McAfee Web Protection [EOL] Reviews

We are using version 8. It is a Hybrid deployment. McAfee uses its own cloud. We monitor everything that is going outside of the United States, and that's why we can see any communication between our users who are outside of Virginia or the United States. We use it to see the communication between our users and outside the United States. We have almost 700 users. We have different departments and all the users. As well, we include servers for this; that we can block any server trying to talk outside to any site.

One of the best things we've found is when you are at home, all the rules that we applied here in our facility or our office go to the cloud. The same rules apply to anyone who works at home. And when you're at home and you're trying to say, "Okay, I'm not in the office, I can go to this site." "No." Because the same rules that apply here, also apply there, and we block the ability to go to any site that is found on the blacklist. That's improved a lot lately because now we have almost zero PC compromise.

The most valuable is the blocking of blacklisted sites, a URL that is, either by intelligence or by McAfee, detected as a malicious site.

I have used McAfee Web Protection for two years.

We have not had any issues with stability.

The scalability of McAfee Web Protection is excellent.

The technical support is great. When we put in a ticket, they respond in a few hours. If we put in that the server is down, we get a call in half an hour.

I used Sophos before; Sophos Web, as well as the Sophos app. We wanted to expand our capability using other products. And Sophos doesn't give you that capability to do it all. Another thing is, I'm the manager of the operation. And something I don't want is to have so many different parts from different vendors. And then when you want to put in a ticket, now you need to call one vendor, then other vendors. And I was looking to have it all in one place, everything that I need. And McAfee Web Protection gave me that solution.

The initial setup of McAfee Web Protections is straightforward. It took around three days to complete. The implementation strategy was; first, block blacklist all the websites. Second, we move monthly monitoring different sites that people go to or sites that people need to go to, but we detect that it is malicious. Then we make an investigation because we are the entity that makes investigations. Maintenance is every time they update when new versions come out. It takes a few hours. That's another thing that's nice about McAfee Web Protection, it's straightforward. You download the update, put it there, and in a few hours, it is there.

We used a consultant to help us set it up. Unfortunately, he was not that good. They were out of McAfee people. He was a consultant and knew the product, but he was not a McAfee person. How they managed it and how they worked was not straightforward.

I think it's in less than a couple months, we are receiving a return of investment because when we start blocking a malicious site that before was compromised on our computer here, is the time to clean that computer, reimage that computer, we stopped that. That's why we say, the last year we have maybe one or two computers compromised because they go to a bad URL and download an app at work. We detect it fast and block the site. Also, we can control where you go and what you see. If you go to a particular site, we can block videos or pictures. That means the efficiency of our people goes up. Now you have a return of investment because people are not losing their time watching videos through YouTube or other sites and we can control that through the website, through the equipment.

When we started to buy the appliance the starting point was a little expensive. It depends on how people see it. In my case, they give a nice price. We are a government agency and they have a contract with us here in Virginia, they gave a nice discount and everything. We bought two appliances that have enough power for managing almost 30,000 users. We are using less than 1% of capacity. And this was a great feature for us because we never come to capacity, but we know that we have enough power to move anything that we want here. I would rate McAfee Web Protection a nine out of ten.

I think right now that the product is the top one in the market right now. And we used another before then. One of my guys is working with it. He's the expert with this. And he told me that he's very happy with them.

We use the on-prem deployment model. Our primary use case is to permit the user to go to the internet with a sufficient level of a category blocking and anti-malware control.

It's a solution that permits making a granular configuration and it is easier to deploy the same configuration on a lot of devices using the central console. It is the master of the product.

The configuration could be simplified because it is more complex to make the configuration on McAfee. What can be improved is the support of the agent on smartphones, IOS or Android. That still now is not available yet.

We are not satisfied with the compatibility of the solution with other devices, like smartphones. In the next release, we would like to see the support of smartphones. It's one of the things that we have been asking them for five years.

It is absolutely stable. 

Scalability is good. It is easy to expand. We have more or less 100,000 of users right around the world that use this solution. All the people that work in our company use this solution to browse the internet. Anybody from the financial department, manufacturing, development, etc.. 

Currently, it's used by 100% of the people that work in our company. We have no visibility to expand. It would be useful to move from an on-prem to a cloud solution.

It is complex to set up the infrastructure. Defining the rules that permit or denies the internet address is complex. Also if you have to connect the appliance to different active directory domains, there is a complicated procedure to create the token that you have to upload on the device on. 

The deployment took three to four weeks. 

We used McAfee Professional Services for the deployment. They offer support for the first two weeks of the activity. 

McAfee Web Protection is good technology. Absolutely. It has a very particular configuration that you can implement in a granular way. What is probably not easy to do is to do something simple.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

Our primary use case is for security related to data that is coming from the internet.

This product simplifies the risk of creating additional customized solutions for data threats.

The most valuable feature of this solution is that it protects against threats that are coming from the web.

I would like to see easy-to-use documentation regarding new threats.

The solution should be more proactive in regards to sending you updates. Rather than simply being informed of an update and then have to click on it if you want to, the service packs should be installed automatically.

The stability of this solution is ok.

The solution is scalable.

The technical support is good, but it's always "I'll call you back", especially when there are no threats.

We usually just call our IT department and they take care of it. On a couple of occasions, I have called them directly. I'm in the BI world, so our environment needs to be very secure. I think that they should have different levels, or tiers, like a general user, advanced, and your pros. Instead of going back and forth several times, talking with customer support, it would be easier. 

We did not use a solution prior to this one.

Using this type of solution is best practice in the industry. It is easy to use and it is affordable.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We handled the deployment in-house.

The IT department was responsible for choosing the vendor.

I would recommend this product but at the same time, I would first check to see if there are any newcomers in the market. I would then do a proof of concept and test it out.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use this solution for the user security side of things.

The most valuable feature is the ease in the configuration for security roles.

We need a better customer experience and more flexibility in the product. I would like to put in more roles for the users.

The solution is stable but it needs more. It is rigid.

Another person is responsible for dealing with technical support, so I do not have experience with them.

We did have an older product but this one had more features so we made the change.

This initial setup for this solution was straightforward.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

The feature which I have found most valuable is the URL filtering policy.

This feature:

1. Gives me a opportunity to make rules for blocking a website where the user should not be able to access it.
2. Then, McAfee Web Gateway also classifies the sites and categories them.

In a company, where about 1000 end users are active, the McAfee Web Gateway are protecting us from threats.

Sample: A user clicks a link in a spam/phishing email, the URL gets blocked by the reputation/category. The end user is protected from phishing attempts or ransomware campaigns.

From the McAfee site, I see no areas for improvement.

As a company or an IT department, you should have a look at the Advanced Threat Defense to build up your security solution with the McAfee Web Gateway.

For about two years.

No. No issues at all.

No. No stability issues have been noticed.

No.

The McAfee customer service is great. As mentioned in my earlier review, this is a top 10 customer service.

10 out of 10. McAfee's technical support is a great way to solve your problems.

Fast response, great assistance, and understanding from the tech support team.

No.

A lot of config will need to be done. If you don't know what you are doing, or if you don't know the product and it's config, you should contact either McAfee or a partner to them for help.

In-house.

As a consultant, this isn't applicable to me.

Even if the product, as well with the Advanced Threat Defense costs a lot, it's a long-term investment and will help you with attacks.

However, the first protection should always be knowledge by your users, and second protection should be products, such as the McAfee Web Gateway

The implementation was already on it's way, so no evaluation of other products was done.

Have a look at the Advanced Threat Defense implementation, and implement it with the McAfee Web Gateway. This is a more advanced filtering of files which could inflict damage upon your company or end users.

This product has built-in AV & malware inspection. Full granular policy customization capability. SaaS and integration with ePO completes a full security solution (HIPS/IPS/IDS/SWG/AV).

Less complex policy to administer, complete visibility with a single pane of glass when integrated with ePO.

Add McAfee Client Proxy agents for mobiles to Web SaaS instead of the consumer based mobile security platform. Adding CASB feature would get McAfee ahead.