Absolute vs GlobalProtect Mobile Security Manager

I do think it is well worth the cost and consideration, especially if you are using it on devices containing electronic medical records, personal health information or personal privacy information or devices that contain proprietary information, critical business information or other information that needs to be securely protected. It can also be used to track a device (individual) as well if that is your goal. We use it as an extra precaution to track our mental health clinicians that do home visits. It allows us to keep track of their whereabouts, in case an issue arises at a client's home. We are able to send someone out to check or assist, alert emergency services or send law enforcement if a situation should arise.

With our work force most remotely for the unforeseeable future this has been an extremely useful tool to manage all our remote VPN access and iOS devices in one place. Easy to install and our users have very little issues getting connected and staying connected. Certificates can be a little tricky sometimes but it's rarely an issue.

• I tracked a stolen computer all the way to Africa from USA and disabled it.
• I set up geofences with alerts. As soon as a computer got a wifi connection outside of our fences it would email me its current location.
• Absolute's persistent technology was helpful. -Even when a pawn shop would attempt to "wipe" a device before getting it online, as soon as it got online it notified me of the OS re-installation and current location. We could call authorities and they could recover the device for us. And they were happy it made their job easier and deterred the pawn shop from reselling stolen devices.

• A single pane of glass in the Palo Alto ecosystem
• A nice policy-based enforcement GUI that is easily managed
• Many authentication configuration options supported.
• Good technical support options with email and phone based.

• I do not know where I would consider this product to be deficient in functionality, difficult to use or any major changes that needed to be addressed.
• I wish the pricing of this product was a little lower, but I do think it is well worth the cost and consideration, especially if you are using it on devices containing electronic medical records, personal health information or personal privacy information.

• It has created another area for us to manage some of the internet traffic for our users. Sites being open on-site and not on remote access or vice versa.
• In general, the certificates are easier to handle than while on Cisco solution, it is still a pain to get the remote device a cert in place if it has "broken."
• We would like to lock in the ability of which gateway we use to connect to the network. While it's not been an issue for us we have seen some oddness when using a different gateway than the preferred one.

I have only used Absolute Data and Device Security (DDS). It was recommended by my Dell sales rep. After reviewing the product info, and loading a demo, it became clear that this is what was needed to add to our existing security to protect us from information loss due to a data breach on our portable devices. I presented this solution to the appropriate departments, and they agreed that this was something well worth the investment.

Easier to implement and configure

• Recovery of stolen assets.
• After recovering a few devices and students becoming aware of Absolute being deployed, it had a prevention effect deterring additional theft.
• It deterred pawn shops from accepting our stolen machines.

• This solved our problem of having more than one piece of software to manage access for different types of mobile devices.
• Reduced our cost of needing multiple licenses to manage our VPN connectivity outside of the office.