Cato Networks Suite

The solution was easy to install, configure, and deploy, from the administrators perspective. The ability to have it auto start when a user logs in to their endpoint has saved countless hours on my service desk troubleshooting the issues that arise when an endpoint is off the domain for too long.

Currently the feature that gives me the most grief is the re-authentication sequence for the VPN client. If a user is actively using their system and the client goes to re-authenticate it opens a the SSO portal in a background tab in their browser, and then users are not sure how to proceed and our service desk gets calls. It would be nice if either the SSO portal was opened in the foreground, or there was "captive portal" behavior where if they tried to open up another site, they would get redirected to the SSO portal. Really it comes down to user training, but its not exactly intuitive as it stands.

easy deployment and simple admin panel to learn.

you will have a weekly maintenance downtime of about 15 mins.
they do update the software which is a good thing, but you will be down for that said period weekly which is a pain for operations who require 24/7.

- Edge firewall protection as a service rather than on-prem hardware that requires constant updating and lifecycle replacement/support.
- Remote access methods that connects remote users directly to private backbone network and from there to resources. Lessens requirement for all traffic to flow through main office network for resource access, removes insecure split tunneling for internet access.
- Ability to aggregate multiple WAN sources and software defined network QoS and traffic management, and redundancy should one WAN provider experience outage.
- Local PoPs mean users connect to closest/fastest ingress to Cato Network, including Ashburn AWS PoP and MS data centers for our cloud-based resources.
- AD directory sync to import VPN users and groups and also provide directory awareness (traffic can be labeled by specific AD user and/or machine).

Like any other change between vendor offerings, there is a learning curve on migrating existing policies and routes/uses to the new setup (for example, firewall setups and NAT/port forwarding were different than our Fortinet equipment). Frequent usage and help from deployment specialists have lessened this and increased our self-reliance and understanding for day-to-day use.