AlgoSec Reviews

One of the standout features is its ability to provide visibility and control over security policies. The product offers a centralized dashboard that gives an overview view of the entire network infrastructure, including firewalls, routers, and switches, regardless of their vendor or location. This unified view enables administrators to easily manage and modify security policies from a single platform, eliminating the need for manual, error-prone processes. 

AlgoSec also provides a powerful rule analyzer that detects and highlights any redundant, overlapping, or conflicting rules, helping organizations optimize their security policies for maximum efficiency. AlgoSec also allows administrators to define and enforce a standardized change management process, reducing the risk of unauthorized or misconfigured changes.

AlgoSec's compliance management capabilities have helped a lot in my organization. It offers predefined compliance frameworks, such as PCI DSS and HIPAA, and assists organizations in mapping their security policies to these standards. AlgoSec can generate comprehensive reports that demonstrate compliance with regulatory requirements, simplifying the audit process. 

It also provides continuous compliance monitoring, alerting administrators of any of policy violations or any changes that may impact compliance.

The visibility of security policies and automation is the most valuable feature of AlgoSec. It offers a range of automated workflows and processes that accelerate security policy management. For example, it can automate the process of rule recertification, ensuring that rules are regularly reviewed and validated. 

AlgoSec also facilitates policy optimization by automatically suggesting rule modifications based on industry best practices or specific compliance requirements. By automating these repetitive tasks, AlgoSec frees up valuable time for security teams to focus on more strategic initiatives.

AlgoSec offers almost everything that clients want and has a robust set of features. That said, there are a few areas where it could improve. The user interface, although functional, could benefit from a more modern and intuitive design. Additionally, the initial setup and configuration process may require some technical expertise, which could pose a challenge for organizations with limited security resources. A simple tutorial about the initial configuration on Youtube could provide a lot of help. Even a self-guide link inside the GUI would be helpful.

I've used the solution for two years.

The initial setup was complex.

The implementation was handled in-house.

I started working with AlgoSec to integrate change opening tools with some clients as I work at an AlgoSec reseller.

I have customized hooks so that custom actions could be triggered within AlgoSec, before implementing the active change I worked to generate scripts to clean up the checkpoint firewall rule base based on AlgoSec reports. My experiences with AlgoSec have always been with end-user support, especially when it comes to software development. That said, I've also done an installation and helped the customer create the approval flow.

AlgoSec has been a partner in my company for many years, with which we can improve our customers' experience.

It adds many facilities in the management of network equipment, due to the ease in analyzing the rule base. It helps firewalls to have a better performance since the rules are positioned more efficiently and unnecessary rules and objects are removed.

The training provided by AlgoSec helps a lot in the development of employees who work with the tool.

I recently discovered the "ask the community" option and it made problem-solving a lot easier.

All of AlgoSec's features are very good, however, in my point of view traffic planning and risk analysis are the most important, with them we can have a view of which items will be affected by the change, which objects need to be created or used, which rules will be affected, with that we can have a much more optimized base and easier to maintain.

With the risk analysis, we can customize it according to the company because each client may have a different risk scenario.

The possibility of customization also makes the job much easier.

Plugins for integration with other tools as ServiceNow, for example, would be ideal. This would facilitate the work without needing a developer to carry out integrations, mainly for market tools.

We need a screen to view system logs. This would facilitate the problem analysis process. The possibility of placing buttons in another system to trigger actions within AlgoSec would be great. For example, placing an HTML button in ServiceNow that triggers the active change. Being able to view the ticket flow within other tools would be useful.

I've used the solution for three years.

I've always worked with the standalone version.

I've always used Algosec.

I have not looked into ROI.

The costs are paid according to use.

I did not evaluate other options previously.

We use this solution for the management of firewalls on a client with a multi-vendor landscape and a low maturity level in terms of security operations and mechanisms. The AlgoSec tool supported the necessary transformation we were helping the client with, centralizing and simplifying the management of all firewalls in several sites across the globe.

AlgoSec is a powerful firewall management tool. I have supported a client implementing the firewall analyzer in an environment with several firewall vendors and poor management. The implementation went smoothly, with good support from the AlgoSec team. However, the configuration was tricky due to the maturity of the client and the ‘messy’ situation, and the internal know-how available regarding what was implemented on the multiple sites.

The most valuable feature is that the tool is capable of simplifying firewall management and configuration in an automated fashion. Additionally, the fact that it is also possible to implement a FW management workflow clearly supports the improvement of the 'way of working' and operation of the FW environment.

The network mapping interface could be improved in the next version. In a complex landscape, with several nodes/equipment, it can be somewhat more difficult to properly visualize the network map. It requires several zoom-in and zoom-out operations, and it is not so visually appealing. Nevertheless, it is still a valuable feature and was highly used by my team.

We evaluated other options before choosing this solution including Skybox and Palo Alto Panorama.

Do not underestimate the configuration effort, especially on a more complex landscape.

We use AlgoSec to provide compliance and for the ease of automating everyday security tasks. We have more than five hundred firewalls and automation is a must. This was the best product in terms of the flexibility and visibility that we needed to manage them across different regions. We can modify policy according to our maintenance schedule and time zones.

AlgoSec has reduced the need for additional manpower and we can now use the time to tackle other security-related issues. For incident response, you can automatically isolate compromised servers from the network.

It helps remove rules with limited impact on other applications. By maintaining a clean security policy, it reduces the risk from the most common attacks and also improves performance.

AlgoSec has also helped increase collaboration between departments. It helps our network department to reduce third-party involvement in policy creation and management.

So far, we are using AlgoSec Analyzer and FireFlow. The Analyzer is more for compliance, risk, and auditing. FireFlow is more for automating rule changes and installation.

Right now I am loving FireFlow for its easy to use interface. You can also get as complex as you are comfortable with. You can add email, scripts, and hooks to certain aspects of the rule creation process.

AlgoSec now has cloud products that they are rolling out. This is the next space for which everyone is dedicating more resources. We would like to see them utilize the cloud to help with performance improvement, and with various processes needed on a daily basis. We have two remote agents that help with daily processing and would like to integrate more power from the cloud to be as flexible as possible.

Provides visibility to firewall policies. 

Single tool to engineer changes and track approvals for audit compliance.

A Central tool to track firewall requests. 

Using AlgoSec API calls to integrate with other apps (ex: central IT request portal)

Standard view of firewall policies, regardless of vendor (ex: Checkpoint and Cisco). 

Built-in reports to aid in policy cleanup (ex: unused rules or objects, covered rules).

Faster HA/DR failover - with very large databases, it takes a long time to failover / failback.

Provide even more REST API calls (ex: rule removal API)

Product and appliances have been very stable.

It easily scaled up to support our hundreds of firewalls.

Both are excellent. 

Customer service is clearly important to AlgoSec. I never get the feeling they're just trying to sell me something, they sincerely try to assist with the best solution for us.

Tech support is extremely knowledgeable and responsive. If I could score them 11, I would. 

Did not use another solution previously.

Initial deployment was straightforward. The FireFlow workflow can be configured to match the existing flow - customizing this to match any workflow permutations takes the most time. 

Through a vendor team. They were top-notch - extremely knowledgeable and great to work with.

Unknown.

Explore the possibility of running on a VM instead of dedicated hardware.

I was not part of the evaluation.

The tool is very flexible. Be sure to allocate sufficient resources to deploy & customize it.

ABF and compliance modules.

AlgoSec contributes more in the security space for our company, especially in automatically finding the high risk and medium risk rules instead of manually reviewing over a few thousand rules. 

Also, ABF is a wonderful module where you can keep the footprint for your firewall rules up-to-date, like CMDB.

ABF is a key module for us, which we are using like an application center where we can keep our firewall rules for each application up-to-date. 

The compliance module is one of the best features which can help anyone to perform security review with predefined security matrix configurations. The compliance module can save a lot of time for security reviews and provide full visibility of the risk required in firewall change requests.

ABF is not very mature compare to AFA and AFF, but the module and concepts are quite good. I would suggest more concentration on ABF, especially on object and application permissions. 

We used a different Network Security Policy Management Solutions (NSPM) tool, but we felt that it would not be able to fulfill our requirements and address the gap which we had before.

We were looking for a place where we could keep our rules and also track ownership of each rule in the application.

I personally feel that the cost is quite expensive. AlgoSec is charging for each function, e.g., Active change, Application ABF license, etc. 

It is worth spending the cost for visibility on security. Of course, security is not cheap.

We evaluated three marketing leaders in the NSMP industry. However, we are not interested in highlighting anyone here.

AlgoSec is a very helpful product in carrying out security operations effectively.

It has a user-friendly interface, and we don't encounter any problems during or after installing updates.

We can get quick support from the manufacturer in case of problems.

The ability to automate policy analysis, optimize configurations, and visualize security risks allows organizations to mitigate threats and reduce the risk of security breaches proactively. 

By providing visibility into security risks, compliance gaps, and application connectivity requirements, AlgoSec helps organizations strengthen their security posture.

This product has had many benefits in improving my security posture by fixing many vulnerabilities.

Lack of sufficient resources or expertise to leverage AlgoSec's capabilities to their full potential might hinder the expected improvements.

The ability to automate policy analysis, optimize configurations, and visualize security risks allows organizations to mitigate threats and reduce the risk of security breaches proactively. AlgoSec's reporting and compliance features help organizations meet regulatory requirements more effectively.

AlgoSec offers a centralized platform for managing complex network security policies across heterogeneous environments. This feature enables users to visualize, analyze, and manage policies from a single interface, enhancing efficiency and reducing errors associated with manual policy management. 

AlgoSec's ability to integrate with various security and networking solutions enhances its overall value. Integration with firewalls, cloud platforms, SIEM tools, and other security devices ensures a cohesive security ecosystem and enables better threat response and mitigation.

Enhancements that allow for more automated policy management, change workflows, and orchestration can significantly streamline network security operations. 

Advanced analytics and reporting capabilities that provide deeper insights into network traffic, security policy effectiveness, compliance, and risk management can be beneficial. 

Features that allow security policies to be defined and managed based on specific applications' needs would be ideal.

I've been using the solution for two years. 

We have around 200 firewalls that we manage through AlgoSec. We use it for automation purposes in certain cases. We have 10 to 12 team members who use AlgoSec.

We have around 100 plus on-premises devices. However, we are moving over to the cloud. At present, we mainly have Microsoft Azure, and we are going to deploy AWS and Google Cloud soon.

We use AlgoSec FireFlow as well. 

The amount of time spent on doing simple tasks, such as adding a particular rule or giving access to a particular person, or doing the same repetitive task has been reduced. We don't have to manually look into duplicate rules or look into traffic that is not getting hits. It will be automatically taken into consideration by AlgoSec, and the information will be given to us so that we can take action on that part. It saved us a lot of time.

When the staff is doing the same repetitive task all the time, there will be errors. AlgoSec helped to reduce human error and misconfigurations to a great extent.

One of the features that I like about AlgoSec is the topology table. It helps us understand where the traffic flows through, where it gets interconnected, and how the traffic flows from our device to the other device.

The other good feature that I have come across is that it suggests best practices. For example, we had a case where there was a legacy rule that was a wide-open rule. AlgoSec identified what IP traffic got hit and based on that suggested allowing those particular IPs instead of maintaining a wide-open rule.

In terms of the overall visibility that AlgoSec gives into our network security policies, I like the best practice assessment in terms of compliance. It helps us deal with wide-open rules and duplicates, and provides suggestions on how the rules can be written, restructured, and reordered.

AlgoSec reduced the time it takes to implement firewall rules. Also when it is upgraded, which we are in the process of doing, when a user tries to raise a ticket, that ticket will be associated with AlgoSec FireFlow. Then, the user will be able to access it themselves.

We work with multiple security vendors, but not all vendors integrate with AlgoSec. As a result, our team has both AlgoSec and Tufin. In terms of integrations, it's going well so far.

AlgoSec helped to simplify the job of our security engineers. For example, a new user who tries to gain access will have to raise a case, and automation will take that into consideration. It helped us to disable rules that are not being utilized, merge any duplicate rules, and reorder rules based on traffic hits to have a good flow. Any rule works from top to bottom, and AlgoSec will place the major items at the top. These helped to reduce latency as well.

Certain firewalls don't integrate with AlgoSec, and it would be great if this bug could be fixed.

AlgoSec looks into compliance and is helpful. However, it would be nice to have validations that can run before the changes are posted and implemented. Now, if something goes wrong the user would need to reach out to us, and then we would have to troubleshoot. Instead of that, if there are validations for simple tasks, it would be great.

I've also heard from our AlgoSec vendor about a feature that is coming up in the future. With the topology table, we can see the interconnected devices to understand the traffic flow. I was told that with this new feature, if we find a blockage, maybe on a firewall, that we would be able to go to that firewall and allow traffic through a specific rule. This would be done just by right-clicking on that particular device and getting the change implemented through automation. This would be a helpful feature.

I've been using AlgoSec for about a year.

The stability has been okay so far. There are a few bugs, but no device is perfect.

We previously used FireMon and switched to AlgoSec because we were not satisfied with it. FireMon was good but was not user-friendly.

I recommend AlgoSec because it has good features and is more user-friendly than FireMon. AlgoSec has fewer options in terms of tabs, so you'll be able to navigate and explore everything. From a technical point of view, AlgoSec is good for a newcomer. Therefore, I would give AlgoSec an overall rating of eight on a scale from one to ten.