Sonicwall Analytics and Analyzer - what to know before buying?
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We are using Sonicwall Analytics for monitoring logs of Sonicwall firewalls deployed in our branch offices. We are using an on-premises version where we have installed it on a server. With Analytics, we are now able to get reports of users, for more than 30 days. Each report is having granular details of the log type we select. It can be users' login or logout activities, their web browsing activities, we are also getting custom reports on the basis of user names if we want to extract any particular user's report.
Pros
- Consolidated Logging
- Reporting
- Custom and predefined templates for reporting
- Ease of integration with firewall and other tools
- Similar GUI and web console like of Sonicwall UTM and firewalls
Cons
- We get reports on the basis of features, like system reports, content/url filtering reports. There must be an option to get reports no the basis of complete user activity, or user timeline
- They could have bundled or included management along with reporting
- Pricing considering only collecting of logs and generating reports only from Sonicwall firewalls, I feel is high.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you have Sonicwall firewalls, and want to store logs and generate custom reports, then this additional investment is worthy. If you only want to have storage for your logs, then I won't recommend this. You can opt for a Syslog tool or a SIEM platform for analyzing the same and storing logs.
