Check Point Harmony SASE, based on Perimeter 81 which was acquired by Check Point in late 2023, is designed to simplify secure network, cloud and application access for the modern and distributed workforce.
$10
per month per user
Cisco Secure Access
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
A cloud-delivered security service edge (SSE) solution, grounded in zero trust, designed to give users an exceptional user experience and protected access from any device to anywhere.
N/A
Pricing
Check Point Harmony SASE
Cisco Secure Access
Editions & Modules
Essentials
$10
per month per user
Premium
$15
per month per user
Premium Plus
$20
per month per user
Enterprise
Custom
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Harmony SASE
Cisco Secure Access
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
+$50 per month per gateway. Discounts available for annual pricing.
We have found that when thoughtfully implemented, Check Point Harmony SASE can be well suited for almost any customer. Smaller customers may not need all the functions of SASE, but they all need a reliable VPN solution when traveling. The platform can be configured for individual tenants, allowing the solution to scale with the client as they grow. As the customer grows, they are already familiar with the agent, so scaling up has less user pushback.
Cisco as a whole solution, Cisco Secure Access as a solution is very well suited. If you want to simplify the operations and the way that you provide access to certain things, rollout and deployment are fairly straightforward and fairly fast if you know how to configure it properly. Regarding private access, there's still some things that need to be addressed to mitigate certain connections that aren't working correctly through the VPN, or maybe create some kind of exception. The most famous ones are things with Microsoft or other vendors, where, when you send that information through the VPN, split tunnels aren't necessarily the only configurations you have to consider. Things like IPS, decryption, you also have to look at those things as well. It might be good to try to enhance those types of configurations and maybe also document those things so that the users are aware.
Harmony SASE can use some improvement in reporting. While general reports are available in the dashboard, it lacks additional details and flexibility to capture insights on user adoption, bandwidth utilization, etc.
The app lacks visibility into failures, errors, and network diagnostics, which would allow IT and network professionals to conduct their own investigation and troubleshooting. While their support has a good grasp of this, having these capabilities will allow organizations to take action on their own rather than waiting for support during issues and outages.
Expanding the platform's global presence, like adding gateways in different countries, is not a use case for us right now. They have a presence in most geographic locations we need, but I can imagine bigger companies needing other locations.
The integration into the Meraki dashboard is not yet complete, you have to use several interfaces to complete the configuration, the services should be fully integrated to provide better handling
Integration of firewall rules onprem and cloud should be standardized
Overall, the product is easy to use, reliable, and can be automated to minimize user input. Occasionally, an agent update will clear the workspace and sign the user out. When this occurs, a member of our helpdesk team is needed to assist the user in signing back in. This is our biggest reason for giving it a 9 out of 10.
It's simpler to identify or find things within the platform. Obviously, there are always things to improve, maybe in the GUI or in certain things coming over from Umbrella, because this platform is actually adopting a lot of the Umbrella solutions. And it's just a matter of trying to navigate through it. I really like the way it's simplified in how you categorize your internal policies and your private access policies. It's just a different mindset and a different way of creating policies in this case, compared to how Umbrella did in the past with rule sets and those kinds of things. But the actual solution itself works pretty well when you understand it.
In the beginning, it was a bit rough getting it to work and getting any kind of quality support from customer service. But recently they really improved their service and customer service. I believe they raise 100M in new funding which provides them the resources to make a better product with better tools and a better help desk.
We selected Cisco Secure Access due to the intuitive GUI and ease of use. The agent deployment was simple and easy to maintain. Any additional updates or changes were quickly deployed, and users found the customized block messages useful. From analytics and management, the Secure Access Product has been simple to manage and provides a robust level of security and flexibility that we haven't found in any other product yet.
One of the biggest benefits of switching to Check Point Harmony SASE was the pricing model. Our previous VPN solution is usage-based and billed on the amount of network traffic, while Harmony SASE has a per-user license.
We also benefited from simplified network architecture. Check Point Harmony SASE takes care of everything; we just need to select a location. Previously, we had to design and architect our VPN infrastructure, a task that required technical expertise.
Our organization leverages Harmony SASE's VPN solution allows us to meet our client-specific requirements. It enables remote work and removes the requirement for a physical office.
