McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator Reviews

Automatic workflow remediation

By setting up automatic workflows for specific tasks by the use of property tags there is less hands on intervention needed.

Although it has the ability to auto create service tickets, it needs to expand to allow more products this ability. It also seriously needs a better way to direct connect to remote users not located within the network.

12 years

Yes, someone who doesn’t understand their environment and the configuration needed cannot just turn everything on and let it go.

No

No, we were able to scale this from a single location within the US of 100 endpoints to 5,000+ globally within a week with only 10% of the systems having a problem that needed to be addressed because of a specialized configuration.

Customer Service: 8 out of 10Technical Support: 8 out of 10

Kaspersky, the management console is very cumbersome and difficult to manage and doesn’t allow for the fine grained control of ePO.

It’s straightforward until you get to some of the advanced components such as a DMZ and agent handler deployment.

In-house, I personally did the implementation, configuration and management.

Saves a company 20 man hours a week. The true dollar value ROI is going to be based on the cost of the product for a particular company, since that can vary depending on the negotiated contract terms.

This product will take 40 man hours for setup, configuration and deployment once the environment information is gathered.

Yes, Trend Micro

There is no other product out there with the control and overall security components that can do what ePO can.

We have deployed McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator in the cloud and on-premise.

We are using McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator mainly for device policy management. We have many different solutions that we manage with McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator.

The valuable feature of the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is the management of the policies.

I have used McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator within the last 12 months.

I have found McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator to be stable.

We have approximately 1,200 users using McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator in my organization. If we expand we will purchase more licenses.

McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator support has been helpful. However, sometimes when  I raise the case they take a while to answer. For example, the last time I used them it took them two weeks to reply back by email. No one has contacted me back since. They should improve their service.

I have not used another solution in this category.

The implementation of the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is simple, it took us approximately 45 minutes.

We did the implementation of the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator in-house.

McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is not an expensive solution.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator an eight out of ten.

We're pretty much using it as a traditional AV.

It has brought what it is built for. It has brought traditional AV capabilities and signature-based scanning.

The general endpoint protection is valuable, and it is easy to manage.

There should be more insights and completeness into the cyber kill chain, similar to CrowdStrike and SentinelOne. It just seems a little outdated in being 100% signature-based without all of the insights and protections that come with CrowdStrike and SentinelOne. Overall, they've got some catching up to do if they plan to compete in the comprehensive EDR space.

I have been using this solution for five years.

It is stable. There are no concerns there. It didn't consume a lot of resources and things like that. We didn't see issues from that perspective.

It is fairly easy to add new devices. It is controlled within our environment. 

All employees and all servers are using it. It is being used extensively, but we don't plan to increase its usage because we're looking to get a replacement for this solution.

Their technical support is average.

It wasn't McAfee ePO. It was the even lesser AV five years ago. It has been McAfee ever since from my AV protection standpoint.

Its initial setup was straightforward. It took a couple of days. It has been pretty easy to add new machines ever since.

It was an in-house job. In terms of maintenance, it requires minimal maintenance. We have our security services provider to take care of maintenance.

It is attractively priced. It is a fraction of what we're going to pay for CrowdStrike or SentinelOne, but it only has a fraction of the capabilities as well.

It is great if you're looking for a traditional signature-based AV product, but if you're looking for a more comprehensive EDR solution, then CrowdStrike and SentinelOne are clearly the top two within that space.

Overall, I would rate it a seven out of 10. If I'm rating it for a traditional AV product, I'd give it a nine or 10 because it totally solves that use case, but if I'm rating it against a comprehensive EDR solution, which includes traditional AV and next-gen behavioral capability, then it would be a five, but they're not necessarily apples to apples.

On-premises

The solution handles risk and compliance aspects for our company. It handles everything including uploading documents, etc.

I don't use the solution in a technical way, so the technical aspects of the solution I'm not clear on.

The central management console is the solution's most valuable aspect.

The solution needs to be more clear about the licensing. They should have a way for users to educate themselves on the costs so that companies can figure out how to reduce costs.

There needs to be support for Mac computers. Currently, McAfee does not work on iOS.

I've been working with the solution for the last five years.

The solution has been quite stable for us. We haven't had any issues at all.

We have about 2500 people using the solution in our organization. They're a mix of people, including engineers and architects. We use it quite extensively - on a regular basis.

The solution is scalable, but the issue for us is that the pricing can be quite high.

We've been in touch with technical support in the past. They've been quite good. We've been satisfied with their level of service.

In the past, we've worked with Symantec, ForcePoint, and Barracuda. McAfee has some features that aren't part of other competitor's feature sets. Overall, however, from a technical point of view, they are all mostly the same.

The initial setup is quite simple. We didn't find it complex at all.

I was not there during the original implementation. I'm very new to this organization. I had just joined the team a few months ago. This solution has been running for the last five years, so I don't have more historical data in relation to the original setup.

We have two software engineers overseeing the project.

Comparatively, the pricing is quite low.

We're a McAfee customer. We don't have a specific relationship with the organization. We are using the latest version of the solution.

The solution is quite good and stable right now, but there are a lot of other products coming to the market. I'm currently investigating what other features customers need or are using to see if we can develop these out on this solution or not. 

Many organizations will find the solution has may features that would suit their needs and reduce the number of issues they face. However, it does depend on the individual company and what their unique requirements are.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

On-premises

We have a lot of endpoints and the major use case for us is to secure the endpoints. That includes computers, servers, etc.

Easy deployment of agents from console and management of endpoints. The graphical interface of the solution. They have a good log event system. If you're able to trace it in the log, all you need to do is to whitelist the IP when you see a false positive.

The solution sometimes has some false positives on connections from the web control aspect of the product. This needs to be improved.

When you have false positive on the firewall, it rarely blocks off some legitimate connections to our network. 

The reporting could be better. 

Search or filter on Knowledge base gives broad choices instead of almost specific to your search. 

agent communication between client and server but products are not deployed.

I've been using the solution for more than two years at this point. It hasn't been too long.

The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues whatsoever. It's reliable. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. The only real issue we have is that there are often false positives, however, it's easy to fix in the logs.

The solution is very scalable. You just need to add more licenses. That's it.

As it's an antivirus for our endpoints, everybody in our company technically uses the solution. Everyone is affected by it.

We plan to use the solution in the future. I'm unsure as to if we'll expand our usage or not.

Technical support is okay. We get support from a McAfee partner here in Nigeria who liaises with the OEM too. We've been satisfied with the level of service provided.

McAfee has a portal for customers or partners to use, for product packages, updates, knowledge base, tools, technical support

The solution's implementation is pretty easy to install. It's very straightforward once you have your database. It's not complex.

When I joined the company, it was in migration. I wasn't there from the start, so I can't say how long it took. However, I was around when they did the migration and that took less than a month.

Through vendor team. McAfee partner consultant and they have their own local support team. They are resellers and partners in Nigeria. We were quite satisfied with their professionalism and knowledge.

Choose your anniversary cycle e.g. pay annually.

You just pay for what you want your license to cover. It is modular. It depends on the feature you want. There's the firewall, DLP, drive encryption, web control, threat prevention, antispam, etc. Scope your requirement and choose to fore what covers your requirement or budget. It depends on what you want to use it for. It's got amazing flexibility.

As an end user, I'd recommend the solution. McAfee ePO has many more features and covers more. A company looking for a new solution really needs to do some initial research to ensure their requirements are met.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten overall.

On-premises

It allows us to detect rogue devices, then to subsequently force policies on them to protect our system from them.

The only feature worth mentioning is the rogue devices detection. This helped the company manage new laptops joining the network.

I am not familiar with the newer versions, but the biggest issues we had with our version were false positives and performance degradation.

I used it for four years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We had no issues with the stability.

We had no issues scaling it for our needs.

Customer Service:

In my experience, the level of customer service is very good.

Technical Support:

Technical service is very good.

I came into the company and started using McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator. The previous solution was F-Secure.

I have managed the setup to new servers (kind of a migration). I will admit that it was very straightforward. My policies were easily accessible and managed.

We implemented it with our in-house team.

The replacement for McAfee was due to pricing. It is common in the antivirus space to have price wars, though.

I am not familiar with the latest versions, but I am sure they have been improved. From a management point of view, ePO is one of the best solutions out there.

I like the following features:

• Centralized virus signatures and patch updates.
• Reports of signature update status.
• HIP management and automatic product deployment.
• Allows virus signatures and VirusScan Enterprise patch updates via McAfee agents installed on the user's PC.

Before this solution, I had to do the following:

• Set up daily virus signatures and product updates on each PC in the office. These are the configurable parameters in the McAfee VirusScan Enterprise application.
• Perform regular spot checks on some PCs to make sure the virus signatures are being updated. As the number of PCs increases, I needed to find a solution to handle this task.

With this solution, all I have to do is install the McAfee Agent on a PC. When the McAfee agent communicates with the ePO server, ePO checks if VirusScan Enterprise is installed on the PC.

If it is not installed, it will start the deployment, patch updates, and virus signature updates. The ePO server is configured to send me a report of virus signature versions and VirusScan Enterprise patch levels of all connected PCs by email on a daily basis. This saves me a lot of my time, as I don’t have to check this information on all PCs manually. I end up with a beautiful report to show my auditor about how the anti-virus software is implemented.

This solution reduced a lot of effort to check and confirm that all PCs are running the latest anti-virus signatures and patch levels. It also helps the IT admin to find the mapping between the logged-on user ID and the PC name which Windows AD doesn't provide.

I would like to see the solution provide a function to roll back patch deployment and alert the administrator about which system is not supported per patch level. It should retain all previous patches in the system to support legacy systems, including the latest patch that was checked in the system.

We have been using this solution for over six years.

The system is quite stable and works as expected.

There is no built-in or easy upgrade of the system. When I upgraded the system from a 32-bit version to a 64-bit version last year, I basically reinstalled the whole environment.

The initial setup is very straightforward. The IT administrator can install and setup basic functions of the system without a user manual.

However, for some complicated functions like drive encryption, it is better to read the user manual before deployment.

Make sure you understand the following:

• The license terms and how they are applied to the user or device.
• What products are covered.
• The dates of the license period.
• Whether or not the agreement will be automatically renewed with an increase in price.
• Whether the price is different when running on a server or on other special devices.
• The support SLA and if there are any additional charges if the problem is complicated. If you do this, you won’t be surprised when you call support.

I would suggest the following:

• Set up a test environment. Test all products you are going to deploy on all platforms you have before actual deployment.
• The testing environment should be retained since new patches may impact some legacy systems.
• Plan your implementation and application deployment. Write down all parameters you put into the system configuration. Link this with Windows AD for user authentication.
• Prepare your SMTP server for an email setup alert.
• If you are going to use it to manage McAfee VirusScan, make sure you set it with up-to-date virus signatures from McAfee, at least on a daily basis. This is not enabled by default.
• Consult your IT vendor for best practices.

• Centralized management
• The scalability
• The report engine

I made an MSS (Managed Security Service) solution based on the ePO and McAfee Endpoint products.

This was before all the vendors made it themselves, and when I researched the major vendors, this was the best product for the project.

The fact that it uses MSSQL, and cannot be deployed on anything other than Windows, can be a problem. The system can get slow at times when you do big searches and reports.

I've been using it since 2007.

We had some issues with deployments as this product was not made to be set up as an MSSP solution but we had a lot of help from McAfee, and fixed them all.

The problems with stability as never in the ePO but in the Operative system (Microsoft Windows) and the database server (Microsoft SQL).

The scalability is very good.

Customer Service:

We were a McAfee EMEA Premier Managed Service Provider at the time, so we had no problems getting the support we needed.

Technical Support:

10/10.

F-Secure, but their product did not scale, and there are so many more endpoint products, that the ePO can handle than F-Secures Central management system.

It was not the easiest projects I did, but with help from McAfee it was not that difficult.

We implemented it in-house.

We were a managed service provider, so the licensing was not what most customers have. We report in what we use, and pay after.

We looked at several options.

If you use any McAfee endpoint solutions in the enterprise you need to use the ePO, as there are no other options.