Symantec CloudSOC CASB Reviews

The main use case of the solution is to control access to the cloud. Companies can control a user accessing Dropbox, Box.com., social media, et cetera. I would say customers mostly deal with file-sharing sites.

The fact that we can log and block the access to storage sites by users, and yet have integration with the active directory is really valuable for us as, that way, we can manage the exceptions.

The active directory integration is very valuable as we can connect to the list of users that we have and the cloud control, the blocking, the access control of the cloud, can be handled by this product.

The solution is very reliable.

The scalability is good.

The product should have release notes. 

One thing I noticed was when you block people who have sessions already established, it would be ideal if they could clean cookies or clean the sessions on the desktop. If you control the web and you say, "Okay, tomorrow I'm going to block Dropbox," if people have sessions already established, there's no cleanup. There should be some sort of forced log-off, so the user will have to reconnect to the solution. If you go on Facebook or Gmail, the sessions will last forever unless there's a forced log-off.

The documentation is okay, however, it's not all-encompassing. Updating documentation is necessary. Two years ago, it was pretty good. However, since then, they've done a few changes and haven't created documentation to explain the changes too well. At the moment, what is available is simply too basic.

It's a good idea to get proper training on the solution before beginning.

It's a niche product. Not many people use it, and therefore there isn't as much of a knowledge base surrounding it.

In future releases, the solution could use more customization and more options for configuration.

There needs to be an opportunity to create customer URLs or Customer Gatelets.

I've been working with the solution over the last six months.

In terms of reliability, we've seen some glitches, however, overall it's very good. I'd describe it as stable. 

The scalability is excellent. If a company needs to expand the product, it can do so easily.

Being a niche product, the solution needs to work on building a community around it or to have better, more up-to-date documentation. That would help individuals answer their own questions and help users better understand the product.

One thing I noticed is that it's probably true of all the SaaS products is that the people who buy the product get the license key. It's really a pain, the buying process. You buy something from Softchoice or whatever, and then you get activation keys. By the time you get the key, it's already two months later. There should be something that they could do to connect people faster, to really see who is the real user and with the activation of the license and all that. However, we have this problem with all the products, not just Symantec CASB.

I'm a consultant. I help Symantec customers.

We deal with the latest version of the solution.

It's a good product, but overall, it's been really good. I would say it's an excellent product. You just need some more effort, putting the examples into the documentation, helping customers do stuff with the product. However, it's always difficult with software because they want you to pay additional services and all that, but they should have at least something written to get you started on that.

Maybe we're guilty as we didn't get the training, we didn't get the professional help. Therefore, we're also part of the problem. It seems like we could do more with the product if we got some help. 

The product is a bit of a niche. If you buy SAP, you get a ton of books on SAP. However, if you buy this product, there's no book on the product. If you buy a Microsoft solution, there's probably a book on it. However, if you buy CloudSOC, it's a niche, which is why documentation needs to be very good as there's no other source of knowledge.

I would recommend a quick start after training on the product and the solution should include that training with the product itself. When people buy this, there should be a customer success team or something, that gives two days of training or one day to get the customer started. It's a bit difficult otherwise. 

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We've mostly been very happy with the product.

It is used for remote users. It is called WSS, but it is a cloud-based technology.

We are trying to get rid of some of the on-prem proxy devices and use the cloud so that it is more cost-effective, and we don't have to manage hardware devices.

The value in some of these solutions is just the integration of technologies with their on-prem DLP solution. So, you can tie on-prem and cloud DLP policies together. You can apply on-prem policies to the cloud to have consistent policies in a hybrid environment. So, it works very well in that hybrid environment of on-prem and cloud.

They have some room for improvement in terms of being able to do troubleshooting. If you're trying to troubleshoot it, you have to work a lot with their backend people in order to get to a solution. So, trying to do your own troubleshooting can be a little bit difficult.

We've been working with this solution for years.

It is a pretty stable solution.

It does scale. They have different data centers spread out for you to do things. It scales just fine, but it is the setup and configuration that you have to do in order for it to scale the way you want it to. I know that some of the newer technologies, such as Zscaler, are doing SD-LAN type connections and things of that sort to improve performance and scalability. So, things are still evolving in terms of scalability.

Depending on how you deployed it, you can run into some performance gotchas. If you take a VPN connection and try to overtax it, you can run into problems. You can't say that it didn't scale. You have to use a different method to get the traffic, or you may have to set up two VPN tunnels or things of that sort. So, if you want it to scale, you have to think it through and make sure you are deploying it in a manner to scale. It can scale, but you have to plan it and make sure you think everything through.

There was a drop in the quality of technical support during the transition from Symantec to Broadcom, but they are trying to build that back. So, as compared to some of the competitors, their technical support would be a weakness.

Its setup can be straightforward if everything is done properly. We use Proserve for that. Its setup isn't extremely difficult, but you do need to plan it out when you're going to do it and not just do something. So, it has to be thought out, and then it works okay. If you just wing it, you can run into some issues.

It compares well with the competition because they're all priced on a per-user basis. I've seen the rest of them. There is definitely a huge price difference between them.

You have to look at the functions and features you're looking for and make sure that it works for you. Most of the companies get into a bake-off to win it, so they won't lose a deal due to the price. If it comes down to them and a competitor, they're not going to lose a deal because of the price. So, price isn't the biggest thing. It is about the unique features or capabilities that you really require.

Comparing it with some of the other solutions that I've been looking at recently, I would rate it a seven out of 10.