Fortra's Digital Guardian Reviews

The most important use case for my clients in Fortra's Digital Guardian is that it consolidates two products into a single product: the DLP and data classification instead of having to implement and configure two solutions and take a long time to complete the DLP and then the data classification. If the DLP is not configured well, the data classification will not be well configured for sure. Additionally, the consolidation or integration between the two solutions in one solution gives the customer flexibility to monitor and utilize the software in a single dashboard, which is perfect for the customer.

Regarding industry compliance, Fortra's Digital Guardian helps to address compliance needs for customers, particularly in Egypt. It is mandatory for all banks, according to the Central Bank of Egypt, to have a DLP and data classification solution on-site. The main issue is that the solution must be implemented fully on-prem with nothing going to the cloud. The Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) has also imposed similar regulations for FinTech companies, but not on a large scale. Here lies my concern because FinTechs are not large companies like banks and are not able to use Fortra's Digital Guardian, so I provide them with another solution called Safetica, which suits small to mid-sized companies and meets the compliance requirements according to regulations in the country. Additionally, I am waiting for the publication of a privacy protection law that may be released by the end of this month, which will emphasize the importance of DLP as a key cybersecurity solution.

The biggest advantage in Fortra's Digital Guardian is that two products in a single product can be configured, monitored, and troubleshot through a single dashboard. Another advantage is that they split the tool for database and the network. If the customer needs to do data classification or DLP for the database, they can purchase the license for the database only. If the customer needs to do it for the network, they can purchase the network license only. If it is an enterprise customer and they need to buy both, they can. However, one disadvantage is that they do not focus on small to mid customers. They start talking about 400 users and more.

Regarding real-time data visibility, it helps manage data security for the clients completely. I can do everything from a single dashboard, including gap analysis and instant response. I have over 15 years of experience as a technical person working hands-on with the product, so I have technical skills. The advantage of Fortra's Digital Guardian is that it includes a forensics tool and incident response, which allows me to determine incidents before and after they occur. In case of an incident, I can put a scenario and action plan, and if the customer gets hacked or attacked, I can identify where, who, how, and when this happened. That is a good advantage.

Fortra's Digital Guardian is very effective in detecting insider threats in the company, especially for low awareness customers who can send unexpected messages. As we all know, most attacks come from the inside, and more than 79% of attacks result from human error, not malicious intent, but it can be accidental. So if I can classify the data and put some restrictions, it is not a constraint on the employees inside but instead protects them and the company.

Speaking of cross-platform protection in Fortra's Digital Guardian, it streamlines data protection processes for the clients. The most important factor is to protect the customer's data, which is their real asset, regardless of where the data resides—on the cloud or on-premises, in static or in transit. What matters is how to protect that data, and I need visibility on it, which is very well managed within Fortra's Digital Guardian. Regarding the network, it can also be managed and controlled if it is split across on-prem or in the cloud, and I have complete and clear visibility on all assets.

The flexibility of deployment within Fortra's Digital Guardian is good, but it is not more than 90% of Arab countries, mainly Egypt, that allow on-cloud implementation. As such, on-prem solutions are the most applicable implementations fully fulfilled by Fortra's Digital Guardian.

The main concerns I have are pricing and the fact that it is handled through a distributor or reseller. Fortra does not have a local team here in the country, and they depend completely on distributors and local resellers. If the customer needs direct support from Fortra's Digital Guardian, it goes through a web interface or customer portal, which sometimes takes a long time for the customer to receive a response, potentially causing negative feedback.

I am a reseller, not an end user, and I established an office for my existing or previous company in UAE and KSA a long time ago. I have used Fortra's Digital Guardian to promote it to some of my customers since 2023.

For stability, I would rate Fortra's Digital Guardian a nine because it proves to be very reliable.

If I had to rate the scalability of Fortra's Digital Guardian, I would give it a nine. It is very scalable; if a customer buys 10 licenses and tomorrow needs 100, it can be done easily with no additional requirements.

In my company, I completely depend on ourselves for customer support. I can provide the customer with my first line of support, and for severity one cases, if the customer is fully down, I have my way to escalate within Fortra to get support directly from the distributor. However, I would rate it up to a seven.

I find the installation of Fortra's Digital Guardian is neither easy nor complicated; it falls in the middle range but is much easier than implementing Forcepoint DLP. I have previous experience in implementing Forcepoint DLP, which took about nine months for a full implementation and three months to complete the Boldon James setup. I could not do the data classification until the DLP was finished, so those projects took about a year. However, for Fortra's Digital Guardian, maximum implementation, from gathering information, sizing, and discussions, would not take more than three months if I do everything from scratch. I segment the customer department, such as marketing in one shot and sales in one shot, to ensure everything is checked and verified before completing the entire project.

The most difficult part about deployment is proper planning and sizing.

I see a return on investment and value for money with Fortra's Digital Guardian because my data is my asset. If my data gets encrypted, I will pay far more than the license costs for this software. I have many use cases where customers, due to a limited budget, could not purchase the DLP solution or Fortra's Digital Guardian solution, and when they faced an attack, their data got encrypted. For instance, a use case here in Egypt revealed they paid about 2 million dollars to retrieve their data. Therefore, there is massive ROI for this product and not only for Fortra's Digital Guardian, but for all cybersecurity solutions. This is one important point I emphasize to all the CFOs of any customer.

It is not affordable for us in terms of the license because it is not something related to the license as much as from a company perspective; Fortra needs to put themselves on a scale for enterprise customers and do not give importance to small to mid customers.

Regarding whether Fortra's Digital Guardian is the leading one, I can draw comparisons with other tools, such as Forcepoint DLP, which only houses DLP and uses Boldon James or Titus for data classification. I have also worked with Safetica and Symantec DLP, but Fortra's Digital Guardian is the first solution I see that includes both, giving it an advantage to position it as a leader. However, competitors such as Symantec and Forcepoint have a strong presence in the market, so Fortra must consider adjusting its pricing strategy and focus on small to mid-sized companies to increase its market footprint.

I have deployed Fortra's Digital Guardian mostly on-prem, which is the most common deployment model.

For Fortra's Digital Guardian, I have not deployed any solutions on AWS cloud. As I mentioned, AWS may have implemented their cloud locally in Riyadh or KSA, but I have not had the chance to do so. On the other hand, I have integrated many other products smoothly with Azure, AWS, and various third-party tools. The key issue is whether such integration is accepted from the customer side and according to governance inside the country. I must emphasize that 99% of my customers in Egypt are looking for on-prem solutions, with nothing going to the cloud.

I would summarize everything by giving Fortra's Digital Guardian a final rating of eight, primarily due to the pricing and their lack of focus on small to mid-sized companies, alongside the customer support aspects.

My main use case for Fortra's Digital Guardian is that I don't configure the software directly; instead, I experience it as an end-user on my corporate laptop where it runs silently in the background while I work, and I don't have any problems with it. It's a good tool for me.

I can give you a specific example of how Fortra's Digital Guardian interacts with my daily tasks: since it's fully managed by my company's IT department, there is no user interface or dashboard for the end-user, so I don't interact with the software. However, I run heavy Python scripts with Selenium that automate browser tasks and send data to n8n via HTTP requests. Many security tools tend to block these automated processes or flag them as suspicious, but Fortra's Digital Guardian runs smoothly in the background without interfering with my scripts or slowing down PyCharm or the tools I use, so it's a nice tool for me.

From my perspective as an end-user, the best features Fortra's Digital Guardian offers are that it's not a heavy tool. It's something that I can use while doing other tasks because it runs as a background process in the task manager. I can use heavy apps; for example, I run heavy Python scripts with Selenium or other things without any problem. I can have many things open or many apps open, and there is no problem with it; the system remains stable and does not hurt developer productivity, which is a very valuable thing.

Fortra's Digital Guardian's lightweight nature impacts my productivity and workflow positively because it delivers enterprise security without hurting developer productivity, and the system performance remains stable. Other security tools tend to block automated processes or flag them as suspicious or make your system very slow, and in this case, Fortra's Digital Guardian is useful for me because it doesn't stop any process, and the system performance remains stable.

Fortra's Digital Guardian has impacted my organization positively, especially for companies with remote or automation-focused teams, as it effectively prevents data leaks without bothering the users or blocking their development tools, making it very useful for a big company for preventing data leaks and for not blocking development tools. It's very useful for developers, and I can work with it without compromising system performance.

Since using Fortra's Digital Guardian, I have noticed positive outcomes: it has zero negative impact, so I think that it's very useful. I don't have any metrics or KPIs, but it's very useful for me as it runs smoothly in the background, and I didn't have any security incidents with it. However, I know that it is used for preventing data leaks, and I think that it is helpful for improving efficiency in many teams, providing many benefits from that.

Regarding how Fortra's Digital Guardian can be improved, the fact that it runs as a background process isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you don't get any visibility into what it's doing unless a security policy is triggered. In the future, they could improve that to give users more visibility about what's happening.

I give Fortra's Digital Guardian a seven because it doesn't compromise my system performance, but I don't get any visibility about what's happening and I don't know which criteria are used for preventing data leaks or classifying my files as sensitive or not sensitive. I would give it a ten if it had more visibility about what's happening or more contact with the user.

Regarding the accuracy and reliability of Fortra's Digital Guardian's output, since it's fully managed by my company's IT department, I don't get any visibility of what processes it runs internally, so I don't know how it classifies the files. Therefore, I cannot give you a certain answer about that.

I've been using Fortra's Digital Guardian since I entered the company, so it's three years since I started using it.

Fortra's Digital Guardian is stable; it doesn't have a negative effect on my system performance.

Regarding Fortra's Digital Guardian's scalability, from an end-user perspective, I cannot speak to the back-end server limits, but the software scales incredibly well on the endpoint side. Even when my laptop is under heavy load, running multiple instances of automated browsers via Selenium, PyCharm, and handling background API requests, the agent remains stable and completely unnoticeable. It runs at the kernel level without memory leaks or performance degradation over time, and for a large enterprise with thousands of remote endpoints, that level of scalability and stability is exactly what you need for a tool to scale properly.

I have never had to contact Fortra's Digital Guardian's customer support because the software has never crashed or caused any issues on my machine; it runs perfectly in the background. I don't have experience with that.

I didn't previously use a different solution, as Fortra's Digital Guardian was already the pre-installed and configured tool on my laptop since I joined my company, so I didn't experience any migration from a previous solution.

As I am not in the IT department, I don't have information about the costs, pricing, or licensing because I'm an end-user, and this software is managed fully by my company's IT department. I don't have direct visibility into the licensing costs, pricing negotiations, or setup experience, as the deployment was completely transparent for me.

I haven't seen a return on investment from my end-user perspective, and I don't handle corporate financial metrics or ROI data, but in terms of productivity, there is a clear return because Fortra's Digital Guardian runs smoothly and doesn't trigger false positives in my Python automated scripts. It doesn't block my workflows, saving me from wasting hours of troubleshooting security blocks that could happen with other tools, allowing me to stay focused on my tasks without any downtime.

My advice to others looking into using Fortra's Digital Guardian is that it's a very useful tool, and it doesn't compromise system performance, so there is no problem with using that.

Regarding Fortra's Digital Guardian's AI capabilities, I think that it is very helpful, and I appreciate when this kind of security software uses its AI because it's easier to detect what is really sensitive and what it's not. I think that it's a good advance in preventing data leaks or helping security departments in any enterprise.

Regarding whether my company has a business relationship with Fortra other than being a customer, I don't have visibility on that, but I think that they have a partnership.

I give Fortra's Digital Guardian a rating of seven out of ten.

I work with Fortra's Digital Guardian as a consultant. As of now, I am using Fortra's Digital Guardian for Endpoint DLP and Network DLP. Endpoint DLP stands out because it can detect activity without implementing any rules. Unlike other DLP solutions where you need to configure rules and policies, Fortra's Digital Guardian can detect any user activity after installation and commissioning without the need for policy implementation.

Fortra's Digital Guardian can detect Windows most effectively, but it can also detect other operating systems such as Linux and Mac, addressing the cross-platform protection issue.

Endpoint DLP can detect activity without implementing any rules. Unlike other DLP solutions where you need to configure rules and policies, Fortra's Digital Guardian can detect any user activity after installation and commissioning without the need for policy implementation; it just works by system default.

Real-time data visibility capability of Fortra's Digital Guardian helps me to manage data security effectively. It is effective at detecting insider threats, but its effectiveness mostly depends on how Active Directory is configured in the environment, as the system can synchronize with the corporate network's Active Directory.

I find it effective, especially if the user, when buying NDLP, also purchases Arc; Arc is most effective in reporting compared to the system itself for forensic and customized reports. Fortra's Digital Guardian can detect Windows most effectively, but it can also detect other operating systems such as Linux and Mac, addressing the cross-platform protection issue.

Several areas need improvement. System reporting and default system reporting are not totally usable and require customization to be practical. I find Fortra's Digital Guardian to be somewhat expensive, not highly or totally expensive, but somewhat expensive nonetheless.

I see some limitations regarding scalability in Fortra's Digital Guardian; every application has its own limitations, and while there are limits, we attempt to work around them, sometimes needing to collaborate with Fortra's Digital Guardian engineers to find solutions. Latency issues with Fortra's Digital Guardian depend on the configuration in terms of network, so while it can be acceptable, it really depends on how well it is set up.

I have been using Fortra's Digital Guardian since 2016 until now, and I worked there full-time for seven years, but now it is part-time.

I see some limitations regarding scalability in Fortra's Digital Guardian; every application has its own limitations, and while there are limits, we attempt to work around them, sometimes needing to collaborate with Fortra's Digital Guardian engineers to find solutions.

Technical support from Fortra can vary; sometimes I encounter great engineers with high experience who can resolve issues quickly, but other times I face less experienced engineers which can cause delays in issue resolution.

I would rate technical support at eight points overall.

I have only used Fortra's Digital Guardian, and I have tried simulations with other products. Forcepoint is also good; however, what I mostly use is Fortra's Digital Guardian EDLP and NDLP.

Installation of Fortra's Digital Guardian is straightforward.

I see some return on investment with Fortra's Digital Guardian since the license is based on the endpoints, which is where you can save.

Forcepoint is also good; however, what I mostly use is Fortra's Digital Guardian EDLP and NDLP. While I find Forcepoint acceptable, I cannot entirely compare it with Fortra's Digital Guardian as the reporting is a notable drawback, making it a headache when creating reports.

Real-time data visibility capability of Fortra's Digital Guardian helps me to manage data security effectively, which is a good point compared to other DLP solutions. For the specific compliance needs that Fortra's Digital Guardian addresses for my company, it depends on the environment; from my experience, compliance is acceptable since every client usually has similar compliance needs that the system can integrate with, although it has limitations as well. I give Fortra's Digital Guardian a rating of nine points since it deserves that recognition.

Fortra's Digital Guardian serves as our main DLP tool. We utilize its policy to either block or allow users depending on their use cases.

For example, we configure policies to block users from copying files to external sources or external sites or other non-Accenture authorized storages, including cloud storages or any unauthorized file movement. Policies are in place to block those activities. For some people who have certain exemptions depending on their project or client needs or approved use cases, we also implement exemption policies.

One of the best features that we have utilized over the years is the tagging or file tagging that Fortra's Digital Guardian offers. With this file tagging, everything that needs to be controlled or monitored is blocked for any file transfer because once the file is tagged by Fortra's Digital Guardian, that tag remains wherever the file is placed. We are able to monitor where that file is going.

We have been able to widen our scope when it comes to file monitoring compared to our previous DLP tool. Our previous tool did not offer the same technicalities. We are able to block more use cases or file transfer scenarios with Fortra's Digital Guardian than we could with our previous tool. We are able to widen our scope when it comes to monitoring those files or flagging those files.

The tool needs to be more optimized in terms of CPU usage. Most users experience a little bit of slowness, especially during upgrades. Others have experienced incompatibility issues that result in either slowness or access issues.

Fortra's Digital Guardian does have some mishaps and imperfections, but it has been really helpful for us as a DLP tool. It gives its purpose and actually does its job, but it still could be better.

I have been using Fortra's Digital Guardian for about two and a half years.

Fortra's Digital Guardian is stable.

Regarding scalability, we have not encountered many issues when we started to roll out Fortra's Digital Guardian to all of our users. When it comes to licensing on every server, we are able to smoothly request additional licenses for every server.

Customer support is great. We are able to communicate openly with the customer support team, and their support pages are readily available.

For others looking into using Fortra's Digital Guardian, I would suggest learning the steps for monitoring and maintaining the server, especially policy configuration, since it is quite tricky and includes a lot of processes. I would recommend learning first before attempting anything at a production level.

Previously, we used Symantec. However, we had to switch because of the scope for the DLP tool. Symantec does not have policy tagging, which is why we switched to Fortra's Digital Guardian.

The initial setup does not require a lot of manual work. We use templates that are already in place in our dev environments, and then we tweak those templates to how we need or want it to behave.

Regarding return on investment, I cannot provide information about money saved or time saved or whether fewer employees were needed. As a general impression, I can say that Fortra's Digital Guardian is a worthwhile investment when it comes to DLP tools. It is reliable, it has a broad scope, and the vendor is easy to reach out to and makes it easy to request assistance.

Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, I am not aware of the actual cost since only the leadership discusses that. Regarding licensing, I believe we are able to get as much licensing as needed, but I am not certain about the cost.

If I am not mistaken, the management team has other options in line aside from Fortra's Digital Guardian. However, Fortra's Digital Guardian was chosen because of the policy tagging use case or capability.

From my experience, we have not experienced any inaccuracies.

Fortra's Digital Guardian does have some mishaps and imperfections, but it has been really helpful for us as a DLP tool. It gives its purpose and actually does its job, but it still could be better.

Regarding security, the console and tool itself are secure. Most aspects of the console or the tool are not something that we can access unless we need to or unless we are approved for access. In terms of access, I can say it is secure.

My current company is the only customer, and they do not have any existing relationship or partnership.

I have not mentioned any other information. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.

We have a wider range of use cases for Digital Guardian, it detects the movement and classification of files within the endpoint server. We can easily check or gather evidence for what is really being transferred, sets of data, and more. The sol There are a lot of cases that Digital Guardian provides compared to Netskope DLP.

When it comes to Digital Guardian, it has a wide range of policies and use cases that you can leverage. It's easy to detect sensitive information, globally known and personally identifiable information. You can customize policies to your own requirements.

I really like the wide range of policies, easy detection of sensitive info, and customization of policies.

Moreover, the solution has user analytics that detects a wide range of data channels such as external drives, mail, internal and external storage, and cloud storage.

In my opinion, there's a need for an extensive skill set or knowledge of creating policies. There's room for improvement to make it more user-friendly in creating custom rules and policies.

In future releases, I would like to see a quick glance at detected data without downloading the actual file for both Windows and MacOS.

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. It's pretty stable, and we haven't experienced downtime or major issues with the solution.

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten since it's scalable in terms of adding more features and policies. It's easily manageable with this solution.

We have around 4,000 end users using this solution. We have recently increased the usage. Before, we had less than 3,000 licenses. 

The support is an expert in guiding you through creating policies. Since it's somewhat hard to create on your own, you have a customer success manager who can help you with the solution. So, the support is pretty much awesome.

Positive

We compared with other DLP solutions like Symantec, comparing them with their evaluation.

We chose this solution because of the different features of Digital Guardian compared to Symantec DLP. We chose Digital Guardian because it offers more capabilities.

We have the SaaS or MSSP type of services with Digital Guardian. So, I would rate my experience with the initial setup a nine out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy to set up. It's more on plug-and-play. Just install the agents for your machines, and it'll detect the data for you.

The deployment probably took us a month or more to ensure the modules were running, and the right policies were in place—roughly around more than a month to detect the solution.

Fortra will ask you about the use cases, what important data you want to monitor, and the policies you want to enable. They will ask how many endpoints we are looking at and the specific region for the management console. They also ask if you want Digital Guardian to monitor the solution for you, as we have a managed service offering.

Four people are needed for implementation: an IT admin, a security architect, an enterprise security team, and a project manager—additionally, the implementation team of Fortra.

No maintenance is required.  Digital Guardian handles the back end, and any requests or additions can be made by simply emailing them or filing a ticket. There is no maintenance required from the end user perspective. 

We have accurate detection on data protection and more visibility on different data channels compared to other DLP solutions. So, basically, more on the principle, there is ROI.  

So, we have seen an 80% to 90% return on investment. Better time to operate, quicker response to the detection. So, it's pretty much good.

The pricing is not cheap, but there's value in what you purchase, around eight out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive. 

Since it's not a cheap solution, you can do more with security, or we have bigger use cases. If you have the money, I recommend going with Digital Guardian.

The price can be a smaller businesses. You will pay based on the modules you want to have. So, it's pretty much scalable.

Just know your use cases before contacting or purchasing it. Make sure that you don't purchase more than what you need. When implementing Digital Guardian DLP, you need to know what you are protecting.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

I have been handling the clients who use the product. My current company is the reseller connected with the tool from the time it was known as Digital Guardian, and then recently after it was changed to Fortra's Digital Guardian. It has been almost five years working with the tool.

The tool's use cases depend on the client's needs and whether it can apply the DLP or nDLP features in a company's environment. My company needs to ask the clients what things they need in terms of eDLP so that we can compensate and finalize a solution to apply to the environment. So far, the tool has been working fine, but sometimes we are facing struggles. Support from Fortra's Digital Guardian does offer help to our company.

The trouble with the tool is its ability to integrate with a third-party application. For example, integrating an SIEM with the firewalls that the client currently uses can be difficult. The main thing is from Fortra's Digital Guardian perspective itself, which is to apply it directly to the client's environment. In my experience, every client has their own infrastructure that needs to be compensated so that the tool can work according to the client's infrastructure.

The improvements required in the product depend on the developers because, from time to time, vulnerabilities happen in Microsoft or other operating systems, which are encountered directly by the users. Once Fortra's engineers know about the vulnerabilities impacting the operating systems, they will develop or rectify the bugs or areas that are causing an issue in the tool. We can send the logs to the application developer, who can then rectify the issues in the tool.

I have been using Fortra's Digital Guardian since 2018. My company is in partnership with Fortra's Digital Guardian.

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

My company's clients consist of small, medium, and enterprise businesses.

The solution's technical support can be frustrating for a user. I rate the technical support a seven to eight out of ten.

Neutral

As long as you know the flow and how the setup phase works, the process can be totally straightforward. If you encounter the tool for the first time, you may need to understand where the configuration has to be done. My experience with the tool was one year, and after that, I became familiar with the product and how to apply its features, making it a bit easy for me to use.

The solution is deployed on the cloud and on-premises models.

I cannot discuss the product's financial benefits because that is the responsibility of another team. From an operational perspective, the tool is okay for me as long as it fulfills my clients' needs.

As per my experience with both of my clients, I would say that the price is a bit high, but it didn't matter once they noticed the thing they wanted for their application. As long as your needs are fulfilled, even if the price is high, you will buy the tool.

The features of Fortra's Digital Guardian that have been the most impactful in protecting sensitive information revolve around the areas of eDLP and nDLP since they can monitor and detect without deploying any policy. Unlike the other DLP tools, where you need to deploy the policy before it can be detected, with eDLP, once it is installed accordingly and includes the agents, Fortra's Digital Guardian eDLP can monitor whatever activities are done by users. When it comes to nDLP, the discovery part is good. Fortra's engineers create a lot of system default policies. Once you install it in your system, the default policy can be customized according to the client's needs. The system default policy is something you can customize and can be made workable on the client side.

I don't have experience integrating AI with the tool.

I recommend the tool to others, especially as long as I notice that what one needs is applicable to Fortra's Digital Guardian application. I have already recommended the tool four times to others.

I rate the tool a ten out of ten.