TrustRadius Insights for Carbon Black App Control are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Flexibility in creating policies: Many users appreciate the ability to create different policies for different users and departments, allowing for more flexibility and tailored access levels. This feature has been mentioned by several reviewers as a major strength of the product.
Valuable User Exchange feature: The User Exchange feature, which provides access to experts in case of incidents, is seen as a valuable resource and likened to having a free full-time employee. Numerous users have praised this feature for its effectiveness in providing assistance during critical situations.
Highly effective enforcement endpoints: The ability to have high enforcement endpoints, where only approved files are allowed to run, is highly praised for its effectiveness in preventing malicious applications from infecting the environment. Several users have emphasized how this feature has significantly enhanced their security measures.
We choose VMware Carbon Black App Control for the application whitelisting and execution control solution. It is more suitable for fixed devices but with rules, you can do anything you need and implement the solution in a dynamic environment, any critical infrastructure will benefit from it. Also if it is properly deployed you can avoid using many security agents and, therefore, offload most intensive checks.
Pros
Controls file writes, executions of the scripts
Defends from process injections, memory protection
Visibility and lock down posibilities
Cons
More frequently updates of "Software Updaters".
Possibilities to tag within Yara rules.
Overall it is the best whitelisting solution I have used.
Likelihood to Recommend
It is more suited to lock down critical systems and servers to prevent unwanted changes, although you can use it on daily basis on laptops and desktops, it needs constant attention and events analysis. For some scenarios i.e. financial institutions it is a must-have solution, as App Control now is a requirement 5 of PCI DSS.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (11-50 employees)
We use VMware Carbon Black App Control [(formerly Cb Protection)] across our organization. It is used for end point and server protection. We moved from one security platform to Carbon Black and it was a great choice. Carbon Black is much more advanced and gives us much better insight into our end points.
Pros
Ease of use
One dashboard to review all the information
Advanced threat protection
Cons
Perhaps more specific training.
Likelihood to Recommend
VMware Carbon Black App Control [(formerly Cb Protection)] provides an in depth review of end points making it easier for administrators to review what is going on and to isolate any issues or concerns. The diagnostic tools in the dashboard are very advanced yet easy to follow and understand. It gives you a clear picture of the system.
We used Cb Protection as a replacement for primary antivirus/anti-malware. We had a different product that was not reliable and found that the concept behind Cb Protect made sense. Use a list of known good publishers and reputable software, and then blacklist the rest. We still ran an antivirus as a secondary, but we didn't have to go with a big name with lots of extraneous features, and (as far as I am aware) never had an incident where any potential malicious items moved past Cb Protect to hit the antivirus.
Pros
Device Control - you can view and allow/disallow the ability for certain devices to be used in your environment. Specifically we used this with USB drives. If you have one you want to use - whitelist the serial number. The rest can't be used. Simple and easy.
Software blocking. If you have an extremely dynamic software base (I doubt this is likely) this could get a bit annoying, but for most organizations like ours where we have specific applications that are required, and then the rest are a bit of an afterthought, it's easy to whitelist the correct applications that you want to be able to run in your environment. The rest can't run (in high enforcement). Users are able to easily request new applications, and you can set certain groups to be able to approve it on their own.
Solid platform - with few exceptions setting up new software was very easy (Dragon Medical was a bit tricky, but worked through it with support). Once you have your rules set up and the initial setup done, you tend not to have to do much of anything except to update on occasion and deal with a few requests for applications to be unblocked, or publishes approved.
Cons
Cost - Cb Protect is part of now a 3 fold protection offering by Carbon Black. The other parts give you visibility and a more traditional antivirus (Conifer I believe). Once you price all three together, things get expensive. You get what you pay for I guess, as alternatives cost less, but you do lose out on features.
On-Prem - I don't believe this has changed, but when we first set up the only option was on-prem. This has a LOT of benefits, but with more mobile users, it can become a bit of a hassle for management and updating policies. A cloud option, or cloud connector would be nice.
Application whitelisting outperforms traditional AV/Malware protection but also takes a bit more babysitting. You end up spending a lot of time looking at new programs etc coming down the pipe. A great example is products that self update. These can become a pain as the product updates typically don't show up as signed, or not signed the way Protect looks for, so you end up whitelisting them as they come up, and depending on how often and how many you have in the environment it can be annoying.
Protect is nice, but you really need to also have Response to see a holistic view. Else you're going endpoint to endpoint if you are breached/infected, and that gets tedious quickly. However this also adds to the cost.
Likelihood to Recommend
Cb Protect is best suited somewhere where you want to maximize the lockdown of workstations. So moving past no local admin rights to blocking specific applications and peripherals. The idea would be to have a list of applications you want to run, and then anything else is not able to be used. As stated prior, if you have a very fluid environment where you are having all sorts of new applications installed frequently (I feel for you!!) this is still do-able, but it misses the general idea. I think especially in environments that are more sensitive to new applications, like banks, healthcare systems etc, this is a good fit. The ability to look at application levels, drift, unapproved software etc is very useful.
