Cisco Stealthwatch is a network behavior analysis product based on technology acquired by Cisco with its Lancope acquisition in 2015.
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Zscaler Internet Access
Score 8.7 out of 10
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Zscaler Internet Access is delivered as a security stack as a service from the cloud, and is designed to eliminate the cost and complexity of traditional secure web gateway approaches, and provide easily scaled protection to all offices or users, regardless of location, and minimize network and appliance infrastructure.
Few products operate off the Netflow or RAP/SPAN traffic versus the endpoint. Of those products, many operate from the aggregate traffic of uplinks/downlinks, whereas Secure Network Analytics focuses on viewing all traffic to give per-endpoint comprehensive data analytics. SNA is a great product for network visibility and detection, and to preserve that focus, other options such as remediation or quarantined are deferred to other products in the security ecosystem. SNA uses Machine Learning models to determine traffic behavioral compliance, which is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it mitigates zero day attacks changing traffic patterns, but conversely, it requires training to know acceptable traffic patterns. Unfortunately, many adopters of SNA do not spend the time giving it the user input and so the ML models never gets the correct weights and parameters to work from.
Zscaler Internet Access is an internet tunnel that pairs with the network adapter to secure traffic between servers and workstations. It can refresh policies automatically and log intrusions but does not broadcast intrusions. Cloud-based Zscaler Internet Access is easy to deploy and scale, with no hardware or software needed. In a hybrid model, Zscaler Internet Access performs some security functions on-premises and others in the cloud, allowing organizations to keep infrastructure. There is a slight learning curve from VPN and appliance architecture to this paradigm.
Zscaler completely moved away from the traditional firewall setup to a hosted firewall solution. We don't have to worry about the hardware failing or maintaining it as part of our service plan compared to our on-premise firewall. Zscaler has a lot of data centres across the world where they are maintaining their solutions so mobile consultants will always be close to one of their data centres.
Rolling out Zscaler solutions to our end customers' computers is actually pretty easy and hassle-free. As part of onboarding of new employees we can set up the Zscaler solution and push it to our end users' machines and get them connected to the cloud solutions.
Zscaler does proper market research on the latest emerging threats and they keep their firewall patched and updated to the latest versions so the security team does not have to worry about keeping the firewall updated.
There are things that you can search for a particular type of traffic, but you cannot create an alert to alert on that type of traffic. An example of that is a particular encryption type. So like RC4 encryption is prohibited within DHS. I can search for traffic using it, but I can't create a rule alerting on that traffic type.
Cisco Secure Network Analytics is a fantastic tool, but does require some setup and upkeep which may turn off smaller IT Security teams. However, once all the flows are set up and the product is functioning with the proper rules, the insight into your network is fantastic. For us, the product has a significant ROI and will be a product we keep up on.
Strong and complete tool which gives comprehensive methods to discover cyber security incidents and prevent data leakage. In case of common use of Cisco StealthWatch and Cisco ISE, you will receive [the] ability [to] not just discover cyber security incidents but also dynamically respond to them. This makes StealthWatch one of most valuable products through[out] [the] whole Cisco Security product portfolio.
Zscaler is a mandatory solution required by almost every large organization with a workforce working remotely or using cloud-based apps. Its deployment is relatively easy and it keeps on working in the background without actively bothering the user. Apart from a few weird messages which a user is unable to comprehend, Zscaler is able to provide fast and safe access to the internet and other external applications.
We haven't had too many issues with the uptime and availability of CSNA, but the application does have a lot of dependancies and we have seen issues after an upgrade that caused an outage for several hours.
Overall winner because it exceeds our expectations by answering all our requirements and at the same time empowers our operations thru other built-in capabilities it has. Visibility is a key to security operations and Cisco StealthWatch really gives us a magnifying glass to check all logs in the network for threat intelligence and threat hunting.
I cannot give a fair rating for this as I have not had to contact Zscaler support. There was one time we had to contact them because we needed to check if they were having issues on their end. Our ISP was actually the problem but support seemed very friendly.
Implementation of the product can be tedious, especially fine tuning its rules to customize it to your environment. However, after that is done, CSNA is a very useful and flexible product that would enhance the security posture of any corporate network.
After integrating and developing a lot of security features in MF NNM, we were not able to meet the requirements from the customer. After the alternative research, we got to know about this Cisco Secure Network Analytics tool and after implementing the same, we finally were able to win CSAT. MF NNM had a support-related issue as well. It took more than a month to solve for couple of issues frequently. Whenever there is a problem or need their support, reaching out to them has always been a challenge.
Zscaler Intenet Access proved to be superior and the difference for us was the speed of policy delivery since your policy is applied in a web console and is effective in a matter of seconds. Another point to congratulate the solution is its compatibility with different platforms (macOS, Linux, Windows, Android, and iOS).
It is a little pricey - in my organization, with budget cuts, I eventually had to replace it with an open source product (NTOP). While it works well for visibility, it simply isn't the same. If you can afford it, don't bother looking anywhere else - just get it.
Being able to detect, pivot out, and remmediate from one console was awesome.
