We primarily use the solution for a micro-segmentation to match the GDPR compliance.
Senior Principal Consultant Cloud/DevOps/ML/Kubernetes at Opticca
Easy to set up and scale but needs more Kubernetes support
Pros and Cons
- "I found the solution to be stable."
- "Supports become difficult when it's for a big organization. For a small organization, medium organization, it still makes sense, however, for a big organization, it makes life difficult."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The limitation of security groups, in terms of the number of services you can open that you can cover by using these tools, is great.
If you treat your network as a flat, and then you start creating all your, let's say, network security zones using this tool, it makes life easy. For example, you have always flexibility in having different production and management interfaces.
With a cloud-native construct, you can do micro-segmentation.
The initial setup is easy.
The solution scales well.
I found the solution to be stable.
What needs improvement?
Supports become difficult when it's for a big organization. For a small organization, medium organization, it still makes sense, however, for a big organization, it makes life difficult.
We would like to be able to go agentless.
I'd like support for all types of Kubernetes and service mesh. They say, "Ah, we support this, we support that." This is not the case.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used the solution for almost seven months at this point. I've used it for a while now.
Buyer's Guide
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Akamai Guardicore Segmentation. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability for Guardicore is high. I cannot comment on FireEye, however. When I say stability, I have to see the production workload. When I say that the stability for Guardicore is high, I mean there's not much an issue. Features were coming in very fast. Whenever we requested something within two to three months there was a rollout. A global rollout, too. It wasn't just for one client. I was amazed and surprised by how fast they implemented suggestions.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The product is scalable. It offers containers, and therefore, it's scalable. I've never had an issue.
How are customer service and support?
I did deal with technical support directly. It was good. I was the guy who was calling them. It was never just a call. They tried to understand the problem and the construct and came up with a solution that would assist us.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I'm also familiar with FireEye. I need more time with the products in order to effectively be able to compare them.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was straightforward. It was not complex.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I can't speak to the cost part as that is managed by the finance team. I never have had visibility into the contracts.
What other advice do I have?
We're partners with Guardicore.
I'm not sure which version of the solution we are using at this time.
I would rate the solution at a six out of ten. The support for Kubernetes is still missing. They're working on it. It's in the roadmap. That will make it better. That said, right now, it does more than 50% of what we need it to do and it's been good.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
Infrastructure Analyst/Developer at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Blocks active threats using threat intelligence
Pros and Cons
- "From day one, you get threat intelligence. It will immediately block active threats, which has been useful."
- "The maps could go a bit faster. They are useful but slightly slow."
What is our primary use case?
We are trying to centralize our firewalling as well as provide application segmentation and environment segmentation.
We have a couple of aggregators onsite and the rest are on the cloud.
How has it helped my organization?
It has given us better oversight of the traffic between our development and production environments and how we can stop unnecessary traffic, e.g., development teams accessing production can cause risks that you are not aware of.
Guardicore Centra saves time when completing a segmentation project versus a traditional toolset. Since we already have a solution in place, we have a fitted process of removing the old segmentation and adding the new. However, you can run them in tandem so that is always a benefit; you can do it over time rather than as one big bang.
What is most valuable?
So far, the most valuable feature has been the ability to have an overview of our firewall. As an added bonus, the network can easily look to see what traffic is going in and out, then block that traffic. Its threat intelligence automatically blocks the most dangerous threats, which is quite useful. It gives you an added bonus of protection as well as allows you to sort of centralize and control your firewalls more easily. It provides something that we don't normally have. Normally, we have an external firewall and a firewall to machines, but we don't have an overview of all the traffic. We don't have any way of aggregating it to look at it more easily. Guardicore Centra is a visual tool where we can view this, but we also can delve down into logs and look at what is happening more easily than going through logs, individual machines, etc.
The range of platforms and operating systems that the solution covers is good. It covers most of our operating systems, if not all. I don't think we have found anything so far that we have struggled to cover with it. We have been quite happy in that regard. Guardicore Centra is far superior in terms of using local firewalls on its own.
What needs improvement?
The maps could go a bit faster. They are useful but slightly slow.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for about four months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not had any problem at all with stability. It has been perfect.
We have used the solution for segmentation in parallel with having our firewalls up in local servers. So far, we have not had a problem. We occasionally find a connection blocked by Guardicore Centra, but it is easy enough to go in and create a new rule for it. That is part of the process. Downtime has been fairly limited, and we have not had any real problems.
A couple of people are needed for maintenance: my boss (Head of Infrastructure) and me. It needs one person to maintain it and a backup.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is definitely easy to scale. It is easy enough to add agents, then you can use automated deployment features to ingest spreadsheets of agents.
From our perspective, it scales well. If we just add agents locally, then the cloud service picks them all up through the aggregators.
We are adding more agents daily, but that is partly because the solution has been successful so far. Therefore, we are planning to increase the scale and scale it up a bit.
There are about two to four people actively working on the system and using it, mostly just my immediate manager and me. There are three or four other people who access it occasionally. In terms of users who are affected by it, there are hundreds, if not thousands.
The security team has an active interest in it. They provide the funding, but they have user accounts. They generally leave it to us to configure. They may become more active for certain things and parts. They are more interested in encouraging different departments to use the product, then hand it over to them to actually manage it.
We have 150 servers so far and are increasing that to about 230. Then, the security team is talking about adding in user desktops on the universities side. Depending on what they add, there are hundreds, if not thousands more. So, we are definitely increasing usage by a lot.
How are customer service and technical support?
We met weekly with a Guardicore employee as we did the rollout to try and segment things. They were very knowledgeable and helpful when doing that.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We generally used internal firewalls on individual servers with no solution, in terms of overseeing all the firewalls.
In terms of agility, Guardicore Centra is massively easier to control and manage. The security is good. With just the network logs, you get a better view of any active threats rather than in normal firewalls where you may not find out until sometimes after the fact. You can get notified as well.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was fairly straightforward and quite simple to do.
It is pretty simple overall to get a template and apply segmentation. You still need to think about how to apply it yourself to suit your needs, but it provides all the tools useful for that as well. The maps are useful. Using the templates to create rules gives you an easy start, then you can go in and refine it to suit your processes. Also, the Guardicore staff has been very helpful in helping us walk through the process and get what we needed out of the software.
It is very quick to secure applications and systems. You can get an agent installed very quickly. We started with 149 agents and will be adding another 100 agents over the next few weeks, as we move on to securing desktops as well as servers.
You can get results as soon as you have your aggregators up. You can get them in a day.
The initial deployment was done within a few days. Going through the process of segmentation and everything else takes months, but that is to be expected because it is not just about installing and running it. You have to walk through the process and logic of what you need, such as, thinking of and trying to improve the way that we are doing things at the same time, which this solution gives us the option to do.
Guardicore helped us plan strategies of how they thought we should roll it out. That helped us focus our minds a bit on how we should then do things.
What about the implementation team?
We installed aggregated agents with help from the Guardicore staff who were very helpful. We installed agents on a lot of virtual machines. It wasn't really complex; it seemed pretty straightforward.
The Guardicore staff were very helpful and knowledgeable. They helped give us guidance on how to do the setup. Any steps along the way that we needed to do were quite straightforward. Anywhere they needed to help us, they were quick to help, got their stuff done, and then passed it back to us. It was all a very smooth process.
The deployment was done by one Guardicore employee and me.
What was our ROI?
From day one, you get threat intelligence. It will immediately block active threats, which has been useful.
What other advice do I have?
Think about what you want out of the product and how your environments are set up. This will make it easier in the long run to deploy it. It is easy enough already, but if you know what you want from your environments, then the easier they will be to deploy.
It has helped me to clarify our thoughts about our environments and which applications we want controlled. That is a top down view that we don't normally get when looking at our systems. It makes it easier to look at systems and think of what we have and what we need to do with them, controlling the traffic between them.
Guardicore Centra definitely covers RHEL and all Windows machines. We have not rolled it out onto all our Windows machines yet, but we are planning on doing that next week. However, it should be able to cover them all. This is very important to us. There is no point in covering some machines and not covering the rest. It is better to have more machines on Guardicore Centra because it gives us a bit of an overview, then we don't have any blind spots.
We have gotten what we wanted from the solution based on everything that we have added to it.
I would rate the solution a nine out of 10 because of the ease of rollout, the oversight it gives you in terms of traffic in and out of your network, and the way it gives you an overview of all your systems and how you see the traffic. It helps you focus your mind around how you want your environment setup and how you can set it up in the future as well.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Buyer's Guide
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Akamai Guardicore Segmentation. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Cybersecurity Coordinator at MONEX
The interface is very easy to use and provides good visibility
What is our primary use case?
We are using Guardicore Centra mostly for security. I work in the cyber security department at MONEX, and we use this solution mostly for visibility. The product offers good visibility of what is going on in the network and the connections that the servers are making, regardless of the platform that they are on. They could be on-premise, on the cloud, or virtual.
I'm recently working on micro-segmentation of our principal payment applications, like SWIFT.
How has it helped my organization?
We use Guardicore Centra mostly in security, because I'm in charge of security. It helps provide us with some alerts about some suspicious behaviors on some of the systems that we have been able to correct right away. That is the main benefit that we have with Guardicore Centra, other than doing micro-segmentation.
We use it most for visibility. It has even provided good information about some of the connections that I am making in and out of the system. So, we are able to correct some behaviors and kill some applications that are suspicious to the infrastructure.
Once you are familiar with the tool, you can make segmentation rules, then apply them to all the agents. We have been securing some of the machines that we are using in Azure. In that way, we are able to put segmentation rules in those machines. We are saving with the Azure Firewall because we are using the Guardicore Centra agents, which gives us some advantages.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature is the visibility that it provides. It does not have a dependency on a specific platform: It could be on the cloud, on-prem, or virtual. It works with most of the operating systems.
It's very easy to install. It does not have any problems with other applications. So, it is very transparent.
The interface is very easy to use and provides good visibility. It does not take you a long time to build rules or have control of your agents.
What needs improvement?
The integration with other tools could be improved. It would be a very good value to customers if Guardicore Centra could talk with other tools, like Palo Alto or Cisco Firewalls, or agents running on the machine, like anti-malware or the intrusion prevention systems.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for two years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is very good. I do not face any problem with Guardicore Centra in terms of stability nor does it have trouble with other systems. It is very transparent.
It does not require any kind of windows where you have to put down the system or network. You can install it, making it run where applications are running. This is very important that we do not have any downtime in the installation of the agent. We can do it in real-time.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Because we are using SaaS, it is very easy to upgrade or install more agents. Once you have the infrastructure, e.g., we have one server that communicates locally with the agents, then you use it to communicate to the cloud. Once you have that infrastructure, you can grow very rapidly.
We have over 500 agents. We are covering four payment applications, where we have been doing micro-segmentation. That has taken us about six months.
It has results the next day after you install the agents, because now the agents report to the cloud. You have visibility right away of what is going on in your system that next day after you installed the agent. For example, if you installed 100 agents today, then tomorrow they will start reporting to the cloud. Also, you would have visibility regarding what is going on in those machines: Where are they communicating? What processes are being communicated? What are the available reports?
I have two people who are responsible for making the segmentation rules. With those two people, we have been able to secure 500 systems in six months time.
How are customer service and technical support?
It has very robust technical support. We have three or four people with whom we talk on a biweekly or monthly basis. They are very good. They take care of us. If we have any problems with the tools or rules, they are supportive.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did not use another solution previously.
How was the initial setup?
It is very easy to set up the agents. You have a script, and you run that script and install it on the system. Once you open the port that it needs for reporting to the cloud, then you have visibility right away.
Guardicore Centra's approach to implementing segmentation is a six or seven out of 10. It is not super easy. You need to take at least one course in preparation. Then, once you are familiar with the platform or where to find the tools, it is very easy. You can replicate those tools over other agents, which is very easy.
What was our ROI?
It has saved us a lot of time. We can secure around 500 systems. We are not growing in personnel. So, with our current personnel, I have been able to secure all the systems.
Guardicore Centra has reduced the number of human resources needed to deploy security solutions. We have two people working on segmentation rules as well as some agents taking care of the infrastructure. Before Guardicore Centra, we would have needed at least one more person.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is not cheap. However, it provides you a good value for what you are buying. In relation to how much it costs, the tool is worth it for the value it gives you.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
As soon as I saw what Guardicore Centra could do, I did not look at other tools.
What other advice do I have?
Guardicore Centra is very easy to install. We have very good technical support. The product itself is very good and robust. In security, there are not many products that can do what it can do in terms of visibility, seeing what is going on in the server, and using the type of mapping that it gives you with the application. With the segmentation part, that is saving us a lot of money with traditional firewalls.
It is a very good product. I would rate it a nine (out of 10). I think it lacks publicity. In my community, if you talk to another colleague and tell them about Guardicore Centra, they probably do not know what it is.
Guardicore Centra is improving on its functionality. The company is putting a lot of effort into growing the tool. I would recommend trying it and giving it a shot, then you can see what the tool can do.
We have just begun to use the solution’s AI-powered segmentation feature.
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Senior Security Consultant at a tech consulting company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Integration with Active Directory, and beneficial query insight module
Pros and Cons
- "Guardicore Centra offers the best coverage specifically in backward compatibility with legacy operating systems."
- "Customers would want to see the cost improved."
What is our primary use case?
Guardicore Centra is used to ring-fence a crucial, business-critical application.
We completed the AD integration while also attempting to isolate the jump station with an agent.
What is most valuable?
Guardicore Centra offers the best coverage specifically in backward compatibility with legacy operating systems.
The query insight module is something that our customers found very beneficial.
Creating policies down to a process level on a server is a valuable option.
Integration with Active Directory is good.
What needs improvement?
Customers would want to see the cost improved.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with the Guardicore Centra for the last month.
It's at a customer where I'm doing an assignment, and we've driven proof of value and proof of concept for a month.
We were working with the latest version.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
As far as I can tell Guardicore Centra is a stable solution. But only time will tell how stable the situation is.
We haven't started to deploy it yet, because we were negotiating the pricing and so on.
How are customer service and support?
We have not contacted technical support, But the Akamai person was extremely well-read on the subject, and there was almost nothing he couldn't answer during the proof of concept project.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I am currently working with Micro-Segmentation on Guardicore, not Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is pretty straightforward.
The only thing that matters is that the customers have a strong plan, a good strategy, and a high-level and low-level design. The most exhausting part will be labeling all of your systems. And if the customer in this situation has around 1000 servers, that may be time-consuming.
What about the implementation team?
We had assistance from Akami themselves.
Akamai volunteered to drive the actual proof of value concept, and I was part of the design team in charge of monitoring the whole process.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The customer would complain about the cost.
I can't tell you how much the license costs because I'm not involved. As a solution architect, and senior solution architect, I never look at the price, therefore I can't tell.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Of the systems that we looked at, Guardicore has the best coverage for legacy operating systems.
We are in cyber defense advice, and we conducted a modest evaluation. We sell both Illumio and Guardicore solutions, but it all depends on the type of customer, the scope, and finally the individual demands of that customer.
We have, I believe, most of our install-based software as Illumio solutions, this is maybe the second install-based for Guardicore.
It all depends on the real consumer, their needs, how the business is structured, and so on.
What other advice do I have?
I feel both companies are trying hard to better themselves, therefore it's difficult to say.
Illumio may be far ahead in six months or the opposite, it all depends on that and the precise moment.
I wouldn't say one product is superior to another; it all depends on the customer's needs and so on. However, in this scenario, the customer has a large number of legacy, old XP, and Windows 2003 legacy servers, as well as other operating systems. In this instance, Guardicore was our recommendation, but for other clients who don't have that history, Illumio is just as excellent as Guardicore.
It's the best, I would rate Guardicore Centra a ten out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
CTO at a consumer goods company with 501-1,000 employees
Stable with no downtime, responsive and knowledgeable support, and it scales well
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature is the visibility of processes and connections."
- "In our version, when using the terminal server, we cannot exclude user tasks for each session."
What is our primary use case?
In our company, we have a data center that has approximately 200 servers running Nutanix. We wanted to protect these servers from both internal and external attacks. By implementing Guardicore Centra, it has given us defense against attacks from the outside, as well as those that originate from inside of the organization.
We protect Microsoft machines, as well as some that are running Linux. We also have an SAP HANA database that is protected by Guardicore.
How has it helped my organization?
We have no downtime when we use Guardicore Centra for segmentation. This is important to us because we're an industrial company and we operate 24/7. We cannot afford to have even one minute of downtime, which is one of the reasons that we chose this solution.
We bought this system several months before the trouble with COVID happened. During that time, a lot of people started to work from outside of the organization. With all of the staff starting to work from home, other companies started to think about how to protect their servers when the users are outside. Also, attacks against endpoints and the data center were on the rise, so it was important to better protect them. I felt safe knowing that I had this kind of defense for the data center.
One example of this happened a few months ago when we received a letter that said we needed to update the on-premises Exchange server. It was a problem from Microsoft and it required that our server be updated to be more secure. Guardicore called us to say that they have witnessed cases where people from other countries were trying to use this exploit to get into the data center, so we blocked it immediately.
All of our servers are now behind Guardicore. The clients are not. From my perspective, the endpoint clients are attackers and my intention is to protect the servers.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature is the visibility of processes and connections. In addition to the defense it provides, Guardicore gives us a view of each connection that exists on each server. Using this, we can identify things like unused connections, or processes that are using too much in terms of resources. Knowing this, we have the opportunity to block such connections and in turn, improve server performance.
Guardicore supports the operating systems that we require. Primarily, it covers our Microsoft platform, but we have some Linux systems as well. We also used it to protect our SAP HANA database.
I have not compared the range of operating systems that it supports to its competitors because of our use case. We are most interested in LAN segmentation, in particular between the data center and the users' network, so I compared it with other solutions in that context.
It is a benefit that Guardicore supports legacy operating systems, and I have used it with such servers. However, in the long term, it is more important that I have something protecting my data center and having the visibility of what endpoint is initiating connections.
We use the AI-powered segmentation functionality and it affects the time required to design by a lot. It gives us a large number of views and without that, you cannot design the system properly. The AI helps because it shows you what you need to do. Without the AI, either you will not be able to implement the system, or it will take a long time and be very difficult. For us, using this feature saved us a couple of months in implementation time.
What needs improvement?
In our version, when using the terminal server, we cannot exclude user tasks for each session. When we upgrade, I expect that we can exclude user tasks for each session from the terminal.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using Guardicore Centra for approximately 10 months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We have had zero downtime, so the stability is good.
Having no downtime is important to us because of the damage that can occur if we're down for even two minutes. For example, if a company is selling drinks like beer, and a reseller asks for Heineken but they can't buy it because the data center is down, the reseller will purchase it from another company. This can result in a lot of damage so our data center has to work all of the time.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have implemented Guardicore on several servers without any problems. We have implemented it on our newer servers, as well, and didn't have any trouble. Scalability-wise, we haven't had any kind of difficulty.
Depending on the growth of our company, our usage will expand in the future.
We have 1,200 employees but the solution does not affect the users directly. Rather, it affects the company. The important part is to keep the data center working and to make sure that it does not go down for even a minute. With this in mind, when I talk about scalability, I'm not talking about the number of users.
How are customer service and technical support?
We have been in contact with technical support and they are excellent. They are responsive and knowledgeable.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
This product did not replace a similar system. Also, I did not require human resources for this same task. Our company is approximately 70 years old and our network started very small. As the company grew, we maintained the same flat network that included both the data center and the users. When I looked at it, I considered two solutions for separating them. The first was the traditional firewall and a physical LAN, whereas the second approach was using Guardicore. I felt that this was the easier approach.
How was the initial setup?
In terms of the initial setup, it is of medium complexity. It's not complex but not simple. You need to understand your network. You cannot do it without understanding what you want and what your strategy is. When you understand the policy and the strategy that you want to implement on the network, it's very easy.
Our implementation strategy was to start with machine learning. Our plan was to run this for one or two days, get it working, and then understand what kind of information they're getting from me and then to continue on from that. The initial deployment will take a maximum of two days.
Implementing segmentation is not difficult but it is more from our side. First, you need to understand the strategy that you want to implement on the network. Then, you need to complete it step-by-step, so that you do not harm anything or block things improperly. You have to give the software time to learn about the connections that you have. Overall, it is very easy to do.
In terms of how long it took us to implement, we have approximately 200 servers and it took a couple of months to implement. This is what I expected because I wanted to take it slowly and make sure that I understand which systems I needed to block, or not.
What about the implementation team?
We worked with a third-party, DNA IT, who assisted with our deployment. I am still working with them, as they take care of updating the system. They are very good and have helped us a lot.
Most of the implementation was done on our side, as we wanted to take our time and learn the solution. We did not want to take down any servers or block things improperly, for example.
A system engineer from our company and one person from DNA IT were involved. Our system engineer is also responsible for maintenance and can contact DNA IT if needed.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
This is not a cheap solution but you have to consider the bigger picture, which is what it is giving you. It provides functionality that is similar in some ways to traditional firewalls and with that considered, it is similar in terms of pricing.
In terms of cost-effectiveness, I can say that it's like insurance. You never know the value if it's working properly. To us, if it prevents downtime, it's priceless. Personally, if it's working, I call it 100% success.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I did not evaluate other similar options.
What other advice do I have?
We have been a little behind in updating our version. We have been using version 31 but today or tomorrow, we will upgrade to version 35 or 36.
This product represents the next generation of protection. A lot of people have asked us, "What is the next generation of solution for protecting your internal network?" and the answer is this kind of segmentation. It may seem easier to stick to using traditional firewalls and LAN protection, but this next-generation tool is easier to implement and gives you a more effective network defense.
Every time we see an area of improvement, they give us a new update or platform to fix it. Things are regularly fixed and updated between versions.
The biggest lesson that I have learned by working with this system is the knowledge of what happens in my network, in terms of connections between users and the server. I have seen lots of connections from devices, other than PCs, to the server.
This is a system that works for me. I'm not working for the system.
I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Specialist Master - Cyber Risk at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
An effective solution for micro-segmentation that offers a dashboard for real time traffic visibility, but needs to incorporate some automation features for operational sustenance
Pros and Cons
- "The tool is a complete package that offers many features like visibility. You can get a graph with real-time workflows and visibility into server-to-server communication. We get visibility into many things happening within our environment."
- "Guardicore Centra should incorporate automation so that we don't require to write custom scripts and APIs. The tool also has limitations on rules where it allows only sixty thousand rules. Our clients have also commented that there are too many manual clicks and effort to do changes. I think that the incorporation of automation can help our clients make changes with confidence and without the possibility of human error."
What is our primary use case?
Our clients look for server-to-server segmentation that includes both inbound and outbound ringfencing.
What is most valuable?
The tool is easy to use and simple to deploy to achieve segmentation objectives. It offers a graphical view of real-time workflows and traffic patterns into server-to-server communications. Also, the amount of process, service level visibility the agents deployed on the servers provide via network logs is very informative.
What needs improvement?
Guardicore Centra should incorporate automation so that we aren't required to write custom scripts by leveraging APIs quite often. The tool also has limitations on overall policy rules that can be configured on the platform (60k rules) which seems a lot but with big chatty applications and a huge application count to segment, this limit can turn out to be small if the goal is to segment a lot of application servers. Operationally there are too many clicks and analyses needed to do quick and safe changes (for e.g. label replacement) in the production environment. I think that the incorporation of automation templates for some standard use cases can help clients make changes with confidence and without the possibility of human error.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with the solution for close to an year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would rate the tool's stability a seven out of ten due to the capacity limit. Once we reach 70-80 percent of the maximum rules, the system becomes slow in terms of response. The backend processes being a SaaS solution need to be more robust.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I would rate the product's scalability a five out of ten due to the current limits on the number of agents, labels, and rules. Around 5000 servers use Guardicore Centra in my organization.
How are customer service and support?
The product's support takes more time to respond back.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
Guardicore Centra's setup was straightforward and I would rate it a seven out of ten. The tool's setup is straightforward as long as you identify the servers and establish the right processes. The tool came with an installation guide and setup took about four to five hours to complete. The deployment depends on the solution size and if the POC is small, the setup is easier and quicker. If you plan for enterprise-wide deployment, then you need to do capacity sizing and planning.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I was not directly involved in licensing etc. costs but only in solution architecture and operationalization.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate the solution a six out of ten. We mostly have enterprise customers for Guardicore Centra. I would advise users to try this out on a handful of servers for the first time (like < 20 servers to begin with). During and after segmentation, monitor the solution for some period to notice how operationally effective it is and the data sources relied upon for building labels, and policies, and ultimately how easy it is to incorporate any changes needed thereafter.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
Information Security Engineering Consultant at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Stable with useful Application Ring-Fencing and Deception Server features
Pros and Cons
- "Application Ring-Fencing and Deception Server, which is basically like a honeypot, are pretty useful features."
- "They can maybe improve their customer service just because they are kind of a small organization, and customer service isn't as big as others such as VMware."
What is our primary use case?
I am using it for segmentation. If someone has access to a development system, they can't take that development system and access production equipment.
What is most valuable?
Application Ring-Fencing and Deception Server, which is basically like a honeypot, are pretty useful features.
What needs improvement?
They can maybe improve their customer service just because they are kind of a small organization, and customer service isn't as big as others such as VMware.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for probably under one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It has been stable so far. I haven't had any big problems.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a little too early for me to tell that. Currently, I am the only one using this solution. We probably don't have any plans to increase its usage.
How are customer service and technical support?
Their support is pretty good. I haven't had to use them that frequently, so I'm not sure about their response times, but when they come and set your stuff up, everything seems pretty good from that end. I would assume the support after that would be similar.
How was the initial setup?
It was like the setup of a typical IT solution.
What about the implementation team?
Their engineers deployed it, so it wasn't any hassle for me.
What other advice do I have?
I would advise others to get a demo but also check out other products to make sure that it is a good fit for you. Every product is not good for every place. It has been pretty good for my use case. I didn't find anything terrible or not good.
I would rate Guardicore Infection Monkey an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Get great visibility into vulnerabilities through micro-segmentation
Pros and Cons
- "This tool greatly helps in understanding the footprint of the attacks."
- "The interface and dashboard are amazing."
- "The product needs a few features like enhanced user policies and payload-level inspection to improve the offering."
What is our primary use case?
We are a partner, not a customer. We would like to be in a position of trying to provide consultation for this solution and delivery of the product to clients. So, we have partnered with Guardicore in India and we are trying to sell this product and that is our primary use case. The primary use case that we are implementing this product for with clients is micro-segmentation.
How has it helped my organization?
This particular product has a deployment model both in public and private clouds and on-premises. We are pitching it to all of our customers, irrespective of the regulations that they must follow. Some customers are in the government sector, for example, and they will need to go on-premises. There are some customers like IT service-based companies that have most of their infrastructure in the cloud, and those can use cloud-based services. What the client wants and needs totally depends on the type of client they are. We have an advantage with this product in offering it both ways — on cloud and on-premises — to meet the client's needs.
What is most valuable?
The most important feature or use case, because of micro-segmentation, is the visibility you get when you deploy this product. It will give you very good visibility of your whole data center. The second thing that is valuable is the lateral movement. Often when there is a compromise of vulnerabilities in the organization, this tool greatly helps in understanding the footprint of the attacks. It also helps in stopping the lateral movement of the attack.
What needs improvement?
Predominantly I have been working with firewalls and the UTM (Unified Threat Management) solutions for some time. Guardicore has to do something to add on features that help to do a better job of inspection.
They should have policies based on users. Often we can only add user groups. I think they should offer the ability to assign policies to individual users. The ability to assign policies to both users and groups would make the area of creating policies more flexible. They should also have time-based rules in the policies which they currently do not have.
They should also get into payload-level inspection. As of now, what they do for threat inspection is to look at the metadata of a packet. This is not in depth enough for proper inspection. They need to start inspecting the payload-level information of a packet or offer this as an option.
So they should have payload-level inspections to do some deep investigation. Then they should have more user-level control of policies. I think if these two things are introduced, then I could probably change my rating of Guardicore to a nine-out-of-ten.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have just recently started working with Guardicore. Six months ago we began working on the POC (Proof of Concept) and we have still not finished so we have yet to deploy the product to production.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I cannot comment on stability under higher loads because we have not yet deployed it and exposed it to live traffic. We are still in the testing and evaluation phase.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I think it is an amazing product in terms of scalability.
How are customer service and technical support?
I have not had any experience with technical support because we are not in production. Once we deploy the solution to our customers, that is when I think we will be making more use of support resources.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Earlier we worked more in the firewall space. That is, we worked with Check Point a lot. It was maybe for a period of five years. Then from firewalls, which is a UTM solution, we are trying to move into the new world technologies. That would be things like dedicated security solutions that cover more than what firewalls do.
As an employee, I am not sure what my organization has gone through in making evaluations and comparisons. I am sure that they have evaluated other products like Illumio, Cisco Tetration, and Guardicore. I do not know, out of all their testing and research, specifically why they found Guardicore to be more a valuable solution. I think these people may be more focused on what they are doing rather than how it is getting done.
How was the initial setup?
The installation and setup are pretty straightforward.
What other advice do I have?
Right now, I would definitely recommend Guardicore for someone who is looking into the micro-segmentation space or probably an internal firewall for the organization.
On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate Guardicore Centra as probably an eight-out-of-ten.
The interface and dashboard are amazing. I would rate the user interface as a ten-out-of-ten. For other reasons having to do with features and functionality, I have to mark them down a few points.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
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Updated: November 2024
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