ContentProtect vs. Untangle NG Firewall

If you are looking for something relatively inexpensive to lock down specific computers, it would be a useful tool. If the computers themselves aren't too locked down, implementation and management shouldn't be too difficult.

Incentivized

Untangle is very strong in the "traditional" sense of security. That means an edge appliance that either works with an existing router or is the router itself (recommended). This approach has also been adapted well to cloud environments in order to protect virtual servers and VDI workstations. As mentioned earlier, many schools are using cloud-based filtering for their 1:1 solutions for their students. This is an area where Untangle is unable to serve. Some have used an instance of Untangle in the cloud with VPN to serve their remote needs, but it is not the same as solutions that are designed for cloud-based filtering of devices without VPN.

Incentivized

• The client is relatively light weight and doesn't impact other applications.
• The client isn't easily bypassed, so the user's are kept under restrictions.
• The configuration is relatively simple and easy to deploy.

Incentivized

• Web Filtering is strong, and can also do application fingerprinting to allow Facebook, but not Facebook games. Secondly, a separate partition called a "rack" can be set up to give one subnet or group of users different web filtering policies than another. For example, teachers would get more freedom to browse the web than students at a school.
• Built-in SD-WAN connectivity as part of your license. IPSEC tunnel creation is also amazingly easy.
• Will install on any x86 hardware created in the last 5-10 years. Ram and processor requirements per user are very low.
• Reporting is phenomenal, however you can get death by details very easily.

Incentivized

• Our primary policy is a restricted list, so that does as advertised. We had one location that had blocks based on categories (adult, illegal, etc). We continually had issues with sites getting completely blocked due to unrelated content. For example, Yahoo had a beer ad on the page, alcohol was blocked, so Yahoo became blocked for the period of time that ad was displayed. We had this happen multiple times and eventually switched to a different solution at that location.
• I've had issues with their cloud portal not working. I don't have to edit our configuration often, but on numerous occasions, i was unable to get the configuration page to load after login, sometimes for days. The platform just wasn't stable when I needed it to be.
• We run many of our remote rooms as frozen (after logoff they reset to the image). This works fine most times, but when content protect needs a configuration change pushed down, someone needs to go 'thaw' the computers, download the updated configuration, and re-'freeze' the computer. It would be nice if that information was just dynamic from the cloud and didn't need to be pulled down.
• The categorization used for policies is very limited and not flexible or easily customizable.
• I could never get the usage reporting to work.

Incentivized

• The full suite can be expensive for business but will be powerful enough.
• The full suite for home or small office isn't that bad of a price but may be out of reach for most home users but remember the basics are FREE so anyone can get started with it.
• I would like to see it promoted for mid to large businesses as I think it can handle it.

Incentivized

Service renewal is in Feb 2021. We will be renewing!

Generally works well but seeing more and more bugs with the OpenVPN app.

Incentivized

The phone support reps are highly competent and native-English speakers. big plus vs some other vendors with difficult to understand or less knowledgable support engineers.

Incentivized

At the time ContentProtect was selected, Forcepoint (Websense at the time) didn't have an inexpensive or cloud type product. The same can be said with Cisco, at that time. Recently, we have reevaluated and are going to be transitioning to Forcepoint's mobile client and removing ContentProtect from our environment. The cost is actually now less and we will be able to get both more dynamic control and also give us more detailed reporting on the traffic from clients.

Incentivized

Untangle NG Firewall has a partnership with third parties to provide an amazing suite of applications. You pay for those. With free software, you have to wait for it to be updated. With Unifi, the hardware was too underpowered to do anything meaningful. I don't mind the monthly fees because these companies update quickly; they have a reputation to maintain.

Incentivized

• It was a relatively inexpensive and simple solution when we needed one relatively quickly, which is a positive. The inexpensive price has kept it in the environment.
• The lack of reliable reporting has lead to the need for an alternate monitoring solution in a few cases. Network level reporting was used, which is a separate expense, configuration.
• Time has been lost waiting on the portal and then troubleshooting support tickets when sites that shouldn't have been blocked have been blocked. It has resulted in changes for locations that needed dynamic category filtering as opposed to a finite list.
• The blocking of sites based on add traffic or sub-sites (rather than just blocking that content like other solutions) has resulted in downtime during classes when those sites were listed in the lesson plan and had previously worked.

Incentivized

• It's allowed us to be PCI compliant which we need to do business.
• It's allowed us to not only be PCI compliant but follow best practice to be actually as secure as we can be.
• It's really presented us with a lot of flexibility in terms of how we connect to other services.
• There is some maintenance, but it's very minimal.

Incentivized