MSPs
and IT professionals use N-able™ N-central® to monitor and manage devices and complex
networks remotely. N-central provides
visibility and efficiency as the user's needs scale. N-central can help users:
1. Proactively monitor everything on a customer network—not just servers
and workstations—and troubleshoot.
2. Stay on top of threats with features like MFA, antivirus, integrated endpoint
detection and response, data backup, disk encryption, email protection,…
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Trend Vision One Endpoint Security
Score 8.1 out of 10
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The Trend Vision One Endpoint Security platform provides antivirus and malware detection, and endpoint visibility. The product suite can be extended with associated applications that cover mobile endpoint protection, endpoint encryption, as well as network and server vulnerability protection.
N-Able is perfect for an MSP environment. It gives all the standard functionality an IT professional needs out of the box and can be configured to show almost anything required. For example, we have configured a dashboard to show when our backups need attention for each customer. This is achieved by running a small script on repeat via N-Central everyday/evening, and the result gives us information on the dashboard to help us identify exactly what is working and what needs looking into.
Before Trend Micro OfficeScan we used Symantec Endpoint Protection and although it was very easy to deploy and to update agents it couldn't find a virus if you pointed it out with a neon sign. We were always getting hit with different viruses but since we migrated to Trend we no longer have that problem. Trend has definitely been preventing those kind of outbreaks successfully.
Remote tasks - entry-level techs can run basic tasks without physically touching a piece of equipment.
Remote support - remote controlling user devices is easy and saves a lot of time with having to initiate a remote session.
Management of devices, particularly patch management and anti-virus management - you can automatically approve and deploy patches and schedule automatic AV scans.
The product has two important aspects, centralized console and an agent which is typically installed on every machine. When the product is installed on a dedicated server then all computers can readily get updated while in the same network (provided the agent is installed on every machine). This helps the machine to avoid any kind of virus attacks.
Even if the machines are not in the same network where the console is being run it can directly get all updates from the Trend Micro server directly and the machine is still protected. Hence, it is not necessary that users have to visit the office or internal network to get the update, once the agent is installed on the machine then they can get the update from anywhere as long as the machine has access to the Internet.
Once the agent is installed on the machine the users can themselves do a full scan and even check the logs themselves.
Customer support just points to online guides and I feel they aren't helpful.
During the trial they turn on a lot of features. In my experience, if you play around with the features, they charge you for them. Keep this in mind if you move forward with N-Able - they will charge for "trialed" services.
In my experience, some services that you're being charged for can't be disabled or monitored by you or your team. You only see them on the monthly invoice.
In my opinion, the "Scripting Automation" doesn't provide value. You're either going to be writing your own batch or Powershell to make scripting work.
In my opinion, monitoring software deployments is painful.
The default monitoring template can't be duplicated, edited, or referenced. You'll find that the default monitors in an unusual way and will throw needless recurring alerts into your ticketing system. To avoid this, you need to create a template from scratch which takes many hours to set up.
In my opinion, they're more concerned about a quick buck than customer service. "Buyer beware" company.
Only thing I would have to say that's negative is the reporting aspect. Basic reporting is good but still lacks some details. This is a problem with many of the software vendors I have encountered in the past as well. Reporting is still much better than most.
Overall we have liked our solar winds experience, however, as our company has grown to support larger enterprises, this product does not have the functionality that our teams need in order to fully support them. The lack of granularity with backups and lack of ability to support nutanix environments is slowly drawing us into the use of other tools.
It is very easy to stick with a vendor year after year, and it is also easy to see the faults in a product and want to change. This is the first time I have renewed with an antiviurs provider as others have been less than ideal and caused issues where there were none before, so while it isn't perfect, it is the best of the bunch currently and I am hopeful that it will continue to improve in future versions.
The user interface is fairly straight forward, with logic groupings for objects. I did not deploy this software, but am one of the daily administrators. Once you get the correct agent package (Which can be a challenge) the integration into AD is not bad. The UI could be more customized, but that may have been a design choice.
The dashboard is user-friendly and allows for an IT admin to quickly deploy the software. The users do not even notice the program running in the background. From the dashboard the IT department can monitor all the workstations for issues and maintain good health of the network.
Every time we have reached out to SolarWinds they are quick to respond, even offering support chat 24/7. Their support team is great and works with you to find solutions to issues. They have taken items we had issues with before and used those to create updates so that the issue is handled better in the future.
It has been difficult at sometimes, the support people at one point told me that they couldn't tell me information about OfficeScan because it was knowledge that was passed down from engineer to engineer. The issue was that if you used the msi for the install any further installs would require the msi to have the same exact name or else the install fails and corrupts the install. This information is not listed anywhere on trends website. Support kept trying to get me to use the exe for installs instead, but we use SCCM and msi's work better. We had to write a script to come up with a solution so that we could uninstall the software and install the new software. Trend did provide the technical expertise to help with the script and had us work with one of the developers in order to resolve that issue. So they did fix their screw up but it took a while and several complaints.
Our version of SolarWinds was old and running on old hardware, but it was way easier to setup and do things with. It did not do everything N-able does such as patch management, or at least we didn't have a module to do so if one existed. However it definitely seemed easier to use and possibly more stable.
For me, Trend Micro Apex One with its low performance is the best option at the time to buy a solution like this, with its flexibility through on-premises or saas deployment options you can choose the option that best fix to you, has an advanced automated threat detection and response against an ever-growing variety of threats.
Since the product is a full suite of protection rolled into a single product, we've seen ROI through cost reduction and simplified management. And while we haven't measured performance, one would logically assume that systems will perform better with a single product installed vs several.
While we haven't measured performance, one would logically assume that systems will perform better with a single product installed vs several.
