Symantec VIP Access Manager Reviews

The users of this tool connect to the office via VPN, with second-factor authentication. This is our exchange over second-factor authentication, which includes Palo Alto GlobalProtect VPN and another tool that I am not currently remembering, but I believe it's Fortinet VPN. Our customers use Fortinet VPN for second-factor authentication, in addition to Palo Alto GlobalProtect VPN and Microsoft Exchange Server.

The best feature of the tool is the mobile application. Also, the tool is very user-friendly.

To improve the tool, I think that the solution should consider integrations with other cybersecurity and IT technologies, such as Privileged Access Management and Site Integration. Additionally, the implementation of second-factor authentication via Symantec VIP Access Manager, CyberArk, and Delinea, among other technologies, could be best for the product. While the existing technology is okay, improving the integration capabilities for Symantec VIP Access Manager would benefit the product.

I would like to see the solution meet the integration needs at our company. While many cybersecurity solutions can function independently, they often lack integration with our systems due to missed integration points. Improving the solution's integration feature would be beneficial.

The last time I used Symantec VIP Access Manager was one year ago, and I am not sure of the version I was using because I was working for a customer. It is a cloud-based technology, and I upgraded the customer's gateway server. Though I am not sure, and I am unable to recollect the version I had worked on back then. Also, I am a partner of Broadcom.

The tool has been very stable, in my experience. Also, I haven't faced any issues or problems with integration or connectivity.

I have used the tool for 50 users. It is a scalable tool since it works on the cloud.

The installation of the tool by an agent and the number of servers required to install the tool are not factors we need to consider.

The tool's setup part could be difficult, especially if the environment only meets some of the necessary requirements. Implementing reduced servers and all applications with Symantec VIP Access Manager will require time. Actually, you do not have to stop anything and allow for continuity in your business. At the same time, the services can remain online, and second-factor authentication via Symantec VIP Access Manager needs to be implemented quickly. Overall, it can be a difficult process.

The deployment process for Symantec VIP Access Manager typically takes around three to four hours per server, depending on the number of integrated servers. However, it can vary depending on all the integrated servers, and I think it takes three hours.

We used Symantec VIP Access Manager's license for 50 users for three years. I don't remember the license's cost for 50 users. Though, I can say that the solution is worth the money.

The tool was expensive compared to other multi-factor authentication solutions offered by local vendors in the Ankara region of Turkey. Thus, the pricing of Symantec VIP Access Manager needs to be improved. Therefore, I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

It was primarily used as a multifactor authentication tool manager. Whenever a new employee joined our organization, they were required to install an application called VIP Access on their phone. This application generated codes, which were then added to their account in the Symantec VIP Access Manager web application.

Users of Symantec VIP Manager were able to access it over the web, where the email of the user and the SYMC number from the VIP Access app on the phone was linked to their work account. So, it's similar to Google Authenticator, where you get temporary codes that you'd need to access any application using 2-factor authentication.

It was really reliable, and it was also simple to use. Setting it up was extremely easy. Throughout the seven or eight months I used the application, I didn't encounter a single issue with it.

Moreover, it was easy to set up and very reliable.

Maybe Symantec could consider providing a step-by-step guide for first-time users. I remember feeling a bit confused during my initial experience, especially when creating users in the application.

Some guidance for new users would be helpful.

I used it for about seven or eight months. The last time I used it was in December 2022.

It was completely reliable. I didn't face a single issue during the seven or eight months of using the application. It was very stable.

The solution was easy to scale. We had a lot of users in our organization, around 50,000 or so. So, it was completely scalable. We were controlling that number of users with VIP Manager.

Ease of use was a factor in considering the product.

The initial setup was really easy. For each user, it would take around five minutes or even less.

It's very efficient. You just need the email and the code from your phone, and that's it.

For maintenance, the entire service desk team, including the team I was in, had access to this particular tool. I would say around 200 to 300 people.

The pricing would most likely charge per user based on how many accounts have access to the IT managers.

It's a good tool. It's pretty straightforward. You just need to install an application on your phone, and that's all. It's really intuitive and easy to use.

I would rate it nine out of ten because it was really good. I didn't face any issues, and it was always reliable. There's always room for improvement, but a nine is a solid rating for it.

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. 

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. 

• 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.

The two-factor authentication is most definitely valuable and moves us closer to being able to check off those important boxes for compliance.

Currently, it is only for select users, but the infrastructure is in place to expand to a larger group. The increased security for those users is beneficial, as well as getting them used to the app. Just getting used to 2FA is a benefit, as we move closer to a more security-centric environment and mindset.

The gateway server is a RADIUS server, but it lacks the functionality of returning RADIUS attributes other than those that are required for the gateway to authenticate the users.

This could be improved a lot by providing additional values, and greatly improving the value and functionality of the Enterprise Gateway. This would remove the need for additional servers/firewall configurations.

The solution does what it is asked, but it has some configuration issues and the support is lackluster.

We have used this solution for about a year.

Stability issues with failover have been experienced. When the services lock up on one server, failover to the other server is not automatic. This may be on the front-end devices that point to the gateways, but the services seem to become unresponsive instead of failing and allowing the failover to function properly. This has not happened too often, however.

There were no issues with scalability, as we are still a small group.

Technical support is one of the worst problems. Every time I have submitted a ticket or called tech support, the tech didn’t seem to know anything about my issues. Granted, I was asking about out-of-band support.

However, they failed to do anything about it, and it didn’t seem like it was important to them. The only movement I got was when my director emailed one of his corporate contacts who provided us with a solution directly.

This was the first solution of its kind.

The initial setup for the gateway was fine. LDAP binding and synching was easy, even for a beginner. However, it became complicated when we attempted to configure the access control enforcement of DACLs we wanted to inject for remote users.

Natively, it does not support such features, so we had to get creative with a Microsoft NPS server as a forwarder to the Enterprise Gateway. This was fine, but the injection of DACLs was the issue. This was solved with Cisco AV-Pairs.

Licensing and pricing seems very fair.

We did not evaluate other options.

This product works fine when it is setup. Once we have it setup, we haven’t had to do much. The Gateway configuration is easy, and it is easy to backup, allowing you to spin up VM's and replace them if need be, (as no AD info is stored on them). The various capabilities for authentication are nice and allow for multiple methods.

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.

It is a fast and easy solution for end users. You are always online.

We were using two-factor authentication via SMS previous to this solution. Sometimes SMSs were not received and users could not make a VPN connection. With this tool, it is now enough to just press the approve button.

There are some shortcomings on the reporting side, such as how many connections you can get per month.

We started to use it in IT first. We tested it for one month. Later on, we moved all domain VPN users and consultant companies. We have used it for ten months since then.

There have not been any stability issues yet. Especially with the consultant firms' VPN connections, in which connection approval is done by us and we record their screen.

There have not been any scalability issues.

You don’t need any technical support. After the first time installation, the gateway solution is enough. After that, you just install the client app on your mobile device.

We used the SMS solution, but it always had problems. Every SMS sent costs money.

The gateway server is easy to install and communicate with. You just install it and download the software to your mobile device. The number received from the mobile device is also secured.

Symantec has always been an open-minded company. If you tell them what your budget is, it will be that number.

We have used the FortiGate SMS solution.

If you use a different product like this, your users will definitely see the difference. If this is the first time using such an application, the end user may have some resistance. The necessity of the product is indispensable and it is a really a simple application.

Resiliency: At one company I was at, we had development all over the world and often we would have a connection go down to the headquarters where we had the VPNs. This caused the remote site, sometimes with 100s of developers, to come to a halt isolating the office. In order to keep development going, I dropped a VPN and a small VIP relay server in the office. Because VIP is cloud based, as long as the site had an Internet connection, developers could still get in and work.

When tracking down an issue, you often have to go to each relay server and read through the logs.

We have been using VIP Access Manager for eight years.

Overall, VIP is very stable compared to RSA SecureID. The back end is handled by Symantec, while the enterprise handles a simple relay server. At times, the relay server could not contact Symantec; it would fail open and allow access without a passcode. If Symantec came back up, it would stay in fail open and not revert back to normal operations. So, I could create a DOS against the relay server, and then have full access to the site with only user ID and password

We did not encounter any scalability issues.

Technical support is better than average.

We previously used RSA SecureID.

Setup was very easy. I wrote a two-page procedure to deploy a server.

Pricing was about 25% of the old solution. That saved us about $500,000 over three years for 10,000 users.

We evaluated Entrust and SafeWord.

Include a load balancer in front of the relay servers.