Trellix Endpoint Security Reviews

We are using McAfee Endpoint Security for network security.

There is a new feature where you can set thresholds for all the CPU consumption allowing for no consumption on the servers when the scans happen. It is a separate plugin or addon, and if we have it on all the virtual machines it automatically checks the resources, and based on that, it will schedule the scans. That is something that I have not seen in other antivirus solutions, such as Symantec.

The user interface could be improved by making it more user-friendly. There are multiple solutions and there is no clear line differentiating all of them. There is a centralized console where we manage everything but most of the administrators feel a little confused when it comes to managing multiple products from a single place.

In a future release, McAfee could improve by having a fewer resource-consuming agents. When you bundle up all the solutions with an agent, it becomes heavy for the endpoint to handle. This is one drawback that they should improve because some of their competitors, such as Trend Micro and Symantec both have low-consumption agents available.

McAfee has multiple solutions that can be combined together into a single product. There is no need to have this many solutions.

I have been using McAfee Endpoint Security for approximately 10 years.

McAfee Endpoint Security is stable. However, the way we implement it can impact stability sometimes. The stability can fluctuate because of the configuration that we have, or the different types of policy that we have on the endpoints. The configurations can be tweaked and tuned to make it becomes stable again.

The solution is scalable. We have approximately 80,000 endpoints on a single console. If we wanted to increase the number of endpoints it can scale higher.

The support from McAfee is far better than other vendors, such as Trend Micro and Symantec.

I have previously used Symantec and Trend Micro.

The initial setup for an experienced administrator should be easy. The setup can also be easy if you follow the very detailed guide which they call the KB guide that they provide. You can receive good support from the professional services team from McAfee. That is how many organizations usually do the initial setup.

I would advise others that are wanting to implement McAfee Endpoint Security to initially use help from the professional service team at McAfee, it will help a lot by making sure they do all the scalability and enviroment requirements. Additionally, they can ask questions based on their expectation and receive suggestions and answers. As an alternative, if you have an experienced person who is well-versed with implementations then I would use them, if not, I would always recommend using the professional service team at McAfee.

I rate McAfee Endpoint Security a seven out of ten.

The solution is broken down into different components from the portals. Web filtering, which is an added feature has been great for us. Other than that, we also make use of other products under McAfee, so it was DLP, HIPS, as well. Rogue Detection is more for detecting and managing systems on our network. That worked very well for us. From an interface point of view, it's really simple and straightforward.

On the next release, they should build an easier way to see a repair option within the McAfee icon on your system tray. If there was an issue, you should be able to contact the user or just right-click on "repair". That would be a very good feature to add. That could be a place of improvement, just adding that button, or customizing it.

We have good compliance. Compliance is using it at the moment, so we work 90% plus. It works well. It's being used on a daily basis and runs very well.

The solution is simple to scale. In South Africa, we have about 12 to 18,000 deployed and over 18,000 Endpoint users. We have two servers as well. 

Installation was a bit complicated right in the beginning. We obviously had to use a different extension and some of the policy had to be modified, changed or migrated across, but there were no other issues.

I've been using the Complete Endpoint Protection for maybe a year and a half, but the other half of the McAfee Suite, the McAfee Virus Enterprise, I've used since 2012 and then it migrated to McAfee Endpoint.

From a customer point of view what they need to look out for is just mainly some of the products that they use to make sure the exclusions are correct. The processes that they need to exclude, as well, are done correctly. It is mainly on the exclusions to ensure they don't have any impact.

I would rate this solution eight out of 10.

Some of the solution's primary use cases include successfully adding devices through ESM GUI and setting up data storage via ELM.

Trellix Endpoint Security's dashboard is very flexible, and I can create my own user-specific dashboard depending on user privilege or preference.

With Trellix Endpoint Security, adding a device as a data source can be done one by one. Whenever I try to add a device like a firewall or a server, the accounts are enrolled one by one per added data source. It would be a lot easier if I could add multiple user accounts within a single device.

I have been testing Trellix Endpoint Security for around three months.

I have tried to contact the solution's technical support team. Whenever I tried to ask for partner support, the Trellix website would ask for my company email details. Then an email would come to my inbox saying that Trellix would get back to me shortly, but unfortunately, they did not. So I couldn't contact Trellix Endpoint Security's technical support.

I have worked with other security tools, such as CrowdStrike. The flexibility of the dashboard and filtering are useful features in Trellix Endpoint Security. Also, adding different elements to the SIEM infrastructure is not that complicated with Trellix Endpoint Security.

There's no need for any additional configuration settings to install Trellix Endpoint Security. You just access the web UI, and that's it.

It took me two months to implement Trellix Endpoint Security because of our company's hardware limitations.

My implementation strategy for Trellix Endpoint Security was to build a demonstration based on what the company would like me to do. So I built a SIEM infrastructure and got the images of the different tools first. Then from there, I tried to connect the different devices before I connected the data sources.

My advice is that users should have a fair background in MQL, which really helps a lot in investigating.

Overall, I rate Trellix Endpoint Security an eight out of ten.

It covers the AV and malware security piece.

It's mainly for compliance. In terms of products in the market, it's probably not the best, but it's the one that is already paid for under the corporate buy. It basically checks the box that we're doing malware threat prevention and antivirus protection.

It can be deployed quickly, and it's scalable. Those are the two advantages of it.

Trying to move away from the signature model for antivirus and malware blocking is something that would be nice. Instead of having to update every day, which is signature-based, moving to more of a kernel or architecture-based model would probably be beneficial.

It has probably been about a year since we rolled it out.

There are no issues. They continue to put out updates weekly or daily. The platform seems to be fairly mature.

It's definitely scalable.

Their tech support is average.

It's pretty straightforward. It can be automated from the central ePolicy orchestrator server. So, the installation is fairly easy because you can automate it with the deployment of your virtual machines and things like that.

I would rate it a three out of five in terms of cost.

I would rate it a seven out of ten. That's mainly because it seems like there are additional security features that could be built into it, or from the signature-based model, it could move to a different model.

Our use case is pretty straightforward. We have the central ePO that's running, and clients connect to it. All the clients connect to the ePO for updates and the ePO is able to go out and get updates, so it's pretty much like a star topology where you have the ePO sitting at the middle and handling all the requests from the clients and the servers.

We really like the dashboard from Trellix and we've found that it's pretty informative. Also, the reporting is pretty much immediate, so if there's any activity on the network, you're able to get notifications immediately. That's something that we really like about this product.

The solution consumes a lot of end user memory and CPU, so you need to have a computer that has a lot of resources for you to properly run Trellix. The agent ends up using a lot of resources, either RAM or CPU, and at times that bogs down users. I don't know if it's possible to have a lighter version of the agent, but if the agent was lighter it wouldn't consume so many resources, which would be good.

It's a bit complex. It's very granular and you need to really, really know the ins and outs of configuration. If you are specifically configuring an XML against ransomware, some very special setup, it can end up being a bit technical. You wouldn't want to make any mistakes while doing your configuration. A single configuration can make you lose whatever you wanted to do.

The other thing is if the engine would also focus more on malware, sort of an anti-malware. Trellix doesn't really focus so much on the anti-malware side, but there are other better performing antivirus or endpoint products that have better engines or they have a higher detection rate compared to what Trellix is currently providing.

I have been working with this solution for about three years.

If you've given the solution the resources that it needs, it's pretty much stable and it's able to continuously run uninterrupted. I've never seen any down times, so I'd say it's pretty much stable and it's built well.

As far as scalability, I think the solution is able to handle quite a bit. We have around three admins who interact with the product. Then we have the rest of the organization who interface with it, which is around 300 to 500 employees.

The tech support was pretty responsive and I believe all my questions were answered within the stated timeline. I can't remember what my questions were about, but I spoke with the technical team and got the help that I deserved. I would rate the support as a five out of five.

Positive

From a technical side, it's not so complicated. Of course, you need to set up your server correctly, and then deploying it to the agent is pretty simple. The setup on the server is the one that is a bit technical. You can't have a default deployment, so once you do your deployment you need to set up rules that work within your environment to be able to safeguard it against suspect files or potentially unwanted programs. You need to know exactly what to do, and that's the point that may not be very friendly to admin, because they might not know all of the threats that are out there. You can't really foresee a threat that you don't know about, or rather you don't know if you'd block it or not. The initial setup is pretty much straightforward if you're an IT person, but the configuration side has a learning curve. It takes quite some bit of time to really know exactly what you're doing.

We handled implementation in-house because when we got the licensing, we also got training modules from Trellix. Trellix has KB articles, which are pretty much straightforward and really helped quite a bit. I'd say it took about four hours to deploy from the time we started with a clean machine to the time that we started pulling updates and deploying to client machines.

On a scale of one to five, I'd give the setup a four, because the product pretty much does what it says it does, but it's not perfect. If you're an IT person, you'll be able to deploy it, and sending the Agent file to clients is pretty much a no-brainer.

The maintenance bit is okay as well. There's not a high amount of maintenance because you can automate many activities. You just need to make sure that your server is able to pick up the updates that are necessary, and make sure the databases are running okay. It's nothing new if you're in the IT environment, just making sure everything is running properly. I've never landed on an update that broke the application.

I believe for organizations that are looking for what Trellix is offering right now, there is a definite return on investment.

I think Trellix is more on the higher side of the market, just on a general scale, but I also think it depends on what particular package you choose. Different packages have different rates. I would give the pricing a three out of five. It depends on your usage because if the product works for you, then you might say the price is right. At one point it worked for us, but we have shifted our goals.

We currently considering switching from Trellix to Bitdefender mainly because Trellix isn't really focused on malware, and right now most threats are coming from within the organization as malware. Malware is something that can stop business continuity, so that's one of our main areas of focus, and Trellix is not doing really well within that perspective.

I would recommend Trellix to someone as long as they know exactly what they're looking for within the organization. For instance, Trellix is very granular, so if you have a dedicated security department that can customize policies and XML documents at a very fine level and specifically work on this product, then I would say, go for it. The solution is going to serve them well, because what it does, it does really well. You're able to experience possibly what's among the best products in the market. I would recommend it as long as the people know exactly what they're getting into and they're ready to handle the challenge.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Trellix an eight.

The solution has three primary uses for us. 

Our environment is Windows-based. We don't have Mac and very little space for Linux systems. We use the solution on all of our Windows devices as a basic antivirus protection. That's our first use case.

The second use case for the solution is to be able to have USB restrictions on my endpoints. 

And the third would be the protection of machines when, especially now in this COVID-19 climate, users connect from home. There are a lot of network-based attacks. When users are connecting from other networks, they're protected from dangers with this solution

The manageability of the product itself is its most valuable aspect. You have the underlying EPO, and on top of it, you can deploy the various components as you require. This is unlike other solutions like Symantec where you have to deploy everything or nothing. With this solution, you can choose to only deploy antivirus or only deploy a firewall, or only something else. I choose the components and that deployment is done through EPO. It makes manageability very flexible.

There are two main areas that require improvement. One is the size of the packages. Although I'll admit manageability is good, if I want to deploy, let's say just the antivirus or just the firewall, each of those package sizes are quite large. They are sometimes as big as 200MB or 250MB. When I have operations in remote areas where connectivity is always poor, it's difficult. To deploy such a package in a remote location over the internet or something like that is always challenging. 

The second improvement I would like to see would be to make the speed of the updates much faster. I've seen other vendors that have already released an update for new ransomware and yet McAfee has not. They seem to generally delay releasing an update to protect against something, which can be dangerous as it gives malicious content time to spread. 

I've been using the product for almost two years at this point.

I would say on a scale of one to 10, the scalability would rate at an eight. It's not perfect and there's room for improvement. However, it's generally been stable for us.

We've seen some versions of McAfee not functioning correctly. Then, suddenly, we had to put in a patch. Occasionally, the notes are not there and when we raise a ticket with the support they came back and say, "Oh no, no, this version has a bug, you guys will need to move to a new version."

The scalability of the solution is good. We've actually scaled up, so we can speak from experience. We initially rolled out to a smaller set of users and then eventually to our entire base. We've scaled up to about 15,000 users at this point. There were no issues in doing so. It's quite straightforward to expand outwards as needed.

Technical support I would say is average. A lot of times we've gotten standard responses from support. They don't really offer a solution. The responses that we have gotten from support is something that we have already tried or they'll simply tell us to move to the next version. That requires us to deploy to 15,000 users. They don't go out of their way to be helpful. 

We've always used McAfee. There never has been another solution that the organization has tried out.

I personally have worked with a few other solutions. I'm not talking about next-generation products, like a CrowdStrike or a Carpenter due to the fact that they are a different league altogether. However, I would say I've had extensive experience with Symantec also. 

In terms of Symantec versus McAfee, the two big differences are that on McAfee I am able to scale quite well and now, especially with users who are connecting from home, I can see users' statuses over the internet. That way, we can check the health of the machine and update machines remotely. That isn't the case of Symantec. Unless the user connects to back to the office VPN we will not be able to do as much.

However, where McAfee falters is the size of the modules, which are quite large.

The initial setup was simple and the deployment itself was straightforward. The was no complexity in terms of the architecture or the initial deployment of the solution.

I came into the organization when McAfee was already deployed. However, I've set up some other packages. For example, although McAfee was already deployed, the USB blocking features module, took about two months I would say to deploy across the network.

We have a team of approximately four people the deploy patches and updates and generally maintain the solution.

We deployed the solution ourselves and continue to deploy any ancillary modules on our own as well. We don't need the outside assistance of consultants or integrators. We have a team that manages these items in house.

I would advise, if somebody's looking at buying a brand new solution fresh or have a solution coming up for renewal, to look at the next generation antivirus products. The next-generation products are far more sophisticated. They might be a little higher in price, but in terms of manageability, updates, and the packet size, they are far superior. 

McAfee has released something called Envision. It's a next-generation antivirus. In this other solution, they have incorporated a lot of next-generation technologies. It's a different license and a higher-priced license altogether. 

Overall, I would rate this solution seven out of ten.

The product works in the background. It does not slow down the computer, which is good. If we put the USB, it automatically asks us whether the device must be scanned. We can scan it or postpone it. If anything goes wrong, the tool informs us that a file or website was blocked. It might be because the IP is on a blacklist. The product is simple. We do not have to do anything. The product is easy to use.

The tool could provide more advanced protection. It should do a deeper analysis of the files.

I have been using the solution for eight years. I am using the latest version of the solution.

The tool is scalable. We can choose when and how to scan. We can even choose to exclude certain folders. Ten people in our organization use the solution extensively.

I have used NOD32 and Kaspersky. I started using Trellix Endpoint Security because my company decided to use it.

The initial setup was straightforward. It took us 10 to 15 minutes to deploy the solution because we had to go a bit deeper into the settings.

The product can be deployed in-house. The deployment process is quite easy and fast.

The solution is worth the money.

We have a yearly subscription. We have bought the solution for ten stations. The pricing is more or less the same as the other tools in the market.

Some tools use a lot of memory, so it's really difficult to use them, especially when we are scanning something. We mostly work on documents on the cloud. We do not get many files on the computer. We do get some spam. I would recommend the solution to others. So far, we've never had any problems. Nothing gets through. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case is for endpoint protection, to block malware and viruses.

We like the web control and firewall.

I have been using McAfee for twenty years. 

It's very stable.

Scalability also works nicely. It's easier to scale it out on thousands of machines.

We only require two staff members for maintenance. There around 16,000 users. 

They have two different kinds of support. One is enterprise support and one is normal support. They charge more for enterprise support and when we raise tickets we get a good response but with the normal support, their response is not quick. They don't give much preference to normal support. It can take three, four days, or even a week to get a reply from them.

Being in the IT industry, we have come across different products, McAfee and Defender plus Symantec, and Trend Micro. For my needs, I like McAfee the most. Symantec might be equivalent but I like McAfee the most.

There are good web, application, and firewall control features. It would be helpful if the controlling of connections coming to the PC could be done from McAfee's side so that we can block those connections. 

It's a good product. I would recommend it. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten. It's easy to use and it's very powerful. It offers nice endpoint protection.