Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration Reviews

We have 4,000 users globally, dispersed all over the world including at our manufacturing locations. The CloudGuard SaaS solution is protecting our Office 365 email environment as well as our Office 365 OneDrive environment from malware and other malicious content. Our CloudGuard Connect instance is protecting our remote plants and acting as a cloud-based firewall enforcement point that is 100 percent managed in the cloud as opposed to on-prem.

Prior to deploying the product, we were getting daily phishing attacks which were directly impacting our business. We had data exfiltration. I can't remember the exact number of incidents we had, but since deploying the product we are now catching approximately 500 phishing attacks a day, attacks that are no longer negatively impacting the organization.

The feature I find to be most valuable is very much the zero-touch provisioning. I was able to be up, operational, and 100 percent functional in less than a half an hour.

I also appreciate the fact that the management aspect of it is all cloud-based and there's very little daily care and feeding and operational work to be done. It just functions.

One of the areas that I would like to see them develop into the product would be in the user feedback arena. Today, if a phishing email were to get through and bypass the product — which very few do — it would be nice if, when a user clicked on that phishing email, they got a second-chance opportunity, a chance to double-check that they really wanted to proceed to that website.

We were a CloudGuard customer in early availabilities, so we've been using the product for three years.

The platform is extremely stable. Given the fact that it is cloud-based and SaaS, we have had zero downtime on the product in the years that we've had it.

The upgrade path has been 100 percent handled by Check Point. They send a notification letting us know when they're going to upgrade. Upgrades have taken very little time because they're able to do them on the back-end in the cloud and just switch our instance over. It's been one of the easiest implementations and products to maintain that I've ever used in my 30-plus years in IT.

I don't consider the question of its scalability applicable because it's very much cloud-based and it's elastic and it will expand to the size of the environment that you have. We're looking at just over 4,000 users running on the product without any issue and without any problem.

Check Point's technical support for this product is fantastic. We have been a long-term Check Point customer using the firewall technologies for close to 22 years. And one of the things that Check Point brings to the table is the superior partnership and superior technical skill sets to support their product line. That has trickled down and come through into the SaaS-based solutions. 

I would expect nothing other than excellence from Check Point and that's what has been delivered in any technical issue I've had with this product. There have been few to no technical issues with the product. I can't think of the last time I've had to contact support on this product.

Before Check Point CloudGuard SaaS, we didn't have a solution that was capturing malicious emails.

The initial setup of the solution was extremely straightforward and extremely simple. You just connect your Office 365 environment into it, the policy is about a half-a-dozen check boxes of decisions that you make, and the product starts to function and starts to inspect your mail and protect your mail immediately. You will see immediate results. I make the joke that it takes 30 minutes to deploy, and that's with a cup of coffee in the middle. It's a very, very, very, easy product to deploy.

Our implementation strategy was that we went in using Detect mode. We let it run in Detect mode for approximately two weeks to get to a comfort level regarding the accuracy of the product, and then we turned it into Prevent (Inline) mode. Our concern was that we were going to see a lot of false positives. But in fact, we didn't actually see any false positives. Everything that it caught was 100 percent accurate and malicious. Over the time we've run the product, which is approximately three years, we have had to release from quarantine, in total, over those three years, less than 100 emails. That's impressive.

ROI is an interesting piece because, when you talk about security, the return on investment becomes a very intangible return. Security is a cost. It isn't something that's going to give you payback. But the intangible that we're seeing is a more productive workforce because we're not under cyber attack. We don't have to worry about how people respond to attacks or to have a team deal with them. And we no longer have data exfiltration and potential loss — be it reputational damage or financial loss — because of cyber exposure. 

Still, when you talk about a return on investment for this kind of product, that's very intangible. Can I say, "Yes, we're getting paid back for what we put into the product?" No, I can't say that. But what I can say is we are not losing because of not having the product.

It's hard to advise people on pricing and licensing. It's priced per user, although I do not remember what the list-price per user is and I don't even remember what we pay per user. But Check Point has always been very good about its licensing models. One of the nice features is that the licensing model is elastic, so if you go over your license count, you can add users during your billing cycle and true-up later. That type of policy is great for a company such as ours that does M&A activity and sees the occasional burst in employee count.

There are absolutely no additional costs to the standard licensing fees. One of the wonderful pieces is that CloudGuard SaaS is all-inclusive in its licensing. There's no a-la-carte functionality. You're getting 100 percent of the product for the licensing that you're paying.

We did do an evaluation of other solutions before putting this product in. We looked at a Microsoft-based solution and we did a bake-off, head-to-head, between the Check Point solution and the micro Microsoft solution. The Check Point solution was superior in its catch-rate and accuracy.

In comparing the two products, what I have found is that structurally, the way Check Point is approaching the catch rate, they're looking more behavioral-based, whereas Microsoft was looking at a signature-based type of solution. That means that the Check Point data is always fresh and current, while Microsoft had to wait to develop its signature and had to wait for somebody to report a malicious content email. It's modern technology with Check Point versus old-school and archaic with Microsoft. That is the best way to describe the two approaches. Clearly, Check Point is a security partner. Microsoft is delivering an application.

They have two different products. One is CloudGuard SaaS, the other is CloudGuard Connect.

The biggest advice I would give is don't go in with fear. Go in confident, because the product is almost too good to be true and it's simple. It really is as simple as it seems, and you will see value within the first 30 minutes of the product running.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using this solution is that visibility is key, and this product has given me more visibility into the attack vectors that our company is under on a daily basis. It has enabled us to then pivot and look at other security solutions. So I would advise to look at the data, understand the data, and understand who your adversaries are. Because once you understand that, you can then leverage your investment in the Check Point product line to further protect your organization.

The reporting functionality has greatly improved over the time I've used the product, so I've been very pleased with that, and I have provided that feedback to Check Point. I'm very tight with R&D at Check Point, so most of the feature functionality that I've needed has been released into the newer versions of the product.

Because I was part of the EA program, I had a lot of input into how the product was developed. I worked very tightly with R&D, as a customer. The partnership between our two companies, between Grace and Check Point, was a great advantage to both companies. I can't say enough about it. It has just been phenomenal.

Currently, our CloudGuard SaaS is managed by two different groups. It is managed by our information security group, which is what I'm part of and lead and manage, as well as our messaging team, which has insight into the content as well as the email flow. When we deployed this product, we thought that it was going to take a lot of people to maintain it and to manage it. We actually have two individuals who are into the product part-time, and spending very little time per week on it. And one of those individuals is just running reports out of the product to provide them to the senior management. There is a very, very low footprint from a workflow and employee perspective, to manage a very powerful product.

I would rate this product at 10 out of 10 all the way. I have nothing but good things to say about the product.

We use CloudGuard SaaS to protect our cloud-based services from security threats. It is responsible for our Office 365 environment, OneDrive, SharePoint, Dropbox, G-Suite, and more. 

This solution has improved our visibility. Last week, one of our Office 365 customers was hacked and we were able to see details such as the attacker's IP address and country. It allows us to better decide what to do, such as activating two-factor authentication.

The security level is fairly high, given the price.

The program has a nice interface and it is easy to use.

There is an extra option available for two-factor authentication that you install an app onto your mobile device for. You can, for example, set it up so that you can't get into Office 365 without authenticating access from your phone.

At this time, the two-factor authentication does not work for Active Directory. This is something that we are looking forward to.

I have been using CloudGuard SaaS for close to six months.

I have 60 customers who are using CloudGuard.

The technical support from Check Point is very good. 

The price is very good, based on what they deliver.

Overall, this is a solution that we are absolutely satisfied with and I definitely recommend it. In my opinion, using this product is necessary.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Our primary use is for email protection, though the analytics provided with respect to data leakage and user login activity is invaluable.

My company is a singular key player in a major industry in my country so we are a target at all times for phishing campaigns. We have had bad experiences in the past. Based on those experiences, we have been using Check Point for a couple of months, and in the reporting, we are seeing very good results.

The most valuable features would be its ability to intercept phishing emails and emails laden with malware, viruses, false links, etc. The ability to sandbox, extract and interrogate email attachments is also key to safeguard user mailboxes. 

I have a keen interest in being able to consolidate and being able to have one viewpoint. I want to be able to integrate directly into our centralized login. I would love to see the ability to integrate into our SIEM solution which is on-premise. 

I see where in a later update, they have built ability to integrate with an on-premise logging solution, so this is a big plus.

Stability has been a pain point. I was going back and forth with my product engineer and project manager for a couple of months. I had the product in a demonstration mode and wasn't satisfied with the results initially. After a few alterations and a few revisions later, it is fine.

It seems quite scalable. We don't anticipate any scaling issues. We have it deployed in the cloud. 

Their technical support was very responsive. I was not initially satisfied with the length of time it took to get this solution.

I've been a Check Point customer for about 17 years, and I am not accustomed to not getting immediate fixes when I contact support. This was different. However, I am glad it eventually worked out.

A colleague recommend the Check Point solution after we had such significant disruptions with the phishing email campaign. So, we tried it out.

The initial setup was was straightforward. It was unknown territory for me, but the instructions from Check Point were very clear and straight to the point. 

I worked directly with Check Point for the deployment. We had a good experience with them. 

Being able to keep the phishing campaigns out of my company has been ROI for me. 

Do a full feature evaluation (interactive) with a support person. That is what I did.

We also considered Fortinet and Proofpoint. We always look at things like stability, feature set, the position in the market, maturity of the product, cost (because we have a budget that we have to work with), and the availability of technical support. This is why we went with Check Point. 

I was part of the decision-making process to implement the solution.

I have been quite pleased with the solution. You have nothing to lose by trying out Check Point.

I would rate it an eight out of ten with room for improvement. 

It is a value proposition in the market.

Lateral data center: Check Point really adds value with east-west protection in the data center.

There is always room for improvement and growth.

The stability is great.

We are the consultants.

Palo Alto and Fortinet are some of the other vendors constantly running to the market.

Check Point is a leader in the market. It is a very sound product.

Most people think that when they're with a cloud provider that they're protected through the nature of being in somebody else's cloud. This is where Check Point adds value.

Our primary use is for security, Elastic Cloud, and Azure Cloud Services. 

The main benefit is to the user. Hackers can't steal their information.

Elasticsearch and sandboxing are the most valuable features. Check Point is very good for threat protection, which is our customers' primary concern. Everyday, our customers are asking about new threats.

The QoS on the Elastic Cloud could use improvement. 

Stability is very good. It has good uptime, which I find acceptable.

The scalability is so-so. The Elasticsearch application is not very transparent. 

We have used technical support, but their response time is very slow. It needs to be improved. 

We switched to Check Point because of the easier deployment on the cloud. It's very strong.

The initial setup was complex. We do the installation in a lab environment before installing it in the customer's environment.

I integrated it myself. The implementation is not easy because of communication between the environment and the environment as a cluster. It is a single gateway.

Having information stolen by a hacker would be more expensive than purchasing a license.

We also looked at Fortinet. 

Check Point is a very strong competitor versus Palo Alto. 

Try out Check Point. It is a good solution. I would rate it an eight out of ten.

We do security automation for our customers.

The automated rule cleanups and automated policy installs have improved my customers' organizations.

The API is its most valuable feature. On the API side, relative to the rest of the market, Check Point is decades ahead of its competitors. The APIs on some of their competitors are so archaic, they are not even usable.

I would like to see them do some work on the database back-end and how it is supported, in terms of performance, cleanup, and scalability. In particular, I would love it if they would do some work on the Postgres definition on the back-end.

I have learned enough to make the product stable. However, the stability has some challenges.

It is scalable. It can be very scalable in certain scenarios, but you have to make sure it is architected correctly.

Their technical support is very good, but I am fairly technical. I don't have to use them a lot. The product has been pretty good that way.

The initial setup was complex, but we were building something new for the API hosts.

I implemented it myself, and I did a great job!

I was the decision process. I wrote the code for it. I only work with Check Point.

I would rate it a ten out of ten. It is the best on the market right now. It is not perfect by any means, and it has its challenges, but every product does.

I would advise someone considering this solution to stop wasting your time and get it deployed.

We used it to replace the old Lotus Notes application with a full deployment of the Check Point Suite. So, it is more of an Office 365 and Check Point combined deployment, so we had a full ecosystem around Office 365 with Check Point, Outlook and all the different applications available. The idea was to replace old applications based on Notes as a base.

It is a little bit new, but the sharing of documentation is clearly easier now. It is easier to work within your teams using the Check Point solution so you can easily share a file without sending it by mail. This is an advantage, being able to work on the same document in a work group.

It is the collaboration between users inside the company. It is a big advantage with Check Point to be able to work together on the same document.

I would like some features that manage projects in more flexible ways, like smart chips. It would be very interesting to share tasks in a very flexible way inside a team or to reorganize planning for a certain project in a very collaborative way. Either integrating or developing something in Check Point to enable flexible project management with smart chips would be easy to use and quite powerful.

There is too much functionality, which makes it difficult to use. More guidance for users would be helpful.

We were using Notes before, but it was quite obsolete. The idea was to replace it with something new, in the cloud, so this was our main objective around the Check Point and Office 365 deployment.

It is a major concern for us is to give people enough knowledge to use the product in the proper way. Now it is more about training and management as we have to organize to make sure that everybody is onboard and using the tool in the correct way.

It is always good to compare with different solutions available on the market. This is a Microsoft solution so you are linked with a lot of tools for the integrations, and your integrations with your current landscape are key. An assessment on the different competitors in the market is very relevant for this type of choice.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

• Quality of applications
• Ecosystem
• Price.

The ecosystem of partner is very important. The position in the market, in terms of quality of the application, is key. The cost and price around it are important too. 

Often. we need to have a local partner available to make sure that we are not obliged to develop by ourselves a solution. It is key to have people able to help us to deploy something. 

We are using Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration to protect our organization from phishing attacks. For example, our CEO received phishing emails with a subject line 'Fund Relief,' and Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration helped block it.

The features I appreciate about Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration include notifications about email reputation and phishing protection. As the admin, I am notified immediately when phishing attacks occur, allowing me to block harmful emails quickly. This notification feature ensures that I have control over email activity and helps maintain data security.

Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration could improve by providing configuration recommendations and use case specific solutions.

Our company has licensed Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration for twenty users, and I have just started configuring it.

I think Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration's scalability is excellent. It allows us to scale protection for more users as needed, potentially up to hundreds or thousands.

I would rate customer support eight out of ten. Though it's my first product from Check Point, I find the service good.

Positive

We did not use any specific email solution before this, except for Microsoft's built-in Defender with Office 365.

The initial setup of Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration was easy because it is cloud-based, and there is a helpful guide on the dashboard.

Investing in Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration has protected our company data from theft, providing clear ROI. This solution manages threats, reducing my concern about daily email monitoring.

I advise organizations to use Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration to protect against phishing attacks and data thefts. I would rate the overall solution eight out of ten.