IBM Security Guardium Data Protection Reviews

Our primary use case of this product is for privileged database activity monitoring. We are customers of IBM and I'm the DBA.

We use the GBDI feature which is very helpful for our needs. The centralization of data is probably the most valuable feature because we span multiple database technologies. 

In general, I find the solution a little complicated to use. Another problem is that we have  encrypted traffic on Oracle and it requires a database outage. That's creates problems because you're monitoring critical systems and they don't like outages.

The solution has been pretty stable for us. 

Our environment is pretty small for scalability purposes, so scalability is not relevant. In terms of the collectors agency, you can always add them. From that perspective, it's scalable, but it introduces more complexity because the more collectors you have, the more management is required. We don't allow people to connect and use self-service. We produce reports for the application teams from the tool ourselves, which is why we only have around 15 users involved in deployment, maintenance and reporting.

The professional services we initially received were really good. Technical support has been okay; it's not outstanding, but it hasn't been too bad either.

The initial setup is quite complex so we used IBM professional services for implementation. We're still in the process of deploying, it's taking a while. That doesn't reflect on the solution; we're very lean with staff and I think that's probably the issue.

If I were choosing a solution now, I would probably look at Imperva and Insights, and go the agentless route, rather than deal with collectors. They still have them with the new system, but they're a little lighter weight. From a manageability perspective, from a scalability perspective, in terms of supporting model databases, they seem to be more viable solutions moving forward.

I rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We will primarily use the solution for protecting our database. We're still implementing the product. It's not fully in place just yet.

The solution is easy to use.

We've found the solution to be very stable.

The product has proven to be flexible.

The system, overall, is quite reliable.

The installation should be a bit easier. It's pretty hard to implement right now.

The solution is very expensive. It's expected, as IBM is known to be pricey. It would be nice if they could make it cheaper.

As we are still in the process of implementing the product, it's hard to discuss the features and what might be missing, or could be added. We need more time with the solution to see how it works or what's missing.

We've only been using the solution for a short time by now. We're in the middle of implementing it. It's likely only been a couple of weeks.

We have found the stability to be quite good. It doesn't crash or freeze. There are no bugs or glitches. Its performance has been very good so far.

The solution is very scalable. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so easily.

Only the administrators really deal with the solution at this time. There are four of us.

We did pay for it, therefore we do plan to continue to use it for the foreseeable future.

Our support is through a third-party service, and not directly through IBM itself.

It's been very good so far. They are helpful and responsive.

We did not previously use another solution before choosing this IBM product.

The installation is not straightforward at all. In fact, it is very, very complicated. We found the process to be quite difficult to handle. The hardest part is the tuning of the system, to make it work right.

The product is expensive, which is what you tend to expect from IBM products. It's not cheap.

We may be using version 11 of the product at this time.

We're still in the process of implementing the solution. It's still quite new to us.

Right now, I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten, however, I do need more time to really get to know it to evaluate it properly. I likely need another good six months or so with the solution before I can really rate it effectively.

Currently, my customer has 10 different types of databases for their various banking applications and they intend to deploy IBM Guardium Data Protection to secure their database activities. As soon as it is deployed, we're able to get some insights into what is going on with their databases, to help ensure the integrity of their data in the future.

Two banks are also working on two opportunities with IBM Guardium right now. I believe this is a compliance requirement; nowadays, everyone has to buy database protection. In that case, technically, Oracle will get the added advantage here, because most of the banks are already using Oracle database.

IBM Guardium Data Protection has better integration options than most of the leading competitors on the market, and the price is always better. 

One thing I'm always thinking with regard to Guardium Data Protection is that, when compared to Oracle AVDF, Oracle's often got the upper hand when it comes to the standard features. So I believe that needs to be addressed by IBM. 

Guardium Data Protection is far better in terms of external integration. But in terms of firewall features, like when you're blocking activities, it's as if Oracle AVDF simply has superior features. This is just from third-party observations, but the users of Oracle AVDF are saying that when it comes to the firewall and protection functionality, they're much more inclined to AVDF. Considering the competitive benefits that AVDF is providing compared to Data Protection, I can see that some improvement is required in terms of the firewall-related features.

Another observation I have is that industry resources are not available to handle this product, and I believe that deployment should be much easier than what we have right now. I'm thinking along the lines of some kind of wizard that makes it easier for users to get started right away. For example, to make it so they can do the deployment easier with drag and drop, etc.

It has to be more user-friendly so that anybody can deploy it, anybody can adopt it, and anybody can do the configuration. It has to be built in such a way that even if you are not a product expert, whether from IBM or otherwise, or that if you know only Word, then you can still configure it. So they have to offer that flexibility in the product.

They can hide the complexity by bringing in more GUI elements so that people can more easily get on board. And also they can introduce the knowledge base side by side so that whenever they are using the product, they can quickly check what exactly needs to be configured. You have Redbooks, and Redbooks can help but maybe they can include something extra. While users are installing maybe IBM can put in some guidance, "Okay, if you do this then you configure this and that."

At the same time, the market has lots of Oracle expertise here. But for IBM, there are no local resources available, and we are highly reliant on external resources. So, I would highly recommend that IBM initiates something like a certification campaign for the end user, as well as for the partner. As a partner, we are trying to do our level best, but I believe it would really benefit users for IBM to come up with some pre-certification campaigns like AWS and Azure do, especially in terms of how they promote their products through learning.

What I believe is that, in order to establish the product in the market, IBM has to invest in developing resources. IBM need to strategize in such a way that it's not just selling. IBM has to develop the resources within the industry, so that there's more word of mouth; people are now talking about AVDF, because they only know about AVDF.

I have been working with IBM Guardium Data Protection since last year. 

I can say that it's a stable product. 

Scalability is no problem. 

Support is where the problem is. Since IBM is not in this country, in terms of technical support and also skill sets in the market, there is not much help available to handle Guardium Data Protection. That's where I suggest that IBM should bring marketing people and do some campaigns, like certification campaigns, so that we can have some skilled experts who will develop resources within the industry to promote and support this product.

Since it comes as an appliance, it's kind of plug and play. I can't be too precise, but it only takes around two hours to initialize the virtual appliance.

For IBM Guardium, licensing is very simple and straightforward. There are no issues I can speak of.

Regarding the pricing, Guardium's price is always better compared to competitors like Oracle. It's not expensive compared to what the leading competitors are providing and on top of that, the integration options with IBM are also better for the price you pay.

I can definitely recommend IBM Guardium and we are going to continue using and promoting it in the future.

I have been working with IBM for approximately 13 years and I've personally found that IBM products are very useful. However, the problem is that IBM's product stack isn't fully present in this country and there is a clear lack of industry resources, so customers remain unaware of their products and they are not adopting products even though this product is very good. Whenever we are talking about the idea of data protection we talk about IBM's solution, Guardium Data Protection.

The main problem is that customers often throw questions like, "What about deployment? What about the support? Are we going to get good support from the local team?" They're not bothered about portal support, they talk about the internal market industry resources. That's where we come in. So even though I am recommending IBM, I know some customers will also like Oracle AVDF.

I would rate IBM Guardium Data Protection an eight out of ten.

One of my customers is a company that manages telecommunications in Mexico. It is a very important company, and they use Guardium for compliance purposes. They use it to comply with PCI, for example.

We have on-premises and cloud deployments. We are currently deploying a customer's environment in Microsoft Azure with SQL Server.

One of our customers uses IBM Security Guardium to discover the production time and to know the transactions about their databases.

One of the most valuable features is the accelerator. It has a predefined report for PCI SOX compliance and other compliances.

The most important requirements for us are integration with new database solutions and the ability to manage things like Jailbreak or something like that.

Its reduction feature can also be improved. It has a functionality called reduction, which is like masking data, but it is just a replacement of characters. Sometimes the customer needs more than this. It would be good if it was more advanced or complete.

We also have a problem with this solution because the IBM aggregator isn't working very well. IBM has created big data intelligence for Guardium, and occasionally, customers need three or four months of data, but they can't run it from the collectors.

It can have a better dashboard and more pre-defined use cases for those customers who don't have any idea about data protection or don't have expert personnel in this area. For example, they can include five use cases for banks and five use cases for retail.

I have been using this solution for eight or nine years. I have been using Guardium before it was bought by IBM.

Its stability is very good. It is quite available all the time.

Its scalability is perfect. In Mexico, we did most of the implementations for medium and large customers. Our company implemented this solution for banks and telecommunication companies.

IBM's technical support is good, but it can be improved. They can improve the response time for the tickets and the availability for the resolution of the tickets.

It is not complex now. Prior to version 11, in general, the console and the environment were not good. They were bad, but they are good in version 11. The deployment duration varies, and complete integration in Windows can take three weeks to two months.

Its cost is good. With the new metric of licensing, such as PDO not being available now, customers are expecting a good price for the solution.

Oracle Vault, Guardium, and Imperva are the three main solutions that clients consider. Easy deployment and good compatibility with all the solutions that customers have gives Guardium an advantage over other solutions.

We would recommend this solution to others. It is a good solution at a good price, and your data is invaluable.

I would rate IBM Guardium Data Protection a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case is for managing and monitoring the database in real time.

The most valuable feature I have found is the performance of client monitoring. The other competitors are unable to do this.

I would like to see AI and machine learning added in the future.

I have been working with IBM Security Guardium Data Protection for two years. 

We have found the stability is very good.

All that is necessary for scaling IBM Security Guardium Data Protection is to purchase a license. We have a lot of customers since we are in the finance industry in Vietnam.

We have excellent technical support in-country and out of the country.

The initial setup is straightforward and takes a short time to install.

The price is good for the quality of the solution.

I would rate IBM Security Guardium Data Protection an eight out of ten.

We use Guardium for large and medium-sized clients in the banking sector for things like monitoring, protecting sensitive data, and logins.

Guardium lets you centrally manage aggregators and collectors.

The documentation could be better. 

I have used Guardium for two or three years.

Guardium is stable.

Guardium is scalable.

IBM support is perfect. 

The initial setup isn't complex, and it takes about four or five days depending on your environment.

We pay for a yearly license, and the price is reasonable. 

I rate IBM Guardium Data Protection 10 out of 10. Anyone can understand this product.

We primarily use the solution for database access management where they are using DML commands. We use it for compliance and validation. If there's any change in the record, this solution will notify us.

It provide real time alerts and report for the review with senior management.  

The solution is very good at marking.

The initial setup is quite easy.

The solution offers trouble-free access.

The reporting on the solution is weak. It needs to be improved and enhanced. From a management point of view, it's really important to have reports. They should be offering easily extractable reports that we, as users, can benefit from.

The technical support is very poor.

Integrations are difficult to configure upon the initial setup.

The solution needs to offer data encryption.

We've been using the solution for the last three and a half years.

The solution is very stable. We don't seem to experience bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

The product's scalability is fine, however, the requirements for scalability make it somewhat limited, as you will need to add hardware resources in order to expand it. Other than that, yes, the scalability is there, and you can use it, but you need to keep in mind that there is hardware that you have to have in place.

We haven't been happy with the support. We're always facing issues with integration with one database and we don't get a detailed response. Their help just hasn't been adequate. Our team is now basically working with a local partner for support, however, it's an aspect of the product I'm very unhappy with.

Neutral

We didn't previously use a different solution.

The initial setup is quite easy. It's not an issue and is very straightforward. That said, teamwork becomes an issue due to the fact that the troubleshooting part is a little bit difficult. We need to have some more insights from IBM to help us along. 

If you are new to the product, you need to have a more qualified person to assist you with the process, and ultimately we have to engage with technical support. The response is not fast, however. The product is a critical part of our environment, so we need a rapid response from the site to sort out the issue, whatever it might be.

We have two people currently managing the product.

You only need one person to deploy the product.

We had one person from the vendor come and help us deploy the solution.

We definitely needed more assistance and have tried to get the help of technical support for some integration issues, however, the response hasn't been fast enough.

I'm not sure of the exact cost of the solution, however, I believe the features have separate costs. We have a data protection license and on top of that, we need to buy however many databases we need to monitor everything effectively.

In the current environment that I'm working in, I did not evaluate other products. However, in the past, I have had to utilize other products.  don't recall what it was exactly, though. The other solution was from McAfee.

In terms of the ease of access and ease of deployment, IBM Guardium was much easier to deploy. However, in terms of maturity, then definitely that the other product that I used in the past was more mature than the IBM Guardium Products. 

We're looking to upgrade the solution soon. I'm not sure which version we are currently using.

I would recommend others considering the solution to make sure they get local partners who can basically deploy the product. They need to have someone with sound experience. I have found a partner who applies the product often just simply deploys it and they don't have a use case available. They don't have the right experience. You need to choose your partner carefully or be ready to work hard yourself to deploy the product in the best possible way. 

I would rate the solution seven out of ten.

We use IBM Guardium Data Protection mostly for data masking and firewalling. We restrict the administrators and other users from altering or deleting anything from the databases.

There are different modules but the most valuable ones are firewalling and masking. Additionally, the auditing of the entire database is helpful, which includes all the activity of the database users and administrators. We can monitor everything and log as well.

If IBM Guardium Data Protection could find a way to not have a lot of coding and development required to get the solution up and running it would be an advantage. The information of the agent could improve, which is necessary for us to monitor the databases would be a great benefit.

I have used IBM Guardium Data Protection within the last 12 months.

The solution is quite stable compared to the other solutions that we have worked with. However, it requires a lot of development, or it requires a lot of effort to make it deployable in a customer location, which makes it very difficult.

IBM Guardium Data Protection is scalable.

The solution is good and stable but you need some manual efforts in terms of development and programming or coding to get the solution up and running, which does make it a bit challenging if you don't have a large team.

I rate IBM Guardium Data Protection a seven out of ten.