AlgoSec Reviews

Many of our customers have big networks with several different vendors of telecom and firewall equipment. This means that network management overhead is significant and manual firewall rule modification is slow and error-prone.

Many firewalls have a bunch of redundant and often unused rules and that decrease overall network performance. The AlgoSec ASMS solution gives customers a very powerful tool for taking control over their firewall policies and to speed up their network security operations and incident response.

AlgoSec ASMS brings a holistic view of network firewall policy and automates firewall security management in very large-sized environments. Additionally, it speeds up the changes in firewall rules with a vendor-agnostic approach. As a result, the security and accuracy of firewall rules are increased.

Another very helpful feature of the AlgoSec ASMS solution is the ability to automate the mapping between applications and IT systems traffic requirements, and firewall rule base in couple with security risks analysis and compliance.

The AlgoSec solution consists of several modules and each of them improves the environment in a specific area. The Firewall analyzer produces a holistic view of the network topology with knowledge of firewall policies, security risks, and compliance.

The Fireflow module automates the change management process and is tightly integrated with the Firewall Analyzer to achieve compliance with minimal exposure.

The AppViz module allows for mapping applications and IT systems, their traffic with vulnerabilities, and firewall rules and policies.

The initial setup can be complex for beginners.

We started to offer AlgoSec ASMS solution to our Customers in 2015.

Scalability is good if you choose the right sizing of hardware and design.

We have had several projects with other firewall management solutions, and our customers choose AlgoSec because it's very flexible.

The setup is easy when you know what to do. The solution has many options to customize and tune.

Our company engineers implemented the solution.

We have evaluated Tufin and Skybox.

For many customers in Russia, the support of local firewall and network vendors' equipment is very important and they will be happy to get that from AlgoSec.

In Russia, there are several common firewall and VPN solutions that are widly deployed over the country. Sometimes, the use of these products is required by regulation, whereas other times, customers prefer using Russian devices to lower foreign vendor dependency risks. It also ensures that no foreign sanctions will break their network and security operations.

Having the support of these devices is very important for our customers.

The primary use case of this solution was to optimize and cleanup all the unused legacy firewall rules from multiple firewalls which was massive in terms of time and effort.

The other user case in our environment was to automate all the manual day to day firewall changes to reduce the turnaround time for application owners.

We wanted to have central visibility for our entire firewall portfolio to see the firewall flow of traffic traversing through multiple layers of firewalls.

Definitely with the help of this solution it made our life easier to optimize and clean up the task within a short span of time which provided the quick visibility of all the rules to be actioned.

Traffic Analyzer provided the centralized view for our IT SOC operations to focus mainly on high-risk firewall rules exposing with explicit any rules.

The other best feature is the Fire flow module which is in the process of implementation to automate the firewall rules changes along with the workflow model right from the requester to the implementer.

Both the modules of AlgoSec solution which has been on-boarded in our environment are amazing to use it as it provides a central end to end visibility of the firewall rules spanning across the multiple layers of the firewall.

It's helping our Risk and Compliance team to assess all our firewall rules periodically and help us to remain compliant. 

It saves a lot of manual time especially in daily operations and increases the turnaround time for business.

It has helped us internally to provide the documentation for our auditing and reporting purposes.

AlgoSec should explore integrating more multi-vendor platforms and should be looking towards ready infrastructure for providing Infrastructure as service (IAAS) on any cloud platforms as the trend and technology is gradually moving from In House platforms to Cloud platforms.

Algosec should also be exploring the integration with the open source firewalls as well.

The GUI features of Algosec solution should be more flexible to use and adopt.

We have been using this solution for one year.

In terms of scalability, it's a license-based model to add license at any point of time when you have any new firewalls added in the portfolio.

Customer service is good but needs more improvement to be on listening side of the customers.

No, this is the first time we have introduced this solution.

Our Initial setup was not so straight forward as we were exploring all the features to its depth so lots of engagement was done with OEM level to explore and implement in our environment.

We went through local vendor support however the involvement from OEM was also huge and phenomenal.

Definitely the simplicity to use this solution is the key factor to be a leader in this competition and the other factor is the response and support model.

We went through the RFP process evaluation for all the magic quadrant leaders of the  market.

Our primary use for AlgoSec is to automate our firewall configuration. We use the AlgoSec system to remotely configure the firewalls, making our life easier.

We are in a multisite environment with plenty of firewalls for perimeter security and LAN segregation for specific proposes. This solution helped us to make the process more dynamic.

It has reduced the workload for the firewall team thanks to the API integration with our ticketing system, handling the standard types of requests automatically. Before having it, we had to create a lot of standard rules that now can now be just pushed from the AlgoSec system.

It has also helped in terms of firewall monitoring. Automatic alerts are sent to the security team so we can react quicker in case something goes wrong or a thread is detected going through the firewall. This is made possible using the simple reports.

The most valuable feature of this solution from an operations perspective is the automation of the firewall rule deployment, working together with our ticketing system.

Any new needs are requested by a user using the internal webpage request. This request is automatically validated against a set of standard rules. If the request is compliant, the new rule sets are automatically configured in the specified firewalls without any human action. This reduces the firewall team's workload and improves efficiency.

It would be nice to have a good tool for network map discovery in the GUI to make it more user-friendly. I would also like to be able to check and modify network maps in a graphical and more intuitive way. This will improve our network overview for new deployments and troubleshooting.

An API to connect to Palo Alto Prisma and Zscaler to be used after SD-WAN deployment would be a helpful feature. We have discussed this with AlgoSec and are hoping to see it in the near future. 

We have been using the AlgoSec solution for four years.

We did not use a solution like this one previously. This is the first time.

I'm part of the team that uses the AlgoSec solution, not on the finance IT team.

Firewall rule base management and FCR processing is the main reason we use AlgoSec.

We also use it for troubleshooting purposes and reporting. In that sense, there are three instances that are the main consumers of it. Our infrastructure management uses reporting to get insights, our Network and Security team does all of the FCR processing and troubleshooting of network problems, and our security department that also uses reporting and is part of the approval process for FCRs that are placed in AlgoSec.       

AlgoSec provided a much easier way to process FCRs and get visibility into traffic. With previous vendors, we had to guess what was going on with our traffic and we were not able to act accordingly.

By automating some parts of the work, business pressure is also reduced since we now deliver much faster. I received feedback from our security department that their FCR approval process is also now much easier. The network team is also now able to process FCRs much faster and with more accuracy.

Most of all, Technical Reviews are now top-notch and AlgoSec does part of the job automatically that had been done manually with our previous vendor.

We now process FCRs much faster, which helps us to deliver faster and implement reworks at a quicker rate.

With Business Flow and Firewall Analyzer, it provides much better visibility into traffic and process flows. Visibility into traffic was our main problem in the past since we had no clue what was going on but now, we have all sorts of analyses and reports. This makes our decision process, firewall clean up, and troubleshooting much easier.

All of the search options needed are there but the search menu could be a bit more intuitive. In other words, I can perform any search I want without any problems but combining different search parameters can sometimes be a problem.

Creating more intuitive menus could be helpful, especially for the first-time users.

For example, it would be useful to be able to save searches with complex structure so they can be easily reused with simple change of parameter. Also, "contain" criteria sometimes misses just like ability to search using any value in basic search box, instead of reaching out to Advanced search (it would be great if simple typing IP address, or Project ID in basic search box lists all rules containing such a value).

We have been using AlgoSec in production for about one year. Before that, we used it as a PoC for around six months.

We have had no issues in the past year.

This solution is very scalable.

We used another vendor prior to AlgoSec but we were not satisfied with the "intelligence" of the product when it came to the processing of FCRs.

We also evaluated Skybox.

I have not seen any major issues with AlgoSec and it is better than the previous product we used. I am glad to have it now.

We use this solution for Firewall Rule Management, to know who did what and why.

We use AlgoSec FireFlow to create Rules for the Firewalls with detailed information. It is used by end-users who supply the requirements for which this rule is needed, and then it goes to Security for approval.

We use AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer to get the audit reports on the firewall and to verify that change, which was approved by the Security and Network teams, is implemented in the right way.

It is a great tool for audit purposes.

Also it tells us if our firewall is compliance with PCI or not.

We use this for Compliance purposes also.

They are both integrated with each other.

This solution is helping us in the long term for managing the firewall configurations.

AlgoSec FireFlow Network Security solution is an end-to-end solution that ensures that firewall changes are approved, necessary, and implemented in the right way.

If some change is not implemented correctly then it warns you right away.

Also, while migrating from Cisco to AlgoSec, we can see the hit counts on the security rules and when the last time each rule was used. Depending on this information, we only use security rules that are more recently used when configuring new firewalls for migration.

For Palo Alto Firewalls, we have configured a lot of virtual routers as part of the network. This segmentation allows different network traffic to be isolated from a security point of view.

For us, it is a great management and audit tool.

This appliance has a lot of great features to offer.

You can buy the physical appliance or VM depending on your company requirements.

Features we like are:

1. Multi-approval AlgoSec Fireflow rule creation system. The end-user can only implement the rule if it is approved by all of the IT groups.
2. Very good integration with other vendor's products like Cisco or Palo Alto Firewalls.
3. This Appliance gives you the full Network MAP, which is obtainable from the Routing table.
4. It is easy to find whether a security policy is blocked, as well as where and by which device.

We love all the features of this device. It can be a bit expensive for small companies but they also have a VM model for that.

It seems that AlgoSec created a VSYS (Virtual system) for each virtual router name, even though our firewall has only a single VSYS. We are ok to work with this, but if this can be fixed in a future release then that will be great.

We have been using this solution for three years.

We have had no Hardware or Software issue so far with this Product.

This Appliance never went down and whenever we did any software upgrades it went very smooth. Also in our environment we had no issues due to any software bugs.

Their Software is pretty stable and bug free.

We love the scalability of this product.

This solution has Five Star technical support.

It is great to work with its Customer and Technical support team.

We used a different solution prior to this one and we had issues integrating with our new firewall vendor which was Palo Alto

The initial setup is straightforward, and we had no issues during the installation.

We performed the implementation in-house.

It seems we have recovered our money on this appliance, so it is money well spent.

Initial setup was not that hard. Vendor did this for us.

Licensing depends on how many firewalls your company has.

They have license options for small to big customers depending on the network.

Price is fair for Licensing and Product.

We evaluated a few other options, including Tufin, before choosing this solution.

My advice is to go with this product. It is easy to set up and use. It has great features and very good technical support to back it.

So far, we find ourselves below limitations on this appliance with the version we are currently running.

Overall, this is a Great security management product with good automation options to help your security teams function.

The primary use of this appliance is for Firewall maintenance and monitoring. Firewalls are a critical component in all organizations. As engineers, we are tasked with more responsibilities. You want to efficiently manage your time and devices, AlgoSec helps tremendously with that.

AlgoSec has improved our organization by providing us with an appliance to assist with our daily Firewall duties. AFA & AFF assist with change detection and logging of user modifications. Also, it's a great tool when preparing for audits and ensuring your firewalls are in compliance.  

The feature I find most valuable is Change Detection email notifications. We are able to track real-time changes made.

Currently, the product is doing everything we have asked for. Its a huge component for our Firewall maintenance. One key component is the integration with ServiceNow for Firewall rule requests. This helps expedite the process and track every step from user to configuration. 

Some area's where the product can improve is with the knowledgebase. Sometimes you have to do additional reading for your particular error.

Some additional features I'd like to see are for the reports. As opposed to showing me the entire objects/rules on the change detection email for that particular firewall, I'd like to see just the changes. I think this would be beneficial to none technical personal that may get overwhelmed with all of the data.

Also, having a Linux or programming background makes troubleshooting easier. That is one challenge I'm working on now to improve fixing our issues quicker.  

So far for what the solution does, it's stable. 

The solution is very scalable so far. 

Support thus far is sufficient for our needs. Their system is very timely and engineers engage you via email first, then migrate to phone and screen share if needed. 

No previous solution.

I wasn't part of the implementation. 

I wasn't part of the implementation. 

I think we have a great ROI due to the improved visibility and management that the solution now provides us. 

I wasn't part of the setup cost. Pricing and licensing seem fair. Licensing depends on how big your organization is. We haven't had any issues with purchasing more licenses for our growth. 

This solution was in place prior to me transitioning to this role. 

No additional comments. 

One of the standout features is its ability to provide visibility and control over security policies. The product offers a centralized dashboard that gives an overview view of the entire network infrastructure, including firewalls, routers, and switches, regardless of their vendor or location. This unified view enables administrators to easily manage and modify security policies from a single platform, eliminating the need for manual, error-prone processes. 

AlgoSec also provides a powerful rule analyzer that detects and highlights any redundant, overlapping, or conflicting rules, helping organizations optimize their security policies for maximum efficiency. AlgoSec also allows administrators to define and enforce a standardized change management process, reducing the risk of unauthorized or misconfigured changes.

AlgoSec's compliance management capabilities have helped a lot in my organization. It offers predefined compliance frameworks, such as PCI DSS and HIPAA, and assists organizations in mapping their security policies to these standards. AlgoSec can generate comprehensive reports that demonstrate compliance with regulatory requirements, simplifying the audit process. 

It also provides continuous compliance monitoring, alerting administrators of any of policy violations or any changes that may impact compliance.

The visibility of security policies and automation is the most valuable feature of AlgoSec. It offers a range of automated workflows and processes that accelerate security policy management. For example, it can automate the process of rule recertification, ensuring that rules are regularly reviewed and validated. 

AlgoSec also facilitates policy optimization by automatically suggesting rule modifications based on industry best practices or specific compliance requirements. By automating these repetitive tasks, AlgoSec frees up valuable time for security teams to focus on more strategic initiatives.

AlgoSec offers almost everything that clients want and has a robust set of features. That said, there are a few areas where it could improve. The user interface, although functional, could benefit from a more modern and intuitive design. Additionally, the initial setup and configuration process may require some technical expertise, which could pose a challenge for organizations with limited security resources. A simple tutorial about the initial configuration on Youtube could provide a lot of help. Even a self-guide link inside the GUI would be helpful.

I've used the solution for two years.

The initial setup was complex.

The implementation was handled in-house.

I started working with AlgoSec to integrate change opening tools with some clients as I work at an AlgoSec reseller.

I have customized hooks so that custom actions could be triggered within AlgoSec, before implementing the active change I worked to generate scripts to clean up the checkpoint firewall rule base based on AlgoSec reports. My experiences with AlgoSec have always been with end-user support, especially when it comes to software development. That said, I've also done an installation and helped the customer create the approval flow.

AlgoSec has been a partner in my company for many years, with which we can improve our customers' experience.

It adds many facilities in the management of network equipment, due to the ease in analyzing the rule base. It helps firewalls to have a better performance since the rules are positioned more efficiently and unnecessary rules and objects are removed.

The training provided by AlgoSec helps a lot in the development of employees who work with the tool.

I recently discovered the "ask the community" option and it made problem-solving a lot easier.

All of AlgoSec's features are very good, however, in my point of view traffic planning and risk analysis are the most important, with them we can have a view of which items will be affected by the change, which objects need to be created or used, which rules will be affected, with that we can have a much more optimized base and easier to maintain.

With the risk analysis, we can customize it according to the company because each client may have a different risk scenario.

The possibility of customization also makes the job much easier.

Plugins for integration with other tools as ServiceNow, for example, would be ideal. This would facilitate the work without needing a developer to carry out integrations, mainly for market tools.

We need a screen to view system logs. This would facilitate the problem analysis process. The possibility of placing buttons in another system to trigger actions within AlgoSec would be great. For example, placing an HTML button in ServiceNow that triggers the active change. Being able to view the ticket flow within other tools would be useful.

I've used the solution for three years.

I've always worked with the standalone version.

I've always used Algosec.

I have not looked into ROI.

The costs are paid according to use.

I did not evaluate other options previously.