AlgoSec Reviews

AlgoSec helps us audit and track changes made to firewall rule configuration. We are able to see network administrator's activities on the firewall. The feature of backup firewall configurations as scheduled is very useful to restore firewall configurations.

It has helped us to clean up and optimize the firewall rule sets by identifying duplicate rules, covered rules, and even rules that have not received hits within a defined period. The baseline of in-built policies such as PCI DSS helps us maintain good security ratings in compliance with regulatory standards.

• Track new rules
• Modified rules and deleted rules
• The configuration backup feature is also helpful to restore configuration when the config file is corrupted.

• The font size on the Changes Summary Report is very small when reading the print out copy. 
  
• AlgoSec can look at ways to include a change management workflow process or integrate with third-party ticketing solutions. 
• Explore ways to detect unused port numbers per firewall rules.
  

The solution is very stable. Updates are also readily available upon release.

AlgoSec's Firewall Analyzer tool for rule usage and recertification. Our firewall governance group uses the AFA tool to gather object and rule usage on a recurring basis for recertification as well as research and design of new firewall rule changes.

Object and rule usage statistics enable object-level recertification of all rules. AFA usage statistics have enabled our company to establish regularly scheduled recertifications of all firewall rules across all policies.

Traffic simulation queries, policy tuner analysis and rule usage. Traffic simulation queries assist with new firewall change design and reduce manual work effort. Policy tuner analysis and rule usage enable recertification and provide additional validation for new changes.

Support/upgrade processes and documentation. The platform would benefit from additional support articles and guides on the Algopedia knowledge base.

This solution scales well from tens of devices to thousands.

Support interactions have been hit or miss. It is my understanding the AlgoSec is putting a renewed focus on support and documentation to improve this aspect going forward.

No.

Tufin

I would recommend investing the time in a full project to implement the AlgoSec suite if you will be using more than just the Analyzer piece. Fireflow and Business flow would benefit from dedicated standup time and effort to achieve the best results.

The primary use of this appliance is for Firewall maintenance and monitoring. Firewalls are a critical component in all organizations. As engineers, we are tasked with more responsibilities. You want to efficiently manage your time and devices, AlgoSec helps tremendously with that.

AlgoSec has improved our organization by providing us with an appliance to assist with our daily Firewall duties. AFA & AFF assist with change detection and logging of user modifications. Also, it's a great tool when preparing for audits and ensuring your firewalls are in compliance.  

The feature I find most valuable is Change Detection email notifications. We are able to track real-time changes made.

Currently, the product is doing everything we have asked for. Its a huge component for our Firewall maintenance. One key component is the integration with ServiceNow for Firewall rule requests. This helps expedite the process and track every step from user to configuration. 

Some area's where the product can improve is with the knowledgebase. Sometimes you have to do additional reading for your particular error.

Some additional features I'd like to see are for the reports. As opposed to showing me the entire objects/rules on the change detection email for that particular firewall, I'd like to see just the changes. I think this would be beneficial to none technical personal that may get overwhelmed with all of the data.

Also, having a Linux or programming background makes troubleshooting easier. That is one challenge I'm working on now to improve fixing our issues quicker.  

So far for what the solution does, it's stable. 

The solution is very scalable so far. 

Support thus far is sufficient for our needs. Their system is very timely and engineers engage you via email first, then migrate to phone and screen share if needed. 

No previous solution.

I wasn't part of the implementation. 

I wasn't part of the implementation. 

I think we have a great ROI due to the improved visibility and management that the solution now provides us. 

I wasn't part of the setup cost. Pricing and licensing seem fair. Licensing depends on how big your organization is. We haven't had any issues with purchasing more licenses for our growth. 

This solution was in place prior to me transitioning to this role. 

No additional comments. 

• We use the Firewall Analyzer extensively to manage our firewall security policies. 
• We use it to assist in processing firewall changes, clean up unused rules and objects, and perform rule re-certifications.

We could not effectively manage our security policies before using the Firewall Analyzer tool. We had never performed a firewall cleanup. We could not meet our Audit Requirement of re-certifying without the Firewall analyzer tool.

Firewall Analyzer's policy optimization reports: They provide the data needed to perform all the activities mentioned above. 

We have had challenges with technical support as mentioned earlier. However, we have a new account team and they are very responsive and addressing our concerns. 

We had a number of issues moving from 6.11 to 2107.1 but have found the latest code 2018.1 to be much more stable.

No issues with scalability in our environment. We do not have a large number of managed devices as we only manage our 21 firewalls.

We have had challenges with technical support as mentioned earlier. However, we have a new account team, and they are very responsive in attending to our concerns.

No, we evaluated AlgoSec and Tufin, and we selected AlgoSec.

The initial setup is very intuitive and not an issue for those with a good understanding of security, networks and the company's use of them.

In-house and we should have employed the vendor/professional services for an engagement to assist in the FireFlow implementation.

This is a difficult question to answer quantitatively. I'd say it is a great story when determining ROI for the Analyzer. We could not meet audit requirements, including PCI, which had the potential for large fines going forward.

The ROI for FireFlow is more of an incomplete story, and much of the issue is the way in which we implemented it.

We also purchased AlgoSec's FireFlow tool. We have had challenges getting value from it, and it is because the scope of this tool is very broad compared to Analyzer. In hindsight, we should have created a formal project and management backing to ensure success with this tool. 

The scope of a Fireflow implementation touches many organizations and we did not have an appreciation of the need for involvement of so many.

Tufin.

I have a North American wide multi-site network with a large amount, 100+ primary firewalls and hundreds of remote firewalls. We have loaded into AlgoSec most of these via CheckPoint CMA and Palo Alto Panorama. Currently, the primary use is log analysis as we are migrating from CP to PA and need to purge the unused rules during migration. 

It is helping with the migration as we don’t carry over empty rules and allows consolidation of rules. 

AFA analyze reports are the biggest use case to review the rules before migration and removing the unused rules for cleanup.

The Network Map is a feature that could use work, it is a big piece but is always a moving target with large routing tables in use and speed of use becomes an issue doing queries. 

In 2018.1 release the VIP always up is a great feature and a 3-way cluster is a good idea. 

We were a Tufin user but moved due to a POC with another asset we acquired which had AlgoSec and at the end we preferred AlgoSec. 

Provides visibility to firewall policies. 

Single tool to engineer changes and track approvals for audit compliance.

A Central tool to track firewall requests. 

Using AlgoSec API calls to integrate with other apps (ex: central IT request portal)

Standard view of firewall policies, regardless of vendor (ex: Checkpoint and Cisco). 

Built-in reports to aid in policy cleanup (ex: unused rules or objects, covered rules).

Faster HA/DR failover - with very large databases, it takes a long time to failover / failback.

Provide even more REST API calls (ex: rule removal API)

Product and appliances have been very stable.

It easily scaled up to support our hundreds of firewalls.

Both are excellent. 

Customer service is clearly important to AlgoSec. I never get the feeling they're just trying to sell me something, they sincerely try to assist with the best solution for us.

Tech support is extremely knowledgeable and responsive. If I could score them 11, I would. 

Did not use another solution previously.

Initial deployment was straightforward. The FireFlow workflow can be configured to match the existing flow - customizing this to match any workflow permutations takes the most time. 

Through a vendor team. They were top-notch - extremely knowledgeable and great to work with.

Unknown.

Explore the possibility of running on a VM instead of dedicated hardware.

I was not part of the evaluation.

The tool is very flexible. Be sure to allocate sufficient resources to deploy & customize it.

We have been using AlgoSec mainly to review/filter duplicate firewall rules and policies.

It helped us clear out almost half the work by identifying the rules automatically with no manual work, which is very cool.

The analysis and visualization part has given us a great insight into our perimeter security architecture. Also, the top 100 policy report usage is a pretty cool feature that I like the most. It also helps us from an auditing standpoint as well to make sure we meet our compliance demands.

I think the product is great from an overall observation, sometimes speed is an issue but I think it could be improved a little bit from a parsing perspective.

We have a big environment consisting of around 100 firewalls with a combination of different vendors. We use AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer to analyze our firewall rules from different vendors and importantly for our firewall optimization project.  

We recently moved our data center to a new location and we migrated our firewalls from one vendor to a different vendor. AlgoSec helped us tremendously to clean up shadow rules, unused objects even before moving to a new vendor. 

Firewall Optimization is all time favorite which saves a lot of manual work and increases device performance. Compliance is also equally important as our organization is very concerned about it and AlgoSec does it for us in minutes. 

I always wanted AlgoSec to support cloud base security firewalls such as Amazon security groups-AWS or Microsoft Azure network security groups. Hoping they will have it ready by end of 2018. 

AlgoSec releases hotfixes every now and then which keeps the product stable and with better performance.

AlgoSec is a much-needed tool for any organization as it helps in reducing manual effort when it comes to managing firewalls. 

I have not contacted customer service that much but whenever I do, I receive a great support and they reach beyond your expectations.

We have used Tufin beforemuch-much we faced lots of challenges and saw bugs all the time so we wanted something better. 

I have AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer and FireFlow certifications which helped me a lot during initial set up. It was straightforward and easy. 

It was in-house.

It's a lot, as it saves time and money.

I am a security engineer and from my point, I would say setup is without complications. Pricing and licensing is taken care of by my senior management so I cannot comment on it. 

Just Tufin, as this was a competitor to AlgoSec.

It's simply great, keep going. 

My organisation has used Firewall Analyser for many years to simplify and automate rule set management across an estate of hundreds of Checkpoint firewalls. Key functionality provided covers compliance reporting and identification of duplicate and unused, as well as risky rules.

Algosec is a game changer for our environment due to core functionality provided by Firewall Analyser. It has simplified rule optimisation and compliance. We are now building on this by deploying AlgoSec FireFlow which we expect to massively reduced the time and complexity around firewall change requests and approval. 

Compliance and risk reporting are the most valuable features of the product, closely followed by FireFlow, which builds on the analysis engine. I have also found the team to be engaging and customer focused.

I look forward to cloud service integration, which is coming in future releases and this should help make the product more of a complete solution. I would also like to see AlgoBot integrate with other communication systems such as Rocket Chat.

Implemented in a Managed Security Service Provider and had every managed customer firewalls integrated as part of the service. The tops were used to generate baseline reports and compliance views suiting all kinds of businesses.

The solution greatly improved the value delivered to the customer, generating reports and providing suggestions for improvements.

AlgoSec Firewall Analyser (AFA): Providing reports and security improvements actually added value to the services provided to our customers. This was a key feature provided as a service allowing us to be proactive anticipating possible flaws and vulnerabilities.

• Support more and more vendors, like minor ones: WatchGuard and others. 
• Also, it would be interesting if it could analyse iptables and IPFW rules and support migration.
• Windows Firewall and Forefront would also be nice since we often need to migrate from those platforms and prove the value of the newly installed solutions.

Very stable, I've had minimal problems using it, and the solution feels really mature.

Not that great, they are improving though.

Great support. Always available.

No.

Completely straightforward except with the configuration of Check Point devices which requires additional steps.

In-house.

Great return since the firewall analysis was sold as a service to our customer.

Setup is really straightforward, and their professional services are available for your every need. About costs, I don't see much difference from its competitors.

Yes. Tufin and FireMon.

It's not a solution to install and forget. To bring out the best of its value you must always keep generating reports and applying corrections. It's a great tool to have especially if you have too many juniors operators.