IBM Security Guardium Data Protection Reviews

We have been using Guardium for data protection. In my company, we use it primarily to test the database for personal information protection. We also use it in conjunction with other data security measures.

We have seen benefits from using Guardium, including its ease of implementation and local support in our region. Many of our clients who previously used Imperva found it difficult to implement, and they have switched to Guardium.

The most valuable features of Guardium are its ability to discover data more efficiently compared to competitors and its comprehensive platform with many features. We appreciate its ease of implementation and the local support available for the product.

Guardium could be improved in the area of data encryption. We have encountered difficulties with encryption using IBM's platform, especially in comparison to alternative solutions.

I have had experience with Guardium for maybe two years.

We have found Guardium to be very stable.

The scalability of Guardium is very good, and the newer versions have shown significant improvements.

We have worked with IBM support for other products like IBM AI, and it has been very satisfactory with high-quality support.

Positive

We previously used Imperva. Our clients and we found it difficult to implement and continue using the solution.

The initial setup of Guardium was easy, and we found the implementation process straightforward.

I did not help deploy Guardium directly, but it was part of a project aiming to enhance data protection.

The return on investment is beneficial as we have one platform with many features, providing solutions to multiple problems for us.

The pricing of Guardium is similar to Imperva and includes licensing costs. Overall, it is considered reasonably priced for its capabilities.

We evaluated Imperva. The main differences we found were in the implementation experience and the support from the vendor. We found Guardium easier to implement and better supported.

We highly recommend Guardium for its application and data protection capabilities, especially with its strong local support.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

I use it for the likelihood of incident response, intrusion prevention, intrusion detection, and malicious traffic.

I like the reporting mechanism. It's very good.

The integration part of the present solution is very complex and tedious. Plus it gives a lot of false positives which need to be eradicated over time.

While integrating it with my existing infrastructure, it was a pain area initially, because primarily it took me a lot of time to educate users. From the configuration part with the existing system, the agent installation and collecting logs from the system and then finally bringing it back to the Guardium is quite complex.

In the next release, I would like these to be improved and implemented.

I used IBM Security Guardium Data Protection within the last six to eight months.

It is a stable product. 

It is scalable, you just integrate other auxiliary IBM products with it, back to the security line. Currently, 12 users are using it for administration and monitoring purposes.

They're always there to help you out and solve the problem very precisely and efficiently.

Positive

I have been using a lot of information security solutions like Ivanti and ManageEngine. When it comes to hardware, I have used Dell EMC, Cisco, HP, and VMware.

The initial setup was complex, it took roughly a year.

I rate it a seven out of ten.

With regard to the deployment process, we conducted a PO. The POC was conducted initially only for the primary network devices, and then gradually we rolled it down for the production servers and to the other parts of the data center.

The solution was implemented through an integrator team.

We cannot actually evaluate the ROI for the information security solutions, but it's one of the recommended and leading solutions in the market. So with that aspect, you can say we are pretty much confident and believe that our ROI would bring good results for us.

It is a very costly product.

I mark it a four or five out of ten because it's ridiculous sometimes. For instance, if you would like to add a few instances, the IBM team will tell you that you need to acquire a certain amount of DB licenses to integrate such instances into your existing portfolio. So it is quite a hefty amount.

I have personally not evaluated other options. My predecessor had evaluated quite a few options.

I think third-party application integration is supposed to be an integral part of IBM without any cost, so IBM should consider that.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use it for activity monitoring and vulnerability assessments.

The features I like are the robust policies, which allow us to create customized monitoring based on specific activities. 

Also, the dynamic encryption and masking functionality is interesting. And the vulnerability assessment feature is comprehensive; we can scan for specific vulnerabilities.

The main issue I have with IBM Security Guardium Data Protection is the support. It's not good.  They're slow, and they don't seem to resolve issues effectively. We have an ongoing problem that they haven't been able to fix.

We had an issue with the setup that we've been trying to resolve. The reports are not coming out the way I want them to.

I'm not enjoying the support. They don't always resolve issues, and sometimes logged cases seem to disappear. The support is not good for me. They should resolve issues as they're escalated.

It's stable. However, it does require a lot of resources. 

I would rate the stability a six out of ten. 

The solution itself is straightforward. The implementation was fine.

We set up the central manager, the archive, agents on the database servers, and S-TAPs on the collectors. Then, we configured policies and reports.

I would recommend using it. It is good for database protection. 

The product itself is good, but the support is lacking. I'd rate it a seven out of ten.

database security

We use it for security purposes, particularly because we have customers in financial sectors, banks, and other high profile industries.

The risk spotter which helps to get insight into user activities

The monitoring of Heterogeneous DBs

Entitlement Reports which helps to gain insight on user creation and privilege escalation.

Being an IBM product it offers data security capabilities with robust features. Over the years, it has satisfactorily met the requirements of our customers which makes it a very reliable and versatile solution.

Since we are resellers we do not have enough information about the technical aspects and the areas of improvement. However, one consistent report that we receive from our customers is that IBM does not offer timely support due to the size of the organisation. It would be great if they could improve their response time.

ActivEdge has been reselling IBM Security Guardium Data Protection for the past five years.

In terms of stability, it is also stable and there is no bugs and glitches that we have faced complaints about

On a scale of 10 I will rate it 8 as there are some issues that usually arise during deployment but are usually fixed by patch updates.

The product is very scalable and we deal with majorly enterprise client. Therefore we have to make sure that the product is scalable.

The process of installation and management of the solution is very easy. You can ask for IBM's expertise, since they have been using this for years. The implementation does not really need more than three months under normal conditions.

IBM solutions have fair price strategy, and operates on a yearly basis. If it's a SaaS solution, then you can opt for yearly basis.

While working with the solution, you have to be clear about your requirements. The solution offers different pricing based on different functionalities. If you are able to identify your requirements properly, you are going to do well with the price and get the best out of the product. So understanding the requirements is very important. I would rate this product 8 out of 10.

Before IBM Guardium Data Protection, we didn't have any solution. We wanted to check our database activities, for example, admin activities, so with IBM Guardium Data Protection, we created some use cases and also wanted to check up on the use cases in our environment, so we deployed the solution. Right now, we have three or four use cases for IBM Guardium Data Protection: creation, table deletion, and making changes to the table, and we receive alerts when any of those activities happen.

IBM Guardium Data Protection improved our organization by providing visibility into our database functions. Before using the solution, we didn't have that visibility until we took the data logs and integrated them. We didn't have visibility into database bots. We didn't know which users or admin users were able to get into the databases even without specific privileges. Now, with IBM Guardium Data Protection, we have visibility into all details by just collecting the logs on the aggregator, then integrating the aggregator and team logs, so our security analysts can check all the user logs and use cases we created to monitor databases, and view them all on a single screen. IBM Guardium Data Protection gave us one console for monitoring data, so we won't have to look at more than one screen or use other monitoring solutions.

What I like about IBM Guardium Data Protection is that some of its features were deployed by collectors during the installation phase. The solution has collector and aggregator features, license installation, and even server patches that you won't find in other security providers. I like the collector-aggregator capabilities of IBM Guardium Data Protection where you install each component on separate servers, then on the aggregator, you collect all the logs on a central server or central console.

Right now, we're in the development phase for IBM Guardium Data Protection, so I don't have any recommendations about additional features and room for improvement in the solution. We're very excited to work on IBM Guardium Data Protection because we are new to the solution, and we're still exploring product features. We're very excited about integrations and use case creation, and it's only after six to eight months that I'll be able to share my recommendations in terms of additional features the solution should have.

We did find some difficulty in deploying IBM Guardium Data Protection here in Pakistan because of the lack of resources.

We just deployed IBM Guardium Data Protection, so we've only been using the solution for a month or so, and we're using it because it was included in the package we purchased from IBM.

IBM Guardium Data Protection is working very smoothly, even during installation, so at the moment, my company hasn't experienced any stability issues, compatibility issues, and performance issues, so it's a stable solution.

In the future, we will scale IBM Guardium Data Protection if we have the need, but right now, we are not in the scaling phase. We're only implementing and working with what we have currently.

The support for IBM Guardium Data Protection is good if you're communicating with techs from the US, the UK, or Europe, but where I'm located, the support you'll mostly get is from India and South Asia because of matching time zones. India-based or South Asia-based support isn't very experienced, so at the end of the day, you have to escalate the ticket to the US or Europe team for issue resolution.

On a scale of one to five, with one being the worst and five being the best, my experience with IBM Guardium Data Protection technical support is three out of five.

Deploying IBM Guardium Data Protection was a little bit difficult for us because of the limited resources available here in Pakistan. Very few people can implement the solution successfully in their organizations because of a lack of experience. There are only two or three organizations here that have implemented IBM Guardium Data Protection, and our organization is one of those.

The people who handled the deployment of the solution within the company weren't experienced at deploying IBM Guardium Data Protection, so we faced some difficulties, but at the end of the day, all teams worked very, very passionately. It took us almost six months to deploy the solution within our organization.

We coordinated with different teams about server availability, connection availability, and database integration with IBM Guardium Data Protection to complete the implementation of the solution.

It's still too early to tell if there's ROI from IBM Guardium Data Protection, but I hope that it gives the company ROI. The solution is very popular all over the world, so my company procured it and deployed it in the environment.

My company purchased IBM Guardium Data Protection in a package, so I'm unable to give its exact licensing cost, but for the package of three IBM solutions, it wasn't very expensive. I'd rate the pricing for all three solutions three out of five. When my team deployed IBM Guardium Data Protection, all features were included.

We didn't evaluate other solutions before using IBM Guardium Data Protection because we purchased an IBM package of three SIEM solutions: IBM QRadar, IBM Resilient, and IBM Guardium Data Protection.

My organization has two teams using IBM Guardium Data Protection. One is an analyst team that looks after the solution, and the other is the SOC team in charge of monitoring events on IBM Guardium Data Protection.

There's a team of five people in my organization that takes care of deploying the policies, and there's a team of twelve analysts that does the monitoring of events in all monitoring solutions used in the company, aside from IBM Guardium Data Protection events.

Currently, the solution isn't being used to its full extent because it's still in the testing phase, and my organization is still new to the solution, so it has to check on the capabilities of IBM Guardium Data Protection and how it works. Users within my company still have to learn how to aggregate, how to send logs, which security tools to monitor, etc. The solution is still in the evaluation phase within the company, and there's still a need to check its performance and analyze its features.

My advice to others looking into implementing IBM Guardium Data Protection is to first get familiar with the solution and compare it with other solutions. IBM Guardium Data Protection is a market leader, so I recommend that you deploy it or purchase it for the purpose of database security. It's a well-known product.

I'm rating IBM Guardium Data Protection eight out of ten.

My company is a customer of IBM Guardium Data Protection, with no IBM partnership.

We mostly use Guardium as a data activity monitoring solution (DAM). We also use it to perform vulnerability assessment (VA) for data. We deployed Guardium on a private cloud. It isn't a hardware product. It's all virtual machines.

IBM should add more database security features to Guardium. They could add user profiling, anomaly detection, and machine learning. IBM has user profiling, but they need to strengthen it. It should make sense for the users. It should remove most of the false positives.

Anomaly detection would help. Let's say you had a thousand anomalies and 990 are false positives. Who will take care of this? People will simply ignore all 1,000. They need to improve a lot in this area. They're coming out with a new product called Guardium Insights. It will be able to store more data, and its algorithm will be stronger. That will probably fix all my concerns. They have yet to release the beta version.

I have been with this company for the last two years, and they have been using Guardium for five years or six years. However, I more than 10 years of experience with the product. I started using it in 2010.

The scalability and stability are excellent. 

IBM support is good. They're very responsive. 

Setting up Guardium is straightforward. The time needed for deployment depends on the number of databases you're onboarding. It could take two or three months for a hundred databases. However, it might take much longer if you have thousands. It doesn't require much maintenance if you deploy and monitor it correctly. You need to do a lot of maintenance if not. 

We deployed Guardium ourselves because we know the website.

The cost depends on the number of databases. You can purchase advanced licenses, but the standard license is calculated based on the number of databases you have to onboard.

I rate Guardium nine out of 10 overall. I rate Guardium 10 out of 10 for data activity monitoring and nine for vulnerability assessment. It's easy to implement and does its job. But I would rate it seven out of 10 in terms of advanced features.

My advice to prospective users is to have a proper source to deploy it in your environment, or you're wasting money. The second thing is to know precisely what you want from Guardium. Is it DAM, VA, or are you going further? In terms of security posture, those lines should be clear.

We want to avoid unauthorized manipulation of data. We evaluated use cases like database discovery, identification of sensitive data, and installation and configuration of custom policies. We also conducted POC for alerts on DDL and DML commands, activity logs of users, restricted access for specific users, reporting, and dashboarding.

The tool helps detect invalid login attempts within a specific time frame.

The solution lacks control over database security.

Our database team has conducted a POC of the solution with the service provider. We plan to purchase the solution.

The support manager of IBM in Pakistan supported us in onboarding the technical and salespersons. They helped us draft and create the solution for our company. The support was above average.

Positive

The price is average. The tool is not cheap, but it is not expensive. The solution is worth the money.

There are other solutions like Imperva, but there are no service providers in Pakistan. We need local support as we need multiple deployments.

Since I have not implemented the product yet, I would give it an average rating. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

We use this product to protect our information. It provides the added feature of including some protective marking rules on the data. Security is the overall high-level objective for us using this solution. We are customers of IBM and I'm a tech lead.

If anyone is trying to access unauthorized data, it sends out an immediate alert to those concerned. 

Unfortunately, we're unable to use this solution for a NoSQL database, which is limiting. The UI needs to be improved so that instead of everything coding in the backend, it's coded on the front end. Guardium has limitations so most companies using advanced technologies have stopped using this tool because it doesn't have the capability to identify the PII data in flat files. Most companies are moving towards big data.

I've been using this solution for three years. 

The product is somewhat outdated, but it's stable.

If you implement it on the cloud, it's scalable. But once you scale the solution, dumping the business rules, establishing the configured profile, and maintaining those profiles is a very tedious process. Rather than a centralized solution, it would be better to have a distributed environment. In that case, different servers and different nodes, with each node having control over some of the applications, would be better. 

The support level is based on your license. There is a seating license based on the number of users and a concurrent license that is unlimited. If you're at L1, the support is very responsive. For L2 and L3 things move more slowly.

The initial setup needs a lot of coordination and effort. It also requires an information security officer to identify the risk levels of the applications. Monitoring requires a dedicated infrastructure team. We carried out the deployment in-house. Implementation time depends on the degree to which you want to scale and what you're using it for. 

Deployment requires admin support, enterprise-level LDAP authentication services, and application leads. Depending on your infrastructure, you may also require an information security officer and security team as well as security engineers.

There are various licensing models. 

This tool works very well with IBM products but not so well with other tools. 

I rate the solution six out of 10.