Forescout Platform Reviews

The visibility is the main benefit. We now know how many devices are connected, what the use for each device is and what kind of devices we have in our environment.

I can create granular policies. This is amazing. I really appreciate the granularity to create policies.

They should improve features related to IT security. ForeScout should analyze behavior to see if the behavior is malicious behavior and block this device. They should develop the ability to analyze the behavior of the device in my environment.

The interface of this solution and the integration part needs improvement. The difference between the 7th and the 8th version is the dashboard. They should improve it. 

We never had a problem with this product. It has worked very well.

It's very simple to scale and to implement more devices and licenses. It's easy to grow.

We haven't had to use their technical support. 

We switched because ForeScout is the best tool for Mac. 

The initial setup was very easy, very simple to deploy. We didn't have problems or difficulties with the implementation.

We also looked at Fortinet. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten because it's the best solution. 

I would advise someone considering this or a similar solution to make sure that the solution works with a lot of vendors. Choose a product that doesn't change your environment.

Primarily used to define which host to admit onto the network, by tying a policy to the MAC address.

Identifying issues on why some hosts are not on the network, and assisting with possible remediation options.

• SNMP Traps on switches
• Getting the MAC address of the host from the ARP table of the switch and applying policy.

• Battled with the use of SNMP v1 instead of v2c
• Direct web interface rather than installation of a client.

Obtaining visibility into the network and connected devices is very simple with this tool. It takes me three minutes to do a base deployment when all the parameters are available.

The reporting for audits start with the knowledge of the devices in the network and the services running on them. ForeScout provides the foundation for the needed information.

Using passive and active methods to learn about the network. Even hybrid parts, like production, can be discovered with the passive method, while the office LAN can be discovered with both.

Multitenancy should be included in the next version so it could be used as a managed service provider.

The most valuable feature for us is the visibility into all connected devices. Also, the plugins are very robust -- the ability scanner, patch management system, and SQL integrator.

You can query a lot of information from the connected device, including their compliance statuses.

We've had no issues with deployment.

It's a stable solution.

There have been no issues with scaling it.

The initial setup was complex, but that was due to the nature of the network architecture.

We didn't look for other solutions.

Have a clear understanding and document the network architecture before you deploy it.

The most valuable features of ForeScout is the fact that it can do network access control either with 802.1x or without 802.1x. Many network devices are not ready to do 802.1x. Lots of endpoints are not ready to do it, or they're poor at it, so having a non-.1x solution is critical for maintaining stability on our network.

We did not have a NAC prior to ForeScout. It provides constant monitoring of the endpoints either through an agent or periodic monitoring with a local admin account. This makes posturing very easy to do. Once the device is on the network, we're able to determine, does it continue to meet the requirements that we need for a device to stay on the network?

Definitely, having more third-party integration would be an improvement. This is something that they're doing. Other products that we have on our network, if we're able to get ForeScout to talk with them, we'll get much better information to those products, things like Splunk and other data gathering.

Also, I think we have Rapid7, so all these different programs that want to collect a lot of information, ForeScout is able to do that. So having it being able to talk to them, the more it can talk to, the better it is.

I think there are some product maturity issues in terms of the web interfaces that its able to present for end users. They're working on those. Those are improving, and just other features that come along with them growing into this space that they have. They're getting feedback from us, and they're getting feedback from other very large customers on what to do to improve, and they respond very well.

2 years

We've had no issues with deployment.

We had a few issues that were unique to our environment, but ForeScout tech support has been very timely in being able to respond to them and getting us support we needed. We have had to have a few reboots due to some outages, but again, these are things that were able to be resolve very quickly. Overall, I would say that this is a stable solution.

We're a huge company, over 100,000 employees, and it does require that we have done our homework ahead of time -- that we know where our address space is, that we know what's out there, and being able to come up with a deployment plan is our responsibility. Once we had that, we were able to go with it, and it works very well.

Very good.

Very good.

Device setup is straightforward - NAC itself is always a complex thing due to its profiling of EVERY device that connects to the network.

The ForeScout engineers were there to help us without the standard, "Oh, you have over 100,000 endpoints? Well here's what every 100,000-endpoint company does."

We compared ForeScout to Cisco ISE. There were some other vendors in this space, but we felt they were for mid-sized companies at largest. Cisco looked like they had an offering that would be able to compete head-to-head with it in terms of size. The reason we picked this over ISE was because ForeScout had a non-802.1x solution for the wired network. We would avoid a lot of chaos and a lot of destruction if we go that route. Also, ForeScout had fewer vulnerabilities whereas Cisco ISE had several level-10 vulnerabilities that have been observed over the years. While we were testing it, two of them came out.

ForeScout has never had a vulnerability above 7.0, so when we look at the security of the system, it definitely meets that requirement where this is not something that's going to be compromised the way it looked, as though Cisco ISE had some potential for that. Much less disruptive, both Cisco ISE and ForeScout really require a client to get the full features of the system. They say that it can run client-less, but having the client gives a lot better functionality, and the ForeScout client just worked a lot better for us on our endpoints.

The most important thing would be that a NAC project involves more than just the network. You've got to have client people, PKI people, active directory people all working together with the network to make this product work and make it happen. There's so many ways that it could interrelate. If you're in a very large company, you've got to break down the silo walls and get everybody together from the beginning to make this thing work out, but once you have those people together, this is something that every group wants to have. Desktop people want it, the mobile people want it, the scanning people. Everybody wants it once they see it, so it does sell itself, but you've got to have that education meeting up front.

As a university, we have used ForeScout to help us get a hold on student computers and their infections, and to keep those infected systems off our network. We are also currently using ForeScout as a mechanism to allow us to automatically move student game consoles to a separate VLAN, and then move the port back to the primary dorm VLAN when a PC or other device is plugged in.

ForeScout has the built-in ability to identify network devices without a separate subscription or device, and that allows us to identify when students plug into a switch or router (not allowed on our network), or tries to put their computer on the less restrictive game console VLAN. The rule sets allow you to configure different rules for different devices or networks from a single location, and provides a single-pane-of-glass view into any network traffic it can see.

The configuration of the rules is both a blessing and a curse. While it is almost infinitely configurable, knowing how to get the product to do what you want it to do can be difficult, especially at first.

The biggest problem we have had with ForeScout is that in order for it to see all of your network traffic it must have access to that traffic. So if your traffic has multiple ways to reach the internet or other resources, then you need multiple network taps in place to see that traffic.

We have used ForeScout since summer of 2012.

Other than the infinite configurability and need to have multiple network taps to see all traffic, we haven't had issues with deployment.

Stability has been like a rock, and it is a product that just seems to work.

We have had no issues with scaling it for our needs.

We have had mixed success with support. Sometimes we had amazing people who knew just what we needed and how to help us get there with minimal fuss. Other times we were explaining to support how to work around an issue so other customers wouldn’t have to deal with what we were dealing with.

We previously used Perfigo, which was later bought by Cisco and became Clean Access. ForeScout offered us a device with a 10GB connection, and that on top of the feature set for the price sealed the deal.

The initial setup was very straightforward, but due to our backbone switch/network configuration, we had to make last minute tweaks to get the product to see all our traffic. Also, we struggled to get our rules properly configured so that students weren’t negatively impacted by misconfigurations that would either prevent them from getting on the network at all, or repeatedly require them to log in.

Our third-party consulting firm (Konsultek), hit one out of the park in helping us, and they made sure we were up and running before the start of school, despite our tight timeframe for implementation.

We used a third-party group to assist us with implementation, and that made all the difference for us as we were able to pull from their experience and knowledge to help us get up and running.

The best advice I can offer is to make sure to understand the rules and how they work as that was a bit of an issue for us in the first few weeks when we worked out how to “fix” some of the issues (client time-outs, repeatedly being asked to log in) as they came up. Also, test everything before rolling out to production.

ForeScout provides some of the greatest visibility into network traffic, showing you exactly who is doing what, down to the port and protocol being used, capturing entire conversations between endpoints. It is a simply fantastic tool that provides network and security persons with the ability to throw up honeypots.

The most valuable feature for us is the real-time alerting of newly connected devices, whether they are approved or unapproved devices on our network.

Since our implementation of CounterACT, it has kept us aware of unapproved devices attempting to connect to our network which pose security threats.

The reporting could be a bit more intuitive and user friendly.

I have used CounterACT for two years.

There were many issues with deployment, but these were largely due to our own network architecture issues.

There were many issues with stability, but these were largely due to our own network architecture issues.

There were many issues with scalability, but these were largely due to our own network architecture issues.

I'd rate ForeScout's technical support as fair-to-good.

We did not have a previous NAC solution in place prior to CounterACT.

The initial setup was complex.

We used a vendor team for the implementation.

Do your homework ahead of time. Ensure that you have up-to-date network maps and that understand your network's architecture.

The most important feature is that this solution works well without a 802.1x feature. You can use CounterACT to implement that feature and also have a very granular control of your devices, including shadow devices.

We were searching for a solution that could help us not only to detect and manage unauthorized access, but also to implement 802.1x on our infrastructure. And when we were working to reach that goal, we found other improvements from using CounterACT, such as antivirus installation, P2P control, and shadow IT -- and that's another plus for them.

The best improvement they could make would be reporting and better integration with AD. Last but not least, a management web interface would be nice in the next version/release.

We've used it for about a year.

We had no issues with the deployment.

We have an HA cluster in place that works very well. We've had no issues with stability.

We had no issues scaling it for our needs.

Fortunately, for now, we've had no need to call technical support.

We didn't have a NAC solution in place. This is the very first solution we've tried mostly because other solutions have 802.1x as a mandatory requirement.

It was not so easy to deploy in our environment, the learning curve for this solution is quite hard.

From my experience, it is impossible to implement this kind of solution in-house. You need a consultant or a trained person who can do this job.

• Alerting as to non-compliant machines
• Ability to quarantine infected machines
• Ability to determine if patches are not up to date

If a machine becomes infected by a user accessing the web, ForeScout has the ability to immediately quarantine that machine, isolating it from the network. Before this, someone would literally have to run down the hall and shut off a machine in the event of a breach and infection by malware.

It needs enhanced mobile support, but I have heard that this is coming.

We've used it for six months.

It took some time to get the policies set up and applied once ForeScout was physically in place. A dedicated resource and timely decisions from management can make this deployment faster. Make sure you account for anything and everything in your environment which has an IP address. We also had one device that was DOA but it was quickly replaced.

We have had no stability issues.

Scalability was not a problem for this site as we have less than 1000 endpoints.

Excellent. Our support engineer was extremely helpful and available.

This was the first of its kind in the environment.

With the assistance of the support engineer, it wasn't too bad. But it depends upon the state of your network. If everything is set up correctly, it will go much smoother. For example, having SNMPv3 activated everywhere is a requirement so that ForeScout can see everything.

We used our in-house personnel with the support engineer guiding us along via WebEx.

They are competitively priced for a medium-to-large sized organization.

This is not a very crowded segment for this kind of a product, and ForeScout is the best known of this small field.

They also offer a monitoring service which is a good value if you do not have someone in house to monitor ForeScout on site. This can be full or part time. ForeScout is a powerful network access control tool that has some features found in insider threat solutions, though it is not exactly made for that.

It gives us a clear initial and secondary view of what's happening on our network to determine its health. We can see what's coming in and going out and to be able to directly management that. If there's something that needs to be quarantined, it will alert us and mark it as a threat.

The reporting could be improved. Also, it needs more analytics to see what's going on as we like to do trends.

We've been using for over seven years since the beginning of the SOC.

We've had no issues with deployment.

It's been very stable. We've had no issues with stability.

We probably have 172,000 users in our department, so I would say that it's scalable. It's in the SOC. We'll probably need to scale it further as we expand it to our 20 other departments.

I've never had to use technical support.

We also use FireEye, NetWitness, Blue Coat, and a few others I can't remember.

I joined the department when it was all setup already.

Go for it.