Meraki Advanced Security License vs Enterprise: What’s the difference?
When clients purchase a Meraki firewall or MX security appliance, they often wonder what the difference is between an Advanced Security license and an Enterprise license, and what they actually do for you.
As you’ll see in the chart below, the Meraki Advanced Security edition is the more robust of the two, but regardless of which one you choose, it’s important to note that you must have a valid license in order for the firewall to work properly.
Before making your decision, understand that the MX licensing you choose is uniform across your Organization. For example, if you have 30 appliances, you cannot have 20 using the Advanced edition and 10 using Enterprise. If you want to use Enterprise Edition for just a few of the appliances, you need to create two Organizations – one for your appliances with the Enterprise Edition, and another for those with the Advanced Security Edition.
Benefits of Meraki Advanced Security License
With security and compliance top of mind, the Advanced Security edition is our company standard. This license provides added security features that can help protect your network from various attacks. Added features include:
- Intrusion Detection / Prevention – The Meraki network will consistently monitor for and block intrusion attempts
- Geography Based Firewall Rules – Prevent traffic to or from any particular country by simply selecting that country from a drop-down menu in the Meraki dashboard.
- Content Filtering – Block certain categories of websites based on your specific organizational policies.
- YouTube for Schools – Allows students to watch educational videos while limiting access to other, non-educational videos
- Web Search Filtering – Enforce Safesearch for all users in your network
- AMP – Advanced Malware Protection is breach prevention, continuous monitoring of malicious behavior, quick malware detection, and malware removal. This extra level of protection stops advanced threats that are often missed b other security layers. This feature alone is enough to boost the advanced security edition above the enterprise license.
Updated 10/8/21: New SD-WAN License for Meraki MX Appliances
Meraki MX Security and SD-WAN Licensing
Organizations of all sizes and across all industries rely on the MX cloud-managed firewalls to deliver secure connectivity to hub locations or multi-cloud environments. In 2021, Meraki announced a new licensing option for MX devices called Secure SD-WAN Plus.
The Secure SD-WAN Plus license includes all the advanced security features plus advanced analytics with machine learning and Smart SaaS QoE. It is ideal for organizations reliant on apps served by SaaS, IaaS, or data center locations.
Benefits of SD-WAN
The Secure SD-WAN Plus license has helped thousands of organizations rapidly save costs by reducing their dependence on MPLS without compromising on performance. It gives you control over how internet traffic is directed and prioritized across multiple sites/branches. It enables the network to adjust to changes in performance to ensure that traffic like VoIP calls get precedence over say, YouTube videos.
The Secure SD-WAN Plus license provides all the features of the Enterprise license and Advanced Security license PLUS:
- Web App Health Analytics
- WAN Health Analytics
- VoIP Health Analytics
- Smart breakout
- SD-Internet
How To Get Started
Once you’ve chosen your MX appliance, you have the option to pair it one of the following license types:
Enterprise license or Advanced Security license or Secure SD-WAN Plus license
Please note that Advanced Security and Secure SD-WAN Plus licensing and features are currently only available on MX devices, not on Z-Series devices, or any other Meraki series of devices.
If you have a licensing question or would like to get started with a Meraki MX appliance, please reach out to our team for assistance at sales@itrw.net or 616.837.6930
