Harmony Email & Collaboration (Avanan)

Check Point Harmony  Email & Collaboration serves as my main protection platform for Office 365  SaaS platforms, including email, OneDrive, SharePoint , and I utilize some training features. In my daily work, Check Point Harmony  Email & Collaboration has become our number one protection platform; it reviews all information that passes through our Office 365  and makes the final decision on whether something poses a risk to the organization. Every day, we review each of the alerts regarding user interactions at the spam, phishing, malware levels and analyze the threat behavior our organization is receiving, including which departments face the most attacks, what is the number one target, and what types of attacks we receive daily, such as phishing, graymail, spam, malware, etc.

The process of reviewing alerts in Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration is automatic; the tool executes the entire process we have configured, checking and taking actions to block anything suspicious automatically, without any action from us. Essentially, we connect to check if the actions taken are correct and whether there are any false positives; otherwise, the tool operates 100% automatically based on the parameters we have configured in each rule.

When Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration detects something suspicious, it runs a certain number of intelligence engines that analyze the data source, the domain's reputation, and the current interaction of that domain with our platform. If it is the first time an email arrives from that domain, it alerts the user; if the email contains content that could be malicious, the user is also alerted, and a score is assigned to the email. If the score exceeds the thresholds we have set, it is classified as a low, medium, or high threat, resulting in automatic blocking and alerting the user about the action taken, allowing the user to interact with the platform and report false positives if they believe the email is valid.

Additionally, I utilize Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration as a training tool; its new Security Training module allows us to conduct department-specific training on phishing, controlled tests, and provides a score for our organization, along with further training to raise awareness within the security department. Other very specific use cases involve user engagement, as we strive to provide as many actionable reports to users as possible to help them be aware of the risks they face daily and how these risks could affect the organization as a whole.

In my opinion, the best feature of Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration is its ease of integration with platforms like Office and Google Cloud , allowing for automatic integration that results in a robust platform that makes decisions based on your organization with just a couple of steps. The most used features include email tracking, which allows us to easily follow up on emails and conversations, helping us understand what is happening within the organization when an alert is detected, providing more context rather than simply blocking an email due to detecting something malicious. Its intelligence engines also review how interactions occur within the platform, and the integration with inspection engines and our infrastructure knowledge at the email level makes it one of its best features.

Those integrations definitely help me save time and improve security, as we no longer need to manually review each alert and are less concerned about false positive reviews. The tool operates automatically, making our workload easier, while also significantly enhancing our overall security.

Since acquiring Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration, we have seen an increase in the blocking of Business Email Compromise, phishing, and spam emails, drastically reducing our exposure to email security risks. We have noticed a reduction in accepted phishing attempts since we started using Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration compared to the protection of Microsoft 365. We have graphs showing that Microsoft 365 detects approximately 65% of threats, while Check Point processes the rest of that 65%, thus providing better protection than traditional solutions.

To improve Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration, one notable enhancement would be to fully integrate the DMARC and SPF protections they have; once this is correctly implemented, I believe it will further improve internal email protection outcomes.

We have only encountered some false positives that required us to whitelist certain third-party domains, mostly due to their poor email configuration preventing DMARC or SPF alerts. Frankly, the platform performs very well, and we have not experienced any other issues since we began using it.

Currently, I believe that no further improvements are needed for Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration.

I have used Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration for seven or eight years.

The platform is very stable; we have not encountered any downtime or stability-related issues, so I would say we have had 100% uptime.

The scalability of Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration is very straightforward; we experience an annual growth rate of about 10 to 15%, and scaling up is simple, as we only increase licensing, and the rest happens automatically. User synchronization and administration detect user license activation, and protection begins from day one.

I have not needed to open any support cases with Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration, which indicates that my experience with support has been very good.

Before using Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration, we were utilizing Microsoft 365 with Defender for email protection.

We switched from Microsoft Defender to Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration because we had an event where Defender failed to detect a threat, allowing phishing and spam emails to reach our directors. We chose Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration because we felt it has better security engines and a more detailed administration of internal security and event management. It also provides graphs and statistics to illuminate how these events occur within the organization, allowing us to identify which departments require closer monitoring or which ones are the main targets for threats, such as directors, purchasing, and HR. We evaluated various tools before choosing Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration, including Proofpoint, but ultimately, we decided to go with Check Point.

I would advise others considering using Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration to conduct a proof of concept directly with Check Point to set up the initial configuration and see the platform working at full capacity before making a decision, and that they can compare the detection parameters provided by Check Point with any other email tools they are evaluating.

We are customers and do not have any relationship with the vendor or partner.

We have seen a return on investment with Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration; specifically, we have drastically reduced the time it takes to detect and stop a threat, which has been cut by over 2 hours from detection to the automatic blocking of the threat.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration is quite good; the pricing is based on the number of users. There are three types of licenses that range from basic to advanced, with a Complete version offering DLP  characteristics, but if you do not plan to create detection or data protection policies, I believe that the Advanced license is sufficient. It is a very straightforward licensing approach, done per user and for periods of 1 to 5 years.

I have given this review a rating of 10.

Check Point Harmony  Email & Collaboration protects against phishing and malicious attachments across email and cloud tools. I use the Gmail collaboration and ensure suspicious links or files are blocked before they reach users. It helps enforce consistent security policies, reduce the risk of account compromise, and provide quick visibility into attempted attacks.

One example of how I used Check Point Harmony  Email & Collaboration to block a threat was when a phishing email disguised as a Gmail login request was sent to several employees. The solution automatically flagged the suspicious email, quarantined the message, and prevented users from clicking the malicious links.

Another way Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration has helped in similar situations is by consistently stopping targeted spear phishing attacks. In one case, attackers tried to impersonate a trusted vendor with a fake invoice, but the system flagged the unusual sender behavior and quarantined the emails before anyone could open them.

The best features Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration offers are the advanced phishing protection and its seamless integration with collaboration tools.

The advanced phishing protection is proactive in catching threats before users even see them. It does not just block obvious spam; it can spot subtle impersonation attempts and suspicious links that appear legitimate at first glance. The seamless integration has made my workflow easier because the same protection applies across email and collaboration tools without extra configuration.

Another feature is the detailed reporting and analytics that come with Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration. They provide clear visibility into attempted attacks, user activity, and overall trends, which helps the team fine-tune policies and demonstrate the value of the solution to management.

It has impacted my organization positively by reducing the number of phishing attempts that reach our users and giving us greater confidence in every communication. It has improved efficiency because suspicious emails are automatically quarantined, saving the team time that used to be spent on manual investigation. I estimate the team saves at least three to five hours per week, thanks to the automatic quarantine and clear visibility features.

The only area for improvement is the language of the support. The support is only available in English.

I have been using Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration for six years.

Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration is very stable.

I have no problem with the scalability of Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration.

I find the customer support to be very great and faster. I would rate the customer support a 10.

I did not previously use a different solution.

From my experience, the return on investment is time saved.

I find my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing to be great. I have no problem with the pricing.

I did not evaluate other options before choosing Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration.

Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration is an excellent tool, and I recommend it for other companies. It is a complete solution with excellent protection and a big, modern solution. I give this product a rating of 10.