to.

There is training involved. If you're going to add more people to it, such as cross train more of your group, there's a cost. Other than that, that's it. We have paid exactly what the invoices have said. We signed a three-year contract and not gone above it.

Understand what it is you're paying for with a CASB. Do your homework and understand what your use cases will be, because you will pay based on use case. Always be weary of someone who comes in and just wants to cut prices. If they're going to lose to a competitor and just whacks their price in half just to get the business. If it didn't match your needs based on what the product does in the beginning, you're going to be sorry. Know your use cases and purchase towards your use case. Make sure that you get a strategic business partner when it comes to your vendors.

I did do an exhaustive search when it came to selecting a CASB. We looked at other major players: Netskope, Symantec, and Skyhigh. We looked at a lot of them before we saw Bitglass.

At the time, Bitglass had more out-of-the-box features and integrated more closely with our platforms. We're talking about Active Directory, where I can get that integrated. It's not a data dump or a nightly upload of our LDAP or directory solutions into the product. We were able to do or add the scanning via Cylance. That came standard with these, while with the other companies, it was an add-on piece or they reverse engineered the solution to try and make it work. I've been doing IT for 20 plus years. Anytime a company tries to reverse engineer something after they first purchase it, it's never a good experience for the end user because for support, it is always, "Oh, you've got to go over here," or "I've got to transfer you over here". Well, okay. "Now I've got to transfer you over here." That is not anything that I can hang my hat on. Therefore, you're looking at the amount of features and functionality from the Bitglass side, as opposed to some of their competitors. 

We didn't take one of their competitors because it was a large deployment with multiple servers in different areas. I was trying to reduce space, not increase my infrastructure footprint.

The biggest thing is know your use cases. If you're not sure what your use cases are, have them help define them. When you understand your use cases, you understand how you're going to use the product. It doesn't mean that you don't learn the other bits and functionality of it, but your core duty to your organization is to protect that critical data. Understand what those data sets are and how critical are they:

• Are they regulated via the state or at the federal level? 
• What is it that you're trying to protect? 

If you can understand these questions, then you can tailor a lot of the training and a lot of what you have for what you need. I talk to my team all the time when we do things, and it has to be sustainable, maintainable and also adaptable. It has to be adaptable to the client because technology is the one thing that we have in business that will change. We know it will change. So, if you're rigid with whatever you're doing and not adapting, then you are already behind.

I really like what this product does and what it stands for. We are a nonprofit, and until our use cases change, we are not using the product to its fullest potential.

I do not use SASE yet. That is more for budgetary purposes. With the pandemic, our budget allocation has been a bit steep.

Biggest lesson learnt: The different ways people can use data. Where they access and share it, then send it, do things, and respond. I understand now the need, more than ever, to evangelize. In the security industry, there's a saying, "Your weakest link is your end user." I tend to disagree now. The weakest link happens to be our security awareness training. How well are we doing there? Because if you train and teach, then things go a bit smoother. 

With everything that I know about Bitglass and working with the organization as a whole, such as, meeting the CEO on down through new folks, I would rate them a 10 out of 10. They have a fantastic culture and ethic when it comes to the customer first. If I need something, they're there. Just this past week, we went to do an integration of the fifth application, but something happened, and we had to postpone it. Our deployment manager says, "No problem. I'm there." He didn't even wait for me to say what we were going to postpone it to. He just said, "Okay, I'm there." That puts me at ease. They have my back and are there to help.

It's our CASB, our cloud access service broker. It also does our SaaS-based based DLP, our data loss prevention, for our SaaS-based applications. We use it to protect our sensitive information. Since we are a healthcare corporation, we have to do everything we can to keep PHI data from leaking outside of the organization.

It's a SaaS offering, but there is an online appliance, a VM server, for the Active Directory sync back to the SaaS.

We have our own data centers, multiple data centers, and we always had the philosophy in the past that we're always on-prem in our data centers, never in the cloud. All of a sudden, one day, somebody had an epiphany and realized that we could save money by closing most of our data centers and putting things into the cloud. We wouldn't have to worry about buying infrastructure and all the hardware. So all of a sudden our company had this mass push to start sending everything possible to the cloud. But as the security department we looked at that and said, "Hang on. There's a lot of sensitive data in all of this that causes a HIPAA compliance issue and a PCI compliance issue. How can we protect that?" That is the number-one way that Bitglass helped us; with our stuff going to the cloud. 

Another aspect is that we recently went from an on-prem Exchange environment for email to the cloud-based email. What we did not really understand at the time, because it was on-prem and we didn't worry about it so much, was that we have a lot of PHI data inside of our email environment; more than we ever even thought imaginable. With Bitglass, we're able to inspect every single email sent. And if we see that it's going outside of the organization, we can stop it, unless that person has the authorization. We'll have special policies written for that person or that group of people to allow that to happen. We've never had those controls before in the past where we could stop PHI data from leaving the organization.

As for the AJAX-VM providing constant reverse proxy uptime, out of the year and two months, I can't tell you that Bitglass has ever been offline. And that is a tremendous value because of something that we've never had in the past: Any employee in the company who has access to a staff-based application could go home to their grandmother's computer, or to their mother's or their own personal computer, and log in to those SaaS-based applications and download social security numbers and patient records. Now, with the reverse proxy, we can stop that. They can try all they want, but the reverse proxy can stop it dead in its tracks. We've hardly had issues with the reverse proxy uptime. If we have had an issue, it's never been around Bitglass itself, it's always been some kind of on-prem issue. For example, we had some switches that were doing port flapping and it took us three days to figure out that it was not Bitglass. It was actually the switches that were causing all the on-prem issues that were being experienced.

In addition, we haven't seen any latency. With some applications, there might be a few milliseconds, but nothing really noticeable at all.

They have an agentless reverse proxy, which is amazing. They also have an agent forward proxy, which is very helpful. That's how you can identify the company-managed devices. With SaaS-based applications, people want to be able to access their email, for example, from a personal computer. The reverse proxy allows us to protect that and keeps them from downloading PHI data to their personal computer. But once we see that it's a company-owned device, because it's a forward proxy, the agent solution enables us to relax the policies a bit and allow them to actually do their job and access the sensitive information, if they're allowed to. That's a huge piece.

We install the forward proxy on a machine and we can have it inspect the machine for certain criteria that would classify it as a company-owned and protected device. For example, we can make sure that it has antivirus, an EDR solution installed, disk encryption, and things like that. That way we know they didn't take this agent and install it on their personal machine and that this is definitely a company owned device. With that solution, we can send them through what's called the forward proxy, which allows us to open it up to do their job, and they can access sensitive information.

What's helpful about the other piece, the reverse proxy, is we can still allow them to access their email or other SaaS-based applications if we want. But, if they go to a personal device and do so, it will put them in reverse proxy and still forward proxy because it's agentless. That will allow us to identify this is a personal device and that we have to lock the policies down so they don't download sensitive information which is not allowed to be on a personal device that is not protected with company controls.

I also find the granular level of inspection that you can do inside of all the proxy traffic to be very useful.

In terms of how the solution secures us against data breaches and attacks, it works alongside an IDP solution that we have. We use Ping and they integrate together, so we can force multifactor authentication. And even if someone makes it past the multifactor authentication and login for Ping, if Bitglass doesn't have the proper SAML tokens passed to it through the SAML insertion, it will not allow access to those sensitive applications. Let's say someone were somehow able to hack someone's credentials and hack multifactor authentication. That's a tall order. But at the same time, Bitglass will be able to take a unique login that happened somewhere else — for example, the user is here in Tennessee, but now you have a login 500 miles away or 300 miles away, as well. Bitglass will be able to detect that and stop it because it's an invalid login. It knows that it's suspicious.

The solution is very good when it comes to securing us against data leakage, because of the other proxy. It also has API scanning or data at rest. It inspects data in motion, which is the proxy, and then it has the data at rest, which is the API scanning. We can inspect for anything we want: file fingerprinting, PHI-sensitive data, PCI-sensitive data. It does not matter. We can usually find it and block it in transit and do our remediation with it. It could either be block, encrypt, or allow and watermark the file to follow it and see where it goes. It allows for those different scenarios.

I wish they would advance more into the endpoint DLP solution. Currently they do not do anything around endpoint, they're still strictly cloud-based. The forward proxy is really the only thing they do. What I would like to see them do is to scan machines, workstations and servers, for information we might not want on those machines. That would be huge. We have to consider the fact that that's not really their arena, but I think if they would come into that arena, they would open themselves to providing a more complete solution.

I have been using Bitglass for about a year and two months.

The solution's overall uptime is top-notch, 100 percent. We've had zero outages related to the product.

The scalability is outstanding. 

One thing that we did find — and this is where we made mistakes in our deployment — is that instead of doing our Direct App Access and doing 10 users in reverse proxy and forward proxy and then 10 more in just reverse proxy as a test, we started rolling it out department by department, facility by facility, in big waves. We have about 100,000 employees. We were going to roll to all those employees in just seven waves. We made it to wave four before we had to stop our deployment. We found that Bitglass itself would automatically scale and just handle it. They always talked about their infrastructure and how it auto-scales based on demand. What we would have is about 20,000-plus users logging in between at 8:00 am and 8:05 am Central Time, which was a ton of traffic all of a sudden slamming at the infrastructure, and it just handled it like a champ. It would scale.

There's still room to grow. I have to stress, it's not Bitglass' fault. It's a company strategy. We have to figure out what our strategy and what our DLP program and cloud-based program is going to be.

In the applications that we have put into it, there is a 100 percent adoption rate, but we're still in the discovery phase of trying to find out how many SaaS-based applications are in our organization. We're at well over 100 SaaS-based applications. Over the last six months we've been vetting all of those applications and meeting with the teams that run a given application in the cloud and with the teams that use it in our enterprise. We're starting a number of such applications each week, finding out the details: What does it do? Does it support the infrastructure that it takes to integrate with Bitglass? We've been working on that for six months.

I have used their support quite a bit. They are outstanding. I've been able to call them at any time that I'm here working. It doesn't matter when, they've always been very responsive. If I don't get somebody when I call, usually within five to 10 minutes, max, someone's calling me back.

In addition, if we run into something that we don't like, and we say, "Okay, this thing could be better," they open up an enhancement request and they'll take it before their board and they have a discussion about that feature request. If they need clarity, they will actually get their engineers on the phone with us to get more clarity on what we're actually asking for. I would say that they've implemented more than half of the things that we've requested. They're very open to improving their product for the users. Those improvements are available to all customers.

They'll do some things for independent customers. For example, even though we're an Active Directory shop, we have an IDM solution called NetIQ. It's the source of truth for all user accounts. It propagates out to AD and controls what's in AD. It controls what's in all the different types of applications. Bitglass supports AD integration, but didn't support our IDM solution, which is essentially just LDAP. What Bitglass did, on the fly, was that they created their agent to adapt to our IDM solution. They will actually do specific stuff for a company, but when it comes to the overall product itself, they make sure that changes are going to benefit all customers.

The whole Bitglass package, which is a single solution, encompasses CASB, web security, advanced threat protection, identity, DLP, and zero trust network access. As a company, we're moving towards zero trust. Two things made us, as a company, choose Bitglass. 

1. The agentless reverse proxy.
2. We are moving to zero trust. 

We liked the way their product looked compared to the competitors. We liked the fact that it has an agentless solution, which is the reverse proxy. That allowed us to protect our data without having to worry about blocking the users. The thing that's important is that our people still need to access their email, for example. If they're on their personal device, that's fine, we want them to have that access on their phones, etc. But what we don't want is patient data on their personal devices, and that's what the reverse proxy is predominantly about.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was one of the most simple, easy solutions I've ever seen, in terms of setting it up, given that it's such a predominant piece of cloud security and zero trust. It's almost out-of-the-box. It just works. It's crazy how easy it is.

We're actually still deploying. In Bitglass' defense, because we are so young as a company in going to the cloud, we've had a lot to learn ourselves as far as SaaS-based security and DLP programs go. We've never had either one of those. We're still trying to figure out exactly where we are. Unfortunately, and it's not Bitglass' fault, we are currently deploying, again, in our enterprise. We are actively deploying as we speak.

Our deployment strategy is different today than it was in the beginning. As an organization, in the beginning, we wanted to understand things more and we took our time and made a lot of mistakes. That was not Bitglass' fault. Our deployment strategy now, which is what I recommend to everybody, is to understand all the apps that you are going to deploy Bitglass for. Make sure you understand the capabilities of the application and what the application contains data-wise, because realistically, all applications might not need to be in Bitglass. That's a company choice.

When you deploy Bitglass, what I have learned is that you deploy what's called Direct App Access. When Bitglass receives the login information, it says, "Oh, we're going to send this user directly to the application and we are not going to send it through any kind of proxy." For example, if you go to gmail.com to log into email, it's not going to send you through the proxy, it will send you directly to gmail.com. What you do is you take about 10 users, depending on the size of your organization, and you put their company-owned devices into forward proxy and you have those same users use a reverse proxy away from the company. Then, you take another 10 users and you put them only in reverse proxy. You don't write any policies to restrict any kind of access in any of the proxies. You then watch how that works and make sure that there are no unknown issues with proxies with those SaaS-based applications or APIs. It doesn't matter what solution you use, when you deal with a proxy —  this is something we've learned, it doesn't matter what proxy you deal with, whether it's Bitglass or some kind of proxy server — there's always the chance of issues.

I'm the only super-admin. We have about 40 additional role admins who have view-only access to investigate issues with people being able to log in. That is all they can do. As far as administrating the app configurations, I'm the sole person.

We mainly deployed it ourselves. That comes back to what I was saying. If we had listened to Bitglass, they could have helped us through the deployment process a little bit better. They wanted to be involved, they offered their services, time in and time out. But again, as an organization, we were wanting to understand everything better. It's our own fault that it's taken so long to deploy.

We haven't seen a direct monetary return, but we have seen an indirect monetary return. We pay however much the licensing is for Bitglass every year, and that is a cost we didn't have in the past. However, the HIPAA fines, and HIPAA compliance issues — the millions of dollars that we could be liable for if patient records are leaked outside of the company — create an indirect return on investment.

Their pricing is extremely fair. 

They need to make sure they pay attention to how the licensing works. There are many licensing methods. One way is the number of endpoint users you will have. And they license for every single application that you're going to put into the proxy system. They also have a few other types of licensing around CSPM, so there are many components.

Bitglass didn't misrepresent their licensing structure in any way, but as a company we didn't really look at what it meant. Fortunately, we feel we got a really good deal with Bitglass and we got everything we need. We didn't have to go back and buy any additional licensing. However, if we had not just blindly gotten the right deal, we might have needed to go back and revisit the licensing structure with our account manager. We really didn't fully understand the way all the licensing worked until after the fact. Do your due diligence and make sure you understand. Don't over-buy your license and don't under-buy.

We never really deployed anything else as vastly as we have deployed Bitglass. We went into the PoC phase with several products. Bitglass is the one that has continued to stand out in performance and ease of deployment. It's simple to use. I hate to even say this, but it's very elementary. They put a lot of time and thought into the interface to make it as simple as it can be.

We looked at Symantec and we PoC'd McAfee and Proofpoint. In terms of the differences between these solutions and Bitglass, the first thing is the ease of deployment. Then there is the agentless reverse proxy, which no one else had, and the ease of use. And performance was another difference. What we found with some of the other products was that they were very resource intensive. Some of them also required a lot of on-prem appliances, whether VMs or other things. Bitglass was the only solution that was totally cloud. The only reason we have anything on-prem is because we're an Active Directory shop and have to feed the users up to the cloud. Otherwise, Bitglass does have the capability of being a 100 percent cloud solution, because it does have its own IAM service.

My advice is to listen to Bitglass when they tell you how to deploy it properly. That's one of the two main things I have learned from using this solution. 

The other is, when you deploy this, always — and I stress this greatly — always deploy the new app or new API in what's called Direct App Access. That means once the user is authenticated into Bitglass, regardless of whether it's an external IDP or you're using the simple, built-in IDP from Bitglass, Direct App Access sends you directly to whatever it is you're trying to access, with no proxy. Always deploy with that, and then select about 10 users for reverse proxy, as well as 10 users that will use reverse and forward proxy. I would recommend that those 20 users be power users, people who use those applications on a regular basis. Bitglass is pretty seamless and it integrates well. But if it's an application that it has never integrated with before, which a lot of our applications have been, there is always the possibility that Bitglass is going to have to make a change for that application. That is a lesson learned for us. We would take an application that they had never integrated with before and we would just slam all of the users into it. It could handle the scale; it scaled fine. But what would happen is that there are certain JavaScripts on the client-side that Bitglass wouldn't handle correctly. It's not a fault of Bitglass, it's just a difference in technology in the way that the product was developed.

So we identify that there's a problem with those power users. We then take those users out of the proxies and allow it to stand Direct App Access. When you do it that way you don't have issues. They can investigate, they can figure out what the issue is, they address it, and they fix it. And then you can start easing the deployment out again. That's huge.

The solution provides a single policy page to secure all of our interactions to the cloud, but not for on-prem. It's not really much of an on-prem solution. There are ways that you could do that, with firewalls. But Bitglass is really more of a cloud-based protection and it's not meant for on-prem devices. With that being said, there is a single policy page around Bitglass, but when it comes to each SaaS-based application or API, then each one of those has its single page of policy. So you have your policies for Bitglass itself, then you have your policies for each app or each API. Bitglass's approach which, for me, makes a lot of sense, is that every application is different. So it's hard to treat them all the same.

We don't yet use the solution's SmartEdge Secure Web Gateway. We are currently in the process of talks for bringing that into our environment. I find a lot of appeal to it and there are a lot of things with that new SmartEdge that would be extremely beneficial to our organization.

Overall, knowing what I know now, a year and two months later, and having been through this whole Bitglass deployment with the issues that we've had that were not Bitglass' fault, I would still choose the same product today. I would do it again, but I would listen to Bitglass more and I would change my deployment method.

The product is important for protecting the environment and information.

The platform's cloud-based console is quite valuable. Additionally, its integration with DLP is effective. 

The solution's integration with other products needs improvement. 

We have been using Forcepoint ONE for two years. 

I rate the product stability an eight. 

Our clients are typically enterprise businesses with around 1000 Forcepoint ONE users.

We have encountered numerous issues with support over the past two years, particularly with response times.

Neutral

We used other solutions before. 

The setup is relatively straightforward. We encountered challenges while integrating it with WhatsApp. I rate the process an eight. 

The product is reasonably priced compared to other vendors. I rate the pricing a two or three. 

The platform has a great capacity for protecting and managing data.

I rate an eight out of ten. 

Forcepoint ONE is a very, very good product, especially for my SOC (security operations center) team though you'll need to get a lot of training to optimize the solution and ensure that it meets your needs. Forcepoint ONE is a very good monitoring solution, and it gives my organization a lot of information on how to boost security and how to keep new products or new applications secure.

Forcepoint ONE is okay for me, and I find it a very good solution. Its most valuable feature is monitoring. Its monitoring is very good, and it can communicate with a SIEM system. I also find the DLP feature of Forcepoint ONE good.

One area for improvement in Forcepoint ONE is that you'll need more training to install the solution yourself. I practiced in a laboratory and I needed more technical information to do the installation.

In the laboratory, Forcepoint ONE is stable, but I don't know if it's stable in a real environment because I have not installed it yet in the real world. In a laboratory setting, it is pretty stable.

Forcepoint ONE is a very scalable solution.

The technical support for Forcepoint ONE is very good, at least when I needed support in a laboratory setting. On a scale of one to five, with five being the best, I'm rating the support a four.

In terms of the initial setup for Forcepoint ONE, I'm rating it a three out of five. I'm giving it a score of 60 percent out of one hundred percent. I currently don't have an implementation strategy, but if I need to implement the solution, I would need more training, or even take a special course on how to implement Forcepoint ONE.

Forcepoint ONE was deployed through an integrator or consultant.

I don't have information on the ROI from Forcepoint ONE.

The licensing cost for Forcepoint ONE would depend on the features, but the pricing is very competitive here in Brazil. The solution offers a good price, and I would rate it a three or a four in terms of pricing. I don't have information on whether there are additional costs apart from the standard licensing fees for Forcepoint ONE.

My company didn't evaluate other options because it is an integrator of Forcepoint ONE, so it only has Forcepoint ONE as its solution. This means I didn't do any testing with competitors such as Zscaler and Netskope.

My company is a partner and reseller of Forcepoint ONE. I work with the solution, though I'm not as experienced with it. I had my training in the Forcepoint laboratory in Brazil because I just started working with the solution, but I know how Forcepoint ONE works, how to use it, and how to implement it. I'm using the latest version of the solution.

The number of staff required to deploy and maintain Forcepoint ONE depends on the number of users because the solution can also be used individually or by a single user.

My advice for people looking into implementing Forcepoint ONE is to take a course or go into training because the solution may seem easy, but it's not, particularly during implementation, because it would still depend on your tool. You need to understand your tool well and how you can adapt it to Forcepoint ONE. The solution is not easy if it doesn't have a direct integration with your tool. When you go direct to the cloud, there's no problem, but when you need it to be a hybrid solution, it could be a bit difficult in terms of integrating it well. The integration, though it's not very, very difficult, still requires attention and care for it to be successful.

My rating for Forcepoint ONE is eight out of ten. For me to rate it a ten out of ten, the support, price, and functionality should first be improved. There would be a need to speak with the Forcepoint team about it, and the team is very, very dedicated in terms of explaining and helping you understand the solution.