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Fortra's Digital Guardian vs Varonis Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
Fortra's Digital Guardian
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (19th)
Varonis Platform
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (9th), Data Governance (6th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (5th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (8th), Compliance Management (8th), Ransomware Protection (8th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (5th)
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes
Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.
Christian Dagal - PeerSpot reviewer
Ease of sensitive information detection and provides flexibility to customize and redefine policies and user analytics that detect data channels
In my opinion, there's a need for an extensive skill set or knowledge of creating policies. There's room for improvement to make it more user-friendly in creating custom rules and policies. In future releases, I would like to see a quick glance at detected data without downloading the actual file for both Windows and MacOS.
Frederic  Delos - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers the ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data
The most effective feature for me is its ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data, provided you have access, to determine whether it's a false positive or a true positive. That's the best thing for me, out of all of it. It's got everything, like other ones, but I like to be able to look at something if I'm doing forensics on the alert and say, "Okay, do I really need to do something with this?" For example, we don't want sensitive data in our OneDrive. So it identifies the sensitive data that's possibly in the OneDrive. And what I can do is look at it and identify whether it's actually sensitive data in Datalert or whether it looks like sensitive data, but I know it's a false positive. If it is a false positive, I can basically say ignore this pattern based on X, Y, and Z, you know, whether it's Redjax or keyword proximity. So I like that. With other tools, I gotta go through a whole process because it's a little bit more complex. Here, I can tag it and bag it in one shot. And the next good time I scan, it slips over it. So it helps in that.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."
"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."
"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."
"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."
"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."
"I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."
"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."
"As long as you know the flow and how the setup phase works, the process can be totally straightforward."
"We have accurate detection on data protection and more visibility on different data channels compared to other DLP solutions. So, basically, more on the principle, there is ROI."
"The most important feature is remediation. In remediation support, there is no group permission. We'll go ahead and remediate the access from the Dell folder to the parent folder."
"There's also a 90-day policy where if a user is not using the warehouse, it will automatically delete that username."
"It can easily identify unusual behavior or access patterns that may pose a potential threat, while operating as a unified reporting system."
"The solution's classification engine is highly configurable and efficient."
"That alerting and reporting service is great."
"The 24/7 support is the most valuable feature. They have been able to answer support questions pretty quickly."
"I also appreciate the reporting feature, which allows for the extraction of various reports based on specific needs. These reports can be used for audit purposes, such as tracking changes in file locations or deletions."
"Technical support from Varonis is rated as nine out of ten."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."
"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."
"Latencies are always a problem."
"It would be beneficial for us if Cloudflare could offer a scrubbing solution. This would involve taking a snapshot of my website and keeping it live during a DDoS attack, ensuring uninterrupted service for our users. DDoS attacks are typically short in duration, and having Cloudflare maintain the site's availability from its secure network would enhance the overall user experience. I would appreciate it if Cloudflare could consider implementing this feature. Many organizations already utilize similar capabilities in their CDN platforms, where a static snapshot of the web page is displayed during DDoS attacks. In terms of features, Cloudflare needs to enhance its resilience and stay more focused on adopting new technologies. For instance, solutions like F5 XC Box, Access Solution, and Distributed Cloud Solution have impressive features, and Cloudflare should strive to match and exceed those capabilities. There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features. Cloudflare should prioritize enhancements in areas such as behavioral DDoS and protection against SQL injection attacks, considering the prevalent trend of public exposure to the internet for business reasons. Overall, Cloudflare needs to invest more in advancing its feature set."
"We are a product integrator and reseller, and we would like to have a better partner relationship, similar to a channel sales relationship. Sometimes we are on our own or get diverted by Cloudflare because they have direct sales, which competes with us and makes it difficult to build a relationship with this company since we want to be an MSP or a managed service provider for the solution."
"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."
"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."
"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."
"In my opinion, there's a need for an extensive skill set or knowledge of creating policies. There's room for improvement to make it more user-friendly in creating custom rules and policies."
"The trouble with the tool is its ability to integrate with a third-party application."
"Varonis requires more access permissions for its core functions compared to competitors, which can be a concern for companies about data safety."
"There is one thing that if I add something manually, I get so many alerts. That's the biggest bad thing."
"The GUI should be more functional. There should be a process for connecting through Chrome, Internet Explorer, etc."
"Varonis requires more access permissions for its core functions compared to competitors, which can be a concern for companies about data safety."
"It is significantly complex."
"I would like it to have cloud integration."
"The solution's areas of improvement are the interface and the dependency on on-premises deployment for some components."
"One area for improvement is the calculation engine. When applying rules in Varonis, especially for large datasets (terabytes of data), the calculations can be slow and require time to process. Speeding up this process would be beneficial."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."
"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."
"As long as your needs are fulfilled, even if the price is high, you will buy the tool."
"Licensing is on an annual basis. Maintenance and renewal fees are separate. Varonis Datalert is quite expensive."
"You could do a subscription, where you pay yearly, or you could purchase it outright. The licensing cost is based on the number of users on the system that you are monitoring."
"The platform is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."
"Varonis Platform wasn't certainly the cheapest solution."
"It's expensive, kind of, really expensive."
"The pricing is good. It neither expensive nor cheap. It is average."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
21%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
No data available
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
What do you like most about Fortra's Digital Guardian?
We have accurate detection on data protection and more visibility on different data channels compared to other DLP so...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra's Digital Guardian?
As per my experience with both of my clients, I would say that the price is a bit high, but it didn't matter once the...
What needs improvement with Fortra's Digital Guardian?
The trouble with the tool is its ability to integrate with a third-party application. For example, integrating an SIE...
What do you like most about Varonis Platform?
The solution has significantly improved data security and compliance posture by allowing us to track and monitor acti...
What needs improvement with Varonis Platform?
Varonis started as an on-premises solution and is transitioning to cloud. It hasn't fully moved yet, which is an area...
What is your primary use case for Varonis Platform?
The primary use case for Varonis Platform is data discovery, specifically for discovering sensitive data in our organ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

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