Binu Haneef - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at International Media Investments
Real User
Effective policy management, quick installation, and helpful support
Pros and Cons
  • "The valuable feature of the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is the management of the policies."
  • "McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator support has been helpful. However, sometimes when I raise the case they take a while to answer. For example, the last time I used them it took them two weeks to reply back by email. No one has contacted me back since. They should improve their service."

What is our primary use case?

We have deployed McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator in the cloud and on-premise.

We are using McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator mainly for device policy management. We have many different solutions that we manage with McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator.

What is most valuable?

The valuable feature of the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is the management of the policies.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator within the last 12 months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have found McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator to be stable.

Buyer's Guide
McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
768,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have approximately 1,200 users using McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator in my organization. If we expand we will purchase more licenses.

How are customer service and support?

McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator support has been helpful. However, sometimes when  I raise the case they take a while to answer. For example, the last time I used them it took them two weeks to reply back by email. No one has contacted me back since. They should improve their service.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have not used another solution in this category.

How was the initial setup?

The implementation of the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is simple, it took us approximately 45 minutes.

What about the implementation team?

We did the implementation of the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator in-house.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is not an expensive solution.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Senior Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Stable with good central management and good technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "The central management console is the solution's most valuable aspect."
  • "There needs to be support for Mac computers. Currently, McAfee does not work on iOS."

What is our primary use case?

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

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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.

How are customer service and technical support?

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.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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.

How was the initial setup?

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.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Comparatively, the pricing is quite low.

What other advice do I have?

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.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
768,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Security Analyst at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Real User
Great graphical interface, good log events, and a simple setup
Pros and Cons
  • "The graphical interface of the solution is its most valuable aspect."
  • "The solution sometimes has some false positives on IP addresses, from the web control aspect of the product. This needs to be improved."

What is our primary use case?

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

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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.

How are customer service and technical support?

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

How was the initial setup?

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.

What about the implementation team?

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.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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.

What other advice do I have?

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.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
President - Systems Engineer at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Real User
The biggest issue was false positives and performance degradation.​ My policies were easily accessible and managed during setup.​

What is most valuable?

It allows us to detect rogue devices, then to subsequently force policies on them to protect our system from them.

How has it helped my organization?

The only feature worth mentioning is the rogue devices detection. This helped the company manage new laptops joining the network.

What needs improvement?

I am not familiar with the newer versions, but the biggest issues we had with our version were false positives and performance degradation.

For how long have I used the solution?

I used it for four years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

There were no issues with the deployment.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We had no issues with the stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We had no issues scaling it for our needs.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

In my experience, the level of customer service is very good.

Technical Support:

Technical service is very good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I came into the company and started using McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator. The previous solution was F-Secure.

How was the initial setup?

I have managed the setup to new servers (kind of a migration). I will admit that it was very straightforward. My policies were easily accessible and managed.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented it with our in-house team.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The replacement for McAfee was due to pricing. It is common in the antivirus space to have price wars, though.

What other advice do I have?

I am not familiar with the latest versions, but I am sure they have been improved. From a management point of view, ePO is one of the best solutions out there.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Senior Manager of IT at a recruiting/HR firm with 51-200 employees
Vendor
Provides centralized virus signature and patch updates.

What is most valuable?

I like the following features:

  • Centralized virus signatures and patch updates.
  • Reports of signature update status.
  • HIP management and automatic product deployment.
  • Allows virus signatures and VirusScan Enterprise patch updates via McAfee agents installed on the user's PC.

Before this solution, I had to do the following:

  • Set up daily virus signatures and product updates on each PC in the office. These are the configurable parameters in the McAfee VirusScan Enterprise application.
  • Perform regular spot checks on some PCs to make sure the virus signatures are being updated. As the number of PCs increases, I needed to find a solution to handle this task.

With this solution, all I have to do is install the McAfee Agent on a PC. When the McAfee agent communicates with the ePO server, ePO checks if VirusScan Enterprise is installed on the PC.

If it is not installed, it will start the deployment, patch updates, and virus signature updates. The ePO server is configured to send me a report of virus signature versions and VirusScan Enterprise patch levels of all connected PCs by email on a daily basis. This saves me a lot of my time, as I don’t have to check this information on all PCs manually. I end up with a beautiful report to show my auditor about how the anti-virus software is implemented.

How has it helped my organization?

This solution reduced a lot of effort to check and confirm that all PCs are running the latest anti-virus signatures and patch levels. It also helps the IT admin to find the mapping between the logged-on user ID and the PC name which Windows AD doesn't provide.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see the solution provide a function to roll back patch deployment and alert the administrator about which system is not supported per patch level. It should retain all previous patches in the system to support legacy systems, including the latest patch that was checked in the system.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using this solution for over six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The system is quite stable and works as expected.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There is no built-in or easy upgrade of the system. When I upgraded the system from a 32-bit version to a 64-bit version last year, I basically reinstalled the whole environment.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is very straightforward. The IT administrator can install and setup basic functions of the system without a user manual.

However, for some complicated functions like drive encryption, it is better to read the user manual before deployment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Make sure you understand the following:

  • The license terms and how they are applied to the user or device.
  • What products are covered.
  • The dates of the license period.
  • Whether or not the agreement will be automatically renewed with an increase in price.
  • Whether the price is different when running on a server or on other special devices.
  • The support SLA and if there are any additional charges if the problem is complicated. If you do this, you won’t be surprised when you call support.

What other advice do I have?

I would suggest the following:

  • Set up a test environment. Test all products you are going to deploy on all platforms you have before actual deployment.
  • The testing environment should be retained since new patches may impact some legacy systems.
  • Plan your implementation and application deployment. Write down all parameters you put into the system configuration. Link this with Windows AD for user authentication.
  • Prepare your SMTP server for an email setup alert.
  • If you are going to use it to manage McAfee VirusScan, make sure you set it with up-to-date virus signatures from McAfee, at least on a daily basis. This is not enabled by default.
  • Consult your IT vendor for best practices.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Security Professional with 501-1,000 employees
Consultant
Top 20
With it, I was able to make an MSS (Managed Security Service) solution.

What is most valuable?

  • Centralized management
  • The scalability
  • The report engine

How has it helped my organization?

I made an MSS (Managed Security Service) solution based on the ePO and McAfee Endpoint products.

This was before all the vendors made it themselves, and when I researched the major vendors, this was the best product for the project.

What needs improvement?

The fact that it uses MSSQL, and cannot be deployed on anything other than Windows, can be a problem. The system can get slow at times when you do big searches and reports.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using it since 2007.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

We had some issues with deployments as this product was not made to be set up as an MSSP solution but we had a lot of help from McAfee, and fixed them all.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The problems with stability as never in the ePO but in the Operative system (Microsoft Windows) and the database server (Microsoft SQL).

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is very good.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

We were a McAfee EMEA Premier Managed Service Provider at the time, so we had no problems getting the support we needed.

Technical Support:

10/10.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

F-Secure, but their product did not scale, and there are so many more endpoint products, that the ePO can handle than F-Secures Central management system.

How was the initial setup?

It was not the easiest projects I did, but with help from McAfee it was not that difficult.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented it in-house.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We were a managed service provider, so the licensing was not what most customers have. We report in what we use, and pay after.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at several options.

What other advice do I have?

If you use any McAfee endpoint solutions in the enterprise you need to use the ePO, as there are no other options.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner, vendor and consulting.
PeerSpot user
it_user3372 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager of IT at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
Thinking Outside of the Cloud: A Holistic and Strategic Approach to Enterprise Security

Cloud computing is one of the next significant stages in the Internet’s evolution, providing the means through which everything – from computing power to computing infrastructure, applications, business processes to personal collaboration – can be delivered to us as a service wherever and whenever we need.

Whether it’s Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or Platform as a Service (PaaS), cloud computing has been with us long before the media had a catchy name for it.

The landscape of a typical business no longer reflects ones that were operating several years ago. The advancements in communication, collaboration, information and/or currency exchange/processing and the speed in which they are done have truly created new opportunities to the modern enterprise. But these benefits have unearthed many questions and challenges-especially to the overall security of an enterprise whose reach is no longer just the extent of their firewall.

I have dedicated the more than 15 years of my career managing DOD business technology risk in large and small organizations. I’ve served in a variety of roles across heavily regulated industries, successfully leading all aspects of IT security programs, including policy and procedure management, oversight and control, strategy, architecture, development, and training.

During this period one of the greatest challenges have been end-to-end enterprise security, primarily protecting sensitive information from unauthorized manipulation and disclosure by B2B and B2E who pose a substantial threat due to their knowledge and authorized access to corporate internal systems and data.

Training and education is a critical step towards the reduction of insider threats, but alone it’s simply not enough.

Once I understood the nature of the security threat within my organization’s enterprise, I was ready to minimize its effects. The primary objectives during containment activities were to mitigate personal risk to employees and customers then mitigate risk to the organization.

Fortunately, many years ago my organization adopted a top-down Host Based Security System (HBSS). This security baseline is a flexible, commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS)-based application. It monitors, detects, and counters against known cyber-threats to my organization’s Enterprise. At the heart of HBSS is McAfee’s ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO).

McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO) is widely acknowledged as the most advanced and scalable security management software in the industry. It has enabled me to connect industry-leading security solutions to my organization’s enterprise infrastructure to increase visibility, gain efficiencies, and strengthen protection.

Whether it’s securing the mobile workforce, the virtualized data center, complex applications, or the distributed enterprise, security has never been more challenging or important. McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO) Networks has allowed me to balance security with access to network resources, information sharing and remote connectivity.  Additionally its end-to-end security solutions has helped my team and I connect, protect and manage across the entire network infrastructure, from the endpoint device all the way to the data center, and allowed us to maintain total control.

Finally, enterprise security has been simplified by leveraging a holistic Information Assurance approach, McAfee ePO fills the gap that few enterprise and cloud assurance platform fills by bridging business and technology concerns that aligns IT-GRC and Enterprise GRC.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user1281699 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
An easy-to-use dashboard with good centralized management
Pros and Cons
  • "From a single dashboard, I can take a look at several things including the endpoint protection, the file integrity section, the data activity monitor, and more."
  • "There is a problem when it comes to agent communication and duplicate records, where the rebooting of a machine leads to the installation of a new agent and you get a lot of duplicate records that ultimately affect your compliance monitoring."

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the centralized management. From a single dashboard, I can take a look at several things including the endpoint protection, the file integrity section, the data activity monitor, and more.

The dashboard is simple to use.

What needs improvement?

There is a problem when it comes to agent communication and duplicate records, where the rebooting of a machine leads to the installation of a new agent and you get a lot of duplicate records that ultimately affect your compliance monitoring.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator for about three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

With respect to stability, I would like to see improvements made in terms of agent communication and compliance.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have not had the need to scale this product.

How are customer service and technical support?

We had a local technical support company and did not deal with McAfee at the regional level. I can say that our local support was quite decent.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: April 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.