AlgoSec Reviews

AlgoSec provides a secure connection between applications and helps customers maintain regulatory compliance.

The benefit depends on the type of client. Our banking customers are impressed with the compliance features, automatic policy installation, and FireFlow. They also realize performance improvements of approximately 20 percent. 

AlgoSec has simplified the work of security engineers. If I had to give that a grade, I would give it a nine out of ten. We used the solution to implement and manage micro-segmentation initiatives. Still, it has been limited since this is a private cloud version, and many of our customers use regular firewalls. 

We deal with customers with a mixture of environments, including private cloud, public cloud, and on-premises. Many of them have on-premises and private cloud environments. AlgoSec provides a single pane of glass for managing these mixed environments, making management more effortless. 

The most valuable feature of AlgoSec is integration because it needs the be integrated with vendors' firewalls and other security products. AlgoSec has intelligent policy tuners. 

It's easy to integrate AlgoSec with solutions from other vendors. It's currently integrated with the products of three or four vendors. We integrate AlgoSec with AppViz and other products to get complete visibility into our network policies, and FireFlow helps us manage risks from firewall change requests. It has reduced the time it takes to implement firewall rules by about 20%, according to the ROI calculator on the AlgoSec website. It varies, depending on the structure of the customer's environment. 

AlgoSec also helps us audit complex environments to ensure firewalls are in compliance. The benefit is marginal if there is only one firewall and a few policies, but it's significant when you have three firewall clusters and 60 devices. 

The documentation could be better. 

I've been using AlgoSec for six years.

AlgoSec is stable.

It's a scalable solution but there is room for improvement in that area. It has a high-availability structure, but some features need to be distributed using a collector, for example.

I rate AlgoSec's support eight out of ten. I don't use it much, but it has improved greatly in the last two years. 

Positive

Setting up AlgoSec isn't complicated. You can install it in half an hour, but the configuration time depends on the environment. Sometimes, it takes a day, but it could take up to a week to analyze the files, etc. We have a two-person team responsible for deployment and maintenance, but we also have partners. In all, we have about 10 technicians supporting our customers.

I don't know about pricing because I'm a technical guy. I can say the licensing model is straightforward and should be in the future. It isn't an issue for our customers. 

I rate AlgoSec an eight out of ten. I would recommend AlgoSec, depending on the client's structure and requirements. It's a good solution for regulatory compliance and analytics. 

We primarily use AlgoSec to just have a check on what firewall rule sets have been configured over a period of time, and if there are any redundancies within those rules, that we can eliminate without any confusion within the ruleset. It allows us to have the optimum support and effectiveness of the firewalls.

Doing the analysis of rule sets is very useful for us.

Being able to make and implement changes within a timeline is a very valuable aspect of the solution.

The solution is easy to navigate.

The initial setup is straightforward.

AlgoSec can probably do better at introducing features for the cloud firewall scenarios. This is something that will probably help customers. It needs a hybrid scenario that includes private cloud, public cloud, and on-prem things. If a feature could cover all three different types of deployment, that could probably make it even more desirable for clients.

I've been dealing with the solution for two and a half years at this point.

We've not received any complaints so far when it comes to stability. So far, our capabilities mapped with AlgoSec has always achieved the best of results for our customers. There don't seem to be bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

We haven't heard anything from clients that would lead us to believe they couldn't scale the solution if they needed to.

The technical support is quite good. I would rate them eight or nine out of ten.

There are some points wherein when it comes to support, my engineer may not have gotten direct support immediately. In the past, my engineer might have to wait half an hour or one hour to get an answer, and then, of course, the customer is also waiting. That slightly impacts my customer experience. Due to that aspect, I am reducing one or two points for that. However, overall, we're pretty satisfied with the solution.

I use a few other solutions as well. More often, I would advise clients to go with AlgoSec. Of course, as a secondary option, if our customers personally had some other preference, my experience is that they tend to go for Tufin rather than Skybox.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It's not complex. We don't face any challenges on that front.

We both deploy the solution and manage the solution for our customers.

In terms of pricing, it would be useful if they could be a bit more aggressive to their competition in the market. They need more aggressive pricing. That would be certainly more helpful to the market overall.

We have relationships with AlgoSec, Skybox, and Tufin. We are resellers as well as value-added service partners of all three solutions.

Our experience is across the board. What we advise depends on our customers' requirements and preferences. Based on that, we suggest select solutions.

We have a cloud model that we have worked out with AlgoSec. We are their managed security service partners. Along with that, we also do the on-prem deployment, especially in the Indian government sector.

Overall, I'd rate the solution a nine out of ten. I've had a fantastic experience with it so far.

The AlgoSec solution is really helpful for us, as we need to review all of the rules that have been implemented or we intend to implement, everywhere in our organization, independent of the country or even region.

With AlgoSec, it is possible to check the risks for each rule in terms of security and it is possible to easily decide if the implementation is valid or risky. This allows us to keep only the rules that are following our internal security standards.

AlgoSec helps to keep order and improve efficiency for operations teams supporting the solution.

In short, this solution makes it possible to increase efficiency by simplifying the life of our engineers. They support the daily interactions with the Firewalls through the implementation of the requested rules. We can easily and quickly identify all of the rules on the firewall and avoid the individual review and analysis of each rule. This keeps the firewalls clean and under our security policy, following our internal standards.

I think that perhaps FireFlow could be the most valuable feature, according to the feedback from our technical teams. This allows them to easily add, modify, and remove rules from the firewalls.

Another good point is that we avoid the old procedure of end-users requesting rules, a security team in the middle validating, and then the final implementor doing the job. With this feature, you can directly permit the end-user to request what he or she needs, and if the security policy is respected then it can directly be approved and implemented.

What the technical teams report to me is that the network maps are a concern and should be improved. It would be easier if the network maps could be updated using the GUI portal instead of from the OS. This would benefit the operations teams working daily with this tool.

In the end, we are striving to improve efficiency, and taking into account that Operations are really under pressure from SLAs to keep support ticket queues clean, and with the least amount of backfill possible, it is key to get better tools that make it easier and faster to update the network maps.

I think we are roughly in the third year since the first time we started using the AlgoSec tool in our company.

In terms of stability, this tool is really good and more than you could expect.

We are still involved in debugging a lot of stuff because we have to accommodate the solution to our large IT network. As our company and network are really large, we have a lot of jobs to do. Even with this powerful tool, it is not immediate.

Scalability is really good with this tool as it is flexible, as long as we can move this solution to hybrid or fully cloud deployments. This is something we are really focusing on right now.

As I know, until today, all issues raised so far have had a good response time and solution. No bad reports or specific or important complaints were reported from the technical teams.

Overall, technical support is really pleasant and smooth.

Before knowing and using the AlgoSec tool, we were managing daily activities with Firewalls the standard way. It was done rule by rule, creating, modifying, removing, analyzing, and finally compiling once all it was decided that everything was under control and following internal security policies.

The initial setup was hard and made more difficult because of the network map configuration. There is no visibility on the provider because they cannot grant access to us. So, the configuration has to be manually done for the most part. This part was really hard and time-consuming.

My team was not involved in testing or pilots of any other solution prior to making a decision. Another global team was part of the negotiations, study, and comparison. My team and I were involved once the decision was made.

It is clear that it is difficult to have the perfect tool with all that you need. As we expect, it is not an ideal world. AlgoSec is, in general, doing fine.

Today, this tool is very stable and permits us to improve the efficiency of the day to day work by our technical teams. It also allows the end-user to be more directly involved in the requests, highly reducing the time between the request and the final implementation.

The only advice or remark I can add here is what concerns me with the network maps. This is the cause of what makes the initial setup harder than expected. The reason is because of the network map configuration. There is no visibility on the provider because they cannot grant us access, meaning the configuration has to mostly be performed manually.

Our first use case is the homogenization of important rules for a large number of firewall-enabled devices in our corporate network.

With one click, we have at our disposal everything we consider important and in this way we do not have to enter each device to verify the information.The AlgoSec Security Management Suite collects all of this information.

The most important thing is to have all of the information in one application. At a glance, we can see security problems and possible issues in the future. In this way, we can be proactive and solve problems before they happen.

With AlgoSec Security Management we have many advantages.

We have all of the information about the firewall devices that we have at risk, either because there is a firewall policy with some open protocol that can give us security problems later, or because long-unused rules present a security hole.

We have collected all of the alerts for each of the firewalls, which helps to identify devices that are in need of a more in-depth analysis.

The most valuable feature is the ability to compare policies with certain established and accepted configurations and values.

We have the option to generate several security reports for our firewall devices, such as what policies were created, what cluster they were created in, and which pose a risk either because they have been obsolete for a long time or because they have very specific technical specifications. Examples of this are open ports that are totally vulnerable or declared services that violate security.

All of the reports can be exported to PDF, meaning that we can send them to the different departments to study the cases and determine whether these rules are necessary. If not, then they can be eliminated to optimize the system.

It would be very helpful to have a direct link to the relevant firewall policy embedded within reports when there are warnings or risks indicated. Regardless of how serious the risk is, we could jump to the policy with a single click. In this way, the administration would be much easier and we would not have to be changing the screen every time we want to look at or modify something in our firewall. I understand that they are third-party software packages that can achieve this, but it would be more comfortable to have it integrated.

We have been using AlgoSec for two or three years.

The stability of this solution is very good.

Scalability is very good.

We have had no problem with technical support. Different incidents have been resolved without major complications.

The first solution that we used in this category was AlgoSec.

The initial setup is not complex.

Our in-house team performed the deployment with help from the vendor team. The expertise was good.

The price is within the standard of security products.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing this solution.

We use the AFA to accurately determine rule use and where we can make improvements across our checkpoint estate. We have around 17 clusters of firewalls that are in constant use and frequently change rules.

AlgoSec has given us the confidence to remove unused rules, consolidate where appropriate, and prove reachability prior to searching a rule base to check access for an application or user. Breaking down a rule to specify used objects within groups and protocols used has proved invaluable for us to narrow exposure to potential threats.

A number of features are used more than others. We use the policy optimiser to search out unused objects in rules and determine when the rule was last hit accurately.

The risk and compliance area is key to ensuring we conform to company regulation. Having a number of compliance options to baseline ensures that we get the basics right before looking at advanced risks and remediation.

Finally, the traffic simulator can be used to check if a request from a user or project is already a function enabled or we have a full access change to implement.

• The maps are a little clunky and could be made easier with some automatic layout technology which assists in spacing out the devices for easier viewing.

It runs well with little intervention.

Good, it has the ability to add more devices anytime.

We use Bytes to escalate, and this has proved effective.

No. 

Straightforward, it needs to run for a period to ensure accuracy.

We used Bytes Security to assist in setup and initial optimization. 

Not really applicable.

Setup is easy; we use a VM to run it. Having knowledge in Linux is not a requirement but helps when required to update the software. Also, ensure the reseller has the ability to escalate any issues in case they can't fix it for you. Your licensing should cover the support of the product.

Yes, we looked at Tufin and FireMon.

Put it in, let it collect for up to 12 months and ensure you run regular reports. Only then can you be sure that you don't use rules. Remember, DR testing and failovers sometimes happen on a 6 or 12-month basis, and removing rules covering this will cause issues when you least expect it.

We have around 200 firewalls that we manage through AlgoSec. We use it for automation purposes in certain cases. We have 10 to 12 team members who use AlgoSec.

We have around 100 plus on-premises devices. However, we are moving over to the cloud. At present, we mainly have Microsoft Azure, and we are going to deploy AWS and Google Cloud soon.

We use AlgoSec FireFlow as well. 

The amount of time spent on doing simple tasks, such as adding a particular rule or giving access to a particular person, or doing the same repetitive task has been reduced. We don't have to manually look into duplicate rules or look into traffic that is not getting hits. It will be automatically taken into consideration by AlgoSec, and the information will be given to us so that we can take action on that part. It saved us a lot of time.

When the staff is doing the same repetitive task all the time, there will be errors. AlgoSec helped to reduce human error and misconfigurations to a great extent.

One of the features that I like about AlgoSec is the topology table. It helps us understand where the traffic flows through, where it gets interconnected, and how the traffic flows from our device to the other device.

The other good feature that I have come across is that it suggests best practices. For example, we had a case where there was a legacy rule that was a wide-open rule. AlgoSec identified what IP traffic got hit and based on that suggested allowing those particular IPs instead of maintaining a wide-open rule.

In terms of the overall visibility that AlgoSec gives into our network security policies, I like the best practice assessment in terms of compliance. It helps us deal with wide-open rules and duplicates, and provides suggestions on how the rules can be written, restructured, and reordered.

AlgoSec reduced the time it takes to implement firewall rules. Also when it is upgraded, which we are in the process of doing, when a user tries to raise a ticket, that ticket will be associated with AlgoSec FireFlow. Then, the user will be able to access it themselves.

We work with multiple security vendors, but not all vendors integrate with AlgoSec. As a result, our team has both AlgoSec and Tufin. In terms of integrations, it's going well so far.

AlgoSec helped to simplify the job of our security engineers. For example, a new user who tries to gain access will have to raise a case, and automation will take that into consideration. It helped us to disable rules that are not being utilized, merge any duplicate rules, and reorder rules based on traffic hits to have a good flow. Any rule works from top to bottom, and AlgoSec will place the major items at the top. These helped to reduce latency as well.

Certain firewalls don't integrate with AlgoSec, and it would be great if this bug could be fixed.

AlgoSec looks into compliance and is helpful. However, it would be nice to have validations that can run before the changes are posted and implemented. Now, if something goes wrong the user would need to reach out to us, and then we would have to troubleshoot. Instead of that, if there are validations for simple tasks, it would be great.

I've also heard from our AlgoSec vendor about a feature that is coming up in the future. With the topology table, we can see the interconnected devices to understand the traffic flow. I was told that with this new feature, if we find a blockage, maybe on a firewall, that we would be able to go to that firewall and allow traffic through a specific rule. This would be done just by right-clicking on that particular device and getting the change implemented through automation. This would be a helpful feature.

I've been using AlgoSec for about a year.

The stability has been okay so far. There are a few bugs, but no device is perfect.

We previously used FireMon and switched to AlgoSec because we were not satisfied with it. FireMon was good but was not user-friendly.

I recommend AlgoSec because it has good features and is more user-friendly than FireMon. AlgoSec has fewer options in terms of tabs, so you'll be able to navigate and explore everything. From a technical point of view, AlgoSec is good for a newcomer. Therefore, I would give AlgoSec an overall rating of eight on a scale from one to ten.

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.

We use AlgoSec to see where our firewalls stand, configuration-wise, and where we can make the policies safer for the environment. We are a large Government organization that provides critical services to the community.

We have a mix of ASA and Firepower that we use in the environment. The tempo is pretty high and there is a large amount of opportunity for error due to the size of the team and sometimes lacking in technical experience with configuring the firewall platforms.

This tool allows us to check the config really easily.

Our pen testers were constantly using AlgoSec for the firewall assessments, even when going with different vendors. We decided to buy the product in order to check the policy in real-time and ensure there were not miss-configurations that would linger until next year's pen test.

We also get an automated email of firewall changes in addition to being able to see if there are any rules that are poorly configured.

I am less stressed thinking there could be a glaring misconfiguration that could cause an incident.

We primarily use the firewall analyzer feature. It is really great for looking at stuff like PCI, HIPPA, etc. There are sometimes false positives but I don't know of a product out there that does not have false positives.

The firewall analyzer is great if you deploy a new firewall platform and need to see if it provides an adequate level of protection, where you don't have any dangerous rules.

I like the peace of mind that we get from seeing what our overall score is for the configs. I also like that I can check against PCI requirements.

This is a tough one because it has a lot of good features.

I think that the rate of false positives can be improved. I would like a FireFlow or packet-tracer-like capability at a lower licensing level.

I liked the additional capabilities for an analyst or lower-level network admin or service desk tech to be able to check the rules to see if there is something blocking the traffic. However, I was not able to get the licensing approved above just FA.

I like the training available as it is very informative, but, I wish it was just available from YouTube and I could easily play it from my cell phone without additional logins.

I have been using AlgoSec for a few years.

We just relied on tech skills and pen tests. This way led us to be reactionary instead of getting ahead of problems.

Setup was not too difficult.

The cost is kind of high but I really did not check any other vendors.

I did not evaluate other options. I do like NetBrain's Path tool. This gives us a similar capability to FireFlow and has some other really great tools.