AppGate cured our COVID-19 remote worker issues!
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use Appgate as a VPN and access control for our remote workers. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck and we had to transition to a 100% WFH policy, we suddenly realized that our existing VPN solution wasn't working. It was manually managed, had very little in the way of access control or access restrictions, and the client on Windows based computers was unstable at best. The head point of the existing VPN system was also located at the office rather than the datacenter and this resulted in extended outages for employees if there was a power outage at the office or the internet circuit at the office was out.
Pros
- Super granular access control that can be set up easily.
- Fault tolerance. The system lets you set up several redundant controllers as well as multiple redundant and load balanced gateways.
- Excellent audit trails and logging.
Cons
- Live logging in the client. Currently you have to "download" the logs into a zip file and then open that zipfile to look at the logs. There's no logfile to tail or watch.
- Load balancing between controllers could be better. Currently relies on round robin DNS and sometimes a browser will pick a different IP than previous and you'll get a big "LOST CONNECTION TO CONTROLLER" message.
Likelihood to Recommend
It is best suited for larger companies with lots of remote workers that need complex access management. We've barely scratched the surface on what Appgate can do via its API.
