Trend Vision One Reviews

We use Vision One for antivirus, endpoint protection, and identifying misconfigurations in our cloud platform. It secures our servers and endpoints and detects any sort of malicious software or inappropriate user behavior. It's a cloud solution with agents on the machines for endpoint protection. 

Vision One gives us more insight. When we implemented the solution, we didn't have a mature security platform, so we couldn't see what was happening on our servers or what our users were doing. It has decreased our time to detect and respond. Initially, we didn't have as much insight into any attacks that came through. It gives us more data points to work with and guidance about the remediation efforts. We aren't dealing with eight or nine different systems to identify one issue. It's all centrally located in one place.

Their Managed XDR service acts as our security operations center. It helps us sleep a little better at night. We know that they can call us on the phone when a significant alert comes in after hours. It makes things more efficient because we know there's someone on the other side who can look at alerts for us and at least do the preliminary analysis if anything comes in. Multiple teams are notified when an alert comes in. We can allocate security resources more efficiently and plug more data sources into the Vision One platform. We don't need to dedicate personnel to continuously monitor the dashboard because we know someone is looking at it with us.

The platform has allowed us to identify blind spots and see where there are holes in our network. It suggests remediation steps in many cases.  There is typically a link in the documentation. That has been a significant benefit because it tells you what to do. For example, it might suggest running a command in the terminal to identify the issues or take x output and put it into y input. 

The solution reduces the time spent investigating false positives by around 65 to 75 percent. For example, when we are pushing out custom code, the workbench tells us the risk level. If it's 70 or higher, we check it out. At 69 or lower, it could be a false positive, so it might require some poking around. It gives us enough data in the alerts that anyone who knows the system could say, "Oh, that was me. I was running patches," instead of checking nine different systems to identify what triggered the alert. It's all there in the alert, including the hashes, commands, impacted web files, etc. We can instantly dismiss it as a false positive and flag it as resolved.

Vision One's playbooks help us save time but I can't say how much because we're still maturing those. For instance, we know what those patching commands look like, so we're working on a playbook to automatically ignore or close those false positive alerts as they come in. We're still trying to fine-tune those playbooks. 

I like Vision One's observed attack techniques feature. It lets you see what an attacker is doing, how they have tried to exploit a machine, or how malicious code is operating. It helps us discover indicators of compromise so we can write better rules for detection.

Migrating to the Vision One platform helped us because we no longer need to look at eight different screens to find data. It's all just consolidated into one location. Having everything in one place is critical. I've been in the industry for almost a decade now, and it's a struggle to find that single pane of glass for all my alerts, logs, and anomalies like random users clicking on a link or downloading a file. It's nice to have it all in one location. Having centralized visibility saves the time we would spend checking various systems to look for things. I can also correlate data points more effectively and make data-driven decisions about the remediation and mitigation of any internal or external threats discovered.

The executive dashboard is nice. It's consolidating all of the tools into the Vision One platform, giving you a high-level overview. Executives love dashboards and pretty colors. The ability to drill down into XDR detection from the executive dashboard his handy. I don't have to go fishing. We get an alert that says a machine did X, and I can fire it up. It's on the dashboard, so I can click on that machine, and it lets me drill down into the logs. It cuts down on the time required to do any kind of forensic analysis on anomalous alerts or behavior. 

The Risk Index gives you an overview of the risk and how it compares with others in your industry. It's nice to be able to quantify the risk, and it enables you to justify the spending on these tools to your executives by showing that it pays off. Also, if we start plugging in more data points and the risk score goes up, we can conclude that there are some issues with the new data source that we just hooked up to our platform. The goal is to have a risk level of zero, but that will be hard to achieve. 

We've received some mild complaints that the documentation is sometimes not up to date. 

I used Vision One at my last job, and I brought them on board when I joined this company, so I have been using the platform for about two years. 

I haven't had any issues with stability. 

We run several different AWS accounts, and Vision One keeps up pretty well. I haven't noticed any downtime, lagging, or crashes.

They were using something else, but my team wasn't in charge of it. Vision One offers a more mature platform. I had used it at my previous job. My boss brought it in because we had both worked with Trend Micro in the past. We know the platform and the engineers. 

Deploying Vision One was relatively straightforward. We were on the legacy platform. They had written a script, so all you had to do was hit the play button. We recently moved to their all-in-one VisionOne platform, which was super simple. The deployment team included two on our side and two on the Trend Micro side. Their engineers hopped on a call and walked us through the process. The setup process primarily entails deploying the agents globally. 

Trend Micro's licensing is fair. 

I rate Trend Micro nine out of 10. This is a SaaS product, so you can do a trial period. If you like it, contact their sales people and try to develop a good relationship with the company. 

We have deployed the Trend Micro product suite across all our servers and workstations, including their XDR component, Vision One.

Our decision to switch from Kaspersky to Trend Micro stemmed from the concerns surrounding Kaspersky and the Russian government. Following those developments, we were advised to discontinue using Kaspersky and began the process of evaluating alternative security solutions. Trend Micro ultimately emerged as our preferred choice due to their exceptional support during the proof-of-concept stage. Unlike other vendors, Trend Micro proactively dispatched an engineer to our corporate headquarters at their own expense to assist with setting up and running the POC, demonstrating their commitment to our success. Vision One was released a year into our contract and we were able to work with the Trend Micro account team to deploy it in our organization.

Previously, our security setup with Trend Micro was entirely on-premises. This meant we were managing our backend servers and manually reviewing security updates. It was a time-consuming process, especially when vulnerabilities arose in their on-prem products. Reviewing briefing files and ensuring everything was patched was a constant burden. Moving to the cloud was a game-changer. The maintenance of backend servers is now handled by Trend Micro, freeing up our resources. We receive monthly emails notifying us of upcoming maintenance, and they take care of everything behind the scenes. It's a breeze. Vision One has always been cloud-based, but our previous on-premises solutions included their endpoint product Apex One, server product Deep Security, and exchange product. When we transitioned to the cloud, Apex One remained our endpoint protection, while Deep Security evolved into Cloud One. Additionally, Cloud App Security was introduced, providing security features for SharePoint and Teams alongside Exchange Cloud. 

Trend Vision One streamlines our security by centralizing data collection and threat management. It pulls data from Exchange, SharePoint, endpoints, and servers to the cloud, providing a unified view of our IT environment. This centralized data feeds into advanced playbooks that automatically block URLs and files based on predefined conditions, reducing our reliance on manual intervention. For potential threats requiring further analysis, Vision One flags them for human review, allowing security personnel to quickly approve or deny access to specific URLs or files. These decisions then inform the suspicious object lists used across all deployed Trend Micro products, maximizing our overall security posture. In short, Vision One effectively automates routine tasks while empowering security teams to focus on critical decisions, making it a valuable asset for our organization.

Vision One grants us centralized visibility and management across our protection layers. With its ongoing development, Trend Micro has steadily consolidated this visibility into a single pane of glass.

Centralized visibility significantly improves our efficiency. Instead of scouring endpoints or hopping between the mail server and data lake, we can consolidate our search for malicious activity into one central location. Vision One empowers us to leverage comprehensive search parameters and scan all data within the data lake, not just data limited to specific products.

For me, the executive dashboard is always the first one I check. Then, I turn to the operations dashboard for a more detailed look. These two dashboards provide a comprehensive overview of our security posture, drawing data from internal and external assets, application agents without vulnerability assessments, and detected account compromises. Vision One also excels at alerting us to potential risks, including accounts exposed to data breaches. I've personally experienced this when the executive dashboard's risk score suddenly spiked due to flagged accounts. After investigating and confirming the risk, we dismiss the alert and the score adjusts accordingly.

The attack surface risk management capability has identified several vulnerability issues in external assets, necessitating immediate action. It has also shed light on blind spots within our environment. 

When we identify blind spots, we need to implement measures to address them and mitigate, reduce, or even eliminate the associated risk from our environment. Our team is relatively small, so dedicating someone to focus intensively on a single issue can be challenging. Vision One has alleviated this burden. Vision One's playbook and built-in automation features help us by proactively alerting us to issues requiring immediate attention, enhancing our overall security posture.

Vision One offers a feature where, if it detects a phishing email with high confidence, it automatically locks the email, removes it from the Exchange database, quarantines it, and disables any links within the email or similar emails. For emails requiring human intervention or immediate action, Vision One flags them for review. We can then approve or deny the actions on the URLs and emails within the system. We use Vision One as a secondary measure if something slips through our other security layers. It allows us to see exactly what happens when users click on a malicious link, even if it wasn't flagged beforehand.

To some extent, Vision One helps us reduce the time we spend investigating false positive alerts generated by our firewalls. While firewalls throw out many alerts, I often turn to Vision One for clients flagged as compromised. Jumping over the firewall report, I check Vision One's insights on those specific endpoints and the sites flagged by the firewall. Previously, I'd spend time on the machine itself, sifting through cookies and deleting temporary files to track the source of the suspicious traffic. But with Vision One, I can quickly see if the endpoint is trying to reach those flagged endpoints. In most cases, it turns out to be just Google searches – images or other elements loading as part of a search.

Vision One has become my go-to spot every morning because of the dashboards. They put everything I needed in one place, saving me the hassle of jumping between multiple platforms. It's a half-hour ritual that sets me up for success, allowing me to review everything efficiently and tackle the rest of my day with confidence. Vision One has probably saved me several hours of valuable time per day.

We currently have some playbooks in place, and we're exploring the option of adding more automation features to them. Our limited IT support staff is one factor that makes a managed XDR solution particularly appealing. However, we recognize the need to invest time in learning and understanding the available automation features, of which there are many.

I could visit VisionOne daily and check the operations dashboard. It provides a good high-level overview of our risk posture, and I can drill down to see the specific registrations from the endpoint network that VisionOne is highlighting. This helped us understand that our risk index recently increased due to users requiring patches for the latest Google Chrome bug. Beyond that, VisionOne offers a clear window into the security posture of our endpoints. It shows any existing vulnerabilities and, if applicable, highlights any available tools from Trend Micro that can help us reduce the risk and mitigate the issues.

The support documentation could be more comprehensive. The last time I needed to find information, it was scattered, and took me a long time to locate what I needed. 

I have been using Trend Vision One for almost six years.

While all products can encounter occasional stability issues, we've had specific instances where Trend Micro caused problems. We were unable to pinpoint the exact cause ourselves. Therefore, we contacted Trend Micro's technical support and collaborated with them to resolve the issue. In one case, it was a bug or previously unknown problem that was fixed in the next release.

Vision One is fairly scalable, especially the cloud model. Because as long as we have the licenses installed. They can create folders and groups to help keep things organized for us.

The technical support team is always incredibly helpful. Whenever we call them, they typically recommend using their data collection tool to gather some information. However, they're quick to respond, easy to work with, and knowledgeable, making for great customer service.

Positive

Previously, we used Kaspersky for several years after Symantec's exorbitant pricing led us to switch. We hadn't considered Trend Micro at the time. When concerns about Kaspersky arose due to the geopolitical situation, our director decided to move away from it. Seeking an alternative that was lightweight and met our needs, we explored various vendors and ultimately settled on Trend Micro.

The initial deployment was straightforward. Trend Micro sent one of their engineers from Toronto to Halifax to help us set up the point-of-sale system for the proof-of-concept trial. The beauty of their approach was that if we decided to move forward with Trend Micro after the POC, we only needed to apply the license to the existing model, and it could be seamlessly transitioned into production. The engineer worked closely with us to develop a script that would uninstall Kaspersky and install the Trend Micro product. They also helped us configure the necessary policies, making the entire process remarkably simple.

Three people were involved in the deployment including the engineer from Trend Micro.

The implementation was completed in-house with the help of a Trend Micro engineer.

Initially, the new pricing structure from Trend Micro seemed reasonable compared to what we'd seen before. They've introduced a credit system, where we purchase credits and then allocate them to the specific services we need active. This concept is intriguing, but it has its pros and cons. In the past, licensing for 700 clients meant purchasing 700 licenses for everything in the package, a straightforward approach. Now, the new system requires a sizing exercise to determine our actual needs. However, the upside is that unused credits don't go to waste. We can divert some to a sandbox environment or other Trend Micro service for a limited time, if needed, to address specific issues.

Each feature costs a certain amount of credits.

I would rate Trend Vision One a nine out of ten.

The on-premises version requires maintenance on the management server and update the software. The cloud model reduces the amount of time spent on maintenance dramatically because the cloud model automatically takes care of the software maintenance side of Trend Micro.

It's a perfect tool for monitoring infrastructure, including endpoints, servers, and potential attacks via networks. That's especially true for internet-visible hosts, which we can monitor directly from the tool.

We had problems with users not using legitimate tools, such as pendrives. We needed to protect hosts from external threats and third-party actors. That included monitoring behavior, scanning our infrastructure, and exploitation of vulnerabilities.

The solution has enabled us to completely reorganize our work. I was the first person using this tool in our company, and I completely changed user behavior to become more restricted. In Poland, but also in the United States, we are very strict about abnormal usage of our tools or attempts to download tools that shouldn't be on desktops, laptops, or servers. From my point of view, we are now a completely different organization than when I joined it. Trend Micro is one of the most important security tools we have implemented.

We don't need to use an external vulnerability scanner because Trend Micro XDR has a module for that, and we can save that money.

Trend Micro's Managed XDR is quite nice because I can manage more than 2,000 endpoints. I use the playbooks with particular scenarios for incident management. It's a very nice tool. It competes with anyone on the market. Sometimes, when we detect some kind of threat and we have no idea how we should investigate, troubleshoot, or mitigate the risk, we use the managed service team with Trend Micro engineers. I'm very happy with this team. They are very good professionals.

We respond much faster thanks to the intelligence used by Trend Micro. They have very good knowledge because they have many threat sources. That is why we are reacting much faster than we would if we had to dig deeper without that knowledge and this tool. It would be absolutely impossible to manage this infrastructure by a single admin or even two security admins. We are able to detect and respond about 80 percent faster. It's not only the monitoring and alerting for classic signature threats; there is also a tool for monitoring user behavior. It would be utterly impossible to find abnormal user behavior without this type of tool.

And we have mitigated most of the false positives—more than 90 percent. About one out of 10 alerts may be a false positive. In the beginning, we had to learn about Trend Micro, what was a legitimate action and what was a suspicious or malicious action. We had to learn what the right approach was.

This product is simple to use. Sometimes, especially when new features come out, I need to spend a little bit of time discovering how they work. But overall, it's simple. The interface is quite nice.

The integration is also nice because there are many external tools that we can connect to the platform, such as configuration management tools. Because the platform is integrated, I can manage almost the whole company across our global organization. I can almost manage the infrastructure alone. We have minimized the need to expand our team.

It also handles vulnerability management.

We use Trend Micro to cover endpoint protection and server protection. That's one of the key points for our company. And Trend Micro Vision One absolutely gives us centralized visibility and management. Especially when we integrate it with Active Directory, we get full visibility of our endpoint and server infrastructure. That is very important; a 10 on a scale of one to 10.

We also use the solution's Executive Dashboards. We present the findings in steering committees periodically. Sometimes, there is a repetitive alert or event. Directly from this dashboard, I can see the groups of this type of event. For me, it's quite a nice tool for presenting the results to the C level and the whole company for those who are not technically experienced.

And especially because of the new European regulation called NIST 2, we are using the solution's Risk Index feature. We calculate our risk score and we can see how it is changing in the timeline. Is it growing? Is there a new vulnerability detected? We can also compare our risk score with organizations of the same size or in the same industry and see if we are better or worse.

The area for improvement is mobile security. We have just finished a proof of concept for Zero Trust Secure Access. We withdrew from this PoC because it does not have that many points for proxy across Europe. Our organization is across Europe, and it will be nice when it is possible to have Trend Micro proxies across many more countries. At this time, they are only located in Germany and the UK. For us, it's not enough. We are waiting for them to increase the points of contact, and after that, we will return to this project. 

From my experience, it was quite a nice tool, and I could manage almost all of the actions that I could not manage in a traditional way. Traditionally, I could allow or block usage of an application. But using the Zero Trust Secure Access tool, I could manage the schema of the usage. I will wait for this tool to change in the next few months.

I have been using Trend Micro XDR for almost 20 months.

It's a stable product. We haven't detected any issues other than the false positives, but that's normal.

We use it in multiple locations because our company is spread across Europe and Asia, as well as the United States and Canada. We have more than 2,000 users, and the solution covers 400 or 500 assets.

If our company were to increase over two to three months to 10,000 users, it would not be a problem. We have the ability to extend as we scale our users. It's very simple and absolutely flexible.

Their technical support is nice. On a scale of one to 10, it's a 10. They respond fast using email, phone, and the customer service portal.

Positive

I used competitors' tools, Secureworks, as well as Carbon Black. These are nice tools, but they are very heavy to implement and heavy on daily operations. Trend Micro is much better, much more flexible, and I have much more visibility. It is a cost- and time-saving tool.

Our deployment is a hybrid. We have advanced our implementation a lot. The first implementation was only one of the features called OfficeScan. That was a few years ago, and the implementation was in the United States. After that, we moved forward with the implementation across servers and endpoints, including Mac and Microsoft endpoints.

The whole project took about three months, with the custom discovery and the fine tuning. We had two people involved, one in Europe and one in the US.

Sometimes, maintenance is required if there is a new feature. It needs to be restarted. But this function is done by Trend Micro engineers because we are using the XDR in the cloud. We don't touch it. There is maintenance on our side for Deep Discovery because that part is an on-prem solution. But it's simple to manage.

They are implementing new tools, like Trend Micro Apex One and DDI. They are ready for implementation on the console, and we are waiting to transition to these tools.

For the new features, I prefer doing a proof of concept, like we did for the Zero Trust Secue Access platform. That was a good move because we saved time when it came to resolving issues on the user side. We had a few users in every department, and we tried to discover what would happen if we implemented this tool. That is my approach to being safe with such products. We can do things without any technical training and can disconnect users around the world using one switch. For new features, I'm a big fan of using a proof of concept.

I use Trend Vision One for banking, retail, and government clients. We sell it with other technologies. It provides more sources for alerts and visibility into threats and vulnerabilities. We have all Trend Micro's modules, including full asset protection, EPS, IDS, endpoint protection, and email security.

Vision One has reduced our detection time by approximately 30 percent, enabling us to use our human resources more effectively. The solution has allowed us to consolidate 90 percent of security tools across hybrid environments, improving our operational efficiency. We've reduced our administration and management tasks by half.  Vision One has also decreased our risk.

The most critical feature of Vision One is that it gives us a single console for threat management. The organizational view simplifies management and improves visibility, helping us identify areas for action. The solution is intuitive and easy to manage. 

The solution's ransomware protection with runtime machine-learning capabilities gives us peace of mind. We also get total protection and fewer false positives than in other solutions we sell. Vision One integrates well with our other security products.

Vision One could improve its area networking and email security.

I have been using the solution for around three years.

Trend Vision One is stable.

Positive

We have not previously used a tool like Trend Vision One, but we have used individual tools for various functions, such as EDR and EPS. For example, we used Vicarius and Ivanti for virtual patching and other tools by Palo Alto, CrowdStrike, Sophos, and Kaspersky. Trend Micro consolidates all these features into one platform, so that's one advantage it offers. 

Setting up Vision One was straightforward. 

I rate Trend Vision One nine out of 10. 

We utilize Trend Vision One to identify and neutralize malicious activities on our network. This comprehensive security solution extends beyond traditional antivirus software, which relies on pattern matching, by actively monitoring endpoint behavior for anomalies and deviations from established norms.

In 2020, we transitioned to remote work like many other companies. During this transition, we conducted an internal Trend Micro office scan, which revealed that many of our users' devices were out of date due to their inability to connect to the VPN for extended periods. This prompted us to switch to Apex One later that year. As part of the Apex One implementation, we were given a complimentary trial of Vision One. During this trial, we received an alert that demonstrated the product's effectiveness, leading us to purchase a subscription. Vision One has been an excellent addition to our security arsenal. Trend Micro continuously adds new features and updates, making it an ever-evolving and valuable tool. The product's capabilities, functionality, and incident response capabilities have improved significantly over the past several years. We can set up playbooks to automate our response to specific incidents, which is a tremendous asset. Vision One is an outstanding security solution.

We are a state government agency that is subject to oversight by the state. Vision One has detected attempted attacks that the state SOC has missed, enabling us to swiftly halt these attacks and address the vulnerabilities before they escalate into more widespread problems.

The integrations have been great. There have been a couple of issues, but overall they've been very helpful. Vision One recently added the ability to connect to our on-premises AD. This was a sticking point for us for a year or so because we didn't have Azure. So we were stuck in a situation where we couldn't tie Vision One to our AD. But since they added the on-premises integration, it's been easy to set up.

Trend Vision One has saved us ten percent of our time. It has eliminated the need for us to rebuild machines. It has helped us even more than that because the few times we have had a threat, it has stopped it in its tracks. This has prevented the threat from spreading and compromising multiple machines. Without Trend Vision One, we would have had to investigate the threat, which would have taken time and resources. Additionally, we would have had to rebuild the compromised machines, which would have taken them offline and impacted our users. In some cases, a widespread outbreak could have occurred, causing even more disruption.

The dashboard provides great visibility into our risk profile. We receive a daily email report that outlines our risk score and identifies the machines with the highest risk. This information is based on usage patterns, vulnerabilities, and non-compliance issues. This helps us prioritize which machines require patching or further investigation.

Drilling down further, we can analyze how our users are utilizing their workstations, including the websites they visit. While we don't track specific website URLs, we can categorize website types and identify any potentially risky or inappropriate usage patterns. This allows us to proactively address any potential security concerns.

For instance, we identified a user who was using ChatGPT for work-related tasks. This flagged our system, and we were able to discuss the user's usage of ChatGPT to gain a better understanding of how our users are working and identify any areas that require additional attention.

Trend Vision One offers training sessions every few weeks or every month to showcase new features. However, the product's rapid development and the introduction of numerous new features make it challenging to keep track of the evolving interface and maintain a consistent understanding of its usability. While the continuous addition of features is commendable, the sheer volume of changes makes it difficult to stay abreast of the latest developments.

I have been using Trend Vision One for two years.

Trend Vision One has proven to be extremely stable in our environment. We have deployed the Trend Micro client across all workstations. Additionally, we utilize a tool for vulnerability scanning, one for application whitelisting, and FireEye, as mandated by state regulations. These security solutions coexist harmoniously, causing no compatibility issues. We have also implemented laptop encryption and other security measures to further enhance protection. Throughout our experience, Trend Micro has not caused any conflicts with Microsoft or our other security tools.

Trend Vision One is scalable. We can add another 150 machines with no problems.

The technical support is excellent. We experienced what we initially thought was a technical issue, but it turned out to be a state update that triggered alerts across all of our machines. I contacted the support team and our sales representative. Within an hour, the incident response team was on the phone with me, examining the file hashes of the updated DLL to determine the cause of the issue. They quickly identified that the update was not malicious. Their promptness and thoroughness were outstanding. The incident was resolved within three hours of receiving the alerts.

Positive

We lacked an XDR tool. Instead, we relied on FireEye, which offers similar capabilities, but it doesn't provide us with the same level of visibility as Vision One. Vision One has consistently detected threats that FireEye missed. While we were mandated to use FireEye by state regulations, we sought a more robust solution that could effectively identify anomalies and patterns. Vision One's utilization of the MITRE ATT&CK framework has been particularly advantageous. We've found great value in Vision One's comprehensive feature set, particularly its well-designed playbooks.

The initial deployment was straightforward. I was able to deploy Trend Vision One with the vendor's assistance within one week.

The vendor guided us through the implementation process and continues to conduct periodic check-ins to verify that everything continues to function effectively in accordance with industry best practices.

Our return on investment does not stem from direct cost savings but from the fact that Vision One has mitigated issues before they escalated into larger problems. This has saved us time, which is a valuable asset.

The pricing for Trend Vision One is reasonable. I am not sure of the exact amount we pay, but it is not excessively expensive.

I would give Trend Vision One a perfect score of ten out of ten. It is undoubtedly the best product in the market today. While I appreciate CrowdStrike and its offerings, I believe Trend Vision One stands out as the leader. In my opinion, these two products are the clear frontrunners in the XDR space at this moment.

Trend Vision One is deployed at a single location. We have approximately 50 endpoints. Most of our devices are laptops because we have a large number of employees who travel frequently.

Trend Vision One is maintenance-free, which is convenient because patching is handled seamlessly from the backend in the cloud. Trend Micro proactively notifies users about upcoming patching schedules and provides detailed information about the patches, new features, and updates. The patching process is managed entirely by Trend Micro, eliminating the need for user intervention. A client installed on the machines receives updates from the cloud server, ensuring that all devices remain protected and up-to-date without any manual effort.

I highly recommend Trend Vision One. Contact Trend Micro and they'll be happy to schedule a demo. I suggest installing the demo, testing it out, and seeing if it's a good fit for the organization's needs before purchasing. Trend Vision One is worthwhile.

We have deployed Trend Micro XDR on all our endpoints. It is deployed as an agent because we are using Trend Micro Apex, the antivirus agent, and the SaaS agent. This means that we receive notifications from XDR for any suspicious activity related to endpoints. For example, if a user connects to a suspicious website, XDR should alert us based on our rules. It can also generate alerts for malicious Windows activities.

In addition to deploying XDR on our endpoints, we have connected Vision One XDR to our Office 365 email platform. This allows XDR to read incoming emails. We can then configure rules to remove emails from mailboxes if they have certain properties or are particularly suspicious.

We have also connected XDR to our Azure platform, which is our user authentication platform. XDR can monitor for risky user sign-ins, such as sign-ins from unusual locations. If it detects any risk, it will notify us.

Finally, we have integrated XDR with a third-party tool to receive indicators of compromise. When we receive an IOC, Vision One will automatically run a check in our environment to see if any endpoints have been compromised. It will also check to see if any emails have been sent from any of the senders in the IOC listing. If it finds any matches, it will notify us.

We can also configure playbooks to automatically take action when XDR detects a threat. For example, we could configure a playbook to force a user to reset their password or isolate an endpoint from the network.

We are using the Trend Micro Vision One XDR agent. This agent component is installed on all of our endpoints, including servers, workstations, desktops, and any other computer elements. Vision One also has an API-based element, which we have connected to our email system, such as Azure.

Before Vision One, we had limited visibility into our security posture. Things were happening all around us, but we couldn't see them. With Vision One, we have centralized visibility and management across all of our protection layers, so we can see and respond to threats quickly and effectively.

I cannot imagine my day-to-day operations without the visibility that Vision One provides. It makes all the difference. No other platform compares to Vision One in terms of simplicity, ease of use, and importance.

Vision One has improved our efficiency with centralized visibility. Before Vision One, we had to go to different platforms and tools in our environment. Sometimes the information was missing and sometimes we were searching with the wrong terms. But because I can now see everything at once, it has helped. The decision we are making now is simply to go there, and whatever we have been faced with, the console is enough to make a decision.

We just signed a contract for Managed XDR services. We were managing our security before, but we'll start using their managed services next year. We've received a few escalations from them already, but that's because they're proactively searching for threats, which is a good thing. For example, I got an escalation from them last week for something that we wouldn't have discovered on our own. It wasn't something that the tool would have generated an alert for either, because it was very similar to what a user would normally do. But they were able to find it because they're looking into all of the addresses that they have. This led to us being able to control incidents that would have happened otherwise.

The XDR service has saved us time, enabling us to work on other tasks. The environment is quite complex, so before we had XDR, we didn't have any tool that considered all possibilities or provided any visibility into our environment. When we first started using the tool, it was new to us, but after a couple of years of using it, we've found that it is a legitimate tool that provides valuable information. Instead of seeing it as adding more work to our workload, we see it as helping us to be more proactive and prevent future incidents. For me, it has been a great help and has added real value to our work.

XDR helped us reduce our time to detect and respond to threats. With a single click, I can isolate a computer from the rest of the compliant environment. I had to do this last week when I had to support two escalated computers. Without XDR, there would be hundreds of things that we would not have seen or known about. But with XDR, we can see everything. And that even includes coverage of devices or computers that are not owned by us, such as those used by vendors. If a vendor brings a malicious device onto the property and downloads something malicious, we can detect it as early as possible.

Trend Micro XDR has helped us reduce the time we spend investigating false positive alerts. I am 100 percent confident that everything that comes out of the platform is legitimate. We had a few false positives when we first started using the solution, but because Trend Micro allows us to whitelist specific items, we were able to build our policy accordingly. Sometimes, there are malicious items that we need to allow because of our environment, such as certain security tools. Trend Micro allows us to build a policy that excludes these items from alerts, so we no longer receive alerts for them.

We use the XDR automation capabilities extensively, including playbook automation for tasks like isolating computers, and API-based automation for most other tasks. For example, we are a member of the retail ISAC information-sharing platform, and we have automated scripts from that platform that pull in all malicious senders, IPs, and domains, and pool them into XDR. XDR then automatically scans all computers to see if any of these malicious entities exist. If they do, XDR generates an alert and allows us to take action, such as removing the file. We generally set XDR to allow only, so that we have visibility into all malicious activity, even if we don't take action on it.

I would like to have the capability to export the information we receive from the XDR into Microsoft Excel.

I have been using Trend Micro XDR for almost four years.

Trend Micro XDR is stable. We have not experienced any stability issues when using the console. 

I do not have access to the backend, so I am not aware of the specific technical details. However, from an end-user perspective, the scalability of the system appears to be excellent.

I reach out to technical support almost every week to address any questions I have. I also have a bi-weekly meeting with their technical team. They guide open tickets and address any concerns we may have. Additionally, we have a monthly meeting with Vision One developers where they discuss upcoming features and seek input. I know exactly who to contact for any assistance I may need. Sometimes, I can simply email them directly instead of opening a ticket. The process is always straightforward and efficient. At times, the prompt responses make me wonder if they are using AI assistance, but I hope that's acceptable. I usually receive a response within a minute or two, which suggests AI involvement. However, the signature at the end of the IT person's email confirms that an actual person is handling my request.

Positive

We had Carbon Black, but we're using it only for application control. With Trend Micro XDR we can detect and respond.

The initial deployment was straightforward. I have extensive experience in deployments across various companies and platforms. However, Trend Micro XDR surpassed all my expectations. We had previously deployed on-premises, and all we had to do was access the designated console and click a button to migrate all on-premises agents to cloud agents. It was incredibly easy. My team of two and I handled the entire process without any involvement from the teams and properties. I right-clicked and moved everything over. A few agents remained unmovable due to their outdated versions, but we successfully migrated close to 99 percent of all agents.

The implementation was completed in-house. Trend Micro provided a document link to help with the deployment.

Trend Micro XDR is reasonably priced for its value, comparable to other products like VMware Carbon Black.

We evaluated an additional option with Carbon Black because we already had that agent in our environment. We also considered Cisco, which has its own XDR platform.

I would rate Trend Micro XDR ten out of ten.

We tried to use the risk index feature, but I didn't have the resources to focus on it at the time. I was more focused on the actual findings that were happening. I have since hired someone who will focus on the risk index, as the primary reason I hired them is to focus on the risk element coming from Vision One, as well as from other third-party intelligence platforms that we work with or have contracts with. Now that I have someone here, we will be focusing on the risk index.

No maintenance is required.

Each component that we have purchased from Trend Micro has its own unique value set. But as CISO, the most excitement in my day is when a Zero Day initiative lands. It's one of those things that, by nature, you're generally not prepared for, and the initial reaction of the security team was, "What are we going to do about this?"

When that happened, I suggested we look at our Trend Micro IPS and see if there are any vaccines related to the particular Zero Day, and there were. We enabled those vaccines and we could see, using the ExtraHop appliance, that the issues we were seeing before had been remediated. That particular experience was a predictor of what was to come. Since then, on almost every occasion, we have had a mitigating response in our arsenal to any type of Zero Day attack before the attack actually occurs.

And even when we got into a situation like Log4j and there wasn't anything in our arsenal to deal with it, we called Trend Micro, and they said, "Yeah, we're delivering it right now, but you'll have to install it manually." And I was thinking, "I'll install it while upside down if I have to, but the bottom line is just get it over here." We deployed it and—problem solved. I believe they own that VDI initiative and it's really good that they're so close to it. That is something that has really really made my life a lot easier. Running around with your hair on fire is not fun.

In essence, it has allowed us to get a handle on our security initiatives and planning, and construct security over the long term. We've been working with them for at least ten years.

Their toolset integrates well with our existing infrastructure. It integrates well with our AT&T AlienVault SIEM.

Another piece that makes Trend Micro kind of unique—and I could see where they might have had a problem kicking the whole thing off—is that they were one of the companies, early on, that spent a lot of time integrating their toolsets, and I was really impressed with that. That meant the endpoint management system could reach out to the Deep Discovery system on the network and pick up something that it perceived as a suspicious object. It could then sandbox it and monitor it. If that suspicious entity reached out for command and control or did something nefarious, the endpoints would be alerted and would start getting rid of the problem.

The issue this addresses—and it's one of the most important issues—is that you really have to consider automation and be conscious of it. Because when the stuff hits the fan, you're not necessarily fast enough, as a human being, to get everything done the way it needs to get done—and document the process.

You might not think about that last piece so much when you start doing security engineering. But when you get into a big healthcare company like ours, there are audits going on all the time. The auditors will want to pick out two or three events that you've dealt with and say, "We want to see the audit trail," et cetera. As a result, there are advantages to the integration of Trend Micro's disparate toolsets.

Trend Micro has worked very hard on making their toolsets, like IPS, Deep Discovery, Deep Security, et cetera, talk to each other and work together. And they're still doing it today.

They have made their IPS an application rather than an appliance. You install it on the endpoint, which is a server in your data center, and it will actually configure it to a minimal standard. That means the applications and the version of the operating system you're running, right down to the colonel version, get only the tools installed that are needed for that particular instance.

They minimize the installation because they don't want you looking for bugs and indicators of compromise that you're not in a position to experience because you're using an operating system that isn't vulnerable to them. That gets rid of a lot of overhead when it comes to server management. They keep in mind that these are servers that have a job to do. They're not just desktops, and if they're eating up a lot of the CPU, that's bad for us because we're out to do business and make money. We've never had a problem with them. It's really reliable, once you get it set up.

When you deploy these tools from Trend Micro, the integration and getting them to work together, are among the more difficult pieces of the puzzle. But when you get that set up and working, you're glad you did.

When you manage a security department for a number of healthcare organizations and deploy security into their environments, they want it done today. And they certainly don't want to be bothered with it over the course of a few weeks. We've been in our Cloud One migration for a couple of months now and it isn't our only project. We've got a lot of things going on here and at our subsidiaries, for which I'm also the CISO. It's very busy. We don't have time to sit down and work on projects just for the sake of having the resources to work on them.

When we invest the time to integrate disparate resources, appliances, and applications, we do so with the idea that we're going to get something out of it that is worth more than what we put into it. In each and every case, that's what has happened with Trend Micro.

Still, a lot of folks I know have adopted their technology but have not integrated it. The endpoint management tool sits on the endpoint and manages it, but it's not fully integrated with, for example, the sandbox. So it would be nice if they could simplify the integration process. And I would like to see better documentation.

Another point is that, with Vision One, there were issues that we experienced with the IPS and EDR technologies when we first got it. We had some difficulties figuring out how to make it dance. Once we figured it out, we were okay.

The remediation they put in place for that was to increase the number of presentations they did on the software, presentations where they answered questions. We attend one about every two to four weeks with Trend Micro to go over things, and it's not just us. There are 70 to 100 people in those meetings. They figured out that, while it's okay to build reasonably complex systems, at some point you have to pass the knowledge along to the end-users. That's not always easy to do. Most companies operate under the mindset that, "Well, we understand it, why don't you understand it?"

We started the integration of Trend Micro Vision One three or four years ago.

Trend's gear is very stable and reliable. In this business, it almost has to be because, if your system goes down frequently, you just don't have time to mess with it. In the years we've had their IPS deployed, and that's a complicated product, we may have had one or two failures. And as I recall, it was something in a power supply. If your primary failure is something to do with a power supply once every ten years, you're in good shape.

It's the same thing with all of their technology. The way they design it, just keeps running and that's not necessarily always the standard in the industry. For example, I finally had to abandon IBM's IAM solution because it was so bad. It would just break. We don't have those problems with Trend Micro. Their stuff just works. It's really good and well-designed.

It's reasonably scalable, but remember that, as you're scaling out, some of the components need to be scaled while other components just need to be reconfigured. You don't want to be paying for what you don't need, meaning you don't necessarily have to double everything. When you scale out, you have to give it some thought.

Their tech support people are better than most. In my career, I have seen it all. But Trend Micro support is really good. They're the best vendor I have for support.

Anytime we've had an issue with their gear, they have been prompt and have gotten on it and gotten it fixed. And if they can't fix it, they replace whatever they have to replace.

Another aspect with Trend Micro that is really good is that they listen to what you say. If you come up with a use case that they don't currently have, they'll add it to their repertoire and, a couple of updates down the road, there is that tool you needed. It's just a well-driven and well-run company when it comes to that side of things.

For example, in the beginning, using the dashboard was a little bit tricky. But the cool thing they did was to hold biweekly meetings on it. They would not only go through use cases, but at the end they would ask, "What else would you like to see? How would you enhance this?" Once the CISO community got a hold of that, they were coming with their guns loaded and saying "I'd like to see this and I'd like to see that." And Trend Micro started knocking out the ones that made sense. As of today, it's a completely different ballgame than it was back then. They're constantly upgrading their platforms.

And they don't absolutely have to do large releases to get things into the users' hands. They'll build something out and say, "Hey, we've included this. Try it out and let us know what you think." Most companies would say, "That feature will be in Release 5 and not until that release. Release 5 is slated for May, but it probably won't be out until October." Trend Micro is not like that and we appreciate that.

Positive

We go back quite a way with Trend Micro. When I first met with them, it was a sales guy at Torrey Pines resort who was meeting with individuals. A bunch of CIOs and CISOs were brought together there and put up for a few days to meet with various salespeople. It was a "getting-to-know-you" event and I did it every year. One of the sales guys was from Trend Micro and I didn't know anything about them but I was impressed with his presentation. I thought to myself at the time, "Keep this one in mind. Think about this a little bit."

About a year or so later, when, at the time, we were using the IBM endpoint suite, IBM decided to take it down. It had about five different toolsets, one of which was IBM BigFix, which is a patch management solution that we still have.

They said that if you want to replace them with what was called, at the time, Trend Micro OfficeScan, you can, and we did. When we migrated to OfficeScan to replace the endpoint piece, we realized that the other IBM pieces were all up in the air except for BigFix. We then just blocked out IBM tools for Trend Micro tools, component by component. That worked out really well for us because the Trend Micro toolset was a lot more comprehensive than the IBM tools. And it integrated well with our BigFix infrastructure. It all just worked together. It was a no-brainer. Trend Micro built much better security systems than IBM did.

Once we had OfficeScan in place, we started talking about purchasing an IPS. I generally do a proof of concept when I'm going to purchase something. Trend Micro's TippingPoint IPS system was included in the eval. What I found is that it's not only the best product, but it has the best product support and that really makes a difference.

We're using Trend Micro on just about every front that they work on. They've been a tremendous partner for us, really good.

When we first kicked off the security department here, one of the problems we had was that we were chasing malware up and down the wire. We had McAfee endpoint management software and antivirus at that time, but we couldn't run it because, if we did, it would eventually eat up all the CPU and tip over the desktop.

We were looking for a replacement for that. We took a look at Trend Micro's Vision One technology and we found that they were deeply interested in what they refer to as attack surface management. It integrates the Trend Micro EDR tool that we had and turned it into something that can trace backwards. It could not only detect that an event had occurred, which is what we used to get, but now gave us information about what led up to that event. What sequence of events happened in our platforms that led up to it? We could trace it backwards, and that's the XDR component. They replaced the EDR component and that's when we got into business with Vision One.

Since then, we have deployed the Deep Security and Deep Discovery components. in addition to their IPS TippingPoint and their endpoint. We also have their email security solution in place.

The Deep Security toolset sits in your data center on every server instance you want protected. The operating systems Trend Micro supports are Windows, Linux, Solaris, and AIX. And what do we deploy in our organization? Those four operating systems. I thought, "That is like a message from God himself." I was taken aback by that.

And right now, we are migrating into their Cloud One environment. That takes it to the next level and allows us to take advantage of the analytics that exist in the cloud without having to set up all of the infrastructure to support it. Everything we have remains as is, on-prem, but everything now reports up to the cloud, and that information is enhanced and further aggregated into more meaningful data, which then comes back down into our purview. That's what the Cloud One approach is all about.

They are a pretty cool company and they're really well organized and well managed.

The initial deployment is always the toughest because you've never done it before. You're going to run into issues that you aren't familiar with. As you go from OfficeScan to Apex One, to Vision One to Cloud One, it gets easier every time you do it because you know what's coming.

By then, you already have an established group of people who support you, and who have been supporting you for some time. You're familiar with working with them, you know what to expect and how things are going to roll forward. And you pretty much know what the time frame is going to be. That part is all good.

Vision One is on-prem. We started building data centers a long time ago and I had the honor and privilege of doing that. We built out redundancy at the data center level so there are two of everything. And then you think, "Well, what happens if something happens to the data center?" So we built another one. And then we realized we wanted it somewhere else because we get enough earthquakes in Southern California to know that nothing is safe here. As a result, we built one out in Arizona and we mimicked what we had here and then whammed it all together. So we can fail over here or to the Arizona facility. We essentially have two private clouds that we manage. That got us to where we were about a year ago.

And then, suddenly, there was the idea of moving up into the cloud. We did start working with Azure and AWS to move items into the cloud, but there were some issues with that too.

For example, if we build out a big piece of infrastructure in our data center, we purchase the hardware and then deploy it. All of that hardware is CapEx and you can write off the cost of most of it over a period of years. When you move into the cloud, you don't get that break, and if you're taking advantage of somebody else's infra, they're going to be charging you for that service. While I'm no expert on the cloud, we have put together some cloud-based applications, but, from a financial standpoint, it is really expensive. You don't get that CapEx back into your pocket like you do when you're putting together your own data centers.

Our management still wants to put more stuff up in the cloud, so we'll continue to do that, and Cloud One allows you to do that with the workload security features.

We did it all in-house. I found someone who had already worked in security, within our company, and brought him onto my team. If you can find somebody who has already done this job and understands it, then not only can you have them deploy it immediately, which takes that piece off the table, but they are in a position to start learning other things because they already know the infrastructure that you're deploying really well. At every opportunity that I had to grab somebody who already had experience, and was good with what they did, I did so. It helps to get experienced people.

I've always felt that automation and the integration of platforms were going to be the key to this. 

The reason I felt that way was that I didn't go into security when I got out of school. I was fortunate enough to get a job at the NCR Systems Engineering division. I built and designed microprocessors, and then I built operating system software for the microprocessors. I was exposed to a lot of what's going on in the bowels of the beast. Although the beast changes from company to company, you have an idea of what's actually going on.

I then started my own company and what I learned was that integration of elements is key to your success, as was automation. You need to automate solutions because you don't want a bunch of people trying to fix things if you can automate things and take care of problems.

When we look at the logs from the IPSs, for example, they're blocking hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of packets a day. If we were allowing those packets in, I don't know what would happen, but I don't think it would be good.

Also, I don't have a big staff under me. The idea that, as a chief information security officer, you're going to get a couple of hundred people to go work on things is just not going to happen. So you really have to set things up and configure them for automation, and any kind of alerting has to point to the problem rather than tell you where to start looking.

They have a new pricing method and we haven't been pulled into that yet, which I'm grateful for. It's tough enough dealing with dollars, but with their new solution—and I'm not up on it because I haven't used it yet—you buy tokens or some kind of points and you purchase things with them. We haven't gone there. We stayed with what we had.

From a pricing standpoint, they're a really good negotiator and they'll work with you. At the first Trend Micro conference I attended, there was a presentation to their sales team and they were told, "Do not worry about making money. Just make our clients happy, and the money will come." They're good at that and a lot better than most companies. It's always good to have a good partner.

We looked at the new stuff that IBM was coming out with, which wasn't that new, so they didn't get very far in our evaluation. We also looked at McAfee and another company that was a startup at the time, although I don't remember its name.

I had three or four vendors in for PoCs, and I asked each one of them for someone to support the effort, and to give me about a month. By the time I was done, I not only got the best product, but the best vendor too. The support has to be there during that process or they're not going to win the day. Some of them were as bad as, "Here it is, let us know how it fares." And I was thinking, "Well, I may have a few questions between now and then. I hope somebody is on the phone to answer them," but you don't always get that luxury. But Trend Micro was really good and that's why I stuck with them.

We had a SIEM in place, but we wanted to do some behavioral analysis of the files that are getting deployed. We wanted to check to ensure that it was nothing with the external registration side. We needed an EDR solution for checking and monitoring everything deployed on this target machine or our host machine site. It will check and detect if any malicious files are there or not. We are getting alerts related to that kind of thing. So we used to check those alerts on the XDR, and we used to, like, do the incident and response to that kind of thing there.

If you have a SIEM in place, you will only get the network logs. XDR gives you more control over what files are getting deployed, how they are being executed, and how they can potentially harm your system. XDR doesn't work like a normal antivirus solution, which uses signatures to detect and block threats. XDR detects based on behavioral analysis and blocks most things.

It reduces the investigation time because it gives you everything, including how the file was executed, which processes it called, the file name, the stemming, and the time. When we have the endpoint name, we can reach out directly to the endpoint owners and communicate with them regarding those alerts.

I like XDR's workbench feature and observed attack technique. It generates an alert once certain conditions are met. For example, let's say there's a threat called malicious.exe being deployed on your system. It will generate an alert with information like the file path, location, hash, etc. You also see a relational matrix showing how that file was executed and which processes were installed.

It's a SaaS solution that covers endpoints, email, and cloud. We have agents installed wherever data is being pushed, so it used to give us a payload. Cloud functionality is one of the most critical things because we don't generally have visibility for cloud applications. Once we install the agents, we gain visibility into all the things integrated on the cloud or any SSH attempts.

XDR offers visibility across layers. This is critical when you want to implement some policies and apply exclusions for particular parts of the system that should not get scanned. It's easy to implement those things. Let's say you want to deploy policies for multiple systems. Using Apex Central, you can directly push the policy to various systems and cover the logs of several systems at a time. 

Sometimes, there are some false positives. For example, once a user had a file in their system named recovery.txt. The solution was flagging that as a ransom note, so we were confused. It isn't that serious, but it should be improved. 

Also, XDR should improve its coverage of the latest IOCs. Their suspicious object management works, but the coverage should be improved. It will take one or two months to get those things covered. XDR will detect on a behavioral basis, but these databases will not get updated daily like some other solutions. If you're dealing with new ransomware or malware, it may take around a month before it's covered by Trend Micro. 

I have used XDR for two years.

Trend Micro XDR is stable. We've never had downtime. 

Trend Micro XDR is scalable if you can pay more for licenses. 

I rate Trend Micro support seven out of 10. Their technical support is good. They reply regarding your cases. However, if you don't reply to them properly, they may close your case if you are not reviewing that kind of thing. 

Neutral

 I previously used Crowdstrike, which is an MDR, so it was totally managed by the Crowdstrike team. They were monitoring every alert that was generated, so it's hard to compare it to Trend Micro XDR. It was somewhat similar, but CrowdStrike is more proactive than Trend Micro, and it has greater coverage of IOCs. I have also used SentinelOne.

It's a SaaS solution deployed across multiple locations covering 20,000 endpoints. It doesn't require any maintenance aside from updates. 

I rate Trend Micro XDR seven out of 10. If you plan to implement XDR you should be aware of the IOC coverage and follow up with the Trend Micro team. Most things are covered, but it takes time to add and deploy all that stuff.