Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration Reviews

We use the solution for preventing malicious emails that we're getting through Google's built-in spam filters. The amount of spam and phishing had greatly increased at our organization and we needed a solution implemented fast. 

Check Point was really quick to integrate and implement and instantly started providing value. The reporting we got during our trial helped to quantify the value to the executive team, in particular, the report that shows what Check Point caught items that Google's spam filters would've let through.

The amount of spam and phishing getting through to end users has reduced drastically. 

We are also now able to advertise how many malicious emails we get and how it is constantly increasing as we grow. This shows our users how valuable a solution like this is and they appreciate that sometimes it may get a false positive. 

We're abe to show to users why emails are quarantined - which has helped to train them on what to look out for if they do receive a suspicious email. We have also improved our reporting process and notifications to admins.

First and foremost, Check Point's ability to detect malicious emails and the filters they put in place are a big improvement on the built-in Google Workspace solution. 

Being able to mass quarantine and remove emails from end users' mailboxes has become extremely important to us as we have grown in size. Admins can be notified as soon as a suspicious email arrives in bulk mailboxes and can act extremely quickly. This has even helped us to notify partners that they had been breached before they knew themselves.

There are a few features that are more geared towards Microsoft users rather than Google, for example, user-reported phishing. It's not fully integrated with Google Workspace, and the statistics don't update in real-time. 

We appreciate that Microsoft has the larger market share, and Check Point has been improving its Google integration. However, more advancements would be appreciated. That being said, the "What Google wouldn't have caught" report was extremely valuable to us in showing value. 

I've used the solution for nine months.

We evaluated other solutions, such as Mimecast, Proofpoint, and Abnormal.

We use the solution for the protection of email from phishing attacks, spam, and malicious email-related activities. 

It detects and blocks the most advanced phishing attacks across inbound, outbound, and internal communications, in real-time, before the attack succeeds.  

The solution is used for email protection, providing IT administrators with a great amount of information about possible attacks faced by the organization, and logins by users. 

It also has a high level of detail in its reports, facilitating the management and detection of possible threats to the security of the organization.

The number of phishing and spam emails has decreased and email security has improved by 80%. The IT team has noticed a great improvement in the number of emails received and a decrease in attacks. The helpful alerts generated by HEC facilitate the management and response. 

Thanks to its dashboard, it displays detailed information about detected activities, suspicious logins, span deletions, or phishing detected and blocked with a high level of detail. The level of reporting detail facilitates threat management; now the organization has an additional layer of protection for end users.

The ease of management and intuitive administration are excellent. Thanks to its dashboard, the most valuable thing is the detection capability provided by this solution. The level of detail offered by Harmony is unique, to the point of showing the differences between what is detected by Office 365 and what is detected by HEC. The organization relies on this email security solution and facilitates the protection of all end users, decreasing security breaches by malicious actors.

The integration with Gsuite could be improved, especially when reporting the amount of emails it manages to filter. It could be improved to obtain a greater level of detail, unlike Office 365, which offers an extreme level of detail and facilitates the management and comparison of what is happening with respect to the mail. Its integration with Gsuite is simpler and has that point against it, however high levels of detail can be obtained in the reports of the solution. On the other hand, the ease of administration and threat detection capabilities are its strong points, and it stands out from other solutions that I have had the opportunity to test before.

Currently, this solution has been used for the last two years.

At the moment, we're heavily using the email and collaboration features. We are also licensed for the mobile part, which we are sort of working into, and CloudGuard as well. We're kind of working through those features. 

The implementation could definitely be better. We had great support from Check Point, but there were some "got-you" moments where we got surprises as we were setting it up. When Check Point talks about it, it's all "plug and play," but it's not really one of those platforms where you can just jump in and click a few buttons and everything works. You need to have a bit of knowledge about what you're doing and it's a bit more complicated than they advertise.

In the future I would like to see something similar to what Proofpoint has, where users can actually go in and make the call to release their own emails. We've got a small number of users, so it's okay for the IT team to constantly be bombarded with our emails for releasing, but I would love to have an option where I can allow users to go in and make the call to release an email, and then of course it would only actually be released if it passes certain things.

I have been using this solution for about a year and a half now. 

The solution is stable and I think it does a fantastic job. The stuff that it's picking up and blocking and stopping from coming into our environment has been fantastic. There's a few things that get flagged by Microsoft, most of them false positives, so it's interesting. Harmony passes it through and Microsoft thinks it's spam, but usually it's not.

The solution is very easy to scale. There are between 500-550 active users in our company. We have a team of three people that look after the environment, but that is only part of their responsibilities. I think it would do very well with one full-time person handling the maintenance. 

The technical support was brilliant, but that's the thing when you're buying something, usually the initial support is top notch. It's been a year and a half now, and we haven't had any urgent technical issues that we've had to go back for help with, but at the start, when we were implementing the solution, we had good support. They were on the ball and they really stepped up.

What we used in the past was an outfit called MSX.

Check Point is more expensive. That's the honest truth. So far, it's a good value for the money. 

We considered the Microsoft inbuilt solution, and the advice that we got from a lot of people was, if you want to use that one, combine it with something else. That is what we ended up doing, because it came as part of our licensing with 365, but we can tell that it was a good idea to combine it with Check Point because it will let a lot of things pass.

Also, I know CrowdStrike is cheaper with their Falcon offering, but I haven't had the opportunity to work with it. The reason why I went with Check Point was because I have worked with it in the past and I like their product, so that was the biggest push. 

I would rate this solution as a seven out of ten. 

We use the solution to protect Office 365 and Gmail.

The anti-phishing feature is the solution's best feature.

A signature-based filter could improve the solution's AI model for spam email. It works right most of the time.

I've worked with this solution for around a year.

The solution is stable, and I rate its stability a ten out of ten.

The solution is scalable, and I rate its scalability a ten out of ten. Both enterprises and SMBs use this solution.

Technical support for the solution is good.

Positive

It is easy to set up the solution. Deploying the solution takes five minutes.

Harmony Email is an API-based solution. Legacy email gateway clouds, by comparison, only inspect internal emails, which include users' and end users' emails. Check Point inspects all emails before they reach the end user's mailbox.

If you are looking for an anti-phishing solution, Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration is the best. I rate the solution a nine out of ten because the spam filtering is still not good enough, though it does not affect the security.

This solution is not for our organization. We are system integrators. We have some projects for our clients, and one of our clients was looking for CloudGuard because they use Check Point Firewall for their on-premise. There are a number of machines and critical servers that they have hosted in AWS; 15 to 20 servers and application servers are hosted in the AWS platform. For those, we have applied Check Point IaaS Firewall for their security and firewall protection.

We are using the stable version that was published in March.

I am confident with the block rate. We host our solution in AWS cloud. If someone tries to hit our applications, they could be a legitimate user or a hacker. So, we have found a number of blocked attempts from the external end.

In terms of technical features, this is the best solution that I have worked with so far. For example:

• URL Filtering
• Application control 
• Threat Prevention
• Sandboxing

We have found threat prevention using sandboxing from Check Point, after buying the Threat Prevention license, helped with the malware prevention rate and reduced zero-day attacks.

For Threat Prevention, I was impressed with this feature and the solution's effectiveness. It has been very good. 

Getting reports and finding threats in the console is easy.

The false positive rate is one of the problems that we had faced with Check Point's information. For example, we have a number of false positives in both CloudGuard SaaS and CloudGuard IaaS, which has been quite disappointing when we find them. However, the moment when we whitelist or blacklist false positive things, the solution gives us more efficient security than other solutions. When I teach Check Point IaaS, I feel like it is putting devices into learning mode and feeding more stuff to the solution, which gives me more efficient security.

We download the SmartConsole from AWS, installing it on our computers, then managing it from our end only on local machines. I need to download agents for every machine from the Check Point instance. To connect with the SmartConsole, then I need to give public access to Check Point's machine. At that moment, there is no configuration in my machine so I need to give some public access to our machine. Giving public access without configuring anything is the first defect or drawback. It takes a few times for every engineer to download the agent and configure the policy, and that takes five to 10 minutes. Within those five to 10 minutes, it is insecure.

The integration with the Check Point console needs improvement, e.g., accessing the SmartConsole is difficult. 

I have been working with Check Point for six to seven months.

I haven't tested the scalability.

The worst thing that I have faced with Check Point has been their support.

I have sat with all the following support teams:

• Cisco
• Fortinet
• SonicWall
• Sophos
• Check Point. 

Other vendor support teams go after fixing the issue the moment that they join the remote session. The problem that I have faced with Check Point support is that they share the case number with me, then it takes at least two days for them to join a remote session with us, even though we have asked for this timeframe to change. Even though we have already explained the problems that we are facing or the business pain points in our network on the call or email, we have to repeat the problem statements again in the console. It can take four or five days to resolve the issue from the moment they understand the problem. This includes the time to teach their R&D or internal team whatever the issue is. I have faced timeframes as long as seven to 10 days for fixing some issues. 

Since this is a cloud-based solution for IaaS and SaaS, I need a different support team for a number of things. So, if they increased or developed their support team, then it would be better for their customers.

Compared to other solutions, like Fortinet, this solution's initial setup is complex. Policy configuration and integrations make Check Point's setup difficult. The setup for on-premise and cloud are the same.

Whenever we need to download the agent from Check Point's console and integrate the SmartConsole with the Check Point solution, the configuration is time consuming and a difficult task for an engineer. Getting the console integrated with the firewall can be difficult, affecting engineers during implementation.

When it comes to Threat Prevention pricing and licensing, it has felt a little costly. For some clients, who are looking at security as their primary concern, then it's better for them. 

I'm in this business as a system integrator, so I need to suggest Check Point to some customers who are comparing products. I sell Check Point, Fortinet, and Palo Alto solutions. In terms of licensing, this solution is quite competitive but very costly. For someone looking at security as a primary concern, they should only invest in Check Point. For a customer who is looking at security combined with pricing, Check Point might not be the core solution for them. In today's market, customers are looking for effective security with efficient pricing, and Check Point is not suitable for these types of customers.

I would like them to improve the pricing.

With respect to Check Point's security features, my clients and I feel every feature given by Check Point has been very helpful for us. We have tried FortiGate, Sophos, and Cisco in some places. Even though Check Point wasn't a market leader, like Cisco and FortiGate, they have the most efficient security. Therefore, we feel it is worth the money for their security features.

The cloud security provided by CloudGuard IaaS is simple compared with the security provided by public cloud providers. If I go for Check Point, then I'm getting the complete features of what a firewall does. When I go for AWS, then by default, I don't get anything other than the ACLs.

The security features have been good. The pricing and licensing strategies have been average, but Check Point's support has been the worst.

I would rate the solution as a seven out of 10.

Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration allows me to monitor the activities in the environment. I can check if there are any phishing or spam emails with its efficient reporting features.

It's been an awesome experience working with Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration. I can count the number of endpoints, emails, and collaborations being used in the environment. It gives me insights into the number of tools required to block malicious websites. 

We have to invest a lot of effort in filtering the spam emails. They have not updated any category for phishing or spam emails. There could be more automation features included for it. It will help me with feedback for unusual activities.

We have been using Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration for four months. At present, we are using the latest version.

The platform is stable. I rate its stability a nine out of ten.

The platform is scalable. I rate its scalability an eight and a half.

The product’s initial setup process is more straightforward as I am Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration partner and have the necessary training. It takes less than ten minutes to complete.

The product’s price is very high. I rate its pricing a ten out of ten.

I recommend Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration to others and rate it an eight out of ten.

All of Harmony Email & Collaboration's features are valuable.

Harmony Email & Collaboration could be improved by making the whitelist available on the website and application level.

I've been using Harmony Email & Collaboration for a year.

Harmony Email & Collaboration is stable.

Check Point's technical support is very good.

Positive

We previously used McAfee Endpoint.

I would recommend Harmony Email & Collaboration to other users and rate it eight out of ten.

The company desires to protect the current email tool, in this case, Microsoft, and its collaboration products such as One Drive and Sharepoint.

We wanted to avoid malware, phishing, and spam, among other frequent threats in this infrastructure. We managed to solve it through Harmony Email Collaboration.

Other tools provided similar solutions. However, we could not centralize their administration. With the Infinity Check Point Portal, it was possible to meet this requirement.

Through the modern security tool Harmony Email, we managed to protect our email cloud environment and its main collaboration tools.

It is quite simple to connect through a connection API, achieving the main objective.

Its protection against malicious documents allowed us to review the attached documents through threat emulation and threat extraction and deliver the package or file to the user in just a couple of seconds, in an agile, simple, and fast way, providing an ideal delivery time for the users.

We liked this tool a lot. Its most attractive features were:

1- Check Point Harmony Threat Emulation and Threat Extraction technologies that delivered fast attached files or files with threats.

2-The DLP policies helped us a lot against the loss of sensitive information.

3-Its ease of implementation and its API to connect with solutions safely.

4-Its monitoring dashboard with screens and graphs is very useful for us as administrators.

The product is a complete, centralized solution accessible through the Infinity Portal.

Some improvements can be provided, including the documentation available. We need it to better establish the manufacturer's best practices since sometimes it is difficult to find public information because the tool is relatively new in the market.

The costs are not publicly available.     

Support can be a bit quicker in helping the customer.

More training and guides should be available for customers.

A few performance issues should be mentioned regarding the Infinity service.

This is a good tool centralized in Check Point's Infinity Portal. We started using it after a POC was given to us.

This is an extremely stable tool.

It is administered through the Infinity Portal without worrying about HW administration.

Previously, we used the native Office 365 tool, however, we wanted more security power and a centralized environment with our other Check Point solutions.

It is important to have a partner to request help in order to review your business requirements.

We always evaluate the security tools available, however, we are inclined to follow the Check Point line. The Harmony family is quite good, effective, and safe.