Cradlepoint NetCloud Engine vs. Tempered Airwall vs. Zscaler Internet Access

I have yet to have any situation where Cradlepoint NetCloud Engine was "less appropirate". It's easy to use and understand and extremely effective for deploying Cradlepoints and maintaining them. The control over the Cradlepoint devices is remarkable, absolute and the product is very well suited and feature rich for the task,

Incentivized

It's very well suited for geographically dispersed organizations, where deploying and managing remote firewalls and other network security functions aren't practical. Once deployed, and the deployment isn't difficult after planning and understanding the data flows of the IoT devices, the system is easily managed and flexible. You're able to allow front line operations people to add devices into a role without sacrificing the integrity of the security model.

Incentivized

It has been pretty great in our deployment; the ability to send specific messages to users, or to isolate with a banner, has given us more control without blunt "this was blocked for this reason" landing pages. We have a lot of YouTube use, and it's difficult to police the legitimate use from personal use. Because of this, the quotas have been an effective way to achieve traffic goals without getting in users' way.

Incentivized

• Support: They are always quick to respond.
• The NetCloud service: It has never gone down in the four + years I have been using it.
• Pricing is very competitive.

Incentivized

• Low capital and support cost structures.
• Ease of deployment.
• Ability to work over the existing network.

Incentivized

• Provides a secure VPN connection point for endpoint connectivity.
• Provides the VPN connectivity in a fast and reliable connection state.
• Very dependable, once connected the connection stays up and there's no fuss.
• Very good at letting you know when you are not authenticated.
• Very easy to authenticate and regain access when your session times out.

Incentivized

• Cradlepoint NetCloud virtual backplane bandwidth is improving but could limit some very large enterprise customers without creative network segmentation.
• Further improvements to simplify NetCloud Manager use would be appreciated.
• User license management and compliance tools need to be clarified and simplified.

Incentivized

• Integration with third-party security controls.
• Automating the on-boarding of devices.
• Reporting needs to be more detailed.

Incentivized

• ZS CLI support to turn off ZIA and ZDX service specifically on mac.
• Better visibility into failed posture devices, including a timeline and the reason the posture failed (This is about the Zscaler mobile portal: Enrolled devices --> Failed posture devices).

Incentivized

While Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) delivers critical value in cloud security and RBI compliance, I rate renewal likelihood 7/10 due to evolving needs versus platform limitations. Below is my rationale:

Key Gaps:

1. Advanced Threat Costs:

ZIA’s add-ons (e.g., Advanced DLP, Sandboxing) incur 35%+ cost premiums – straining budgets as transaction volumes (UPI/iMobile) grow 50% YoY.

2. API Banking Scalability:

ZIA’s API rate limits throttle real-time policy sync during UPI peaks (10K+ TPS), forcing workarounds for finacle integrations.

3. RBI Future-Proofing:

Limited native support for upcoming digital rupee (CBDC) security rules requires custom development, increasing compliance overhead.

Incentivized

Device management is nearly the same as if you logged in locally, giving a familiar feel to the interface. Device group management can be cumbersome when pushing firmware updates.

Incentivized

The product is as expected. ZIA has been integrated and utilized as intended. Any modifications to rules in ZCC have been straightforward to implement. Although it has not been done yet, the segmentation for specific users is highly anticipated. The product received a 9, as no product is wholly perfect, but it has been great to use.

Incentivized

There are often performance issues reported

Incentivized

Every time I have engaged support, it has been a satisfying experience. Because they cover such a wide range of applications, I do have to spend more time explaining our intended results and rationale than I would have to do with a more focused vendor, but it's a minor tradeoff for the value of saved time in every other aspect of the solution.

Incentivized

It's pretty darned good for a new company. We had to hash through a couple of instances that no one had ever run into, but once we got to the right person on the engineering team, they were able to work through the solution pretty quickly. The nice thing is, unlike Cisco, once you fix something, you don't find three new things that have to be changed.

Incentivized

Zscaler's ZIA support is quick and knowledgable. They respond within 1-2 hours of you submitting your ticket. They are very thorough and are typically ready to jump on a live troubleshooting session. Our ZIA platform and how we use is it unique so at times tickets can be open for weeks but we alway get quality support compared to other unrelated product support in our enterprise

Incentivized

It is much easier to group your devices within NetCloud prior to deployment. We ran into issues of lost/changed settings when grouping devices that had already been deployed

Incentivized

good the engineer give excellent support and eplanation

Incentivized

Before Cradlepoint NetCloud, firewall transversal was a challenge for telemedicine and required extensive and lengthy cooperation with client IT professionals. Interface selection and failover required application-level software on the host that would become inaccessible should a failover event go badly. We used several tools, each with their own management consoles, licensing plans, and learning curves to enable solutions. Much of that is a thing of the past with NetCloud.

Incentivized

The cost and complexity vs. ISE is as different as Uber and Lift are from trying to take a taxi in Duluth, Minnesota. The complexity of Cisco's IoT security is a joke. It was going to take us over a year just to deploy all the Cisco equipment, and that was if we could have gotten it all working together. We got the entire project deployed in just under 3 months, and that includes working out all the bugs and logistics. Honestly, I don't think all the Cisco parts would have ever been running like Cisco promised it would. It's just way too complicated.

Incentivized

We keep using the other products, but for network traffic Zscaler Internet Access tends to be the best solution, although for Infoblox we are using their DNS solution, and for CrowdStrike, we are focusing on other items more related to EDR than network.

Incentivized

• TCO vs traditional WAN was over 1,000% less
• Increased connectivity improved security AND connectivity

Incentivized

• Capital cost to deploy was 1/4 the cost of doing Cisco.
• People and time frame to do the entire deployment was 1/12th the time/people to complete the installation.
• On-going management is being done without adding staff.

Incentivized

• I would say it has a very good ROI, as whenever someone can't access something, they submit a ticket to our network engineer, and within minutes, the site is safely added to ZIA with best-practice configurations. After seeing a little of the UI from the Zenith event, it seems very user-friendly to control these policies.

Incentivized