BigFix Reviews

For me, Inventory Services is heavily used in our environment. The patch management suite, I would say is the second, and very important for us to ensure that we are maintaining our PCI and SOX compliance for the company I work with. In addition to that, we have server automation that we use, security and compliance module, lifecycle management, and OSD. So all of those things are really important for us.

Clearly, with Inventory Services, the speed is really key. In retail, we need answers very, very quickly. Other competitor products (which we do have in house) just don't compare.

Web reports. The interface for web reports is still pretty basic, and really hasn't changed in the seven years that we've had the product, so that would be one thing that would be really nice.

I really don't know that there's really much more that can be added that's already not currently in the pipeline, or currently exists.

It's been stable. I've used the product for seven years and I haven't had an issue that has brought things down. So it's been very stable.

Scalability is also really great. We have a very small client base in comparison to what we could potentially do, so scalability is wonderful.

In the seven years, I think I've submitted maybe four to five problems. That's it. Response time has always been good.

When we're selecting a solution, we want a vendor that we can trust, that is on top of it, on point, and thorough.

I would say I would give it a nine. Only because as I stated earlier, web reports, if that were to improve, I'd give it a ten. There's always room for improvement.

Really understand what your environment is like. Make sure that your network team is engaged with all of that.

We use the solution to push patches to our servers, primarily for desktop and server security updates.

We proved the endpoint's effective delivery of software updates and conducted a network inventory in BigFix. This significantly improved the completion status and generated reports on the percentage of patching immediately after Microsoft releases the patches. This report is easily available for our end-user computing platform.

Desktop patching is the most valuable feature, because with servers, we have complete control over them, and we can simply push patches to the servers. However, desktops are one of the most common sources of leakage, which can occur for different reasons if patches are not uploaded on time. We have significantly improved the desktop side of it. This includes endpoints such as laptops, desktops, and other mobile devices.

The deployment has room for improvement and can be more streamlined.

The automation has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for one year.

I give the stability an eight out of ten.

I give the scalability an eight out of ten.

We previously used Microsoft Windows Server Update Services, but we switched because we could not have a complete schedule for a server to receive updates. We have a few other features in BigFix, such as managing network endpoints, discovering endpoints, and a scanner. All of these features are not available with Microsoft and Linux patching.

It is very important to use the solution effectively. In most installations, we deploy without configuring all the features and implementing them, so we do not gain much from it. Therefore, I think some automation processes can be adjusted to prevent the zero-rate thread.

The deployment phase was somewhat complex due to the need to open many firewalls within the network. Considering the large scale of the company, with fifty thousand employees around the world, I believe that in my previous job, we could have improved communication by reducing the number of ports required for the servers to communicate within the network.

We had a project manager assigned from the BigFix team who listed out all the requirements for effective communication to be established. However, the challenge of implementing BigFix in multiple countries and coordinating with multiple network teams in order to open the required communication between the firewalls was a seemingly hopeless task. If the application uses specific codes that are common in nature, typically those ports are already allowed in the network.

The deployment took us three months.

I give the pricing a seven out of ten. The cost is slightly high.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

In the deployment phase, we need to get the firewall ports that are required and open ports to the Internet for the DNC-based servers to communicate and download patches. These tasks need to be taken care of during the deployment phase, as it will be very difficult to troubleshoot and fix things once they are implemented. Therefore, the deployment phase needs to be covered effectively. Thinking of the features at a later point in time will not solve all the problems.

When evaluating solutions, there were very few in the market that provided most of the security features. When we evaluated BigFix, it was the VMDR functionality that stood out compared to the others. We would have to use a piecemeal solution or multiple products to be configured in the system. The effectiveness of BigFix was secondary, but we at least had some basic information available regarding security, VMDR management, detection, and response.

I'm a full stack developer and we are customers of BigFix. 

All the vendor patches are synchronized automatically, which is something you don't find in other tools. It enables an unlimited number of management fixes to be created automatically. For software deployments and software package staging, we can easily use a web script and deploy directly which is another great feature.

Improvements can be made when it comes to in-place and OS upgrades. For example, SCCM provides a feature upgrade that's automatically synchronized, whereas in BigFix it doesn't synchronize for feature updates for Windows 10.
I'd also like to see some more advanced reporting tools. 

I've been using this solution for about four years. 

The solution is generally stable although sometimes our customers will report some issues and it's not always easy to find the source. 

The scalability is fine. 

We don't really use customer support. We have enough knowledge for reporting and deployments, and we have a TRC that allows us to access the remote of the end-users and check any problems. 

The initial setup is straightforward. 

If you compare BigFix with SCCM, both have their own specialty tools. In some cases, I prefer BigFix and in others I prefer SCCM. If you're talking about patching, I'd go with BigFix but if it's connected to image management, then I'd go with SCCM.

I rate this solution seven out of 10. 

We rely on BigFix to provide patch remediations in conjunction with instant response engagements that we have. Once CyFIR finds a problem, we tend to leverage BigFix to automate the solution across the entire environment.

We rely on BigFix as part of our consulting engagements. It's more efficient from a visibility and discovery standpoint on the initial phase, the consulting engagement. It also increases our efficiencies on the remediation phase of our engagements. 

We use it to compare the current state of patch and diff that with where it should be and to also push CVE patches and things out that are specific to a problem we have found. 

The combination of CyFIR and BigFix has allowed one of our major customers, one of the top Fortune 50 financial firms in the world, to reduce their forensic investigator count by about 4 FTE with the combination of CyFIR and BigFix.

Compared to SCCM it's much more robust, much more capable, and you can be much more targeted with SCCM. The challenge with SCCM is it doesn't have much of a discovery module so if we're going in blind to a network, we really want to know what's there, not what they think is there. BigFix provides us that picture.

With BigFix, the ability to do device discovery and the installation of our CyFIR agent across the environment is a very autonomous, automatic-type function that is a very significant feature for us. We combine CyFIR and BigFix to provide a total cybersecurity solution, including computer forensics disk imaging, memory analysis imaging. As part of that, we tend to leverage BigFix from the remediation side and from the installation side. 

The peer to peer file transfers as a solution are fine. 

I'd like to see better API integration with BigFix. We have some tremendous API capability inside of CyFIR and the ability to take textual search results, for example, and bring that back into the BigFix dashboard. This would be of extreme interest to us and our customers. 

It's very stable. 

Scalability is very good. 

Their technical support is very responsive. 

We're always looking for innovation and the most efficient and effective way to serve our client base. BigFix came up on our radar as part of that continual enhancement search.

From our perspective, it's pretty easy engagement. It's not just for our network, we use this for our engagements with our clients so the complexity is typically not introduced by BigFix but by the customer client networks and their specific requirements.

We implemented it ourselves. 

The fewer consulting hours that we spend is ROI for us. BigFix enables us to produce maximum results.

I would rate it a 9.5 out of ten. It's pretty close to being perfect. It's stellar.

We use this solution to import management across all of our stores, desktops and server infrastructures.

Having higher visibility on patching level, on patching successful, and non-successful has been a way that BigFix has improved my organization. Also, the ability to customize the content to do what we need it to do is very powerful and very flexible for us. Finally, in the area of custom interfaces, like REST API, really gives us the ability to provide for our external customers.

It has immensely helped to reduce network traffic when it comes to downloading patches. Downloading once and distributing to all endpoints applicable greatly reduces bandwidth.

The most valuable feature is the ability to make the platform do almost anything you want it to do. Out-of-the-box features are very powerful, but with creativity you can make the platform do almost anything you want it to do.

I would like to see more flexibility on how queries are run through the API. We've got some of our desktop customers that use the API to query a lot, and that actually impacts our server automation plan sometimes. On a day when they might be heavily querying and it hits a web report server, that messes with our server automation plans and the reporting for it. The server automation should be hitting the actual BigFix database versus the web reports.

I would also like to see improvement on configuring where the logs go. It's been annoying for both of our desktop teams. Even on the Linux side, we should be able to set the property to have the logs go to a different location. It's annoying because sometimes if you need to clear out the best data you end up losing all the logs. You can try to save it off but it's an extra step. If you try to move those logs ahead of time with the client property it shouldn't be an issue, install the BigFix agent into a nonstandard location. It's important for some of our UNIX endpoints who don't give enough space. It should be supported from the install, out of the box.

It'll scale almost as big as you need it. You just throw hardware at it.

In regards to technical support, level 2 is very helpful, but when things need to get more visibility you can get their core developers to help which is really helpful.

The initial setup was complex. There are a lot of steps to set it up, at least on the Linux side.

License management isn't quite as easy as it should be to deal with the licensing. You need to take the server down to import the new licenses which I find to be annoying. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten. It's incredibly flexible. I've managed and worked with several endpoint management solutions like ITMS, or ZENworks. I haven't worked with SCCM, but it's like if SCCM was a Ferrari, BixFix is an incredibly tweak-able, tunable, indie car. It can do a lot of cool stuff but you have to tweak it, and you have to know how to use it. 

I would advise someone considering this solution to throw out all of your expectation on how you think things need to work. Throw out how you did things before. Don't try to shoehorn what you did before into a product you might move to because it's probably going to do things better than you did before. 

Server management patch management and software deployment, where we have multiple platforms, such as Windows Servers, Linux, Unix, etc.

• Patch compliance reached 100%.
• Patch management, because it significantly improved the patch compliance.

Patch management, because it very much improved the patch compliance and has the capability to manage Windows and non-Windows clients.

• OSD and other features listed in SCCM, like desired configuration management
• Internet-based client management
• Offline patching of virtual machines
• Network Access Protection (NAP) technologies to prevent computers with vulnerabilities from gaining access to networks.

I believe that the agent on the endpoint is very powerful. It can do a lot. It can patch, it can get information on the asset, and it's just a very powerful tool.

It helps maintain our environment, so all of our systems are patched and up to date. It also helps provide security settings to the endpoints as well. We can also push out applications and different settings.

They're actually adding some of the features that I wanted, such as detecting, which allows us to fix things remotely. If there's a security issue, we could actually stop the security issue in its tracks. I think they need to polish up a little bit, and it seems like IBM is now finally starting to invest money into the solution. I think that's going to help its brand name.

The product is very scalable, but it can also be very complex. If you don't set things up right then you could have problems. You just need to know what you're doing.

Technical support has sometimes been very good, and sometimes it's been not so good. It just depends. I would say that in tier one sometimes they know, sometimes they don't, but then once you go up to tier two or tier three they're definitely experts in their field.

Previously we were using the Microsoft solution, Windows Software Update Services. That's a very all or none solution which is not as granular. Regarding BigFix, I like that I can push out updates to systems within their patch window and make sure that they're complete and done within that patch window.

The setup could be simple or it could be complex. It depends on your environment.

I primarily consult with other companies for their software asset management purposes. I use BigFix to help deploy the IBM license metric tool and BigFix inventory.

The older version of the tools that I use also included the connectivity aspect, and the fact that the tool now has it separate from the collection of usage data makes the deployment of these tools much easier.

The fact that it works with endpoints so well is the most valuable feature. A big part of the collection of IBM License Metric Tool data is from the endpoint so it really helps.

Even at a very large number of endpoints, it's very stable.

Their technical support is very good. The PMRs I have had to open with IBM are answered pretty well. I have nothing but praise for these people.

I self-taught for this online, so the initial setup was a little difficult to pick up at first. I had to create a couple of testing environments and destroy them in order to learn how to use it. There was a lot of trial and error, a lot of reading of the manuals. 

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten. I'd give it an eleven but it's off the scale. It does what it says it's supposed to do. Once you get over the learning curve, it is pretty easy to use. Plugging in the endpoints is pretty simple.

I would advise someone considering this solution to hands down use it.