Netskope Private Access Reviews

Netskope Private Access is a solution that helps you share all your web traffic. It applies policies and other measures in the Netskope data center and then routes the traffic to its original destination.

Netskope Private Access is a zero-trust network access solution. If I have a server in my internal organization and want to access that scope remotely, I can install the publisher agent on your internal server. When remote users attempt to access the server, their traffic is routed through the Netskope cloud platform. The publisher agent then authenticates the user and grants access to the server based on their permissions.

Netskope enables users to securely access private applications remotely without a VPN. You can install the NetApp client on your machine, and it will take your traffic to the data center. From the data center, it will be directed to the original location, which is your internal organization server.

There could be an ability to access one server from another when we have console access to the first server. Netskope Private Access does not provide this feature.

Currently, there is no IPv6 support for Netskope Private Access. It is on the downline, and enhancement requests have been made.

I have been using Netskope Private Access for almost three years. They have multiple products with multiple versions.

The solution's stability is good, with troubleshooting features. There is no need to look into much data or figure out what's happening. There is a troubleshooter on the web UI itself. If you run it, you can get the exact location of the error and find out if it is related to configuration or something else. Generally, if a user cannot access a private app from their laptop, they should run the troubleshooter on the web UI. The troubleshooter will identify the problem and provide instructions on how to fix it. Netskope Private Access is a very good product compared to traditional VPN solutions.

Netskope connects users from point-to-point and remote-to-point networks without going to the cloud. It allows users to access private apps and internal organization servers without a cloud connection. I rate its scalability a nine out of ten.

We have L1, L2, and L3 engineers and technical leads. Additionally, we have an engineering team involved directly to provide technical support to the customers.

Positive

The initial setup is simple.

Netskope Private Access is a great product for securely transmitting data from remote locations to your organization. It provides excellent security and stability with minimal downtime or maintenance. I recommend it over other VPN solutions.

Overall, the product is good, but a few things need to be upgraded. If we install Netskope Private Access on the servers, we can access it from the console. However, IPv6 is not supported. I rate it an eight out of ten.

We are using the solution as a VPN. 

We can block and alert the ports and allow the public traffic software in our environment. Thus, we can separately provide the port numbers and that is a valuable feature. 

The major problem that we are facing is if we deploy Netskope on the server level or if we get a new server in the EMEA factor, it will affect all the machines. Recently, this has caused us to fail some reviews.

Apart from that, sometimes Netskope isn't reachable from the client end. This happens when we sometimes try to reach them regarding an issue and troubleshooting request.

In the future, I would like to see a dashboard monitoring feature. If there are any human vulnerabilities, we will be able to see and monitor the kind of traffic with thought information, attacks, or requirements. 

I have been using Netskope Private Access for three years. 

The solution is stable. 

It is a scalable solution. Presently, 1,400 users are using the solution. 

The technical support team sometimes take too long to respond to queries. 

Neutral

The initial setup is straightforward. We have Netskope configured with CentOS. We get a pop-up from the Cisco publisher.

The pricing is cheap. 

I would advise that you set up any one of the POCs before going to deploy any environment. We use it continuously and monitor continuously where there's data in effect on our systems and quality balancing with the security parameters. You should verify all those things before going to configuration. 

I rate the overall solution a seven out of ten. 

With NetSkope's ZTNA, a huge amount of VPN can be saved. If I opt for a traditional VPN, then I need to purchase a user-based license to use that VPN solution, and it would also cause my users to dial the VPN client every day, which my users won't have to do if they opt for ZTNA from Netskope. ZTNA from Netskope just pushes one configuration profile onto a user's computer, after which the user gets access, along with the access policy on Netskope's portal.

My company uses the solution for the private compute applications, which we have hosted on the cloud platform. To privately access private compute applications, my company uses ZTNA.

In general, with the help of the product, my company is easily able to access private compute applications.

The product is not easy to use. The product needs to be made easier to use.

I have been using Netskope Private Access for two years. I am an implementer of the product.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution.

The initial setup of Netskope Private Access was very easy.

For the deployment process, you need to deploy a publisher that is provided by Netskope on your cloud platform or the on-premises setup you have. After that, we need to register our applications with the publisher in Netskope's portal, after which we simply need to create the policy for its users. Netskope provides its portal in the cloud version. If I need to access my cloud resource, which is hosted in Azure or AWS or any other cloud platform, then for such a cloud platform, I need to install the publisher from Netskope to create a secure VPN tunnel between Netskope and my platform or the cloud service provider.

Not a lot of people are required for the deployment process since it is very easy to do. One or two people can manage that product after implementation.

I believe that the price for Netskope Private Access is included in the features or functionality my company purchased from NetSkope.

There is no maintenance required for the product.

I recommend the product to those planning to use it.

Most of my company's customers had purchased the solution and got it implemented.

I rate the overall product a ten out of ten.

In the firewall, we don't have a user-based policies list, and we can't create them. Netskope helps us to create user-based policies. For example, if there are specific teams like HR or more than nine teams, and we want logs from access over particular URLs, and we don't want to allow that specific URL for certain users, we can create these policies in Netskope. It's handy, easy to use for new users, and has a cool GUI interface. We can create multiple policies, and as for the proxy, it's a leading solution. 

Overall, it's user-friendly and beneficial for organizations requiring a proxy to modify data flowing through the Internet. Netskope has become a beneficial solution for them.

In terms of market leadership, it seems to be lagging behind. Zscaler has taken over the ownership because they've launched multiple solutions, whereas Netskope hasn't launched as much. 

So, in my opinion, Netskope may require some R&D effort from the development team to stay on track. When they partnered with Meta, their graph didn't improve much. 

Zscaler is leading because of diversity and better security. In my conversations with customers across the globe, especially in the APAC, Dubai, Singapore, and Indian regions, Zscaler is more commonly used than Netskope in larger organizations. Netskope is good for smaller organizations due to its cost-effectiveness, but for larger ones, the customers prefer everything in a single place.

Netskope seems to be lagging behind, especially after its partnership with Meta.

I used this solution for three years.

I would rate the stability around seven out of ten.  Sometimes, we face some difficulty, but it depends upon the complexity of the environment. Because it's not that much complex, we are able to troubleshoot each and every issue on our own by going to the Action Center and then the Netskope IT section. There is a filter option with the help of the logs, and then we can check where the traffic is getting logged or something like that without Wireshark as well. 

But in a complex environment, we might require tech support as well. So it totally depends upon the customer's environment.

I would rate its scalability around eight out of ten. However, larger companies might find some challenges due to the need for more complex architectures and approvals.

I have a good experience with customer service and support. They do their best to make things possible because it's their job, and they have to resolve the ticket within a service.

For proxy purposes, I have used Netskope. Otherwise, I have worked on multiple devices like Cisco DNS centers, Cisco for SD-WAN, and FortiGate firewalls. And for email security, I was using Proofpoint.  

So, I work on multiple devices in the test environment.

It's been quite easy to use. The deployment usually takes around one month. Because we need to design the architecture in such a way that multiple approvals are required for that. Post that, we can integrate it into our environment. 

If you have a single office, then it is easy to set up in the architecture. But if you have multiple offices, then you have to check and decide on multiple POCs and multiple SOPs. We need to see and create; the installation usually takes one month. But before that, we require some documentation purposes that might take, for it depends on the organization to organization. So it might take two to three months.

It's a bit cheaper and a bit more cost-effective than Zscaler.

Overall, I can rate it around eight out of ten because no product is 100% accurate.  

I advise you just to brush up on the basics because it is not as difficult as a firewall or the ECLs in Cisco because it has a GUI-based architecture. So, most of the troubleshooting from the customer's perspective can be done by clicking on the GUI. But if any issue arises, I would say that someone just focuses on the basics of the DNS, TCP/IP, and proxy as a product.

These are the main focus areas that you need to understand initially if you want to go ahead and implement these things. Because everything you do in a complex environment, you can usually use Wireshark to check where it is getting dropped and whether the ETL is allowed or not. That is all the same. Whether it's the same packet, the TCP handshake is there, or the DNS is all in. Everything which you can be on over the Wireshark.

So, I would suggest for the newcomers or the beginners just to focus on the basics. Once you focus on the basics, you will have a clear understanding of how all these flows take place, then you can easily learn any product within two to three months. There is no more than that because every organization will provide tech support if it is a product-based organization.

Usually, it will provide you with basic training for one or two months. So, that will be good.

We use the solution for digital transformation for everyone working both on the perimeter and on homework assignments, accessing apps within proprietary work servers, and putting a publisher behind those servers to secure field trust access.

The most valuable feature is being able to see who is accessing the application, whether it is a managed device or a bring-your-own-device published by Netskope.

The cost has room for improvement. There are cheaper options available.

I have been using the solution for six months.

The technical support is fast even here in Mexico and we have Spanish-speaking engineers.

The setup is straightforward and simple. One of my key advantages over other brands is that I only have one console, where I can create a unified policy across NPA, DLP, and other solutions such as the next generation. This allows me to make one policy across my portfolio.

I give the solution a ten out of ten.

We're one of the handful of partners in Canada for Netskope. We're a platinum partner, and we do the architecture design and provide other services to our clients. We also use this solution internally because my company is 100% SaaS, and DLP, governance, and all that stuff is very important to me.

They have improved the end-user experience as people are working from home. It is a huge platform for secure remote workers. One of the big issues that people have with Microsoft 365 is how poor the latency is. When we show clients that they are not only secure and protected, they are also going to improve their latency because they are not even going to be using the actual network, and they are going to use Netskope's 200 points of presence to securely access 365, people are kind of blown away.

With private access or next-gen VPN, they are able to keep you secure, but they are invisible in terms of how they do it. Anybody working from home and trying to bring up VPN quickly can pretty much get VPN up and running in a matter of minutes because this doesn't require any VPN technology on-prem. All the VPN technologies that you're using to access applications on-premise can be eliminated by using their software. If you're accessing Microsoft 365 or salesforce.com, you can go straight out from your home office or home internet to that application rather than having to come through a VPN. It still has all the policies enforced, and it mitigates any business risks in terms of how that user is accessing that application and what they're doing inside of it. VPN piece is really critical, especially at this time of Covid, and your latency also goes down.

Your latency gets better by using the platform because they're intercepting your traffic, routing it through their local data center, and then sending it to whichever SaaS service or whatever you're going to. It does it better, faster, and quicker with all your governance policies enforced, rather than you having to go through your data center. So, all the traffic gets hauls there, and then that traffic has got to route somewhere else, and then it has got to go up to the cloud. Your latency actually goes down. They can guarantee 15 milliseconds or less pretty much across anywhere on the planet for about 95% or 90% of it.

I would like to see them go down the path of including SD-WAN. Currently, they don't do SD-WAN. If they could somehow natively do that inside of the platform, that would be amazing. I don't know if they're going to do it, but it would be amazing if they do.

I have been using this solution for two years.

There is a cloud GUI, and we push out the link from the company or internally through the mobile device management (MDM) platform. People just simply click on the link, or it can be just automatically enforced and loaded onto all the devices. It is a very lightweight link that takes up nearly no CPU.

They do one software or one platform. They are the leading CASBY platform in the world. What they can do, nobody can do. They've advanced their software over the last several years to allow people to also do secure web gateway. Now, they're competing with Zscaler, but Zscaler can't do CASBY the way they do. 

There is private access VPN, and there's also a feature for a public cloud. For a public cloud, they can continuously monitor or assess any misconfiguration in AWS EC2 instances, Azure, or Google, and correct it. They are also expanding. They can also help you with compliance. Let's say that MIS3 was secure on February 4th and didn't have any misconfigurations, they can do compliance based on the audit trail or breadcrumb trail. It is probably coming sometime this summer, and it is their version of the next-gen firewall. To do what they can do with one software, Palo Alto had to buy seven companies for their Prisma Platform.

I would rate Netskope Private Access a ten out of ten.