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McAfee Firewall Enterprise MFE [EOL] vs NetWitness Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

McAfee Firewall Enterprise ...
Average Rating
7.0
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetWitness Platform
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (36th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (34th)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer999975 - PeerSpot reviewer
Computer Technician at a leisure / travel company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We cannot find resources to help us configure it, so most of the time the virus still goes on our computer and McAfee doesn't detect it
It's pretty easy to use on a daily basis, but there are no other features because it's hard to configure on the server. On the endpoint it's really easy to push. It's hard to configure on the server, though. It's hard to find resources to help us configure it, and there is not much online help that you can find. Most of the time, we were looking at the forums, and we needed to go very deep to find what we were looking for. It was hard, and McAfee was not really helpful when we were trying to get the product to work perfectly. This is why are changing it.
reviewer1130436 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Security and Infrastructure Expert at a government with 201-500 employees
Helps to deal with potential attacks and is available at a reasonable price
My company has had many benefits from the use of the product in the last eight years. The tool has streamlined our company's incident response process since it serves as a log repository, which allows us to correlate events and access different technology stacks. In our company, we were able to actually find some potential attacks, so it has been very helpful. The tool's integration capability isn't so great. In my company, we managed to integrate it with our Microsoft Azure Subscription, after which we managed to integrate it with other tools. You will face a lot of difficulties if you want to integrate it with your database monitoring tool, PAM solutions, or IAM products. The product has done well overall for my company's teams to deal with their workflow efficiency. I would not recommend the product to others. I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"ROI: It's good."
"It does give certain protection for everything that is well configured on our McAfee server. We have good protection with it. If we could find a feature and make it work, it would work perfectly, there would be no bugs, and it would be really good."
"We have 10 offices throughout Brazil, and now they are all connected by using the VPN feature of the firewall."
"For managing multiple MFE firewalls it is incredibly handy, convenient, and it is easy to use the product with McAfee Control Centre."
"It's a very functional and stable product if you're looking for a Layer 7 firewall with reputation filtering and encrypted traffic inspection."
"The most valuable features are its ingestion of logs and raising of alerts based on those logs."
"This solution has a very good dashboard with a separate tab for incidents and alerts."
"Possibility to investigate incidents based on logs and raw packets, such as extracting files sent over the network"
"Since the solution has been under way we have seen a large decrease of threats and proactive reactions to incidents."
"It gives the capability for the incident response team to correlate logs to identify any kind of problem like malware and incidents in a general sense, both for logs and packets."
"Integration is exceedingly minimal, since its project development is much easier than that of LogRythm or IBM."
"The newer 11.5 version that my team is using has found it to have good mapping."
"The most valuable feature is the hunting ability to work in a CERT."
 

Cons

"The hardware is not stable and we have faced many stability issues."
"Administration of the firewall is a little confusing for end users."
"HA configuration is a bit difficult for the first time."
"Customer support and AV are both lacking and are really hard to come to you when the product is installed. Those are the two major points that they need to work on."
"Migrating from v7 to v8 of McAfee Firewall Enterprise, in many cases, involves you having to completely re-write all of your previous McAfee Firewall Enterprise v7 policies due to the difference in the way the interfaces are named in the product going from v7 to v8."
"Health monitoring of the event sources and devices."
"The initial setup is complex. There are other solutions that are easier to implement."
"Lots of competing products have vulnerability protection built into their products, and this solution would be improved by including that support."
"RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets can improve the threat level aspect, it is lacking compared to other solutions. Whenever any hacking activity or any other threat factor occurred they used to provide the coverages very fast when comparing RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets. I heard the other three solutions, from a discussion with my team members who had experience in other solutions, they used to say that. Whenever any issues happened across the globe RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets are a little bit slow improving those detection mechanisms."
"The solution should have more integration capabilities with different platforms."
"The product continues to crash. Even with tech support help, it does not resolve itself."
"The implementation needs assistance."
"The log system is a bit complex and has room for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It provides tools to assist in selecting the appropriate license and usage scenarios."
"In comparison to other SIEM solutions such as Splunk, NetWitness is less costly."
"We are on an annual license for the use of the solution."
"This is a pricey solution; it's not cheap."
"The new pricing and licensing mechanisms are fair. I would advise always to get the full solution (i.e., not only Logs)."
"Our license is for one year."
"The NetWitness Platform may be affordable only for enterprise-level customers, as it may not be within the budget of small and medium-sized businesses."
"We have yearly licensing costs. The license fee can be based on the volume of EPS. Some organizations may have, as a gentlemanly gesture, 10,000 EPS and get a 3,000 EPS license but actually use 5,000 EPS."
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Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Feb 26, 2015
HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. ​McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm
We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
21%
Construction Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise20
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetWitness Platform?
The pricing is comparable to others, and I consider the cost to be intermediate. Specific cost details are unknown to me.
What needs improvement with NetWitness Platform?
There is currently no need for improvement in the SIEM ( /categories/security-information-and-event-management-siem ), though there could be potential enhancements by integrating with AI.
What is your primary use case for NetWitness Platform?
I use NetWitness Platform ( /products/netwitness-platform-reviews ) in the financial industry as a good product with excellent capabilities and integration with various devices.
 

Also Known As

Firewall Enterprise MFE, Intel Security Firewall Enterprise MFE
RSA Security Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

French Ministry of Education, RWTH Aachen, Avency, Cegedim, Cobweb, Intel Security, Cemex Mauser, R_sler Oberfl_chentechnik
Los Angeles World Airports, Reply
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