What needs improvement with Avanan?

Avanan doesn't cover certain tool segments. Barracuda provides backup and retention of emails and Microsoft 365’s backup and retention services. I've brought this up with the vendor. They told me that they are hyper-focused on security.

The solution can be confusing because it’s a Check Point product under the Harmony banner. We get lost a little bit in terms of where it fits. The user experience must be improved. The front-end user screen could be improved.

Currently, I don't see any weaknesses in the product because when we positioned Avanan for our customers, it always aligned with the customers' requirements. Right now, there are no enhancements asked by our customers for Avanan, so it is going normally. Our customers don't have any issues or see any weaknesses in Avanan. In the future, when it comes to DLP, Avanan can consider having more integrations. In Avanan, the email channel is one of the channels where data leakage happens, and they need to consider it from a DLP perspective. They need to add something to their product line that can help with the conversion of a page into an image. Avanan needs to have a complete DLP portfolio in place for email protection.

For the period I have been using Avanan, most services have been excellent and ever-productive. The scanning system and emailing system can be improved to meet modern technological demands. When sending bulky emails, the system slows down and takes a long time before it responds effectively to our requests. That said, the performance in most scenarios has been reliable. The UX can be upgraded to increase performance, speed, and efficiency. We have achieved most objectives that pushed the entire organization to get this platform. Avanan is good, and I love the overall performance.

The unified dashboard that it displays needs some improvements in terms of the KPIs that they have. We'd like it to be more user-friendly. We need to understand how the dashboard displays the information a bit better. In terms of the price, it is quite high for small and mid-size organizations. For the large organization, they can handle the cost, however, for smaller organizations, the price is a little high for the implementation. Sometimes it lacks some features.

The customer support staff has often been available to solve any raised issue. The system response in a slow computing device affects performance when sending and receiving emails. Poor configuration with applications and tools in the business premise can block secure emails. I am satisfied with the current functionalities and capabilities. The set billing policies by the Avanan team are suitable for our company and can fit other willing organizations. With thorough training and advanced updates to teams on new changes and proper guidelines, this tool can do wonders.

They should come up with a mobile application so that it can be more flexible. The set security system does not detect some extensions attached to emails that can sometimes be dangerous to the users. The overall performance has been great, and the customer support staff has always provided much-needed support from the IT team. The solution has been of more help compared to a few operations challenges that occurred all of a sudden. The cost is higher for SMEs, however, the pricing and billing criteria can be lessened to accommodate more willing customers.

They need to provide more documentation to be able to implement custom features or validate more advanced functions. It is very difficult to find the required documentation. As for technical support, we have doubts if Check Point provides it or if it should be a separate solution since its portal is separate from Check Point solutions. We would also like it to be included in the security solutions found in the Infinity Portal so we can centralize environments successfully.

Since it periodically identifies ordinary emailers as spam or dubious, they may need some AI logic improvement. This should be improved with the upcoming release. It should reduce the amount of time needed for thorough scanning. It is not a significant problem, though. It should also offer a fast backup in case any email is unintentionally quarantined or deleted to prevent data loss. It should provide us with more in-depth analytics on the risks that were found, quarantined, and removed, and a record may be kept for the next screening and review.

They need a little bit of improvement in AI logic, as sometimes, it quarantines frequent mailers as spam/suspects. This should be improved in the next update. It should also decrease the time in detailed scanning. That said, it is not a big problem. It should also offer a quick backup in case any email is wrongly quarantined or deleted to ensure no data loss. It should give us more detailed analytics about threats identified, quarantined, and deleted and a report can be maintained for future screening and reviewing.

There are times when we have false positives.

I would say no improvements are necessary. They are constantly making upgrades and improvements. The only thing that used to bug me, which they fixed, was when I cleared alerts or any activity, it wouldn't clear very quickly so I didn't know if they were cleared or not. Another issue, which is not that bad, is it can be a little over-sensitive. Sometimes it seemed like the allow list wasn't working. I've created many allow list rules however, they still seem to be blocked; the same is true with the blocked list rules.

Being cloud first and because we are in the movie business, we use a lot of Macintoshes. So, there is absolutely no reason for us to have Active Directory whatsoever. However, if you are using Office 365, you must have Active Directory in order to reset passwords. Even though we have a single sign-on provider, we must have Azure Active Directory for Office 365, which is really stupid. As a cloud application, you would think that I don't need Active Directory, which I don't need for anything else except Office 365. We have one server inside that space to help us manage Active Directory just for Office 365. This is a very sore point, but it is what it is. There are some things that they can't remediate. The honest thing is nobody can right now because of the nature of how some of the secure email platforms work. We have worked with them on some other different vendors to integrate into. There is a particular space that is a unique challenge for everybody. We are trying to help with this as well. For example, if I need to send you information securely, whether I'm using Google, Microsoft, or a third party, I may send you an email that is encrypted but you don't really get the email. When you open up the email you have to click a link to login to a server to read the email, e.g., sometimes a doctor sends you secure messages. The information is not in an email and it's not on your computer, but you receive an email that says, "Click on this link. Login to the server online to view the message or information." Well, in doing that, the message in that email that is sent to you to go to that server is 100% legit. Everything about it is correct, even the TinyURL or whatever. There is nothing wrong with that email. Once you connect to that server and you login to view the message, it may have a payload that will get distributed onto your phone or your computer. Avanan doesn't have a way to protect against that because it's not an email issue anymore. At that point, the email was delivered and it was fine. It was you going to a server in your web browser that caused a problem. Then, the question is: Because the attack factor came in via the email, how do you build out an innovative solution that allows you to better manage the risk associated with secure emails without having to compromise the integrity or confidentiality associated with reading that particular privileged email? I think combinations of browser isolation, proxy, or some other different pieces that endpoint security operation components will address this.& There is a handoff or convergence associated with those different faculties or capabilities. Then, the next question is: Is this something that Avanan needs to address or is it something that the endpoint security needs to address?