AlgoSec Reviews

We are using Firewall Analyzer (AFA) to compare configurations from multiple firewalls, such as Cisco ASA, Palo Alto, Check Point, and so on. It helps us to streamline our firewall rules, identify risks, and provide better visibility. This product has significantly saved the time and human efforts in creating and deploying firewall rules. It is now easier for our cybersecurity team to analyze firewalls rules and ACLs, using them in a more efficient manner. Other features are also very important for us.

With the help of this product, we can manage all the network security equipment in a centralized way. We are also able to make requests to our security team about quick and valid changes requests, helping to minimize the workload in documentation, troubleshooting and so on. This helps to identify any wrong or unnecessary changes in the network security perimeter, making sure that all security policies and best practices are followed in our network domain. During change implementation, and especially after completion, we can validate, make sure that everything is working fine, and is up-to-date per our expectations.

It’s capability to build and present entire network topology via map makes team members to easily investigate the entire domain. Whenever new applications and services get on boarded and traffic rules and policies being created it automatically discovered those Apps and services and makes life easy. Each and every performance report can be fully automated using this and saves time in audit and compliance requirement.It also helps us to clean old and obsolete rules or those rules which are not in use otherwise it could be very difficult without this product as team have to log into each firewall and remove rules and policies

We are running multiple hybrid cloud solutions, working with cloud providers, and looking for API integrations with cloud and related interoperability. Sometimes, when we are trying to delete or disable any rule, it takes more time than expected. 

Sometimes, the web browser has issues with slowness. It can be worked out with a click or two. 

We are using Algosec Firewall Analyzer referred to as (AFA) since 2018.

This is very stable, robust product. During extreme load in business hours, it works well without any issues. 

It provides interoperability with all vendor firewalls and the scalability is much easier.

Technical support is always good whenever we contact the support team. We always get an immediate response and a solution within defined timelines.

Earlier we are not using any solution but always planning to procure solution that have ability to integrate multi vendor firewalls into single platform and after assessments and evaluations with OEM products we finally select Algosec as approved solution.  

Initial setup was very simple. Using Quickstart help, any member can take part in deployment and administration from basic to advanced level. 

Only the firewall integration could take time due to some complex interactions. 

We implemented using our own internal team and with the help of AlgoSec technical support team. AlgoSec technical support was excellent and prompt.

It provides an improvement in the firewall process load. It also helps with increasing CPU and memory utilization.

When it comes to the cost of support and licensing, it is much cheaper than other competing products.

We have tried FireMon and Tufin under a non-production environment, but the overall features of AlgoSec were best. Therefore, we choose this product for our production environment.

Excellent product to use and has tremendous support from OEM.

We have not faced many problems or issues using this product.

We also have not tested AI or ML capabilities and are very keen to start working with it now. 

Overall, it is well-maintained, robust platform tool for firewall management.

Our main use cases for this solution are:

• Firewall Rule optimization
• Topology mapping of various firewalls
• Automating the implementation of rules.
• Reports warning before time based rules expire. 

We also implemented the AlgoBot, which is extremely useful when checking if rules already exist or finding out easily where they need to be configured.

We have 20-plus firewalls from multi-vendors in several sites, both IT and OT. Therefore, an automated way to manage firewalls is a must, especially since staff is always on the short side.

AlgoSec has saved us a lot of time in managing our rule base which has become increasingly large. With 20-plus multi-vendor firewalls, it gets really hard to manage without a solution like AlgoSec. This has helped us to fulfill our internal SLAs for change implementation.  

The fine tuning of the policies is a lot faster and repeatable. 

The compliance factor has also helped us a lot where we can show auditing that we have a repository for all the changes made in the firewalls, who made them, and at what time.

Gone are the days where time-based rules expire without anyone noticing. We have now automated reports sent to the team. This allows us to ask the involved asset owners if rules can be disabled or need to be extended.

Most valuable features are the firewall rule optimization, topology mapping, and automating the deployment of new rules in several multi-vendor devices. 

AlgoBot is a brilliantly, simple idea that lets us give our IT internal customers a way to check if rules are already in place before asking for more.

With firewall rule optimization, you cannot only tune most used rules higher in the rule base, but also check for unused objects or rules to clean up.

The automatic implementation of rules in several firewalls simultaneously is also a great feature, especially in large environments or on short staffed teams. 

AlgoBot should be more developed by adding more features to the chat.

We will be integrating with Cisco ACI soon. Hopefully, new features with this integration will be developed as well in terms of automation.

I came across a difficulty recently with a BGP enabled firewall that had a large number of routes. This wasn't directly supported due to a 3000 rule per firewall limit.

We've been using AlgoSec for over six years.

It has been running flawlessly since installation. Even upgrades are pretty straightforward and have never given us problems.

We have added 10 more firewalls to our 14 existing and have had no performance or scalability issues.

We have had several tickets opened and the responses were fast. This enabled us to solve our problems quickly. The only complaint is about the license rekeying needed for when you need to change a firewall. That usually takes a bit of time.

We did use a different solution for several years. The features and usability made us switch.

If you are knowledgeable about the firewalls that you intend to manage, the initial setup is really easy. The most difficult steps are configuring checkpoints for LEA integration where you need to create the object in each firewall, establish connectivity, install the database, install the policy, etc.

It was initially implemented through a vendor. Their level of expertise was good enough to implement the solution effortlessly.

Cost is based on firewall. There are bundles, e.g., virtual firewalls might make the solution cheaper.

The licensing scheme should be done in a simpler way. For example, if we delete a firewall and want to add a new one, then the license doesn't get freed up automatically. You have to request a new license to customer support and install it. If you are testing new implementations, this can be cumbersome.

We evaluated the main competitor, Tufin, because we were using it!

I am the senior network security engineer in an environment of more than 80 firewalls ranging from ASA 5506-X to ASA 5585-X and now to FortiGate 3960E. As part of this position, I need to be able to audit firewalls and ensure that they are compliant to a number of policies.  Before AlgoSec, this was done in a very long, slow manual process, and it took days to audit even the smallest firewall. With AlgoSec, I can run a compliance report and see exactly where that firewall falls short.

AlgoSec has freed up my time to look into new solutions and complete other jobs that I have to get done. I have been able to shepherd the migration from Cisco ASA to FortiGate and using AlgoSec made that process much easier. Now, when I get a request for audit information, that information is available at a click. A PCI audit is no sweat. I know which firewalls fall under PCI, and I can provide the needed answers in minutes instead of days.  This has improved my use of time.

Policy optimization, compliance, and change reports are the most valuable. I can clean up firewall rules quickly, optimizing the rule set and moving on in hours. Before, I was looking at days. Compliance is a breeze. The change reports are helpful to see changes over time and also be a "second set of eyes" when looking into issues. 

The mapping tool is helpful. 

Traffic queries are a great help when troubleshooting a problem, especially if the traffic is going through two or more firewalls.

I can't think of specific improvements. If anything, the product has been improving in usefulness constantly. 

I have been using AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer for approximately two and a half years now.

Product hotfixes are released regularly and are a breeze to install. I have dealt with other products that always promising to fix bugs, but it takes months or longer for the next patch to appear. AlgoSec is on top of this and in my opinion is a real leader with bug fixes.

Technical support is the best that I have ever dealt with. I have yet to have a support engineer tell me that they couldn't fix a problem or that it was sunspots (Cisco TAC). They have gone above and beyond multiple times. I never hesitated to call as they have never made me feel that the problem is the user, even though I am sure that there were times it has been.

I have never had a problem that the technical support wasn't willing to dig into and get resolved.

Not really. We used a homegrown VBScript that would parse the configurations on our firewalls for auditing. This didn't help at all with compliance.

The setup is not difficult. The professional services were outstanding in installation and knowledge transfer.

We implemented through a vendor team. Their expertise was outstanding. They made sure to spend a lot time doing knowledge transfer.

The initial cost was high for us, but we have always been behind the tech curve and cost has always been the limiting factor. That attitude has changed. Now, we look for the best, not simply the cheapest.

We did look at a couple of other solutions. FireMon and Qualsys are the only two I remember.

It has saved my bacon a number of times and is a great arrow to have in your quiver of tools.

We need less time to identify any risks in our firewalls, as we can detect changes in real-time.

We have obtained in easy way to do compliance reports for audit purposes. With this optimization reports, we can clean up unused rules, consolidate covered or redundant rules. We can also define trusted rules that apply.

Risky rules reports help to reduce manual work and identify the main risky configurations to remove. This give us some recommendations on how remediate and their importance.

• Identifying and removing risky rules
• Firewall rules cleanup (unused rules)
• Security compliance reports
• Security baseline settings

A vulnerability management module might be interesting, though not integrated with a third-party vendor. It should be an AlgoSec VM module.

I would like some server integration for vulnerability management.  

Some PDF reports are not so good. E.g., the graphics and reports are not so good. Sometimes, we need to create graphics and reports to compare security ratings across months and groups. 

I have been using AlgoSec for two years. 

Awesome.

Great.

Excellent and very kind technical support.

No.

Licensing is very easy to set up. The pricing is relative to how you want to expand and harden your network security. 

I did not evaluate another solution.

It is a great tool that makes work easier each day. I can't imagine working without AlgoSec and using it for my daily activities. 

The primary use of this solution is to extract Risky Rules reports obtained from our Firewalls, check the rules, and proceed with changes on the Firewall as needed. In these reports, we also see the traffic being applied for different rules.

The traffic used for different Firewall rules can be obtained and then, we have a clear idea of the use for different rules. If some service or protocol is more often used or not, we can see.

We use the FireFlow tool to create the rule to be validated and applied in the appropriate Firewall. FireFlow can install the rule automatically.

This solution has improved our Security in our Firewalls. This has helped to restrict rules, delete rules that are too permissive, and create a configuration that complies with our security policy.

The reports are very useful for determining whether our Firewalls are compliant with our security rules and directives.

The feature that I've found most valuable is the risk classifications for different rules. The number of different risky rules that we have for each Firewall is determined automatically. 

The traffic used or not for every service is very useful to check if some service is needed or not. In cases where it is not used, we can delete or disable it.

The FireFlow tool is very useful with the automatic installation of rules into Firewalls. It detects the router and applies the new rules, which saves us time in manual configuration.

There are sometimes issues with the Risky Rules reports where the number of hits is registering zero, but we know that this is incorrect because we have checked the rules and see that they are indeed registering traffic.

Sometimes the Trust setting on Firewall rules is changing to trusted by itself.

I have been using AlgoSec for more than one year.

I have very good impressions of AlgoSec stability.

The scalability is very good.

I did not use another solution prior to this one.

I did not evaluate other options before choosing AlgoSec.

Overall, I think this tool is very useful and we think that it's difficult to improve.

Our primary use for AlgoSec is to automate our firewall configuration. We use the AlgoSec system to remotely configure the firewalls, making our life easier.

We are in a multisite environment with plenty of firewalls for perimeter security and LAN segregation for specific proposes. This solution helped us to make the process more dynamic.

It has reduced the workload for the firewall team thanks to the API integration with our ticketing system, handling the standard types of requests automatically. Before having it, we had to create a lot of standard rules that now can now be just pushed from the AlgoSec system.

It has also helped in terms of firewall monitoring. Automatic alerts are sent to the security team so we can react quicker in case something goes wrong or a thread is detected going through the firewall. This is made possible using the simple reports.

The most valuable feature of this solution from an operations perspective is the automation of the firewall rule deployment, working together with our ticketing system.

Any new needs are requested by a user using the internal webpage request. This request is automatically validated against a set of standard rules. If the request is compliant, the new rule sets are automatically configured in the specified firewalls without any human action. This reduces the firewall team's workload and improves efficiency.

It would be nice to have a good tool for network map discovery in the GUI to make it more user-friendly. I would also like to be able to check and modify network maps in a graphical and more intuitive way. This will improve our network overview for new deployments and troubleshooting.

An API to connect to Palo Alto Prisma and Zscaler to be used after SD-WAN deployment would be a helpful feature. We have discussed this with AlgoSec and are hoping to see it in the near future. 

We have been using the AlgoSec solution for four years.

We did not use a solution like this one previously. This is the first time.

I'm part of the team that uses the AlgoSec solution, not on the finance IT team.

Our primary uses for AlgoSec are to gain visibility and automate rule creation.

We met our goal by gaining visibility and automating rule creation. We are on a very good track.

The most valuable feature is the help of cleaning the firewall rules and object databases.

This solution would be improved if it were able to compare configurations and provide recommendations. For example, suggest cluster members.

I have been using AlgoSec for four years.

Firewall rule base management and FCR processing is the main reason we use AlgoSec.

We also use it for troubleshooting purposes and reporting. In that sense, there are three instances that are the main consumers of it. Our infrastructure management uses reporting to get insights, our Network and Security team does all of the FCR processing and troubleshooting of network problems, and our security department that also uses reporting and is part of the approval process for FCRs that are placed in AlgoSec.       

AlgoSec provided a much easier way to process FCRs and get visibility into traffic. With previous vendors, we had to guess what was going on with our traffic and we were not able to act accordingly.

By automating some parts of the work, business pressure is also reduced since we now deliver much faster. I received feedback from our security department that their FCR approval process is also now much easier. The network team is also now able to process FCRs much faster and with more accuracy.

Most of all, Technical Reviews are now top-notch and AlgoSec does part of the job automatically that had been done manually with our previous vendor.

We now process FCRs much faster, which helps us to deliver faster and implement reworks at a quicker rate.

With Business Flow and Firewall Analyzer, it provides much better visibility into traffic and process flows. Visibility into traffic was our main problem in the past since we had no clue what was going on but now, we have all sorts of analyses and reports. This makes our decision process, firewall clean up, and troubleshooting much easier.

All of the search options needed are there but the search menu could be a bit more intuitive. In other words, I can perform any search I want without any problems but combining different search parameters can sometimes be a problem.

Creating more intuitive menus could be helpful, especially for the first-time users.

For example, it would be useful to be able to save searches with complex structure so they can be easily reused with simple change of parameter. Also, "contain" criteria sometimes misses just like ability to search using any value in basic search box, instead of reaching out to Advanced search (it would be great if simple typing IP address, or Project ID in basic search box lists all rules containing such a value).

We have been using AlgoSec in production for about one year. Before that, we used it as a PoC for around six months.

We have had no issues in the past year.

This solution is very scalable.

We used another vendor prior to AlgoSec but we were not satisfied with the "intelligence" of the product when it came to the processing of FCRs.

We also evaluated Skybox.

I have not seen any major issues with AlgoSec and it is better than the previous product we used. I am glad to have it now.