Check Point Harmony Endpoint Reviews

There have been improvements in the way our organization functions, as, from an administrative perspective, and being available and taking upgrades out of our court if our users need it, it's going to be out there hanging off of AWS's internet or environment. There is no downtime.  

Theirs (AWS) is probably more highly available than ours. Other than that, it's supposed to be the same product that we were using. It's a Check Point Management Station to a Check Point Management Station in the cloud. Basically, it's not that much of a difference. We have upgraded all the clients since, and we're on one of the later versions of the VPN clients that are supported by the new Management Station. The old Management Station wasn't supporting the newer clients anymore.

The new clients seem to be faster and more stable. Those are improvements that everyone in the company can appreciate. They can VPN and connect faster. They're more resilient. I've noticed that they try to reconnect. If our internet goes out for 20 minutes and you VPN'd in, it will actually reconnect on its own at the same token, which is amazing. Before, if only the slightest instability of the internet connection disconnected you from VPN, you were then required to put in your RSA token and password, and username. That is annoying for people as a lot of people's WiFi's aren't that great and/or they're in some airport or something and might momentarily disconnect.

We love that we don't have to upgrade it anymore. They take care of that.

The upgrade process was nice with the new Management Station compared to the old one. I like how they have the clients already available. I didn't have to download them and upload them as I did with the old Management Station.

We're happy with the solution overall as it takes away the administrative overhead of operating it and patching it and being able to also sign in through the web browser anywhere as opposed to just having to VPN back to our work and connect to the Management Station in order to use it. We can just use the Check Point portal and just use any browser anywhere. That gives us more options, which we like. 

I've noticed they're constantly updating the interface and making it easier to use, which I appreciate. When we first started using it, it was really laggy and it was really slow and it was hard to sort some of the computers and users, however, they make updates almost every time that I log in. It gets better and better every day. It has gotten better and it's not as slow as it was.

There seem to be constant improvements happening, which you can't say for everything. We don't have to upgrade to get the benefits of the improvements, either. That takes a lot off of our plate and allows us to focus on other things. We're taking the good with the bad and the bad seem to be one-offs and we're looking forward to the future.

Therefore, the most valuable feature is its ability to take the management and the administration of the product off of our plate and onto their plate. We don't have to worry about upgrading it, creating downtime, working off-hours, doing all the research and stress of seeing if it's compatible, if there are problems, letting them test it. That's nice. Previously, we would upgrade our products or patch them maybe two to four times a year, depending on if there's a security vulnerability. Each time we do something like that, it was about three to four hours of downtime. Now, that process doesn't exist. 

Before, with on-premise, we had two Management Stations. One was primary, one was secondary and there were two different data centers in case one data center was down. The other one would come up and be the Management Station for all of the clients. Now, in this case, we only have one. It's in their cloud. Their cloud is in AWS. It's a great thing. It's resilient by design and it provides redundancy in a single source of administration for us. We like that too

It would be ideal if they had a migration tool of some sort.

There were some caveats that we encountered on the new Management Station. For example, they had some features that were not supported by older clients. There are the clients that are running on the laptops, and there are the Management Stations, and then we had one on-premise, which was older in terms of the clients that we were running. Then we had the new Management Station in the Cloud that Check Point is administering as it is a SaaS, which is a benefit.

The newer Management Station has features that it enforced on the clients that the clients weren't able to support. For example, Windows Service or Windows Subsystem Linux. Everyone in my company that uses Windows Subsystem Linux, which is about 15 or 20 people, that need it on a daily basis, were running the older clients of course, as they were migrated over the new Management Station and they weren't allowed to use that. It was being blocked automatically due to the fact that that was the new policy being enforced that was literally a tick box in the new Management Station that I didn't set. Even if I enabled WSL, it didn't matter. The older clients couldn't take advantage of the new newer Management Station telling them to use it. That was annoying trying to troubleshoot that and figure it out. tNo one at Check Point really knew that was the problem. It took a while to resolve. We finally figured out upgrading may solve the problem. When we did that, we upgraded those users, however, that created a little bit of an issue in the company, as we upgraded those users. We like to test them with a small group and make sure they're stable and make sure nothing weird happens. We were forced to upgrade them without testing first. 

One thing they still haven't improved on from the old Management Station to the new Management Station, which should totally be an improvement, is when you create a Site List for the VPN clients and you deploy it from the Management Station, you are not able to get that Site List. You have to play around with something called the Track File, which is a miserable process. You have to download the client, decrypt the Track File, edit it, then upload it again to the Management Station and download the client a second time and then test it and make sure the Track File's in the right order of sites as well, due to the fact that it's kind of random how it decides to order the Site List. The Site List is what the clients use to connect to the VPN Gateway, and if you have more than one gateway, for example, for disaster recovery, which we do, then they'll need that list.

It's something they've never improved on, which I was hoping by going to the cloud and having this whole thing recreated. Since it's more advanced I thought they'd have that ability to edit the Site List with the initial download. You should be able to just add the sites and then that's it. That kind of sucks that you can't. 

Other than that, the only other thing I could complain about was that they did this process where they did some type of certificate update on the backend of all of their staff solutions. That created downtime for our VPN clients and they didn't notify us of the certificate update. We're using the product in their cloud as opposed to their product on-premise, which seemed to be more stable in that regard. They didn't communicate that out. However, when we spoke to support after about a week, they told us there was this thing they did the past week, and that's the reason why we had that problem. Everyone that had that product had that problem. That really wasn't ideal.

I've been using the solution for about a year. Maybe a little bit more. 

We've been a Check Point shop for approximately 15 years. We're very well versed in Check Point.

Seeing that it's in the Cloud, I think it's very scalable and I am impressed with that aspect of it.

For this solution, in particular, we are using 100% of the Cloud VPN Management Station and all users are phoning home up into the cloud. We're going to stick with it unless they have some severe outages or certificate updates without telling us like they did last time. Right now, there's no reason for us to change and I'm very pleased with the product.

To set it up, we relied heavily on technical support as it was new. That said, it's really the same ball of wax, so we're good now. It was just the initial setup we needed help with as it was new to us. We hadn't done much. We had to learn how to connect our software clients to the cloud. We had to use special cloud keys that were proprietary to Check Point. It's like learning a new suite from Check Point. 

We literally got on this as it was cutting edge. We're like one of their first customers using their SaaS. We were using their VPN and Smart-1 Cloud before most people. When we were setting it up, we're setting it up with their actual product engineers or whatever. It was interesting.

They changed it a lot since we started setting it up. 

I'd call them to their support and they didn't even know about anything due to the fact that the support wasn't even trained on the cloud yet. They weren't even trained on their Smart-1. They would just say "we don't know about that yet and/or we can't help you." It was kind of funny. I told our sales team that and they got pissed.

They called them and they're like, no one should ever tell the customer that you don't know about this yet and it became a big deal in Check Point. 

That said, I'd rate their service as pretty high. I respect those in the endpoint or firewall department as they largely understand what's going on. At the same time, they do need to get people more people trained up. They don't seem to have trouble keeping people around for a few years so that they learn.

After signing up with Check Point, the migration of users took about a month and a half. 

We had to build out the Management Station in Check Point too and that took from probably January to almost July as we had to build it from scratch. They didn't have a migration tool for our current policy, as it enforces firewall policy on the endpoints locally on the local firewall and that wasn't ideal. We had to build that whole Management Station from scratch.

I had to go back and forth between the on-premise Management Station and the Cloud Management Station and literally look at every single feature, every single function, every single rule. I had to recreate every single object. I had to recreate every single everything. That took a very long time.

It was very manual. It's literally two screens and comparing items. That took a couple of months while doing other things, of course. However, that was my priority for about a month and a half. I worked on that a lot. I wish they had a migration tool, like a migrate export for the policy and the features. Once that was created, however, everything pretty much worked. That said, there were a couple of caveats. 

We're customers of Check Point.

I've been working on setting it up and migrating users from the on-premise platform since January of this year. This is their Cloud Endpoint, VPN Management Station versus their on-premise VPN Management Station for Endpoint. We had to migrate the users from the on-premise version using a special tool that you have to ask them to make, which is kind of weird, however, their product is so new that that's the way that they do it. I had to deploy that tool to all the users in our company and that switched them over to their Cloud Management Station.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. There's room for improvement, however, I respect it and it works well.

We primarily use the solution for anti-malware. We installed it on around 300 systems. Since we required some application to safeguard ourselves in this situation of work from home, so we were evaluating Antimalware products. 

After some research, we finalized Check Point and took a demo. The product seems fine as per our scenario and fits current conditions. We were evaluating it for work-from-home situations. it had a multifeatured tool that helps in safeguarding the current digital attack vector for organizations of all types.

It helps in safeguarding our infra from malicious attacks. However, initially, we faced lots of challenges while implementation as the vendor who was implementing it made blunders, which resulted in chaos for the organization. 

Our team worked almost 24/7 for 3 to 4 weeks to resolve the issues. We haven't requested the encryption feature, yet they implemented it. Our laptops were already encrypted, so it started decryption and re-encryption, which was a nightmare for us. We are still facing a few challenges for which we couldn't find any reason for the issues we've since found that were not there before installation.

We found all features valuable - other than the encryption since we were already using that feature. Since we required some application to safeguard ourselves in this work from home situation. We were evaluating anti-malware products specifically. 

There can be scenarios where this encryption feature will be applicable and fruitful if it is implemented with proper planning and organized with respect to a particular organization. There have to be proper requirements gathering and a plan to work effectively.

There are improvements required in terms of accuracy. It gives you an alert for malicious sites, which, after searching on the Google database, don't come out to be the same.

There can be scenarios where specific planning will be required before even giving thought to implementing it into an organization - be it small, medium, or large. Everything needs to be organized with respect to each particular organization. There has to be proper requirement gathering and a plan for the SOW to work accordingly. 

I would suggest that the Check Point team always allocates an SME to all the vendors before implementation as it will improve the first impression. In my case, I had pretty much faced disaster after implementation that I would not suggest anybody go with the product.

The product needs to improve the security infra.

I've been using the solution for three months.

In terms of stability, I would rate it at a five out of ten. There were issues like once a version was installed and was not working properly, even the checkpoint team couldn't uninstall it and as a result, we had to format the system. few cases were reported for software installed but was not visible in the control panel.

The scalability is good.

Our ROI has been neutral.

Cost-wise it's cheaper than other options.

We did evaluate another solution. However, I can't reveal the name.

We primarily use it for end-to-end security for endpoints and the co-relation of events from one single console. We have been able to protect our endpoints with Harmony. The user experience is also good and there is not too much to be done with respect to the endpoint changes (the best part). Features like Threat Emulation/Threat Extraction, Antibot, Anti- Exploit, Anti Ransomware protection, UBA, Zero-day Phishing protection, Behavioral Guard, Encryption, VPN, and compliance makes it more powerful and helpful to our security team in order to protect the environment.

Our organization's overall security posture has improved with Harmony Endpoint protection. This has helped to secure against all modern age threats and risks that came in during the pandemic. 

During the pandemic, the users, for example, have been forced to work from home and that's been forcing the IT to do overtime to protect the endpoints. After introducing Harmany Endpoint we have seen the incident levels going down to close to zero. 

The single dashboard provides complete visibility over endpoint security and the administration can view the actionable tasks to follow up easily without searching across multiple reports/consoles. 

All of the available features are good (for example Threat Emulation/Threat Extraction, Antibot, Anti-Exploit, Anti-Ransomware protection, UBA, Zero-day Phishing protection, Behavioral Guard, Encryption, VPN, and compliance), however, the one I have thought to be very valuable is the Ransomware Protection Feature which has been used widely during the pandemic. It protects as well as saves original file copies to prevent data loss.

Forensic Analysis provides a complete analysis of threats via detailed reports. The threat prevention, which includes a detailed threat landscape is very good.

The VPN connectivity and compliance check are also very good features.

Support's service and the response times can be improved. The triaging of the tickets takes a long time and the tickets are only resolved with escalations. 

With respect to the product, we feel Endpoint vulnerability management is one of the modules that is missing and it is something that is required. Adding this will strengthen the product and help in taking proactive steps towards protecting the environment.

DLP Module & Patching are required from an endpoint perspective. It would be good to add those in an upcoming release/version.

I've used the solution for more than 6 months.

We have deployed it on the cloud which helps it to be scalable and cost-effective.

We were using multiple solutions to protect the environment in the past. These include solutions such as McAfee, Websence DLP, encryption, etc. however, now it is all happening with this one tool and console 

Easy to set up and start using.

A single administrator can manage the complete solution. It's easy to deploy and does not require any additional effort. We're able to have multiple solutions within a single solution.

We implemented the product with the help of our OEM and our in-house team. There were no major challenges during implementation or even in day-to-day operations.

Harmony Endpoint, in terms of the deployment, integration, and setup, costs less than other solutions.

Yes, we evaluated other products as well, however, with respect to feature price and integration availability, we selected this product.

Harmony Endpoint is a good product and scalable with business growth. 

In my organization, we have deployed the Harmony Endpoint Check Point tool with the idea of being able to secure the deployed part of our mobile corporate devices in order to start the security processes at the point as close to the user as possible. 

Using its ease of deployment capacity and its power in detecting malware or insecure elements, this tool provides us with the peace of mind we were looking for in an environment of several thousand terminals deployed on the network in many places and environments.

By using the Check Point Harmony Endpoint tool we have improved our network visibility, have extensive control of our network and our users, and, above all, have a level of security against cyber attacks that we did not have before. 

Now, we are able to detect and avoid security breaks. We can better understand the use that our users make of the devices, and, most importantly, we can apply security policies that keep our users safe as well as the organization's own systems and data. The personal information of our users is also secure.

Right away, we noticed when using Check Point's Harmony Endpoint tool, was the ease of deployment. In our case, it was deployed without too many difficulties, considering the deployment involved several tens of thousands of devices. 

Once deployed, the dashboard and all the inventory information that we had been able to obtain and that we did not know about before proved to be very interesting. 

One of the strengths of Harmony is its power to detect threats and keep us safe. Also the ability to apply policies specifically to users or groups is very useful.

I still don't have a clear opinion of the possible improvements that the tool may need. There are still functionalities that I have not been able to try completely and I would like to spend more time using the tool before offering an opinion to the IT Central community on this point. 

Something that is very important to me is the remediation or recovery capabilities after an attack. From what I have seen so far, this tool maintains the quality line of Check Point products and is always ahead of the needs of the market.

I've used the solution for seven months.

This was the first endpoint tool we use in my organization. We didn't use anything previously.

The only thing I don't like about the solution is the time to pay for the licenses. That said, I really believe that it is a fair price according to the quality of the product offered.

We also looked at Panda Security Adaptive Defense, Cisco Secure Endpoint, ESET Endpoint Security, and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint.

After analyzing and comparing other solutions, we determine that Harmony has the best value for money.

In my organization, we have selected the Harmony Endpoint tool after an analysis of the market. We wanted to be able to secure the deployed part of our mobile corporate devices in order to start the security processes at the point closest to the user possible. Thanks to its ease of deployment and its power in detecting malware or insecure elements, this tool provides us with the peace of mind we were looking for in an environment of several thousand terminals deployed on the network in very different environments.

By using the Check Point Harmony Endpoint tool we have achieved great visibility, extensive control of our network and our users, and, above all, a level of security against cyber attacks that's more effective than what we had before. Now, we can detect and avoid security incidents and we can better understand the use that our users make of the devices, and, most importantly, we can apply security policies that keep us safe - not only on the organization's own systems but also within the data. The personal information of our users is also very much protected.

When starting to use Check Point's Harmony Endpoint tool, the first thing that strikes us is its great ease of deployment. In our case, it has been a deployment without too many incidents considering that we are talking about a deployment in the tens of thousands of devices. Once deployed, the dashboard and all the inventory information that we have been able to obtain and that we did not know before are very interesting. Of course, one of the key points of Harmony is its great ability to detect threats and keep us safe.

After using Harmony for six months, I still don't have a clear vision of the possible improvements that the tool may need. There are still functionalities that I have not been able to fully test and I would like to spend more time using the tool before offering an opinion to the IT Central community on this point. What is very important, in my opinion, is the remediation or recovery capabilities after an attack. From what I have seen so far, this tool aligns with the quality of Check Point products and the evolution it has is correct and logical. Check Point is always ahead of the needs of the market.

I've been using the solution for 6 months.

No, it is the first tool of this type that we deployed in my organization.

I would advise all organizations to deploy tools of this type for the security they need. As for Harmony, I recommend it 100% for its ease of use, reliability, and reasonable price.

Yes, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Cisco Secure Endpoint were evaluated.

It's a very good solution and it is a complete endpoint security solution. We get almost all the features we need, including features like Threat Emulation/Threat Extraction, Antibot, Anti- Exploit, Anti Ransomware protection, UBA, Zero-day Phishing protection, Behavioral Guard,  Encryption, VPN, compliance, and many more. It's well integrated with Check Point Threat Cloud, as well as other Check Point solutions. The product provides complete visibility of threats with forensics analysis. There is direct Integration with all well-known SIEM solutions as well as the support of standard SIEM integration features.  

It improves our organization's security posture as well as endpoint performance. The single-agent has multiple features and we have no need to use multiple solutions for endpoint security. The required features are supported by Harmony Endpoint. During the pandemic, one of the major requirements is to connect corporate resources in a secure manner. It helps us with secure connectivity.

During the pandemic, the threat landscape has increased as every endpoint is an entry point for any threat and it is critical to secure. Every endpoint with advanced/latest technologies and Harmony Endpoints provides the same level of safety.

A single dashboard provides complete visibility over endpoint security.

The features available are all good. One of the best features is the Ransomware Protection Feature. It is great and is a way to protect endpoints. It protects as well as it saves original file copies to prevent data loss.

Zero-Day Anti-phishing detects phishing sites in real-time and prevents users from any data and other losses.

Forensic Analysis provides a complete analysis of threats via detailed reports. Threat prevention with an included detailed threat landscape is very good.

The VPN connectivity and compliance check are also very good features. 

Endpoint vulnerability management is one of the modules I believe is missing and it is something that is required. I recommend adding this feature in an upcoming release as it will provide complete visibility of endpoint vulnerabilities. 

Endpoint Patching is another good feature that could be added and is required to mitigate vulnerabilities. 

Currently, the DLP Module is not available and it is one of the requirements from an endpoint perspective. It would be good to add in an upcoming release.

There needs to be improved integration with the on-premises/Azure AD.  

Software deployment needs to be added.

I've used this product for the last one and a half years.

It's a very stable product. It's easy to deploy and manage.

It's very scalable.

It's a good and technical team. They are very supportive and any help required by the development team receives some form of resolution.

Yes, we used different products earlier, however, due to the fact that the feature available is more advanced here than in others and there are lots of add-on features, we prefer this.

It's straightforward and not complex.

We implemented the product with the help of OEM and our in-house team. There were no major challenges during implementation or even in day-to-day operations.

A single Administrator can manage the complete solution. It's easy to deploy and does not require any additional effort. We're able to have multiple solutions within a single solution.

I strongly advise others use Harmony Endpoint as the deployment, integration, and setup cost less than others.

Yes, we evaluated other products as well but with respect to feature price and integration availability, we selected this product.

It's a very good product. Over the past year, the team has been improving it day by day and we're now more focused on endpoint security with the latest features on offer.

The solution should be able to provide next-generation security for endpoints and should be able to monitor, detect, mitigate, and block attacks, as well as provide complete visibility in terms of the chain of events so that forensics can be performed accordingly.

All of the security features should be provided on a single agent and it should be lightweight and should not have a performance impact on the endpoint.

Provide required/relevant logs on the console and also should be able to forward to the SIEM solution. So accordingly, a use case can be created. 

The agent should be tamperproof and the admin should not be able to shut down or stop services without the security team concerned, or by using a password.

We should be able to integrate and share IOC with other security devices.

The Check Point SandBlast solution, also known as Harmony Endpoint, is able to detect, block, monitor, and respond to any malicious activity that happens on the endpoint. With a single agent deployed on the endpoint, it's able to provide complete EDPR functionality, with help of multiple security features and modules.

This agent can be pushed either from the Check Point management console or by using other patch management solutions such as SCCM.

It is able to provide a consolidated security posture for all Windows endpoints on a single dashboard and also provide threat hunter visibility for any security threat on the endpoint, and able to mitigate the same. 

Provide capability of reproducing any security threat and also provide RCA/attack tree. 

File/hash can be swiped across the network using the security console, which provides visibility on the endpoint according to its priority.  

Harmony Endpoint provides complete EDPR functionality using multiple modules and features that are available with the solution. These include Compliance, Anti-Malware, Media Encryption, Port Protection, Firewall, Application Control, Full Disk Encryption, Remote access VPN, Capsule DOC, URL Filtering, Anti-Bot, Anti-Ransomware, Behaviour Guard, Forensics, Threat Emulation, and Anit-Exploit. This group of features is able to protect the endpoint from any next-generation attack. Any of the modules can be enabled or disabled based on the organization's requirements.

Harmony Endpoint is able to detect, monitor, block, and mitigate attacks on the endpoint and it builds and maintains relevant logs for later inspection. The agent sends telemetry/metadata to the centralized console for forensic purposes.

Policies for endpoints can be created based on the username or endpoint.

Integration with the Threat intel platform is helpful for blocking any attack at an early stage.

The complete solution can be hosted on-premises or SaaS on the cloud.

Remote access VPN is provided as default in the base license.

A different Policy Server can be configured and hosted at each location so that the agent does not have to reach a central location to receive policy updates. Policy servers are created using an OVF file, which can be installed on any Virtual Platform such as VMware.

It has secure communication between the Policy Server and the Management Console using Certificate/SIC communication.

The agent footprint is small on the endpoint.

It supports integration with other security solutions for sharing threat intel within an organization or over the cloud.

The anti-ransomware module is very strong; it's able to detect any ransomware attack at a very early stage.

Host-based firewall policy configuration is simple, which helps to access an endpoint if the machine is not in the organization's network.

The Threat Hunting module is not available for on-premises deployment.

The user has to connect using the VPN to take Policy Server updates when the solution is hosted on-premises. This adds overhead, as the user has to connect to the corporate network to get the policy.

In the case of a hybrid setup where the Policy and Management Server is on the cloud, the Sandbox appliance has to be on-premises.

Policy configuration and deployment are complex.

The application control and URL filtering features are not very strong.

Application Control databases are generated locally and it does not provide any visibility to the admin on which applications are installed on the endpoint.

The solution is supported only on Windows and MAC and not any other platform.

So far, the solution is stable.

The solution is scalable we can add multiple policy servers based on requirement and it will be integrated with the central management server (Primary/Secondary). 

In the case of the SaaS offering, it is managed by Check Point. 

Technical support is excellent.

We used McAfee AV but it was not able to provide the next-generation capability that we were looking for.

The solution required the Management Console and Policy server for initial setup and it can be increased based on the requirements.

We had assistance from the vendor during deployment and the service is excellent.

There are three different licensing models including basic, advanced, and complete, and it needs to be selected according to the endpoint. For example, it matters whether it is only required for a Windows endpoint as opposed to providing support for BYOD/Mobile devices.

We evaluated Windows ATP and CrowdStrike.

In case you want to set up the solution on-premises and you want to deploy multiple policy servers, it is complicated. You will need an OVF to be deployed at each location and sometimes, organizations don't have the compute or supporting platform for deployment.

Also, for connecting remote users there is a dependency on the VPN, hence it's again a challenge for users to connect to the policy server for updates.

We had to protect our equipment inside and outside the perimeter network, regardless of where we were. Due to this need, we came to use Check Point Harmony Endpoint, which was extremely easy to deploy from the moment we logged in to the website. 

This solution is very user-friendly. After the Check Point tenant is created, it allows us to download the application for iOS or Windows, and it is only a matter of installing it so that the teams can start reporting to the Harmony Endpoint cloud. 

It came to provide us with security, reliability, and a centralized administration of unified services. It works regardless of whether you work on Mac or Windows systems, which are among the equipment we have in our organization. Today, our equipment is very diverse. However, we have managed to protect everyone with this solution. Check Point Harmony Endpoint provides support within the new organizational disruption trend of teleworking. With it, we manage to protect and manage all teams from a centralized policy. 

Its most valuable feature is being able to integrate cloud services and centralize the protection policy from a single administration dashboard. We are achieving uniform work that is easy to manage if any changes are necessary. Being able to give us an inventory of the equipment and the health status of everything from a single place has been great. This solution has become a great ally for the prevention of threats and security problems caused by viruses such as ransomware, and we are protected against threats, which is of great value. 

I would like to see this same solution being able to link with the services of different corporate networks as if they were a remote access VPN extension and thus not require additional licenses. We'd like to be able to integrate several products and services into one to be more efficient and user-friendly within the infrastructure. 

I've used the solution for one year.