Obviously, the most valuable feature is the flexibility of the solution, it being able to be integrated with a number of applications and solutions; and also, the configurability of the solution.
Service Delivery Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Video Review
It is flexible, integrates with applications and solutions, and is configurable.
What is most valuable?
How has it helped my organization?
Security is a big concern of our client and it is certainly something that helps the client be able to secure the application and provide a better user experience; doing a single sign-on instead of multiple logins, for example.
What needs improvement?
I've seen a lot of analytics capability being built in for a number of products. Obviously, I want to be able to use analytics on CA SSO as well.
For how long have I used the solution?
The client that I manage it for has used it for four years already.
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Symantec Siteminder
October 2024
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's a stable solution. It's been in place for quite some time already. There aren’t a lot of operational or technical issues that are related to the system, so it's a stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It has been scalable, to us, at this point in time. It's been able to support quite a number of applications for our client. It's scalable to us.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support has been great. Generally, support is very responsive, timely, and obviously, we have account support folks that we can reach out to, to be able to support us if there's any technical issue.
How was the initial setup?
With the setup, obviously, with a large organization, there are quite a number of things to be done. There is some complexity involved, but generally, I would say that it's been quite successful.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We knew we needed to invest in a new solution because, obviously, again, security is a main concern of a lot of clients. Generally, the solution is stable, it's one of the leaders in the market, and it was chosen to be implemented.
I think what we will be looking for when selecting a vendor is in terms of support, technical support, when there is an issue. I think that's a key component to us when we implement a product. We want to be able to deal with issues when they arise. Can we support it? That's what we will look for from a vendor.
What other advice do I have?
Generally, it's been a great product for us to use. It's been stable. It's been a good product.
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: My company is a CA partner.
Middleware System Engineer at a insurance company with 11-50 employees
Provides centralized and secure policy management on a large scale
Pros and Cons
- "Symantec Siteminder Is both scalable and stable."
- "Some of the new protocols, like OAuth 2.0, could be improved."
What is our primary use case?
We use Siteminder to protect our portal site subscribers. In our case, this refers to people who have dental insurance.
We're a dental insurance company and we've got millions of subscribers.
We have thousands of dentists. We have millions of subscribers who use our dental insurance. There are a couple hundred thousand providers (dentists) in the network.
How has it helped my organization?
SSO affords us the opportunity to have a federated connection between our members, groups, and companies.
We have a trusting partnership with everyone involved. This solution helps us in that aspect. In summary, it protects our applications, relating to benefits and eligibility, etc.
It gives providers (or dentists, in our case) the ability to transpose across the different Delta Dentals without having to authenticate more than once. With Siteminder, We don't have to log into every site with a different user name and password — It's one identity for all sites.
What needs improvement?
Some of the new protocols, like OAuth 2.0, could be improved.
It would be nice to see a better cloud-based solution that's both easy and accessible for all organizations.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Siteminder since 2011.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Symantec Siteminder Is both scalable and stable. If you need to add more groups of members, it's just a matter of adding another web agent. It's very scalable.
How are customer service and technical support?
I work with the technical support guys all of the time. They are excellent.
How was the initial setup?
Since I've been doing it for years, it's hard for me to say it was complex. You have to set up the realms, domains, ACOs, access control, configure the objects, and set up the databases. Speaking as a technical person, I think it could be a little more simplistic, but on a technical level, it's about even with the other solutions available.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price.
What other advice do I have?
If you're thinking about implementing this solution, make sure you have the proper infrastructure. Also, try to negotiate the cost.
On a scale from one to ten, I would give Symantec Siteminder a rating of eight. If they fixed some of the issues I mentioned, I would give them a higher rating. There's a lot of players out there that are only doing half of what Siteminder does, but they do it with the more advanced protocols.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
Symantec Siteminder
October 2024
Learn what your peers think about Symantec Siteminder. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Director at a logistics company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Provides secure PC login, and allays concerns of unwanted access to data if a device is lost
What is our primary use case?
Validation of people's logins when they log in to their PCs. Everybody, when you turn on your PC, you go SiteMinder to login. Security.
It has performed very well, it does what we need it to do, it's reliable, and it doesn't impose any overhead on the user or on the platform.
What is most valuable?
- Ease of use for the user
- Security, of course
- The ease of setup and installation
How has it helped my organization?
We can definitely control our user experience better on the PCs. People don't necessarily have to worry about losing something, like a PC, or a tablet, or a phone, because it's controlled by SiteMinder. We can remote wipe it, we can do all sorts of different things to secure it.
What needs improvement?
Answering this would require me to know what the current platform does or doesn't do, and I'm afraid I'm not a good enough judge to make that evaluation. I might say something and it's already there, and I just don't know about it.
I will say the user interface for login is kind of plain. They could make it a little prettier. The site is a big, blue screen, with "SiteMinder," and that's pretty much it.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It seems pretty stable so far. It's a mature product, it's been around for a long time.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We're using it on thousands and thousands of devices, thousands and thousands of users. So, it's very scalable.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Technical Lead at a hospitality company with 1,001-5,000 employees
For authentication purposes, we can keep security out of our applications. More UI templates would be nice.
What is most valuable?
With Single Sign-On, we don't have to do anything in our system.
After they deploy the application, everything works seamlessly. That's the main benefit that we get out of this product. For authentication purposes, we can keep security out of our applications, which is productive for us.
How has it helped my organization?
We can rapidly onboard different partners. We don't have to wait for months to do that. For this, we use the Federation feature from CA Single Sign-On, which helps us a lot.
What needs improvement?
There is a need to introduce more templates in the UI side and this would help design this aspect better. As of now, there are only a few samples available.
There is scope for improvement in this product.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It works fine. We did not find any stability issues. It is very rare to see something go wrong, so the application is quite stable.
However, we have noticed that when you update to the latest version, it can be unstable. Right now, we are in a stable environment.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
You can scale it very easily. It works exactly the way the product has been documented. We can scale it well and we did not find any issues with it.
How are customer service and technical support?
The technical support level is moderate. I would give it a 5/10 rating.
It depends both ways - we need immediate solutions however from their end, it takes time to get answers.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We required such a product, as we were using an old solution. That’s how we started using CA Single Sign-On with the CA SiteMinder.
How was the initial setup?
The setup was not straightforward. I would give it a 7/10 rating - 1 being simple and 10 being complex. So, it was quite complex.
What other advice do I have?
I would advise others to use this tool as it is robust and mostly it solves all the problems that arise in our industry.
We did consider other vendors. However, after we saw the demo for this product, we decided to purchase this product.
The factors we looked into before purchasing this product are the benefits of this product, how CA functions with other tools, costs, the level of support provided, upgrades and so on.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Technical Lead - Security Services Group at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
It provides a web-app customer response feature that allows us to customize responses back to the mobile app or browser assignments. We'd ike to see a more streamlined implementation update process.
Valuable Features
Our primary purpose for using it is to manage and control access to our web applications. We've extended the use somewhat to protect other environments in our shop where we need to authenticate users.
For example, we have a GemFire caching product, and we want to limit what data users can access within the GemFire environment. So we leverage SiteMinder and its policies within GemFire to authenticate the user and to authorize them based on what type of data they are accessing.
We also use it to federate identity with external clients and vendors. We use the federation component to federate identities between ourselves and outside third-parties.
Improvements to My Organization
We're moving to an API-based application development model with SiteMinder in that environment. It's important for us to be able to handle authentication and authorization issues when client-side mobile apps are calling to our services. We needed to handle the responses from those authentication problems better than the traditional SiteMinder SSO system did. 12.52 provides a really nice web-app customer response feature that allows us to customize responses back to the mobile app or the browser assignments.
Room for Improvement
We're really interested in the containerized version of CA SSO where the product will be delivered as a container image rather than the traditional binary.
We'd also like to see a more streamlined implementation update process.
Also, I think they need to improve their support a little bit better especially with experienced customers who are very knowledgeable in product. It's difficult when working on level higher than support.
Use of Solution
We brought it in a little over 10 years ago. We're currently in production on 12.0, but we're right in the middle of our migration to 12.52.
Deployment Issues
We have a very carefully planned roll-out of these products. We won't go into production as long as we're having stability issues. I would say for 12.0, our experience was fairly elongated to get to the resolution of some issues, probably a couple of months. With 12.52, we've had a couple of issues, but we already have patches and work arounds for them, and so we think that things have improved.
Stability Issues
In the past, whenever we migrated to a new version, there's been a little bit of stability issues at the beginning and I would say with 12.0 in particular we had some stability issues. But we believe 12.52 is a lot more stable, but that's yet to be seen.
Customer Service and Technical Support
It's a hit and miss thing, like all support organizations. For the most part, for simple problems they can get to a resolution fairly quickly. If the problem is a little more complicated, they really struggle with getting us a solution. We usually have to escalate the problem to our contact engineer. But then it depends on how important the problem is. If it's like a real critical problem affecting our production environment, we'll push a little harder. We'll call up our CA representative and try to escalate the problem.
Initial Setup
I wasn't involved in this initial decision to bring it in, but I was brought onto the team fairly soon thereafter.
Other Solutions Considered
I think Oracle and IBM have similar products. For due diligence purposes, We occasionally take a look at other vendors and compare features, but so far we're happy with CA.
Other Advice
I would totally recommend this product, but I think CA has a really good handle on what the drivers are and where the business is going in terms of application development. They seem to be a good fit.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Delivery Manager - Technology - Identity and Access Management at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
The login experience is seamless navigation from one app to the next. The policy export/import could be easier for when we go between environments.
Valuable Features
The most valuable features are:
- Ease of deployment, and
- It’s customizable within the user interface.
Improvements to My Organization
It helps protect our applications and provides identity management. It allows us to do business with third-party apps, and they’re a recognized industry leader.
For the login experience, it’s seamless navigation from one app to the next. It’s responsive and promotes ease of doing business.
Room for Improvement
Upgrade planning is extensive and costly and involves a lot of applications, so we’d like to see that improved. Also, the policy export/import could be easier for when we go between environments and when we export/import into our production environment.
There are some security risks that we’re evaluating with a current version of the product that might require an upgrade. From an upgrade standpoint, it’s challenging – not a simple, agile type upgrade. It’s a major upgrade that affects a lot of our applications.
Stability Issues
Highly stable. We have it pretty well tuned.
Scalability Issues
It’s scalable from one app to the next, and we already have the infrastructure built out to support it.
Customer Service and Technical Support
They provide a pretty good service, especially as we’re entertaining additional products and services. We had an upgrade from R6 to R12, which was significant, which we managed through support. Understanding the urgency and sensitivity behind it, we got their account management team to come on-site and help.
Other Advice
It’s stable, the client experience is really good, and there’s an opportunity for us to improve response times. They could improve integration with other products in the suite.
Understand what their business cases are before they pursue a solution; understand where they have a need. Sometimes applications themselves don’t necessarily need to be integrated with something as robust as SiteMinder doing ID management, so I’d recommend looking at the business functions and what their needs are before they pursue the SiteMinder solution.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Lead Technical Architect with 1,001-5,000 employees
With just a single ID, people don't have to remember multiple user IDs and passwords. We've seen some bugginess when we want to incorporate a new feature, customization, or technology.
Valuable Features:
The features most valuable to us are its usability, the way you can customize it, and its supportability.
Improvements to My Organization:
From an organizational perspective, it helps us to maintain IDs and it enhances the user experience. With just a single ID, people don't have to really remember multiple user IDs and passwords. So, it's a tool to enhance the user experience.
Room for Improvement:
I'd like to see less issues when we implement new customizations or technologies. Being able to customize is something we'd like to do, but it needs improvement to allow that to happen without issue.
Stability Issues:
It tends to be buggy, though not to a high level. Where we have seen most of the problems is when we want to incorporate a new feature or when we want to implement some customization or when we want to implement a new technology. During those times, we have seen it to be buggy.
Scalability Issues:
Like the stability, we have had some issues with bringing in new integrations or customizing it for our need. It's been a journey figuring out how to scale it.
Initial Setup:
I wasn't involved in the setup.
Other Advice:
It may be a good product, but I'd advise staying away from customizing it.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Architect & Technical Director at a tech consulting company with 11-50 employees
Used for single sign-on (SSO) authentication and facilitates third-party integrations
Pros and Cons
- "Symantec Siteminder has simplified user access for our customers from user login to their web applications."
- "The support team could work on their response time and overall competence."
What is our primary use case?
The solution is used for single sign-on (SSO) authentication.
What is most valuable?
Symantec Siteminder has simplified user access for our customers from user login to their web applications.
What needs improvement?
The support team could work on their response time and overall competence.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Symantec Siteminder for ten years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I would recommend the solution to both smaller and larger companies.
I rate the solution’s scalability a nine out of ten.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution's pricing is competitive.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend the solution to other users. The solution is easy to use, and our company helps customers implement the product. The solution's centralized policy management provides a simple GUI for the users or administrators to use. We have the right skill set to do third-party integrations very easily.
Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
Last updated: Aug 31, 2024
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