NordLayer provides cybersecurity tools for businesses of any size or work model developed by the standard of NordVPN. NordLayer helps organizations secure networks and enhance internet security and modernizes network and resource access with technical improvements aligning with the best regulatory compliance standards. Helping organizations to adopt FWaaS, ZTNA, and SWG principles, NordLayer is focused on the Security Service Edge of cybersecurity services.…
$8
per month if Yearly plan per user
Okta
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Okta is an enterprise grade identity management service, built in the cloud. IT can manage access across any application, person or device. Whether the people are employees, partners or customers or whether the applications are in the cloud, on premises or on a mobile device, Okta helps IT become more secure and maintain compliance. The Okta service provides directory services, single sign-on, authentication, provisioning, workflow, and built in reporting. ment systems.
$6
per month per user
WatchGuard Network Security
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
WatchGuard Network Security is a network security and firewall software. WatchGuard includes secure Wi-Fi, multi-factor authentication, and network intelligence products and services designed for SMB’s.
NordLayer has become an invaluable resource for our security posture and day-to-day activity. The primary use case is preventing staff members from accessing sensitive resources on an unencrypted connection, applying NordLayer and conditional access policies in congruency. The ability to create teams and assigned them to specific dedicated servers is also helpful and allows for further security segmentation
Should be well-suited for a SaaS business organisation as they have a lot of internal applications and need a role-based authentication system between the various teams, improving security and audit log system to account for any breaches. It integrates well with internal applications such as Salesforce and Oracle. Best when need of SSO.
We use it to secure groups of systems instead of whole networks. The easy to configure rulesets allow us to meet the needs of multiple compliance standards without losing our minds. The rule use reporting has allowed easy debugging when tracing issues. Further the ability to have rules that are hostname specific instead of just IP based rules has made it extremely easy to write rules overall.
The browser plugin needs some work, or some research about what browser/OS restrictions may limit its functionality. Ours does not work at all even after contacting support so we do not use it
Toast/Windows notifications scheduled or deployed through admin center would be amazing. The ability to remind a user who has been disconnected for X hours would be a great feature
I do have to reset my password quite frequently. However, I don't think there is really a way to improve this, as it's a good security measure.
It makes me re-sign in a couple of times a day, sometimes if I haven't used my laptop for a couple of hours, and sometimes just randomly throughout the day.
It doesn't remember my devices, either my laptop or phone. so it always calls that out.
Okta has a passion to provide secure and scalable identity solution. Their passion has come across as advocacy in a way that has deepened my knowledge of the field of authentication. I took identity for granted before but after seeing features such as external authentication I know that Okta can enable my business to reach new heights
I'm giving this note to WatchGuard Network Security due to its ease of daily support (after acquiring necessary knowledge in the solution), which allows agility in configuration changes, its integration of several reliable security features (such as SSL VPN, VPN Virtual Interfaces between companies, and others) and functional and stability in operation, with no downtime in the equipment due to problems or malfunctions
Although it might take some time to figure out, we have been able to use WatchGuard's online reference library and tech support to create/implement/modify all of our filtering rules and exceptions needed. There really has not been a shortcoming other than perhaps a learning curve.
The Okta Identity Cloud advertises 4 9's of reliability and I would go as far to say that it may even do better than that. As a true Global organization that operates in just about every region of the world, we have yet to have an issue with The Okta Identity Cloud that has impacted our business operations.
Availability has always been a strong point of this product, it is rare that watchguard does not have a solution for customers' network monitoring needs.
From my perspective, for the things that my group uses it for, Okta is very fast. It is as least as fast as the local password database methods that it replaces on our campus enterprise services. I do not believe that it slows anything down at all. In fact, not having to think too much about the login, because they all look the same, probably speeds things up somewhat.
The performance of WatchGuard Network Security is very good, in the years that we have used the solution we have only had a single error and Watchguard itself was able to solve it. Furthermore, when purchasing any product, the partner always evaluates the capacity of the solution to recommend the most appropriate product for our needs.
We've had a few support cases over the years and every case has been handled by the Okta support team beautifully. We received clear answers to questions we had regarding setup and even were provided simple to follow guides on how to setup their product to use with custom applications.
We have only had to contact them once during the initial set up to help bring the internet back on line. After that for the most part our systems have been automated, and could easily be checked form their online FAQ and Knowledge base that they provide. Everything else is easily handled from their browser based interface
We participate to a in person training and the three days of learning was really useful and complete to gain skill to solve the major part of the problem we encounter during our life. And more the in person training give us the opportunity to create a network with other WatchGuard partner.
I had my key information for setting up the firewall, and they assisted me in finding the settings and appropriate places to enter data. They also helped troubleshoot when I didn't understand some of their feature concepts, and we got it running.
Okta is far superior in terms of integrations, user interface, automation, and connectivity. Additionally, Okta offers better support and availability, and a more robust solution across every capacity Entra competes in. Okta simply works, whereas Microsoft Entra has a large overhead that is difficult to use when configuring things.
I was not involved with the decision making for WatchGuard versus another product. However, I know WatchGuard is significantly less expensive than other brands. My overall preference would be Ubiquiti due to their continuous improvement of the product with tons of great features. I know WatchGuard is making great advances, but the progress seems slower in comparison.
Being a cloud native application, The Okta Identity Cloud is extremely scalable and easy to setup. By integrating into existing directories and applications via standard techniques and protocols, it is very easy to both initially setup and add additional users as required. Once all the necessary integrations are setup, it's a simple rinse and repeat process to onboard additional users (which can be automated with imports as well)
This product is very scalable since previously everything related to Watchguard was on premises but that has now changed with the inclusion of watchguard cloud. Now the product has evolved to have full control of firewalls at the cloud level.
Increased user productivity - not fighting with IT all the time!
Though there could be a bit more on the 'lost/broken phone' front, the self-service eliminates time that would typically be spent waiting for IT support/admins.
An Okta account under a certain domain allows proper access from the get-go, and under certain apps (such as our HRIS), adding members is easy.
Improved security - deactivating Okta removes all account access across multiple platforms instantly for leavers.
