McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator Reviews

We are a system integrator and McAffee MVISION ePO is one of the security products that we implement for our clients.

The primary use case of my customer is to protect the endpoints. It is important because of people who are working from home, and the diverse platforms that are apart from the workers who have a different environment.

They are also spread over different countries and many different towns. The cloud platform is the best to communicate the management of devices and security.

Also, besides, it offers protection compliance.

What I like the most is the ability to manage centrally, to manage the various devices, the platform, and the endpoint, all from one console.

The rollout to cover the online resources, such as SharePoint, One Drive, and Office 365 doesn't seem to have a very clear path. There is a lot of different information all over the place and there's probably a need to have some technical ability to understand how to bring solutions to fruition.

There doesn't seem to be any documentation in place to guide you. Unless you are a technical person, it's very difficult to bring that solution to fruition.

The product is good but they just have to document how to use the different products and bring them into one platform, one solution. You shouldn't need to be a technical person to do that.

You can roll out to all of the endpoints easily, but now if I need to protect the online cloud resources like SharePoint sites or SharePoint libraries, that is where the biggest worry is because people feel things like the cloud contains threats. They're not concerned with how to do it or to make sure that they have visibility and protection. 

This is where it gets a little bit tricky, but even McAfee themselves are not giving a very clear road map or very clear documentation to know this is how to go about it, and this is how to achieve it. Again, we do not have to have a technical background to be able to synchronize.

I think that they should drop their high costs of training. Many people will train themselves and still sell the product. They implement their product and they will recommend it. If they make the training available then the uptake will be higher.

We have been working with this solution for approximately one year.

I have not experienced any issues with stability.

I haven't been faced with any limitations regarding scalability.

McAfee's technical support is a bit of a letdown. Also, there's no good support within our region. The people who are within our region do nothing, they just sell you licenses. The moment that you have a problem, you are on your own. They keep bouncing you between this department or person, or you end up with somebody who has no idea, and then now there is so much up and down that we end up now doing things on our own.

You can send an email to support and you will get a response in a couple of days and maybe that response is to refer you to someone else.

Bringing the ePO and central management on board was very easy and very straightforward.

For large enterprise companies, the price should be alright, but for small businesses, the uptake might be slow because, for these clients, the price doesn't look very attractive.

So people will compare, they are going to acknowledge and pick up a CD or go with Kaspersky, or Bitdefender. They feel that it's easier than suffering to get the information, that's the problem. One of the advantages of working remotely is that you can pick up a Bitdefender DVD and pop it into all of the laptops and other devices.

I can recommend this solution, maybe because of my own background and my own portfolio, I have been working with it for a year and I know how to market it, I know what works and what doesn't work.

When It comes to the training, it's a letdown because online training is very expensive, and they want people to sell and use their product. They are making training modules, which are very expensive.

They also tell you that if you want to buy the product, you must be certified, but to be certified is very expensive at my own cost, then I can sell the product. There are many products like this being sold in our region. You sell the products for them but they charge you for training.

It's a good product, it's a good solution, it's straightforward, and it works very well. At the same time, we shouldn't have to pay to learn it, just to sell it. They should brunt the costs of the training for their resellers.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I use the solution for two things - as an antivirus for a spider scan enterprise and endpoint protection, and also to make application whitelisting, or application blocking, where we only allow certain applications to run on the server, in case the server has been compromised. That could mean our ePO scripts or anything might be compromised and it can't run. We install a plug-in so it won't run any executables which are not whitelisted. We're a cyber security company and a customer of McAfee. 

The security is a key feature and the console is very user friendly. I like that there are multiple options for reporting. It's a helpful tool. 

The product could have a single plug-in that would have multiple uses rather than a single plug-in which is used for a single purpose. Each aspect has a separate plug-in. They should concentrate on providing something for all of the options that are available.

I've been using this solution for about three years. 

The stability of the product is pretty good. Our entire company uses it and it's deployed throughout. We have five people maintaining it. It runs in the backend and there are around 1,500 to 2,000 people who benefit from it. 

The technical support is pretty poor. 

The initial setup is quite straightforward. You just need to set up an SEO database in the backend and couple the SEO database in the ePO management console. It's quite simple. 

All the endpoint security solutions operate in a similar manner. If you take it as a baseline and if you want to get acquainted with a security solution then I think this is definitely a good tool. Of course, the costing and other factors need to be taken into consideration. 

I would rate this solution a seven out of 10. 

It is an endpoint protection product. You use it to centrally manage security policies and push out configurations, then you manage the antivirus on endpoints.

We use the on-premise deployment model.

If you're talking about endpoint, you have virus detection, behavioral-based detection in advanced threat detection, and even have host-based firewall, etc. Each of these would be a separate product that would integrate into the endpoint solution. From a cost perspective that would scale pretty quickly, which is not cheap. Also, it creates management overhead. We have to administer and configure it separately with a separate lists of policies. This is where it gets a bit complex, but it gives us the power to do things very specific. 

Once you understand how to use it, it becomes easy to use.

The product is solid. It's a bit of a beast. We've used it in a very large environment where we manage around 150,000 endpoints, and it is able to cope with the load. It helps that our architecture around it is pretty solid. So, it works like a charm. 

There have been some issues with bugs and things from a functionality perspective. However, there are issues with everything.

It will become stable. We have had very specific issues. I am not blaming the product, as it could be the way the product is configured. There have been bugs and utilization problems where it may not be compatible with a certain operating system. You might find that there are certain processes that are just chewing up a lot of memory. There are known issues and errors. Things that do exist. We have seen this things quite often. It's just a matter of McAfee releasing a hotfix or stable version, which then needs to be tested and deployed correctly. We've been seeing quite a few of these.

These are systems with developer workstations or developer system services and are highly resource heavy. So, the API always has an impact.

It is scalable. We have 150,000 endpoints using an agent handler in between. The scalability does require us to do a lot of planning for things, like bandwidth. The problem is with the complexity. If one thing breaks, it can also impact a bunch of other things.

It serves a purpose. If you set it up right, it can really manage a very complex environment which require fine tuning where there are a lot of exceptions. That's what it caters to. It can just do those specifics in those exceptional situations, which is good.

While there are bugs and a few functionality issues, it is just a matter of raising them with the support team. However, support is part of the problem as well. You want everything to be seamless in a perfect world, but the support is spread across different countries. They have Level 1, 2, and 3. Level 1 is most likely in a developing country. They don't provide the best service.

Struggles like this impact the experience. If you have an issue, you want to get expedited within a certain amount of time. Sometimes, it just takes longer to get things done.

It's easy to deploy. This does depend on the complexity of your environment, and it depends on how you set it up. You can make it as granular as you want. 

It is not something that's very easy to administer. You have to go for a course with training modules. Once you understand how to use it, it becomes easy. For a beginner, it's not that easy. It's a very complex system. If you know what you're doing, it becomes easy.

You get what you pay for.

McAfee tries to package different things into different products, then sell them as different products with different licenses. They just split everything up into multiple things. That's just their sales pitch and how they do it.

It does provide a lot of functionality. 

ePO Cloud takes away a lot of the management administration overhead. Though, I haven't tried this feature.

The use of the solution is the same as in any industry, like IT, manufacturing, or the banking sector. My company deals with customers who use McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator. In general, my company uses the product for various types of customers.

ENS is one of the features in the product that is useful as it basically services an antivirus solution. The DLP feature in McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is good. McAfee Device Control and McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention (DLP) help users set the category filter, or we can set the classification based on which users can restrict the traffic that goes outside the organization.

There are challenges regarding the compatibility and agent functionality of the product. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement.

The setup and deployment phases need to be improved.

The issues with the integration capabilities of the product, specifically the ones that are deployed on an on-premises model, need to be improved.

I have been using McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator for five years. My company has a partnership with CrowdStrike and McAfee.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a five out of ten. I had some issues with bugs and some breakdowns in the solution.

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

Though the scalability of the product is good, if McAfee sorts out the connectivity issues related to the agents, then it can be made a better product. The product has been in the market for a long time. The tool has been in the market during a time when no other OEM products were even introduced. The tool should improve some of its services.

The product's initial setup phase was difficult since only a professional can do it. A fresher or a new person cannot take care of the installation of the tool. A fresher or a new person cannot take care of the installation of the tool. Agent installation is easy, but the other features related to the antivirus and DLP functionalities can be implemented only with the help of a professional or skilled person since they can be deployed only from the server console. The person should be aware of the server console functionality.

I faced many challenges when deploying the product, especially some connectivity and compatibility issues.

Though the tool is good for centralizing security management, there are a lot of issues in the product, which stem from compatibility issues with different operating systems. McAfee uses multiple engines to run on the endpoint system, which causes the engines and definitions to have many issues. Ultimately, everything in the tool is based on definitions, and it needs to be updated regularly.

There are certain limitations with the integration capabilities of the product because the tool doesn't support API integration, specifically for the on-premises products. The product offers some cloud solutions that can be integrated with APIs.

I rate the overall tool a six out of ten.

It works perfectly for reporting and creating policies. It's easier for the customers. Reporting is a significant functionality.

Application control and traffic encryption are the most valuable features. The encryption feature includes Drive Encryption and supports a lot of features like antivirus encryption. It consolidates my system.

There's one room for improvement. We need to consolidate multiple features into one console. It would be beneficial to have all the important features on a single platform. Instead of using separate agents for tasks like antivirus and demos, it would be better to have a unified agent that can handle everything.

I would like a unified agent that can handle multiple tasks.

Another useful feature would be an email solution. It could be helpful. Also, having the capability to check for data vulnerabilities would be a great addition. In the future release, I would like to have a feature that checks for vulnerabilities

I have been working with this solution for 20 years. I am currently working with Version 5.10.

Stability is medium. I would rate it six because it can be resource-intensive and impact performance.

Most of the features are scalable, especially when transitioning to newer versions.

I would give it a rating of ten for scalability. Approximately around 50 to 100 users are currently using McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator. Some clients are small businesses, while others are enterprise-level.

The tool itself is great, but the technical support is not always perfect. There have been some support issues.

When there are issues, it often takes a considerable amount of time to resolve them, especially for domain-related problems. We are not given the right support.

Negative

The initial setup is easy. I would rate it a ten out of ten. The deployment process depends on various factors, such as the network. Usually, it takes a few days.

The deployment process involves licensing, installing APL, integrating with the directory, and then configuring policies based on best practices. We also customize some policies to fit the client's environment.

The cost is high compared to other clients who prefer lower pricing.
In terms of pricing, I can give it an eight.

If you need any additional solutions, you would have to pay extra on a monthly basis.

I would rate it as the best, around nine, because it's easy to navigate and configure.

We're using this solution for its antivirus and device control. We are partners with McAfee and resellers, and I am an engineer. 

The MVISION Insights is a good feature because it gives users the ability to see what's out there, which is what our customers are looking for. I know that they are adding ISO application control which is also a good feature.

There are some features available with the on-premise version that are unfortunately not available on cloud such as encryption. For now, there is only management for native encryption and not full drive encryption. I'd like to see more integration and a lighter antivirus; most of the complaints from customers relate to the search utilization.

There needs to be more integration. Customers want to see MVISION Cloud integrated with things like SIEM, whether it's Microsoft, Fortinet, or something else.

The solution is stable, quite a number of our customers are running it and there haven't really been any problems. 

The solution is scalable. 

The technical support is very good and they respond quite quickly. 

The initial setup is very easy and the system only requires one person that has reasonable knowledge to manage it. 

I think that licensing costs are reasonable and you get your money's worth.  

Companies like Palo Alto and Check Point have amazing SOAR solutions; in the case of Check Point it's an EDR type solution. I think McAfee MVISION is much better now that we have things like Insights. McAfee's advantage is that there are fewer false positives compared to some of these other vendors, so I'd say they're doing well.

There is a trade-off between the on-prem version and the cloud version. Some features that are available on-prem are not available on cloud but there are other features we can get on cloud that are not available on-prem. I believe this is a good solution and rate it nine out of 10. 

We have a lot of endpoints and the major use case for us is to secure the endpoints. That includes computers, servers, etc.

Easy deployment of agents from console and management of endpoints. The graphical interface of the solution. They have a good log event system. If you're able to trace it in the log, all you need to do is to whitelist the IP when you see a false positive.

The solution sometimes has some false positives on connections from the web control aspect of the product. This needs to be improved.

When you have false positive on the firewall, it rarely blocks off some legitimate connections to our network. 

The reporting could be better. 

Search or filter on Knowledge base gives broad choices instead of almost specific to your search. 

agent communication between client and server but products are not deployed.

I've been using the solution for more than two years at this point. It hasn't been too long.

The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues whatsoever. It's reliable. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. The only real issue we have is that there are often false positives, however, it's easy to fix in the logs.

The solution is very scalable. You just need to add more licenses. That's it.

As it's an antivirus for our endpoints, everybody in our company technically uses the solution. Everyone is affected by it.

We plan to use the solution in the future. I'm unsure as to if we'll expand our usage or not.

Technical support is okay. We get support from a McAfee partner here in Nigeria who liaises with the OEM too. We've been satisfied with the level of service provided.

McAfee has a portal for customers or partners to use, for product packages, updates, knowledge base, tools, technical support

The solution's implementation is pretty easy to install. It's very straightforward once you have your database. It's not complex.

When I joined the company, it was in migration. I wasn't there from the start, so I can't say how long it took. However, I was around when they did the migration and that took less than a month.

Through vendor team. McAfee partner consultant and they have their own local support team. They are resellers and partners in Nigeria. We were quite satisfied with their professionalism and knowledge.

Choose your anniversary cycle e.g. pay annually.

You just pay for what you want your license to cover. It is modular. It depends on the feature you want. There's the firewall, DLP, drive encryption, web control, threat prevention, antispam, etc. Scope your requirement and choose to fore what covers your requirement or budget. It depends on what you want to use it for. It's got amazing flexibility.

As an end user, I'd recommend the solution. McAfee ePO has many more features and covers more. A company looking for a new solution really needs to do some initial research to ensure their requirements are met.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten overall.

The solution handles risk and compliance aspects for our company. It handles everything including uploading documents, etc.

I don't use the solution in a technical way, so the technical aspects of the solution I'm not clear on.

The central management console is the solution's most valuable aspect.

The solution needs to be more clear about the licensing. They should have a way for users to educate themselves on the costs so that companies can figure out how to reduce costs.

There needs to be support for Mac computers. Currently, McAfee does not work on iOS.

I've been working with the solution for the last five years.

The solution has been quite stable for us. We haven't had any issues at all.

We have about 2500 people using the solution in our organization. They're a mix of people, including engineers and architects. We use it quite extensively - on a regular basis.

The solution is scalable, but the issue for us is that the pricing can be quite high.

We've been in touch with technical support in the past. They've been quite good. We've been satisfied with their level of service.

In the past, we've worked with Symantec, ForcePoint, and Barracuda. McAfee has some features that aren't part of other competitor's feature sets. Overall, however, from a technical point of view, they are all mostly the same.

The initial setup is quite simple. We didn't find it complex at all.

I was not there during the original implementation. I'm very new to this organization. I had just joined the team a few months ago. This solution has been running for the last five years, so I don't have more historical data in relation to the original setup.

We have two software engineers overseeing the project.

Comparatively, the pricing is quite low.

We're a McAfee customer. We don't have a specific relationship with the organization. We are using the latest version of the solution.

The solution is quite good and stable right now, but there are a lot of other products coming to the market. I'm currently investigating what other features customers need or are using to see if we can develop these out on this solution or not. 

Many organizations will find the solution has may features that would suit their needs and reduce the number of issues they face. However, it does depend on the individual company and what their unique requirements are.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.