McAfee Complete Data Protection Reviews

The most important feature of McAfee Complete Data Protection to my customers is the ePO or the management console. It's easy to use and it's scalable. You can also generate the reports you want on the console. It's a mature management console. The features that McAfee Complete Data Protection has, for example, anti-spam features and other features can also be found on other solutions, but the most unique feature you can find in the solution is the ePO itself, the management console.

Though there may be some ransomware detection modules now in McAfee Complete Data Protection, it's a field that McAfee should focus on, particularly having integration with some EDR or other add-ons. This is so McAfee Complete Data Protection would have more accuracy in detecting new ransomware in the market.

What I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is for its pricing to be more cost-effective because some competitors have cheaper pricing, so McAfee Complete Data Protection can't compete. Sometimes, some new vendors offer other solutions rather than McAfee Complete Data Protection, to win customers over, and this is a loss for McAfee.

I've been working with McAfee Complete Data Protection since 2010, so twelve years now. The most recent work I've done with the product was three or four months ago.

McAfee Complete Data Protection is mostly stable.

McAfee Complete Data Protection is a product that's easy to scale.

I got in touch with the support team for McAfee Complete Data Protection about certain cases such as enhancement inquiries, some bugs, and features that needed to be fixed, so I contacted the team many times. The support team was very helpful.

I'd rate McAfee Complete Data Protection support four out of five.

I find the initial setup for McAfee Complete Data Protection simple, but for someone who's just getting to know the solution, it would be difficult.

The cost of McAfee Complete Data Protection isn't that high but isn't that cheap as well, so it's in the middle.

For a fair comparison, I'd say McAfee Complete Data Protection is comparable to Symantec Endpoint Protection and CrowdStrike.

I'm a reseller of McAfee Complete Data Protection. My company has a partnership with McAfee.

Most of my customers, around 80 percent to 90 percent, deployed McAfee Complete Data Protection on-premises.

For a hundred users of McAfee Complete Data Protection, only one person is required for the maintenance of the product.

In my opinion, what makes McAfee Complete Data Protection better than other solutions is that it's comprehensive. You can manage different McAfee solutions from one console. For example, you can choose McAfee DLP, antivirus, endpoint protection, application control, and encryption solutions, then manage all via just one management console, so it's the strongest point of McAfee Complete Data Protection.

I'm rating the solution eight out of ten.

I use the MR services or active response, which scans actively on the machine.

Our compliance department understands that we need a secure environment free from viruses.

They need to segregate McAfee Complete Data Protection for endpoints and servers. We need two different platforms one for endpoints and one for servers. This will provide stronger security from a compliance perspective.

I have been using McAfee Complete Data Protection for a few years.

McAfee Complete Data Protection provides stability and is a good product.

After we deployed McAfee Complete Data Protection we found it scalable.

McAfee Complete Data Protection has a good technical support team.

Positive

We did switch to see what the latest in technology trends are now and evaluate them.

The initial setup was straightforward. In our case, we needed two individuals to deploy McAfee Complete Data Protection.

We had a dedicated team to complete our deployment. This deployment required a year to implement.  Larger organizations will take longer.

We currently have a contract option with McAfee Complete Data Protection.

I would recommend anyone interested in McAfee Complete Data Protection should do their own assessment. After they do their assessment then they can decide if the product is for them. I would rate McAfee Complete Data Protection a seven out of ten.

It helps prevent my machine from hacking and wireless attacks.

It's easy to use, and so far, it's been successful for me.  I receive updates quite frequently.

It's user-friendly and has been performing well for me for the past five years.

The advanced threat prevention capabilities are pretty good; my laptop is well-secured.

The price could be improved.

I have been using it for five years now. 

I would rate its overall performance and stability an eight out of ten. I consider eight to be excellent, but there's always room for improvement.

I'm only using it on my laptop, and it's working fine.  

I've never had to reach out to the support.

The initial setup was easy. 

It worked for me: it's easy to use and has been very effective.

The return on investment is that my machine is safe. It's working well for me; no viruses, no unauthorized access.

The licensing is yearly, and the cost is pretty reasonable. I've only used the standard licensing options. I don't have to pay for the extra costs. 

It's not the cheapest; I'd rate it around six out of ten, with ten being the highest and one the cheapest.

I chose McAfee because it was referred to me by a friend.

I would recommend using it. Some of my relatives/colleagues are also using it because I recommended it.

In the five years I've used it, I haven't had any virus in my system.

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. It keeps evolving. As long as the threats are advancing, I believe McAfee will continue to update and advise us effectively.

We use the solution to manage all incoming and outgoing traffic of the user's laptop.

The solution has good monitoring and interface features for the DPM layer.

The solution's pricing could be better compared to Kaspersky Endpoint Security.

I have been using McAfee Data Protection for three to four years.

Stability-wise, the solution works properly.

I rate the solution's scalability an eight out of ten. We have 150 users in our organization.

The solution's customer support team's response time is good. We raise the ticket on a support portal and communicate with the technical team. They provide the best solution as soon as possible.

Positive

We have used Kaspersky Endpoint Security before. We switched to McAfee because of the pricing.

The solution is easy to manage, configure, and monitor. It also has a good UI. I rate it an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution to protect sensitive data and general protection.

The protection on offer is very good at protecting the organization. We can protect our assets and our IP.

The data protection has been very good. Customers like the product based on the amount of protection they are getting.

We can scale the solution.

It's a stable product.

The UI could be improved a bit.

Other than that, the solution has been very good.

I've used the solution for about a year. 

It's been stable and reliable so far. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution is scalable. 

We've never escalated any issues to technical support. I can't speak to how helpful or responsive they would be. 

The solution has a moderately difficult setup. It's not easy or difficult. It's intermediate. We can deploy the product in 15 to 25 minutes on average.

At this time, I haven't noticed any necessary maintenance.  

I'm not sure of the exact pricing of the product.

We are using the latest version of the solution. 

I'd likely recommend the solution to others. It's a good place to start in terms of developing a security strategy.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

It can be used for all mobile works laptops, which are more susceptible to data loss. Or it can be used for file servers where you put your file servers on the cloud, and so the data addresses and transit are encrypted.

They offer very good accepted standards. The solution is compliant and offers good support. They offer pretty good security due to their standards compliance. 

It is part of the DLP and works well for that use case.

They could be better in terms of Complete Data Protection. There are a lot of components that get involved there. 

I would like to see a bit more stability.

The initial setup process could be simpler. 

I've used the solution for the last four years or so.

I haven't used it much, and therefore cannot speak to the overall stability, although I would like it to be more stable in general. We've faced problems on and off.

Having not used it very much, I have never tried to scale the product.

It is a complicated initial implementation process. The implementation is not straightforward. My File and Folder protection take at least two days to three days to fix and deploy. To get all the end-users on, it might take three or so days. 

You do need to purchase a license in order to use the solution. 

It is a pretty good product. Overall, I would rate it a seven out of ten.

I am actually very familiar with the on-premises solution. I am just starting to try out the cloud version. I have not really had the opportunity to exercise the capabilities fully because I need to buy the license to do that. I work with Cyber Security Africa Distribution, but even being that type of organization we still have to purchase our license to try the full solution. I have seen it work with the MVISION Cloud, but I have not tried out the data protection path. But I have reviewed all the features.  

I am not really an end-user so my answer is addressed talking more from the integration side. I do a lot of integration, and from this point of view, using McAfee as a data protection solution and for data classification is most valuable. I think McAfee actually fits very well with providing literally all the use cases for you. If end-users cannot classify data and solve the problem of data classification, then they can not successfully move forward and get on to data discovery using something like the McAfee Discover running it from the endpoint or running it from the network and doing network DLP (Data Loss Prevention/Data Loss Protection). We are sometimes having to look at it more from a perspective of the cost rather than actually solving the problem. It will work out so long as it helps end-users to classify their data. Some clients have some budget restrictions.  

So, for some use cases, I think it will be good for a certain type of user. It would be best for those who need data enforcement from both endpoints and from the network. I think it is perfect for shadow IT as well. With the proper policies in place, it could prevent you from sending corporate data to both cloud storage or to flash drives. If you look at it as a device control feature, it limits what you can send to removable storage devices. Configured a different way, you can send your other unclassified data to cloud storage and the like.  

Looking at it from a general use case as a security consultant, what most organizations try to prevent is data extrication. If you can prevent people from moving corporate data to their private clouds or to their own personal storage devices, you would have saved yourself a lot of stress. If the employee exits their security system carelessly, someone can actually extricate data during that process breach.  

Another use case is preventing loss of confidentiality. If you are trying to ensure the confidentiality of your data, using McAfee DLP you can prevent certain classification levels of data from being sent to printers or sent through emails.  

There is file and folder encryption and there is also complete McAfee Drive Encryption. The beauty of McAfee is that they are not looking at encryption from one single standpoint. It is a broader solution.  

If I have FileVault on my Mac Pro, I can protect my Mac. McAfee has encryption that helps you manage encryption natively. If you have BitLocker and you prefer to use it on your products, you can and you can still have a central management console for both your endpoint and your other encryption with McAfee. I think that is actually a perfect example of how you can use MNE (Management of Native Encryption) to manage your native encryption along with other products.  

I think in looking at this as to how it can be improved, the drive encryption side is not as straightforward as it could be. It is a little bit heavy on the configuration part. There are a lot of options to look at. Maybe it is just that the training needs to fine-tuned a little bit or maybe the UI needs to be a little more interactive. There are so many options that you have in the product that you may not know exactly what something does if you enable an option. There is a gray area, for example, as to whether or not it is best practice is to have a pre-boot authentication or not. The usual argument is that if you do not turn on pre-boot authentication, your encryption can actually be bypassed.  

There is a question and it is not an argument that you can easily answer because the product is not doing enough to help you out. They need a publication that actually sets that record straight, or probably they could have something like a best practice configuration guide so users can take advantage of that for determining exactly what options are best for them.  

People do not always know what are the best practices for their environment. They try out a lot of stuff, and then if it does not work with their system, they just come to the conclusion that the solution does not work. They blame the product rather than the configuration which they do not have set correctly. So with a best practice configuration guide or something similar, it would help people take proper advantage of the solution and help them to better see the total benefits of what the solution has to offer.  

So their configuration is complex, but this can have advantages as well if they provided the user with the information they need.  

I think I have been using McAfee Endpoint Solution or McAfee Data Protection solutions for about five to six years now. I have been following the company's journey with product development since version 9.2 or 9.3.  

McAfee Complete Data Protection is quite stable. I think the only module that a lot of people seem to have had some issues with is the file and folder encryption. I am not talking about this from my point of view as I never experienced the issue personally. At one point, I used to manage a team of seven people and all my engineers always had issues with file and folder encryption.  

In reality, I think file and folder encryption is actually more complicated than server encryption. Well, for me I think it is. Looking at encryption from two points, drive encryption does disk encryption. It does not encrypt to the file level. File and folder encryption actually encrypts to the individual file and folder level. I think the real option is — and I am not sure if McAfee is trying to achieve this drive management with file encryption or not — but I think for me if FRP (File and Removable Media Protection) worked more like a drive management system, then it would be perfect. The idea would be for it to store files and folders more like drive management than just using encryption. Right now, the way it works is more like just locking the file or the folder. If it worked more like drive management, I think there would be more value to it than there is to it today.  

To be honest, I have actually never really needed to call support overall. The product has been working all these years and I do not have any major problems with the functionality.  

Data protection solutions are quite expensive, which is expected. I have had customers complain about the licensing costs of various solutions.  

Where I actually have issues with cost would be in the cloud. If you look at the MVISION portfolio, you see that the device control is not the same as on-premises. I am not sure which parts of the MVISION products actually have device controls with the encryption.  

The problem is that after seeing that single product within MVISION, in order to access it from the cloud, you still have to buy the full version of it. As we are on-prem and just beginning testing on the cloud, I am not exactly sure of the capabilities.  

I think that part of the pricing is confusing to a lot of end-users. When they purchase the license from us they see that they have device control. But when I get to the cloud, there is no device control. As resellers, that puts us in a bad place, because we have to explain it to the customer. They have to purchase something additional for device protection that they thought they already had.  

I think there was no communication about that change in the licensing when it was changed over to the cloud. So we had to take the initiative in doing other things when coaching our customers.  

There is always back and forth when doing consultations with the customers before we finally come to a configuration that is the right one for the client. I look at information online and then see they have device control on the cloud but then there is a question as to why the client is using device control in certain circumstances. There is a question as to why they are putting certain data on the cloud even. Some do not understand best practices and that putting data on the cloud is not the solution they want anyway.   

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this McAfee Complete Data Protection product as an eight or even a nine-out-of-ten. Just for the encryption part, I think I will say nine. The solution is actually quite stable and otherwise, it is quite good. I would definitely recommend this product to other users. The core of McAfee has been my end solution for all types of situations for me for a long time. If I have not switched yet to work with any other solution, obviously, I think it is a good one and I definitely recommend McAfee.  

On the DLP side, I am not sure if there is much they can change in that system, because I think one part compliments the other. But on the DLP you do not have the same type of endpoints control you have in the cloud. So I think on the DLP side, they must provide better controls so the solutions are more similar in that way from both ends. If there is a way to balance from what you have on-premises and what you have in cloud, then it becomes a better product from the user perspective.  

For data encryption, I think they need to work on the interface and the configuration and make it easier. If it could work more like a comprehensive management system, it will make more sense. It will make more sense and it will actually create more market value for end-users than just doing file and folder encryption.  

The possibilities for integration with McAfee CDP are important. You can integrate with that solution. Not all people in all environments want to run McAfee for Endpoints. Some people also want to have that kind of synergy McAfee has in DLP and encryption. So if you are trying to encrypt the network for a sensitive environment and you have a checkpoint policy to use McAfee on your endpoint and on your DLP, configure it to mask or to encrypt a file. There has to be that type of relationship between DLP and encryption for it to work properly and accomplish these ultimate goals.  

Some organizations use other solutions for the DLP and they also have that in the architecture. I have not yet seen that scenario, but I can imagine that there can be environments that start with McAfee endpoints and they have access to encryption and they want to extend that integration. It might be possible to do but it seems to me that it is not actually a very common way of doing things.  

We deploy McAfee products mostly as service delivery providers for our customers. About 60% to 70% of the time we use this solution as the complete, modular anti-virus component for data and endpoint protection. We use the advanced version for device control. Sometimes we integrate Endpoint Encryption for file and folder protection and maybe add in McAfee Application Control to block unwanted applications. We provide services for prevention as well as endpoint and firewall solutions. Depending on what the client wants, there are many of the McAfee modules in this line that we work with to provide an integrated solution.  

Unfortunately, we are not using McAfee in our company because there are policies that come from our main offices in India rather than here in the UAE. That is the only reason we are using another solution. But for my own purposes, this is the solution I have chosen to use in my home.  

Our customers are mainly medium-sized organizations although we have some enterprise clients. When I say enterprise, I mean companies that have more than 1000 machines. I have very big clients that have more than 2,000 end-users and they are using this product.  

Often the customers have requirements where we need to provide them with endpoint DLP (Data Loss Prevention) solutions. McAfee's DLP is a very good product. It gives you accessibility to either allow or block many preferences on a machine and does a good job of protecting against any data loss. This is what I think is the most valuable feature in the solution.  

The improvement that I think most needs to be addressed is a claim from many customers that I receive all the time. They say that the product consumes too much RAM and CPU. It makes clones in the machine and that eats up resources.  

It makes the clone as long as it is running on the machine. The problem is big enough for users that I need to have another smart, reliable solution that can be deployed instead if the customer does not have the hardware to allow the product to consume the needed volume of RAM and CPU. If McAfee were able to do all it does without stealing so much of the resources on a machine, I would not have this problem of having to consider other deployments.  

We have been using the solution for between six or seven years. Earlier it was called VSP. At that time it was not complete all-in-one protection. It has been only for maybe two or three years they have changed the name to Complete Data Protection and made this well-integrated product.  

From my point of view, the product is very stable and the support team is very responsive. If they release a new update and there was a bug or something, they release a patch or fix for it very quickly.  

The scalability of the solution is there. McAfee is one of the oldest security companies. They have been creating and releasing security solutions since 1987, so they know what they are doing and they do it well.  

We deploy the solution to medium and enterprise clients so it can scale up and handle larger clients.  

Essentially, as a service delivery partner, we are also technical support to some level.  

Because we deploy for clients, we work with a variety of solutions in order to meet their needs. While I am working mostly with McAfee solutions, I'm also very familiar with the broader classification of security solutions. I have worked with various PAM (Privileged Access Management) solutions. I don't only work with McAfee portfolio or their security products but it is what I deploy most often. I am familiar with Symantec, LogRhythm SIEM solution, and Forcepoint. Also, I have worked with security solutions for USB, for the web, for email, and for secure file transfer solutions, so I am very familiar with a lot of security solutions and how they work.  

The main difference between McAfee Complete Data Protection and other solutions is that McAfee has a strong point as a comprehensive security solution. With Endpoint Security, you don't have to have different management interfaces to manage your endpoint solutions. It all can be managed from one single server in one interface. This might be their main and most powerful advantage because users do not have to mix and matching various products to accomplish what a security suite can. They also do not have to deal with potential incompatibilities.  

The initial setup is something I have done often so it is very clear how to do it and it is easy for me.  

On average it takes very little time to deploy. For the management console EPO (ePolicy Orchestrator) it is a maximum of maybe half an hour for it to be deployed. It depends on the server. Deploying the endpoint from the management console also does not take much time. If the network and the firewall ports are open, normally it takes only 5 to 10 minutes and you can deploy it in batches of 50 or 100 machines in each batch. So the total time depends on how many batches, but the installation on the machines can take as little as 5 to 10 minutes.   

We do all of our own implementations and the implementations for clients as well.  

The advice I have for people considering this type of security solution is not to listen to what all the companies advertise. You can see bad reviews, maybe good reviews as well, but you need to use that information from the reviews as a starting point for your own observations and not just believe what reviews say. I know some reviews on the internet are fair, but some reviews are not. Try to do a POC (Proof of concept) and conduct testing for yourself. Define your policies as per your requirements for your situation and your company and choose products that meet the needs of that model. If you want to install any solution with the default policies, it will probably not fit your requirements exactly. You will need to do enhancements and fine-tune the solution, so you will need a solution that can be tuned. Give the solutions a try. Do the POC for one or two months and then you can decide if it is a good solution for you.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product as an eight of ten. To make it ten or even a nine, they need to resolve the issues with how the solution consumes PC resources.