McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention vs Symantec Data Loss Prevention comparison

McAfee and Broadcom are both solutions in the Data Loss Prevention (DLP) category. McAfee is ranked #17 with an average rating of 7.8, while Broadcom is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2. Additionally, 76% of McAfee users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention and Symantec Data Loss Prevention are both key players in the data loss prevention market. McAfee appears to have an advantage due to its affordability and ease of use, though Symantec offers superior integration and advanced features.

Features: McAfee's notable features include its single-agent platform, USB management, and intuitive setup, making it straightforward for users. Its interface offers excellent endpoint monitoring and reporting. Symantec, meanwhile, excels in sophisticated data matching, endpoint security, and integration capabilities, offering a comprehensive security suite with advanced machine learning and OCR functionalities.

Room for Improvement: McAfee users report issues with high resource consumption, complicated interfaces, and limited customer support. It also lacks flexibility in advanced data matching and could improve its AI capabilities. Symantec requires enhancements in user-friendliness and integration, with users experiencing challenges in complex installations and dependency on Oracle databases. Additionally, improvements in documentation and scalability are noted.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both products largely focus on on-premises deployment. McAfee offers a straightforward setup but has less responsive technical support and demands high resources. Symantec, while more complex to install, provides a wide range of deployment options including hybrid cloud solutions and receives better customer service ratings. However, both need improvements in technical support and integration ease.

Pricing and ROI: McAfee is perceived as more affordable, especially with its integrated suite pricing, appealing despite being expensive compared to some peers. Symantec's pricing is higher due to costly Oracle database dependencies. While McAfee's ROI is positively reviewed by most users, Symantec's justified costs are appealing for its robust feature set, although seen as pricey for extensive deployments.

To learn more, read our detailed McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention vs. Symantec Data Loss Prevention Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention vs. Symantec Data Loss Prevention

January 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 838,713 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

Read full review

VivekGupta7

DGM at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Versatile with good patching and a straightforward setup

There is some fine-tuning needed, even once you define something. We need to do a lot of configuration. It would be easier if they made the configuration simpler, especially in the beginning. They need to give the user more choices and provide more guidance to help avoid problems later on. We'd like some more built-in predictive analytics so we can be prepared for what might happen in the future. We did have some bandwidth issues during setup. If your update fails, you may have stability issues. We find it difficult to reach higher levels of support when we face larger issues.

Read full review

ARAVINDAN K

Information Security Engineer 4 at Amadeus

Strengthened security operations with endpoint-level protection but database flexibility could improve

Symantec Data Loss Prevention has proprietary metadata and is well-suited for endpoint-level security. It stands out for supporting multiple protocols like email and SMTP without needing user profile login for endpoint agents. Once policies are downloaded to the local system, they function independently of a user's login. The solution helps enhance security operations when integrated with ServiceNow and offers robust incident response capabilities.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."

"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."

"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."

"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"

"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."

"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is that it has a free version. They give us the free version with the anti-DDoS features and also the load balancing solution."

More Cloudflare pros

"The product is largely stable."

"The most valuable features of McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention are the DLP. The DLP, data loss prevention is the most important feature right now that users are looking for."

"The initial setup process was easy."

"The administrative capabilities and the interface make this product accessible and easy to use."

"Everything in this DLP is great. It"

"I am impressed with the tool's firewalls and web protection."

"The product provides us with an excellent, dependable solution to recommend to clients for their security needs."

"It can scale."

More McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention pros

"The initial setup is easy."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is endpoint security."

"The product helps with blocking sensitive data transmission and permission management."

"The features I like most about this solution is the endpoint modules because it gives us the protection we need."

"We work in the banking field. We deploy data loss prevention. Our branch protects our clients' data, credit card numbers, account numbers, and other confidential and sensitive data."

"The product is very stable."

"What I like about Symantec Data Loss Prevention is the technical support it provides. It's good."

"The dashboard, management section, and reporting are good."

More Symantec Data Loss Prevention pros

Cons

"We are a product integrator and reseller, and we would like to have a better partner relationship, similar to a channel sales relationship. Sometimes we are on our own or get diverted by Cloudflare because they have direct sales, which competes with us and makes it difficult to build a relationship with this company since we want to be an MSP or a managed service provider for the solution."

"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."

"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."

"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."

"If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better. I'm living in a remote area. I would like to connect to them without any kind of lag."

"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."

"Technical support is lacking."

"Support response time could be improved."

More Cloudflare cons

"The pricing is high for licensing and support and the GUI interface is good but could use updating."

"I would like the solution to improve the AI features for anti-virus detection. I also want the software to include a tool for malware detection."

"We need to do a lot of configuration."

"The solution takes up too much CPU and memory."

"The support from McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention is good. However, if they provided 24 hours a day seven days a week support that would be a helpful addition."

"McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention could improve by making the customer aware of the benefits of the solution which would increase the adoption. Additionally, if there were features to suit multi-cloud environments it would be helpful. If the solution can intelligently identify which is important data for the organization and should not be released from the organization without authorization would be a benefit."

"McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention could improve by having artificial intelligence."

"The solution needs an easier integration in heterogeneous and dynamic environments."

More McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention cons

"DLP could be improved by implementing a cloud-based console."

"The solution is not user-friendly."

"The solution relies on and Oracle database which is not financially feasible for many customers."

"In a majority of cases, most of the companies are using DLP for endpoint sessions, where you have a user that might be communicating information outside of the company. However, they forget there are actual interfaces that can directly communicate with either the database or other files within the data center that uses end-to-end encryption. In those cases, you might need things like your DLP to be able to monitor and block some of that. The solution needs to catch information communicated through the data center on the server-side."

"Virtualization is not currently supported."

"Technical support is pathetic."

"That fine tuning has to be done for the customer as well as the vendor. So if I take Symantec DLP, we have to have some final fine tuning but we may need some time developing this depending on the customer. This is an area where something can be done to improve the product."

"I would like for the administrator management interface to improve. It's kind of old and slow. Updating it would make this solution better."

More Symantec Data Loss Prevention cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."

"We don't have any issues with the price."

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."

"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."

"The price is reasonable."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"I would rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."

"If the client purchases the entire suite of McAfee Endpoint, the license is included."

"McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention is expensive."

"I'm paying the license for McAfee Total Protection yearly. It could be cheaper, but it's fine."

"There is an annual license to use this solution."

"McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention is an expensive solution."

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."

"The price of McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention is expensive. It is not the most expensive solution but it is typically 15 to 20 percent higher than other solutions. There is no additional cost to using McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention."

More McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention pricing and cost advice

"The pricing and licensing are based on per user endpoints."

"The platform is not very expensive. I rate its pricing an eight out of ten."

"The product charges a little on the higher side."

"The solution should be less expensive to allow more people the opportunity to use it. Some of their competitors are less expensive. There is a license required to use the solution and we purchased an annual license."

"The pricing is competitive and not pricey. We also receive corporate discounts."

"The price is competitive."

"Pricing is above average."

"In terms of pricing, Symantec DLP offers reasonable rates compared to other products like Forcepoint or Jargill, making it a good investment for ROI, typically seen within two years."

More Symantec Data Loss Prevention pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

24%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Retailer

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?

Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...

See all answers

What do you like most about Cloudflare?

Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.

See all answers

What do you like most about McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention?

The tool focuses on endpoints rather than networks. Endpoints cover everything. It wouldn't be possible to steal conf...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention?

McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention is expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention?

The product’s pricing could be cheaper.

See all answers

What do you like most about Symantec Data Loss Prevention?

It can prevent copying and encoding of HTTP data to various sites like Google, and Webex.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Data Loss Prevention?

I do not have an idea about pricing, as it is handled by another team responsible for procurements.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Symantec Data Loss Prevention?

It's been around six months since we switched. I don't recall all necessary updates. However, I do recall the install...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 49% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

HP Wolf Security vs McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention

Compared 79% of the time

Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention vs McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention

Compared 6% of the time

Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention vs McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention

Compared 5% of the time

Digital Guardian vs McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention

Compared 3% of the time

Cisco Secure Endpoint vs McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention

Compared 2% of the time

More McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention Competitors

Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention vs Symantec Data Loss Prevention

Compared 38% of the time

Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention vs Symantec Data Loss Prevention

Compared 19% of the time

Trellix DLP vs Symantec Data Loss Prevention

Compared 10% of the time

Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform vs Symantec Data Loss Prevention

Compared 5% of the time

McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator vs Symantec Data Loss Prevention

Compared 1% of the time

More Symantec Data Loss Prevention Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

February 2025

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention

February 2025

McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention report

Download McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention product report

Buyer's Guide

Symantec Data Loss Prevention

January 2025

Download Symantec Data Loss Prevention product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

McAfee Total Protection for Data, McAfee Total Protection for DLP, Total Protection for Data, Intel Security Total Protection for Data

Symantec DLP

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

McAfee Total Protection for Data solution suite protects your data using a combination of powerful encryption, access control, and user-behavior monitoring.

McAfee

Keeping sensitive corporate information safe and compliant has never been easy. But today, you’re faced with a totally new set of data protection challenges. Sensitive information is leaving the safety of your corporate network as more employees share files over consumer cloud storage services and access those files on their own mobile devices. The number of targeted cyber attacks continues to grow, as cybercriminals develop effective new methods for defeating traditional security measures and stealing corporate information. And as all of these factors converge, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage corporate information and protect it against loss and theft.

Symantec Data Loss Prevention (DLP) provides a comprehensive approach to information protection that embraces today’s cloud- and mobile-centered realities. With DLP, you can:

• Discover where data is stored across all of your cloud, mobile, network, endpoint, and storage systems

• Monitor how data is being used, whether your employees are on or off the network

• Protect data from being leaked or stolen—no matter where it’s stored or how it’s used

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Kleberg Bank

Hadassah University Hospital, Her Majestys Government (HMG), United Kingdom, Hitachi Consulting Software Services India Pvt Ltd., Hua Nan Bank, Hyundai Department Store Group,JW Marriott Hotel Seoul, Lake Health, McCann Erickson Israel, Molina Healthcare Inc., PGi, Quilvest Switzerland Limited, State of Nevada Public Employees Benefits Program, Symantec Corporation (Enterprise Security), The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust, The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust (DLP), The Saudi Industrial Property Authority, TSO cloud, Visa, Yunnan Power Grid Company

Buyer's Guide

McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention vs. Symantec Data Loss Prevention

January 2025

Free Report: McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention vs. Symantec Data Loss Prevention

Find out what your peers are saying about McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention vs. Symantec Data Loss Prevention and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention vs. Symantec Data Loss Prevention report.

See our list of best Data Loss Prevention (DLP) vendors.

We monitor all Data Loss Prevention (DLP) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.