Action1 vs. OpenText EnCase Endpoint Security

If your organization is like mine (nonprofit and tight budget) this product is for you. The first 200 endpoints are free and being we are a small organization, this product is perfect for us. I was able to use Action1 to upgrade all my endpoints from Windows 10 to 11 pretty much effortlessly. If you are not a nonprofit and have more endpoints over 200, this is still a great product to use as I don't find it very expensive to incorporate into your infrastructure.

Incentivized

It is more suited to environments that have a large internal user base since there will be more incidents that require forensic analysis. It will be less suited for environments that have a small internal user base due to the fact that there would be fewer incidents that require forensic analysis, but it really depends on the industry that a small internal user base is a part of.

Incentivized

• Easy remote access to devices. That simple. We have some very unskilled users in the field where asking them to access their PC via conventional remote tools like TeamViewer, Anydesk, etc. was always a pain. Now, all they have to do is ensure their PC is online, and we can connect to them.
• Remote software deploy. Before Action1, we did have some GPOs and scripts, but again - being able to deploy to PCs outside of our office/LAN, is just beautiful. On top of the standard repository, being able to create new packages is very useful for our scenario.
• Inventory Reporting. Recently we had to identify PCs running old versions of Windows. Can't highlight enough how easy it is.

Incentivized

• Functionality meets minimal requirements, since it performs forensic investigations as advertised.

Incentivized

• Remote Access could use added functionality
• The deployment screens for update deferrals can be hard to understand at first and easy to skip since it carries some default info when you create a new automation rather than a more conspicuous prompt to update.

Incentivized

• Their UI definitely needs to be more user-friendly, right now it is very cumbersome to run and view investigations.
• Authentication mechanism should be a simple username/password, not certificate-based which is difficult to manage.
• Needs better support documentation for the product, it is difficult to find solutions to issues that we run into.

Incentivized

Price, functionality, and continuous improvement of the product.

Incentivized

Action1 has taken many of the tasks that are time consuming and made them simple automated tasks that can be run on a schedule. I can schedule tasks to run off-hours and know that they will be done and I no longer have worry about it. As someone who does IT support for a living, it just makes my job so much simpler with less stress.

I never contacted support services

Incentivized

Because support is non-existent whenever you have a functionality issue using the product. Also since the UI is so cumbersome to use we could use as much support as possible. Whenever we ask for support we are told to take the training which costs us more money. I believe that support should be easily accessible and affordable for the client

Incentivized

very easy to start using it.

Incentivized

After looking at different solutions, Action1 [Cloud Remote Monitoring and Management Solution] was the perfect fit for us that delivered all of the features we wanted without being as costly as some of the others alternatives we've looked at. There was no minimum endpoint count and they even offer up to 50 endpoints for free, which is really great for a small organization like us to help us lower our starting costs and still allows us to grow at our pace without having to commit to a defined amount of endpoints to start.

The other forensic tool that is a direct competitor to EnCase and wasn't listed above is the Forensic Toolkit or FTK. I believe that FTK is a better tool overall simply because it is easier to manage and use when it comes to investigations. Unfortunately, I wasn't part of the decision process and EnCase was the tool selected, otherwise, I would have recommended FTK.

Incentivized

• Saved hours per week on patching and able to ensure a 100% patching success rate.
• Able to create custom alerting on potential problems as well as able to create some automation to automatically address problems.
• Improved support to our remote locations and users.
• Custom deployments allow us to have a mechanism to deploy custom applications we build as well as other third party applications we need to distribute.

Incentivized

• One negative impact would be that since the UI is cumbersome to use we would need to spend more money on training which is not always feasible.
• Another negative impact would be that since there is not much support available this slows down investigations due to finding out how to troubleshoot and fix functionality issues.
• One positive impact would be that since it meets minimal requirements when it comes to forensic analysis it gives us visibility on any malicious activity occurring on a user's endpoint.

Incentivized