Symantec VIP Access Manager Reviews

VIP is a strong authentication service to securely access the network while working remotely.

Strong, smarter user authentication with no set date of expiry on the soft tokens issued to remote users. It is an app that sits on the iPhone and generates a token every 30 seconds and combined with a 4 digit PIN makes remote login very simple either from an iPad or a laptop.

No areas come to mind at the moment.

I've used it for two years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Excellent.

Excellent.

Previously we used RSA SecureID hard tokens for authenticating remote logins which were more expensive and we always used to get user requests to replace them when the expired.

It was fairly straightforward because all the platforms we were running like Microsoft Server 2008, Citrix, Cisco etc. were all supported by VIP.

We had very good vendor support for our in-house team, so the implementation went very smoothly. Within a month, we were able to migrate our entire fleet from the hard tokens to the VIP access soft tokens for remote login to the network.

It is added value that cannot be quantified with a monetary ROI figure, but what I can confidently say is that it is a one time investment of soft token licenses that do not expire. The main benefit of Symantec VIP is that it provides strong authentication while keeping it as a very user friendly experience.

As we already had a good business relationship with Symantec, and they were giving us a very cost effective cloud based option with VIP, we did not even have the need to pursue other options.

These are the benefits of implementing VIP by Symantec as remote login solution

• Cloud based solution
• Fast migration from hard token solution
• Reduced complexity
• Improved productivity
• Lower costs

All of us in the practice work remotely from home across the country, so we all use it for remote access.

Other than it provides us with remote access, so it's fairly easy to install, fairly easy to set up, and provides us the ability to get into our corporate environment.

I've been using it so long I'm used to the way that it works, so it really doesn't have any problem as far as I can tell.

I check for updates a lot. I reset it sometimes. I can show my credential ID, so it works very well.

I have been using Symantec for six years. 

It's fairly stable. Every once in awhile, you've got to go in and reset the token, but it's not hard to do. It's fairly stable. I usually have a problem with my internet before I have a problem with VIP.

There are 2,500 employees and around 80% of us are now remote. It scales through. I don't know what tier license they have or anything like that. I don't know what they had to do on the back end to scale it license wise, but to roll it out, I work in functionality as far as rolling it out to 1,800 people pretty easily.

The people on my team who use it are security engineers. 

I usually call technical support if I have a problem with it, I'll call my IT guys, and they can reset it on the backend if they have to. It gets out of sync with Active Directory or whatever it might be, whatever the authentication piece is on Active Directory, and they just reset it on the backend. I never have to contact the vendor.

I don't know if it's Symantec that's the problem. It's probably our domain controllers and however they have SYSVOL set up is what I'm guessing.

When the SYSVOL goes out to sync up, I'm not sure where the Symantec server sits, so sometimes, that synchronization gets out of whack. It's probably on our end, not Symantec.

If you're looking for a fairly lightweight client that works very well for remote access purposes, I think Symantec is definitely a good product. As much as a lot of people bad-mouth Symantec, just based on the Broadcom acquisition last year, I think this product is one of Symantec's best.

It competes very well with Boomi. Some of Boomi's features because they're also a company of acquisitions, they've done a lot more acquisitions on the remote desktop side. They also acquired Avecto, BeyondTrust, and probably a couple of others on the privileged access side, VIP doesn't really provide any privileged access, but when you get into competitors that have a broader product offering, they have more to offer for a remote desktop.

If Symantec wanted to look at an acquisition, I think that would be awesome. I think they'd compete much better with other products.

VIP is the token.

If I was an IT person, there might be something in the tool that I have to go tweak and tune to make it work on the IT side on the backend. But as far as the user side, it launches fairly easily from the desk tray. The token repeats every 30 seconds, so it's pretty easy to use.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

Strong user authentication with easy integration to many applications using a free app, Mobile Credential, that lowers hardware costs.

Most of our customers reported fraud reduction and PCI compliance support.

They are adding QR code to its functionalities making the solution more complete.

A good feature that would be interesting to have is a credential profile with access time control. Some of our customers would be happy with that.

But a great improvement would be if they change the token number for a kind of technology by facial recognition.

Another thing is, if the Symantec VIP had a hardware appliance with a risk engine exclusive for IB, maybe they could create a new business opportunity.

With these three features my rating would be 5/5. That’s for sure!

I have been installing this solution for about three years.

It’s a cloud-based authentication service and I never get complaints about stability.

No complains about scalability. We can make quick changes in the user base and easily provision new VIP features.

In my opinion, for this solution, the technical support is not so expert when we talk about integration using the API. I rate them 3.5/5.

As a consultant, I am familiar with RSA SecurID. But, due to the need for tokens hardware, the solution turns out to be much more expensive than the VIP.

Quickly and easily deployed in enterprise infrastructure.

Licensing is per-user and has a great price if compared to RSA SecurID.

I evaluated RSA SecurID.

VIP is a strong, cloud-based authentication service that enables organizations to secure access to networks and applications to prevent unauthorized logins to company resources, even when passwords have been compromised or shared.

Some of the features that are the most valuable are both the VPN and the interface.

The VPN we are using is good and working quite well. We are in the process of using all of the server access with cloud access.

The reporting on the VIP Manager is not correct. The error is showing that we have a certain amount of users, but when we export the report to Excel or CSV, the number of users is different. The challenge we are facing at the moment is not knowing which one is correct.

If they had dashboards or a report for managers or executives, then it would allow them to see the status and have it make sense to them. They can also see the value of this solution.

This solution is stable. Everything is very stable.

This solution is scalable. We have approximately 7,000 licenses at the moment.

The technical support is good, but we have Business Critical as well. If it takes longer than two or three days to resolve an issue, we contact Business Critical.

Overall, we are satisfied with the technical support.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was not complex.

The deployment model that we are using is on-premises.

I am a consultant for Symantec on-site.

Before getting started with this solution, have a successful business process in place, or get something in place as soon as possible.

I like the whole solution, and I would recommend it.

I would rate it a ten out of ten.

The primary use case is to generate digital code to login to my email and network.

This solution is part of our requirement for multifactor authentication when logging into the network from outside the office.

We are currently using the latest version of the product.

It offers more platform support, like Apple, Android, and Microsoft.

It is easy to use. I use it when traveling.

In the next release, I would like the ability to work offline with remote access. Sometimes, there is no connectivity.

Every time that I have a new phone or computer, it takes a little longer to deploy it.

The stability is okay.

The scalability is very good.

We used a consultant for the deployment, who was good.

The solution has helped to increase staff productivity by approximately a minute.

There are additional costs for maintenance.

Find a way to work offline. 

In this version 9.1, lots of changes are done for the dashboard, User Store etc.

Mostly from a product expert's point of view, it provides solutions for my clients.

Intelligent Authentication and the cloud-based service with BYOD are valuable features.

The User Store synchronization part needs to improve. Also, the logs, reports, and dashboard can be improved.

I have been using this solution for around two years.

There were no stability issues.

There was the User Store issue that we experienced in terms of the scalability. It was difficult to fix after lots of troubleshooting.

Frankly, still in India, the technical support team is not that capable so as to resolve issues. This is because, in the APAC regions, this technology is new both for the Symantec support as well as for the partner engineer.

Read all of the initial configuration guide and attend training from OEM.

• Intelligent authentication - Risk-based authentication
• Cloud-based service and management

It provides an easy management for credentials of the remote users when accessing the corporate resources.

There is a consolidation of a couple of Identity Providers into Symantec VIP for centralized management of credentials.

Integration with Citrix Access Gateway, Microsoft Office 365 and Single Sign-On (through Symantec Validation and ID Protection Access Manager) has increased the productivity of the employees for accessing resources.

The factors that need improvement are:

• Geofencing
• Privileged account management
• Behavioral authentication

I have used this solution for more than four years.

There were no stability issues experienced.

There were no scalability issues experienced.

Technical support is very good.

The setup was straightforward since this is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution, no hardware procurement or provisioning is required. Everything is already set up and provisioned on the Symantec data center.

There is a one-time setup fee plus the licenses are provided as per the number of users. For SMS and voice calls, the costs are separate.

Understand your pain points and requirements, then fully understand the feature set provided by the vendor and licensing requirements.

You know your environment best and the consultants who work with the vendors know the solution best, so bring everything down to an overlap.