Check Point Harmony SASE (formerly Perimeter 81) Reviews

We are using Harmony Connect (clientless and client) with Harmony Mobile, Harmony End Point, Harmony Office security.

Before we were using Fortinet Client with Token and we are now using Harmony Connect in Saudi Arabia. 

We use Check Point for application control, IPS, and web filter on-premises and wanted an in-kind solution for off-prem users. The primary requirement was for the Harmony policy to be able to be managed from the same SmartConsole instance as our on-premises gateways are managed.

The solution is secure, scalable, and easy to handle with good support

The Check Point portfolio showcases very strong products.

It very easily allows users to leverage their home office via safe access. If they had any type of issue with the machine, the disk is already encrypted.

The client's requirements were that the solution could:

• Be designed to prevent the most evasive cyberattacks
• Have Zero-Trust network access to enterprise applications
• Secure Internet access for remote users
• Protect branch office (SD-WAN) connections to the Internet and the cloud

Harmony Connect Client is very powerful tool.

I find it very easy to implement and deploy in the organization. One point to note is that it is a very user-centric solution.

The integration that this solution has with the different routers or perimeter equipment is exceptional. We were able to implement the solution on the same hardware as the SD-WAN equipment in each branch and central site.

Mainly, Zero Trust Network Access is one of the most important features of this Check Point Harmony Connect solution. It's of the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) type since it gives us secure access to the organization as if we were physically in the organization.

The suspend feature needs more control.

Zero Trust Network Access can be a security breach if not used correctly. I have implemented it and it turns out that access to the organization's applications must be complemented with user awareness.

It is important to note that the Zero Trust Network Access feature is an important feature for the solution, however, at the same time, the organization's applications can be accessed if user access is available. A double authentication factor could solve this gap.

I've been using the solution for one year.

We were using Fortinet Client Token Solution. We switched as CP gives more control and visibility.

The tool is very handy at a good price.

We did not look at other options.

My company integrates the solution into other companies where we are required to do a project for them per the requirements. I had the opportunity to suggest Check Point Harmony Connect two years ago at the Bank of Brazil.

The most valuable features of the solution vary and depend on what our company does. For example, I may work with a big water distribution project where everything revolves around IoT. In general, I can say that everything depends on the type of project where I need to be working as an architect.

In our organization, we use two managed SaaS products or technology at a time when everything appears to be moving to the cloud, and we still work with tools like Check Point Harmony Connect that require a license since the problem related to the product lies in the licensing part, the aforementioned details should be considered to improve the product.

The complex initial setup phase of the product is an area that can be improved.

I have experience with Check Point Harmony Connect.

It is a very stable solution.

It is a scalable solution since the SaaS licensing part of the solution is by the number of users and not by the number of assets or people or everything you need to manage it.

My company provides customer support. We have an operations center with all the tools to provide the necessary support to our clients. I remember that the technical team from Check Point was very supportive when I was working with the Bank of Brazil. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup of Check Point Harmony Connect was very complex and complicated since our company had to integrate 17 different applications into one console.

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.

It provided us with the way to provide governance, control and monitoring of the visited sites, see vulnerabilities and find out how to deal with them in order to avoid cyber attacks. 

With this tool, we can guarantee that the equipment will not be an easy target for cybercriminals. It is really simple to implement.        

Checkpoint Harmony Connect helped us to guarantee the protection of equipment not covered by a Check Point Gateway. For example, when a vendor goes out and connects to the network from anywhere or is the target of cyber attacks (which can generate a loss of equipment functionality in addition to infiltrations or loss of company information that is confidential) which is why we decided to use this tool. It generated everything that was needed at the security level. It is an excellent tool.

The most valued features for us are:

The ease of implementation, of installation in the equipment, and the low performance of the equipment that the agent requires to provide security.

Its administration through a portal. Infinity Portal does not need to be implemented in an additional management server; rather, it is web-based and manageable from anywhere.

The application control and granular access feature are very easy to use, intuitive, and effective. It does not require equipment updates, policies are updated quickly.

They could improve on the available public documentation. The most modern applications or features of Check Point are difficult to find in their documentation for implementation. According to the manufacturer, sometimes it happens that the manual is applied, yet the desired implementation is not achieved.

Also, as seen in our support cases, it is somewhat slow to solve problems. There are other manufacturers that have better support. They can improve on that part and prevent customers from complaining about how they provide solutions.

We have used this tool for about two years.

It is an excellent security tool that provides additional features to our existing GWs. We can provide web security with it.

We had not really used other tools; when we had the need, we investigated, and we found Check Point Harmony Connect.

The cost is difficult to find, however, our seller can solve these issues. The cost is normal. It is per protected user.

We validated some security solutions, however, Check Point Harmony Connect was perfectly suited to what we needed.

It's a very modern tool and can be used to achieve security for old and new vulnerabilities.

The primary use case has to do with the remote connectivity of sites.

I have found the IPsec VPN to be valuable.

The integration from a management perspective could be improved so that the management can, from an existing Check Point firewall, manage a Harmony firewall through one pane of glass.

I would like to see the use of either GRE or non-IP tunnels in the next release.

I've been working with Harmony Connect for about 18 months. I tested it but did not run it in production.

Stability wise, I'd rate Harmony Connect at seven out of ten. It could be more stable in some respects.

The scalability is good, and I'd give it an eight out of ten.

I found the technical support to be okay. Most of the technical support was geared to the regular equipment, and we had to find specialists within Check Point to look at Harmony Connect. Because of that, I would give technical support a rating of seven out of ten.

Neutral

The initial setup is simple in some ways but complex in other ways. You need to know a lot about the Check Point side and the portal side to make it work.

I would rate Harmony Connect's pricing at six out of ten. It wasn't particularly expensive, but it wasn't super cheap either.

We evaluated Silver Peak. Comprehensiveness was the main difference between Harmony Connect and Silver Peak. Harmony Connect is a little more suited for smaller branch offices as opposed to full-site connectivity.

Overall, I would rate this solution at seven on a scale from one to ten.

For the past two months, we have been evaluating Harmony Connect because it has some limitations on routing and account control, so we are testing it for three customers to check this function. In some areas, Harmony Connect can replace older VPN products and also add some features, like DRP and security gateway.

The DLP (Data Loss Protection) is the most valuable feature. 

My customers want more remote functionality.  They need another routing option after they connect to the enterprise intranet. For example, let's say a user tries to connect to a remote branch office and headquarters through Harmony Connect. They need a local breakout after connecting to the headquarters, especially in China. They need to put local breakout in the Chinese internet. The current version cannot do something like this.

This solution is new to Taiwan, so I haven't been using it for very long. I started using Harmony Connect in Q3 2022.  

Harmony Connect has been stable so far, but this is still a test. 

There are some limitations on redundancy, and it takes about 30 minutes to switch. This is a significant limitation. Competitors like Palo Alto can do it in around five minutes. It's more appropriate for enterprises because they sell the product license in packages of 50 accounts at least.

I rate Check Point customer service nine out of 10. It is excellent, especially on the customer side. 

Positive

Check Point Taiwan provides me with a lot of flexibility in pricing. If I'm trying to secure a customer, they can give me a good discount on this product. The price is about 350 HKD annually. 

I rate Check Point Harmony Connect eight out of 10.

I work from home primarily, however, in a multi-unit complex. I often worry about internet security. From time to time, I also work from a coffee shop and that's when I really lean on Perimeter 81. 

It's definitely nice to know that no matter where I am I can use Perimeter 81 to make my connection more secure. Sometimes there is sensitive information or documents I work with and this extra layer of protection gives me a lot of peace of mind while I'm working (though I still tend to only work from home in those cases). 

It keeps us all accountable and ensures secure internet connections while we all work remotely. 

We have team members that live all over the country and some that chose to work abroad or in different locations periodically (since the pandemic). Having Perimeter 81 as a solution in those instances to keep our team secure has been really great. 

We eventually will have even more employees that are working remotely, and maybe even some international employees, so I'm sure we'll find it even more useful then. 

I would say the multiple networks are the most valuable aspects. I think it's cool that, depending on where I'm located, I can join a network with a specific gateway for my region. 

I don't exactly know what other features I could be using. Getting more of a tutorial or walkthrough would be awesome. I know our IT team doesn't have time for that kind of thing, however, so I would think it best to come from the solution's team. Even if it was just a quick video or animations that show you new features as you're getting acquainted with the product, that would be great. I wouldn't want a lot of emails, however, maybe a banner pop-up would work from time to time.

I don't know all the other ways I could be using the product, so I'd love to learn more about all of the features. Maybe a monthly spotlight of features or having a banner that explains more ways certain features could be used would be helpful. I wouldn't want anything too exhaustive or frequent - just something that could share some high-level features that may be helpful for at-home workers or even security tips. I'm not super-versed in that kind of thing, so I would find that valuable. I would love a little tutorial that's quick. 

I've been using it for about four months and I really love it. Not only is it easy to use but it adds some peace of mind. 

This tool is of great help and allows us to provide security assistance to our users who work remotely. They connect from any site, secure or insecure, accessing applications and business email without protection as they are outside the company perimeter.

It gives us granular security through web control policies, reports, and monitoring. We manage to avoid user vulnerabilities from anywhere. It is managed with Harmony Connect in the Check Point Infinity Portal, a very good tool.

Users are quite happy with the applied security performance.

Check Point Harmony Connect has improved the protection of computers outside the office. It offers implementation that is simple. 

Also, with the monitoring dashboard, we can make decisions to improve the control policies and web access so that we can better protect our teams.

This tool does not require being on the same network. Everything is verified thanks to a small Check Point protection agent that is installed on the client.

Protection against threats like ransomware is very effective.

We really liked the Check Point Harmony Connect tool and the monitoring, since we can make the right decisions thanks to the records observed in a simple way through the dashboard. The portal is really very intuitive.

The policies applied to users are quite granular, which helps a lot with the differential protection of users, generating managerial profiles and normal profiles efficiently.

We have also put VPNs into practice through harmony connect, having secure user connectivity. It is a very robust, modern, and secure tool.

They should include the ease of implementation or installation of the agent through an Excel list, where all the users can be loaded and added to be able to send the agent by mail.

I would also like it if they could include more documentation from the manufacturer to be able to implement it more efficiently and follow all the best practices.

Regarding the support, the schedules can be improved since they are generally in another geographical area, and it is difficult to solve the problems with the time differences between them and us.

We have been using this tool for approximately two years now. It is an excellent security tool to protect telecommuting users.

This is an excellent cloud-managed Check Point tool; no server is required.

Problems are always solved, however, with modern security applications, specifically those that are in the Check Point Infinity Portal, it is a little more difficult to solve with support.

Neutral

We have not had a modern solution like this before. Check Point has innovated our processes.

It is important to associate you company with a partner who can work with prices and documentation in order to find the security application that best suits the company's requirements.

Before acquiring any company-level security tool, we undertake the task of investigating several solutions. In this case, Check Point was the best.

All Harmony solutions are excellent. I really recommend this option.

Check Point Harmony Connect is a modern security tool from the prestigious brand that helps us provide web filter or web gateway security to our employees, from the office or anywhere they can be covered with the security of this application.

It is a tool with great potential. It gave us access to security and user control to enhance productivity.

In the company, we are pleased with the functionalities and benefits provided by Check Point Harmony Connect. It is an excellent option and an excellent tool.

It helps us daily with access and restrictions due to business policies, generating access and restriction profiles, we have guaranteed greater productivity and better security for the institution's teams.

This has helped mitigate the latest attacks, malware, and even ransomware that are all too common these days.

Thanks to this tool, we managed to solve all these vulnerabilities quickly. It offers a clean implementation and a Check Point agent that does not cause any concern at the level of requirements on the server.

There are too many positive things that I could mention. Some of them are more impressive than others, however, the best include: 

• The ease of implementation. It offers easy steps for the implementation of security tools, all through a web portal (Infinity Portal from Check Point).
• It has comfortable licensing. It adapts per user and really for all the functionalities they are of great value. It is worth implementing and acquiring.
• The monitoring and granular policies are very helpful. We can generate site blocking policies and specific applications for some user profiles. Monitoring is incredible. It helps decision-making and security improvements in an easy and intuitive way.

Check Point Harmony Connect has basic improvement areas, such as the following:

• In order to be able to invite users, send the agent and implement it, the user input must be generated manually. It would be easier if we could add them automatically via automation.
• The guides for some capabilities are limited or do not represent the reality of the application. It is difficult to find 100% reliable documentation. It is not always possible to perform all the steps due to some problems. Some manuals are not so intuitive.

This is an excellent modern security application. From the web portal, it is easily accessible.

We've used it for more than a year and have been satisfied.

We have not previously used such a complete tool.

Finding a Check Point vendor or partner who can provide you with costs and advice on current tools is best.

We evaluated the requirements of the company. However, after seeing the different options we understood that Check Point is the best option on the market.

I really liked this application. I would recommend it without hesitation.