Symantec Data Loss Prevention vs Varonis Platform comparison

Broadcom and Varonis are both solutions in the Data Loss Prevention (DLP) category. Broadcom is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2, while Varonis is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.0. Additionally, 90% of Broadcom users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Varonis users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Symantec Data Loss Prevention and Varonis Platform are prominent competitors in the data loss prevention and data security market. Based on feature set, deployment ease, and customer service, Varonis seems to have the upper hand for many enterprises due to its simpler integration and responsive support, while Symantec offers robust capabilities for complex environments.

Features: Symantec DLP offers comprehensive endpoint security, advanced network discovery tools, and machine learning capabilities for reducing false alarms and supporting encryption mechanisms. Varonis Platform provides transparent data monitoring, compliance features, and solid data classification tools, focusing on effective management of data access while maintaining performance.

Room For Improvement: Symantec DLP presents challenges with complexity and high costs due to reliance on Oracle Database, with users suggesting improvements in user-friendliness and interoperability with different databases. Additionally, high false positive rates and maintenance difficulties are noted. Varonis Platform users feel that its setup and reporting interfaces could be more intuitive, and there is room for improvement in data processing speed and integration with data loss prevention capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Symantec DLP primarily supports on-premises deployment with limited hybrid cloud options, which complicates integration with cloud-based systems. Post-acquisition by Broadcom, customer support has seen a decline in responsiveness and issue resolution. In contrast, Varonis Platform offers flexible hybrid cloud deployment, making it easier to adapt to various environments, while its customer service is praised for being responsive and knowledgeable.

Pricing and ROI: Symantec DLP is deemed expensive, particularly for small businesses, due to licensing and Oracle Database costs, necessitating careful cost management. Varonis Platform is also viewed as costly, especially with its modular pricing structure, but users find the investment worthwhile for larger enterprises due to its extensive capabilities. Both solutions are noted for offering substantial ROI with cost savings and improved data protection efficiencies.

To learn more, read our detailed Symantec Data Loss Prevention vs. Varonis Platform Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Symantec Data Loss Prevention vs. Varonis Platform

January 2025

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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.

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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.

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Frederic Delos

Senior Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Offers the ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data

The most effective feature for me is its ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data, provided you have access, to determine whether it's a false positive or a true positive. That's the best thing for me, out of all of it. It's got everything, like other ones, but I like to be able to look at something if I'm doing forensics on the alert and say, "Okay, do I really need to do something with this?" For example, we don't want sensitive data in our OneDrive. So it identifies the sensitive data that's possibly in the OneDrive. And what I can do is look at it and identify whether it's actually sensitive data in Datalert or whether it looks like sensitive data, but I know it's a false positive. If it is a false positive, I can basically say ignore this pattern based on X, Y, and Z, you know, whether it's Redjax or keyword proximity. So I like that. With other tools, I gotta go through a whole process because it's a little bit more complex. Here, I can tag it and bag it in one shot. And the next good time I scan, it slips over it. So it helps in that.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."

"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"

"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."

"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."

"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."

"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."

"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."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."

More Cloudflare pros

"The data-at-rest features are the most valuable because they let us identify data infected with ransomware and prevent employees from being exploited through phishing attacks. If an employee is compromised, the attacker can access servers and deposit ransomware. This enables the attacker to exfiltrate data remotely using employees' credentials. It might be valuable data that could cause a business reputational and financial damage if stolen and publicized. It could also be credit card data or personal health information stored on critical servers."

"What we like about Symantec Data Loss Prevention is that it's a very good product. We never faced any problems with its performance. It has very good performance. There was this RAM issue, but it was an internal issue which we've sorted out. Apart from the RAM issue, there are no other issues with Symantec Data Loss Prevention."

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

"Symantec Data Loss Prevention is the number one product in its field. It does its job well and it has all the necessary features. It is definitely better than any other solution on the market."

"The data matching features are the most valuable due to the easy policy setup and implementation."

"We are able to contain our confidential data in our environment."

"The incident response capability has been instrumental in mitigating potential data loss."

"Technical support is very professional and responsive."

More Symantec Data Loss Prevention pros

"That alerting and reporting service is great."

"The analytics would have to be our most valuable feature."

"The solution ensures that users have not accidentally shared sensitive information with the wrong people or too many people."

"It can easily identify unusual behavior or access patterns that may pose a potential threat, while operating as a unified reporting system."

"Varonis offers robust data access governance, allowing us to understand which sensitive data exists and who has access to it."

"The telemetry to capture everything and the reports are very easy to configure without having a developer degree."

"On the Varonis side, technical support is phenomenal. Their ability to explain is very good, and they seem to be very knowledgeable. When I get an alert that doesn't quite make sense, they dive in there and kind of take me through it. That's very useful and very good. There are some false alerts, but it is better to have a false alert than no alert at all."

"The 24/7 support is the most valuable feature. They have been able to answer support questions pretty quickly."

More Varonis Platform pros

Cons

"It would be beneficial for us if Cloudflare could offer a scrubbing solution. This would involve taking a snapshot of my website and keeping it live during a DDoS attack, ensuring uninterrupted service for our users. DDoS attacks are typically short in duration, and having Cloudflare maintain the site's availability from its secure network would enhance the overall user experience. I would appreciate it if Cloudflare could consider implementing this feature. Many organizations already utilize similar capabilities in their CDN platforms, where a static snapshot of the web page is displayed during DDoS attacks. In terms of features, Cloudflare needs to enhance its resilience and stay more focused on adopting new technologies. For instance, solutions like F5 XC Box, Access Solution, and Distributed Cloud Solution have impressive features, and Cloudflare should strive to match and exceed those capabilities. There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features. Cloudflare should prioritize enhancements in areas such as behavioral DDoS and protection against SQL injection attacks, considering the prevalent trend of public exposure to the internet for business reasons. Overall, Cloudflare needs to invest more in advancing its feature set."

"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."

"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."

"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."

"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."

"There are some issues with the CDN services."

"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."

"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."

More Cloudflare cons

"The product's pricing and support services need improvement."

"Symantec Data Loss Prevention's AI technology has certain shortcomings where improvements can be made."

"I do have a problem with the database."

"The product must improve its interface."

"A main disadvantage of Symantec DLP is its reliance on Oracle, especially compared to other products like Forcepoint, which offer MSSQL database options that are more convenient."

"Where things could be improved is that product engineering takes time to respond when we make a request. They get on a call for troubleshooting, but fixing the issue takes time."

"We need to have agent auto-parsing."

"Sometimes setting up the solution can get a little tricky because it would depend on your internal infrastructure. For example, you have to connect the Symantec Data Loss Prevention platform and you need to integrate it, so that could make the process somewhat difficult."

More Symantec Data Loss Prevention cons

"One area for improvement is the calculation engine. When applying rules in Varonis, especially for large datasets (terabytes of data), the calculations can be slow and require time to process. Speeding up this process would be beneficial."

"It is significantly complex."

"The remediation process can be improved. There will be no existing permission group for the McAfee channel domains. We can create a new permissions group for the required folder."

"I would like it to have cloud integration."

"We have Microsoft Office 365. I just saw an article today which says that they're actually getting integrated with Microsoft Office 365, which would be a useful feature. For user-based reports, log on activity, and stuff like that, it doesn't seem to really be present like Log360. That could just be my inexperience with it. I've been dealing with it for only about two and a half months."

"For unstructured data monitoring, it's one of the top ones, if not the top one, due to its usability."

"The product is very complicated."

"The solution's areas of improvement are the interface and the dependency on on-premises deployment for some components."

More Varonis Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."

"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."

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

"A free version of the solution is available."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."

"We are using the free tier of the solution."

"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The price of the solution is expensive."

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

"The price is a bit high."

"From what I know the pricing is good, it's not too expensive. If you negotiate you can get a good price."

"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."

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

"The price of Symantec DLP is fair. I don't recall the cost of the license, but it wasn't outrageous enough that it was an obstacle to approval. I'm not concerned with how much per seat or server, but I know they charge a lot."

More Symantec Data Loss Prevention pricing and cost advice

"Licensing is on an annual basis. Maintenance and renewal fees are separate. Varonis Datalert is quite expensive."

"It's expensive, kind of, really expensive."

"Varonis Platform wasn't certainly the cheapest solution."

"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."

"The pricing is good. It neither expensive nor cheap. It is average."

"The platform is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."

"You could do a subscription, where you pay yearly, or you could purchase it outright. The licensing cost is based on the number of users on the system that you are monitoring."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

24%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Insurance Company

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 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

What do you like most about Varonis Platform?

The solution has significantly improved data security and compliance posture by allowing us to track and monitor acti...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Varonis Platform?

The solution's areas of improvement are the interface and the dependency on on-premises deployment for some component...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Varonis Platform?

Customers use the product to identify sensitive information, correlate it with access permissions, and utilize its au...

See all answers

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Product Reports

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Cloudflare

February 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Symantec Data Loss Prevention

February 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Varonis Platform

February 2025

Download Varonis Platform product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Symantec DLP

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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

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

Varonis Platform specializes in network security and data monitoring with modules for alerting, data classification, and access management, benefiting environments like Microsoft 365.

Varonis is designed to secure data by auditing and tracking data movement. It leverages data alert and classification modules to identify and manage sensitive information. The platform enhances network security by alerting users to unexpected data modifications and deletions, crucial for effective data loss prevention. It supports unstructured data management, ensuring proper data access and permission controls. Known for its 24/7 support, Varonis offers comprehensive analytics and unified reporting, helping prevent data overexposure and facilitating compliance efforts.

What are the key features of Varonis Platform?

24/7 Support: Provides round-the-clock assistance.
Data Monitoring: Tracks data activities efficiently.
Unified Reporting: Consolidates data access reports.
Data Classification: Identifies sensitive data effectively.
Permission Management: Simplifies managing access rights.
Behavior Analytics: Detects abnormal behavior patterns.

What benefits should be highlighted in user reviews?

Enhanced Security: Improves data protection measures.
Compliance Support: Assists in meeting compliance standards.
Data Transparency: Offers clarity in data access activities.
Access Control: Ensures proper access to data.
Centralized Remediation: Eases remediation procedures.

Varonis Platform is widely utilized in industries needing stringent data confidentiality and management, such as finance and healthcare, for tracking data modifications and unauthorized access. Enterprises deploy it to manage permissions within large datasets, benefiting Microsoft 365 environments. While Varonis requires enhancements in cloud integration, the current deployment is often based on-premises, with attention to addressing the security needs and effective data handling for critical infrastructure.

Varonis

Sample Customers

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

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

Nottingham Building Society

Buyer's Guide

Symantec Data Loss Prevention vs. Varonis Platform

January 2025

Free Report: Symantec Data Loss Prevention vs. Varonis Platform

Find out what your peers are saying about Symantec Data Loss Prevention vs. Varonis Platform and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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