AlgoSec Reviews

• Firewall management, configuration, and risk management functions to ensure the highest security posture
• Automated change notification is a must and is critical in maintaining a safe environment and compliance. 
• Need the ability to review the policy and NAT rule bases
• Lastly, logs from a firewall can be overwhelming and difficult to maintain, so every security department needs the ability to review logs with accuracy.  

AlgoSec provides visibility of policy and NAT firewall rules for rule review and cleanup. It provides risk management status of our firewalls at a glance, and notifies when any change is made to the firewalls. This solution has improved our security posture, lowered our risk and exposure, saved time with cleanup and maintaining the firewalls, and allowed for log review with ease. Finally, AlgoSec has changed how firewall management and changes are conducted, so it has improved our overall process and procedures.

I value all the rich features of AlgoSec equally since it solves many problems with one solution. From the ability to see rules with a few clicks to maintaining or lowering the firewall's security risk score is priceless. And, the support team behind the solution is equally as strong and helpful, making this one of my best implementation decisions and tools in the toolset.

AlgoSec is my favorite tool because it does what it is designed to do and it does it well. The service I've received from their support teams is second to none. They have always successfully answered my questions and solved my problems. So, it is difficult to improve a solid solution but, not everything is perfect. Having executive type reporting capabilities which explain the security posture and scoring to provide to executive management would be a nice feature to add. Reports can be printed, but an executive summary report would be an improvement. 

We use AlgoSec to manage our firewalls and to manage our firewall ACL change workflow. We also use AlgoSec to get better visibility into our traffic flows, to optimize our firewalls rules, and to analyze risks.

AlgoSec has greatly improved the time and resources spent on creating and deploying our firewall rules. Our network and security teams can now smartly research our ACLs and implement them with confidence.

We found the traffic simulation query, active change, policy optimization, FireFlow, and map features to be especially helpful. All the other application features are valuable as well. We have yet to fully unleash its full potential.

The tech support and ticketing system could use some improvement and need more of a personal touch.

I work at a multi-vendor firewall environment. AlgoSec is primarily used to see what firewall policies are in place, as well as PCI compliance levels.

AlgoSec has helped us save time by having one central location to view firewall policies, especially when crossing multiple vendors.

The PCI compliance feature has been helpful in preparing for audits. The Firewall Analyzer has been very helpful.

We are still waiting to implement FireFlow, and getting it into place will hopefully speed up our implementation time and help with policy standardization. There have been some difficulties in getting this portion set up in our environment.

No stability issues.

No scalability issues.

The firewall analyzer allows for a quick and consistent method of reviewing your firewalls ruleset for security, compliance, and peace of mind. The ability to review and understand your firewall topology, run reports and have the ability for practitioners and auditors to review our security posture, gives us a sense of calm within this area of security.

Adding AlgoSec as a process into our network, compliance, security, and audit teams allowed for quick turnaround on any issues that arise regarding security rulesets. We often find these issues before they are pointed out to us, which leads to a quicker turnaround from compliance, but more importantly from a security mindset. This tool is used as part of the M&A process to analyze any new companies looking to incorporate our network. It's become one of the indispensable products we can't live without.

I would say cloud is an area for improvement, but AlgoSec in is that market now, too. I do want to see, however, the ability to set up an instance within the cloud instead of having to use physical appliances.

I've had no issues with deployment.

It's been stable for me.

It's able to hit all the devices that I've put it up against and it was able to find rules that put our organization at risk.

The technical support is standard. They do a good job and understand the product.

It's head and shoulders above all the competitors in the field. They're the ones pushing the boundaries of the market.

One of our customers was using basic firewalls and the VPN, however, much of the policies were not applied - hence there were a lot of loopholes and hence a lot of spam and malicious activities were going on in their organization. Employees were able to use blocked sites, IT managers were not able to address the issue on their own. 

The client replaced existing solutions with AlgoSec. AlgoSec has given better visibility and better performance. IT managers who [reviously could not find loopholes were able to address them. 

Detection of loopholes and pinpointing troubleshooting areas were the key value additions that AlgoSec has provided. Its response time is fast. 

Detection of malicious activities and malware is much better than other options. 

Previously, the company was dependent on third-party solutions for audit reports. AlgoSec now provides an instant audit report. 

It has improved the management of all the firewalls (which are both cloud and on-prem) via a single console. The integration with the routers and other IT products is seamless.

The most valuable aspect of the product is the automatic application connectivity. The second best feature would be detection and response and analysis of the data. Applying security policies over the network is easy. AlgoSec instantly provides audit reports which is a most useful feature in this organization. 

Integration of the next-gen firewall, cloud firewall, routers, and load balancers is seamless and a very useful feature.

The solution offers unified and risks analytics reports features. 

AlgoSec helps IT managers automate firewall management across all hybrid environments.

The blacklisting and whitelisting of IP addresses should be improved. There are many false positives.

The cloud migration process should be more streamlined for my customer-facing issues.

The price should be less. The customers who have just started using the AlgoSec firewall management tool, as of now, have not faced any major issues apart from some small debugging. 

Improvement can be done in many areas. For example, it would be great if AlgoSec could integrate with an endpoint solution and directly integrate with firewall and endpoint solutions to bring much more visibility.  

We started deploying the application in January of this year. Currently, in our contract, we have a license for AlgoSec FireAnalyzer and FireFlow. So, at this moment, we are only working with AlgoSec FireAnalyzer. 

We are using AlgoSec to have a good view of our environment in terms of the risks and compliance and to implement rules. Our environment at this moment is only on-premises. We have servers, routers, firewalls, etc.

The visibility that AlgoSec provides about our environment is very important. Without it, we won't have visibility into various risks to our environment. AlgoSec can show us these risks and allows us to improve and close some rules. It improves the security of the network, and we can protect the data of our customers more efficiently.

It is helpful in improving the security and compliance of our environment. We can optimize our environment by improving the rules that are not used or are duplicated. FireFlow is useful in creating and implementing new rules. It allows us to automate rules implementation and have more control over rules.

Its reports are very important for compliance and understanding and mitigating risks. They show us the rules that are open or that can create risks for our environment. This information is very important for us for optimizing our environment and correcting the policies.

In our environment, we add rules in the firewall based on user logins, but currently, we can't do that with AlgoSec. AlgoSec can't create rules based on user logins. For example, generally, when we create a rule, we put IP Address, Destination IP Address, and Service Port. However, in our environment, we put IP Address, User Login, Destination IP Address, and Service Port, but AlgoSec doesn't support a rule in this format. We opened a ticket regarding this with their support two months ago, and they said that they will be able to add it in the future, but they don't know the timeframe. We are currently in the process of making changes in our environment for such rules, and after two months, we won't be using the rules that are based on user logins. We will make them consistent with the market, and we will use only the IP Address, Destination IP Address, and Service Port for rules. So, it won't be a problem for us, but this can be an improvement for other clients.

It is quite new for us. We starting working with it just a few months ago.

Its stability is good. We never had a problem where we couldn't access the platform. It is always available, and we don't have any problems related to the downtime of this platform.

At the moment, it gives us what we need. Next month, we will add new technologies to AlgoSec.

AlgoSec has a great team. They are professional and have good knowledge of AlgoSec. We have a good relationship with them, and we got good support from them.

We never had a solution like this. It is the first one in our environment.

We started its implementation in January with the help of a partner company. It was very easy to implement, and we didn't have to contact AlgoSec.

We completed the deployment in February. We put it in our environment and started the server. After that, we did the configuration and started to add our devices to AlgoSec.

We implemented it with the help of a partner company in Brazil called Logicalis. When we have any problem, we talk to them, and they are able to help us.

I would recommend this solution because AlgoSec provides a lot of reports and views of your environment. You won't be able to get this view through a firewall manager. For example, the CheckPoint firewall manager won't provide what AlgoSec provides, especially related to the compliance of your environment.

We have implemented Cisco ACI in our environment, and AlgoSec will help us to work with this new technology implemented in our environment. We will integrate AlgoSec and ACI next week.

I would rate AlgoSec a 10 out of 10.

I have been implementing AlgoSec for different end customers. None of the environments are on the cloud, they're on-premise applications. Some of them have been planned, but a majority of them are for virtual instances. I have implemented four or five end-customers and also supported them with AlgoSec.

I deploy and maintain AlgoSec for customers for test purposes. I use it before doing anything on the customer's premises. For testing purposes, I have used it in my own environment also, but the majority of the time I'm using it in the customers' environment.

I have integrated AlgoSec with Check Point, Palo Alto, some older Cisco versions like WSN, Fortinet firewalls, and Cisco ASA.

The features that I like are the monitoring and the alerts. It provides real-time monitoring, or at least close to real-time. I think that is important. I like its way of organizing, also. It is pretty clear. I also like their reporting structure - the way we can use AlgoSec to clear a rule base, like covering and hiding rules. For example, if the customer is concerned about different standards, like ISO or PZI levels, we can all do the same compliance from AlgoSec. We can even track the change monitoring and mitigate their risks with it. You can customize the workflows based on their environment. I find those features interesting in AlgoSec.

The visibility is pretty clear from top to bottom, even interconnected maps and zones.

We can always customize the standard risk profiles. But even within the standard one, before doing any changes, when you go with the flow, they always inform you. Before implementing the change, you get the visibility there. You get the visibility with risks.

This is important because the places that I have worked have different departments for risk handling. So whenever we go through the flows before implementing, that part goes through the risk department and gets their approval first. With AlgoSec you get to know the risk profile before implementing the change. That way you get to know the risks that you are taking with that particular change. So it's important.

It has helped to reduce the time that it takes to implement firewall rules. In some places where I work, they fill a form and send it to a particular manager. For example, if an end-user fills it and he sends it to his manager, then it gets his approval and he sends it to the risk department, and gets their approval, and sends it back to the person who implements. There's a chain that takes a longer period of time and even their paper costs. That gets reduced when they use a workflow from AlgoSec. They always get automatic notifications when the change moves on to the next level so they know exactly which stage the change is in.

It is helping to reduce those policy changes by more than 50%.

You can face audits in two ways. You can either do it from AlgoSec. I have used it like that for periodic audits. You can always plan it. Either you can go from one of your rules, clean up your rule base and improve the standards of your risks and all the other areas in the AlgoSec reports. Or else, you can go for a PCR level report and you can prepare it stage-by-stage and commit up to a certain standard. I have used both methods. You can also do reports for the particular changes and check how much your environment is improved after you follow the report and do the particular change that they suggest. For example, reordering or combining your rules or removing some of the unused objects. Then you can run a report and see how much it gets improved. So in terms of auditing, which they can run every six or eight months, or once in a year, you can always turn on your audit before it comes to that level. You can always prepare for your audit by scheduling reports.

It's pretty easy when it comes to integrating with the leading vendors. If you want to integrate, they have proper documentation. Their documentation is very good. I have to give them credit for that. You can always follow it. Integrations are pretty easy and much easier than with some of the similar competitive products that I have used. I don't want to mention names, but AlgoSec is much easier because of their proper documentation. For example, when you are integrating a particular device or application, you know the things that you need to do because they have the proper documentation before doing it. It takes less time to integrate compared to some of the other products in the field.

I have come up with two cases of misconfigurations in some rules. One of them is with change requests when you have a single object and you just have to amend it to the particular rule but not to other specific rules. The other thing is what rule it's covering. It's not a misconfiguration, actually, and you can amend it. I have come up with some situations like that. Before coming back to my stage, it is always clear from the other risks and level of approval. So I did come up with that kind of a scenario but it's not actually a misconfiguration.

AlgoSec has helped to simplify the job of security engineers because you can always monitor your risks and know that your particular configurations are up-to-date, so it reduces the effort of the security engineers. You can always get top to bottom. For example, if you talk about the rule base of a particular firewall and access to some particular things, you can always get a clean one with the required security. So rather than going here and there, they can always use this tool to do the automation and their decision-making.

I haven't yet configured with Cisco ACI, but in the next one and a half months, I'll be integrating it with an ACI structure.

I expect the value of bringing AlgoSec and ACI together will be good. It'll be like an extension. If you integrate AlgoSec, it's not like a single point. If you connect it with the ACI fabric it will be challenging. I haven't really experienced it in full, because I am still in the designing phase and I haven't done the full implementation, but I feel like it'll be interesting and challenging. Since I have not experienced it or yet done the implementation combining these two, I cannot fully say how it will be. It's a question mark. But I'm expecting it to be a little bit challenging because the visibility differs.

AlgoSec needs improvement with its support level.

I know that they have 3D architecture like SMB and enterprise on top of that. Some people consider this as a noncritical device. But because it's not as critical as a firewall, some people think that the support level does not need to be equal to a firewall level of support. But if some people are monitoring and managing firewalls through AlgoSec, the level of support should be equal to a firewall level. It shouldn't be dragging over two or three days. I know that they have three levels of support, but at the very first level, I believe you should be able to directly contact the tech and get a solution as soon as possible.

The only problem I have with AlgoSec is just its level of support, not with the product. Not with the organization or the documentation or anything else, but if I need any additional support, the only problem is the time it takes to get it.

I've been using AlgoSec for two and a half to almost three years now.

I use AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer and FireFlow.

It is generally stable. As I mentioned, the only problem the customers are worried about is the technical response time from AlgoSec. If you have to contact tech support the project will get delayed. The customers are comparing it because, for example, in their environment they have Palo or Check Point, and their support levels are much higher. With them, when you open a ticket, after a few minutes you can check and get the opinion from the tech or check if an engineer is available. If it's a critical issue, you can always talk to him within hours and fix the issue. So they always compare that level to AlgoSec's support level. That's the only issue that we have to explain to them. The customer's opinion is this is a non-critical device because this is not a firewall. But we manage firewalls so that kind of level of support should be given.

In terms of scalability, the maximum that I have tried with AlgoSec is six clusters. Its scalability is good. The way that we can work with it is good because with every device you can see everything on the same dashboard. If you want to check the monitoring, you can always select the device to see. You can check the status by clicking the device. It's the same structure. The scalability is good but I have only worked with a maximum of six clusters so I can't tell you exactly when it comes to a high number of hours, if it is good or bad, but for the six that I have worked with, it's good.

We do have plans to increase usage of AlgoSec. I have explained to some of the customers about the application integrations, the visibilities, and the rule-based optimizations by using this feature. In terms of features, I am expecting that they'll amend that component to their environment. Since we are a system integrating company, when we propose a solution for a particular customer, we always propose to do firewalls. Therefore, we always add AlgoSec. When we are proposing it, we always submit AlgoSec automatically.

I did not find the initial set up very complex. It's advanced, but not complex. Their documentation for implementation is very good.

It really depends on the customer. Some places, when you go for a POC or a deployment, we can always plan and tell them that if they are integrating these kinds of things, these are the levels of provisions that we need. These are the things that they need to do from their end. 

The POC for some customers goes three or four days because of their delays. But with some customers it goes fairly quickly, like a day and a half or two days. For one customer it took five days because they had a procedure where you have to fill a form and send it before creating your user for AlgoSec when it's with the firewall integrations. Because of that, it took a little bit longer. So depending on that I give it three to five maximum days to integrate four or five clusters. It really shouldn't have taken that long to do the work. Then you need to contact different teams to get the support. It all causes delays.

In terms of implementation strategy, I'm always looking at what their components are. I always have to go with the Firewall Analyzer components and to check what type of devices  they are willing to integrate for this particular unit. I check if it is a Check Point cluster, or the Palo cluster, or a Forti cluster, and what the additional features are that they are looking for. Based on that, I complete the Firewall Analyzer unit as soon as I can. Since I have worked with the product, I have similar use cases. What are the things that we can use to demonstrate for firewall change flow? I'm always asking for input from them. What are the things that you need for base level policy changes, etc...?

In terms of actually deploying AlgoSec, most of the time it's me only. But I have to contact the other end. There is always a direct contact person and a support team when it comes for integrating the firewalls. 

When it comes to maintaining AlgoSec, we have another colleague also. They can always give the support.

I have seen improvements of ROI at companies. Although customers might have a department, they recruit new people to use AlgoSec reports to analyze their risk, monitor the alerts, and check their daily tasks. I have seen new implementaton by a banking customer who obviously see the value.

I'm on the technical side so I don't have a clear picture about pricing and licensing. But as far as I know, if a customer asks for a 24/7 support, the pricing level is much higher, relative to normal 8 - 5 support.

Recently, we proposed AlgoSec and there were other companies who proposed other solutions. During the technical discussions, I was the one who did the demonstration, and we were able to say that whatever features they are looking for, we can always provide it with AlgoSec. When they finally released the tenders we were in the top three options and the second place for technical. The only problem was the pricing with AlgoSec.

The other company gave much a lower price. We couldn't match the AlgoSec price level to that particular vendor. I think the company and customer were really impressed with our presentation and demonstration that we gave. They even told us if we can reduce our pricing by a certain level, they can take us because they are impressed with our product, but the pricing won't do. But when we tried to AlgoSec to reduce the cost so we can get this deal they couldn't match it to that level. Unfortunately, we lost the customer.

It was not a one day effort that we put into submitting these documents, to comply to their requirements, and do a demonstration. They were convinced to take this product, but because of the pricing issue we lost it. We all got disappointed about the support level.

I find AlgoSec more organized than some of the other products. With some other products, you have to go here and there to check it, but with AlgoSec it's more organized. But, I find some of the other products more customizable than AlgoSec. It takes a little bit of time to do the customization, for example, if you need to change or add some special level of approval or if you need to add three different levels of approvals for a particular workflow. To do that, sometimes you have to contact AlgoSec's regional support. But with other products that I know, it's just a matter of adding a particular character to the workflow. In some cases I have found other products that are useful, but in terms of organization, I find AlgoSec easier and more manageable than some of the other products.

I have learned so many lessons here. A secure environment is your main asset. When you have a secure environment you can always run your business smoothly, do your changes smoothly, and do your daily tasks smoothly. A secure and safe environment is the key to a successful IT business. That's the main point that I've learned from this.

If you're implementing, I always recommend AlgoSec and to check whether it can cater to their needs. Most of the time, it is capable. It's capable of handling your requirements most of the time.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give AlgoSec a seven.

This is taking into consideration the support and everything else. Any talks about AlgoSec and you need to consider their support level.

We use this solution for device changes auditing, device compliance, network mapping, active change, clean-up of the rule base, and a ticket system.

The device changes audit is a quick identification when changing the configuration on devices. Device compliance gives us the ability to generate device compliance reports. The network map is the method for locating the devices that are related to the communication of origin and destination.

Active change is used to centralize the creation of rules in AlgoSec without the need to access other devices. Cleaning up the rule base means that AlgoSec reports and helps remove unused rules and even unused objects within a rule.

In terms of the ticket system, FireFlow helps to record user requests.

AlgoSec products help to manage complex environments with many devices, so we can deliver requests more quickly.

Environments with many devices are difficult to identify problems, especially when there are new analysts on the team. AlgoSec helps in troubleshooting and streamlines the analysis.

AlgoSec helps in the agility of the analysis, speed in the delivery of compliance reports, automation in the request to create rules in firewalls, removal of unused rules, and optimization of the rule base.

In my opinion, the most valuable features are the network map, unused rules reports (IPT), and active change. They are features that help with automation and reduce the analyst's time spent troubleshooting.

The unused rules reports (IPT) help remove unused rules and even unused objects within a rule.

I would like an analysis to be created for user group rules (Check Point - identity awareness). 

Current versions of AlgoSec do not perform analysis of Identity awareness (Check Point). It would be important for the user to be able to request a rule by an access role group and then AlgoSec would create this rule automatically in the firewall.

An improvement in tool performance would be important. Environments with many devices need a lot of hardware resources to avoid slowdowns. Memory consumption of the server is very high.

I have been working with AlgoSec for five years.

The tool is very stable and does not present many problems.

Currently, the tool works well with large environments.

It may be necessary to create a distributed solution of the product on different servers (WEB / DB).

We did use another solution prior to AlgoSec and the change was due to the reports having more information and easy customization.

The initial setup is simple.

After that, it is possible to make customizations to adapt the tool as desired.

The cost of the tool can be recovered with AlgoSec automations.

We evaluated Tufin and FireMon before choosing AlgoSec.

AlgoSec is the best tool on the market.