Microsoft BitLocker Reviews

Microsoft BitLocker can be used to ensure that stolen PCs or laptops do not lose their data.

We recently found some stability issues with Microsoft BitLocker. We found that quite a few users on the web are complaining about the solution's stability, especially after the Microsoft update. One user's laptop did not boot because of such an issue.

I have been using Microsoft BitLocker for about eight to ten years.

I rate Microsoft BitLocker a nine out of ten for stability.

Microsoft BitLocker's initial setup is extremely simple.

Microsoft BitLocker's pricing is included in the Microsoft license, and you don't have to pay an additional fee for it.

Microsoft BitLocker is directly deployed on the end user devices. Microsoft BitLocker is an encryption solution that ciphers the disk of the local machine. If you carry around your devices and somebody steals them, they cannot read the data off it even if they attach it to another device.

Microsoft BitLocker is directly deployed on the end user devices. Microsoft BitLocker is an encryption solution that ciphers the disk of the local machine. If you carry around your devices and somebody steals them, they cannot read the data off it even if they attach it to another device.

Using Microsoft BitLocker is very easy. After ciphering the data, it unlocks itself if you have a modern PC attached to the correct PC. However, you must have your old company username and password to create an account and see the data. You cannot see the data if you don't have the password. Nothing much can be done regarding the software's usability or evolution.

Microsoft BitLocker should not be considered as an end-user software. It's a system software that protects your hard disk.

Microsoft BitLocker is not hard to use.

Overall, I rate Microsoft BitLocker a nine out of ten.

We use the solution for data encryption. 

The tool has improved the startup of our notebooks and end-user devices. 

I would like to see improvement in the solution's central management of passwords. Currently, we install it separately. 

I have been working with the solution for more than one year. 

I would rate the tool's stability a nine out of ten. 

I would rate the solution's scalability an eight out of ten. My company has more than 3000 users for the tool. 

The tool's setup is quite difficult I would rate the tool's setup around three to four out of ten. We had to deploy the solution on thousands of machines. Hence, we implemented it in phases. 

The solution is priced low. I would rate the product's pricing one out of ten. 

I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. The solution is a Microsoft product and Microsoft should be able to help rectify any issues in the future. It has a similar integration as that of Microsoft. 

Our primary use case for this solution is encryption. The solution is deployed on-premises.

The ease of administering and integrating the solution is great.

The product could be improved by simplifying the implementation process and the integration between Active Directory and BitLocker could be better.

We have been using this solution for two years and are currently using the latest version.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. Currently, we have approximately 800 users using this solution, and six people are required for maintenance.

We don't have experience with customer service and support.

The initial setup is easy and takes approximately one to two days. A day for implementation and a second day for compliance.

The solution was implemented in-house.

We use the System Center Configuration Manager, which is free. So we don't need a license for BitLocker.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. The solution is good but can be improved by simplifying the implementation process. I recommend it to people who may not be able to afford high license costs.

We primarily use the solution for encryption. 

You have to do a bit of reading to understand the logic; however, after that, it becomes pretty straightforward to use it.

Feature-wise we have the ability to encrypt fast. This means when you enforce the policy and when you onboard a device via the Azure AD, it comes online pretty quickly. The speed at which BitLocker engages is pretty strong. That's a significant thing. You can even control your external devices, like your USB devices. You can allow or deny, or even encrypt those devices. There are lots of useful things like that available in this product.

In terms of improvement, they should look at file encryption. When the files are being moved out or something, sometimes we need encryption in transit. Meaning when your system, your laptop you're using, the files are idle, then they are encrypted. And if you are sending the files out, let's say you're mailing the files out, that's data in transit. The encryption over there is controlled differently. It depends on what tool you're using for sending the files. However, the encryption is controlled there. The thing is, if you could have one single point of the solution, no matter if you're using Office 365 as an organization, to have just one encryption system across multiple systems, rather than having one BitLocker on the drive, then another encryption rule-set for sending an email, that would be easier.

Maybe the solution could use some more capability within the reporting system, et cetera. The reporting in Microsoft is very minimal. If you had a third-party tool, they will give you very high-level, very detailed reporting across various categories and conditions. Microsoft doesn't do that. That's a huge drawback in the system. You open the control, you get a lot of information; however, that information, you can't export.

I’ve been using the solution for almost a year now.

The solution is absolutely stable. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn’t crash or freeze. It’s reliable.

We currently have about 150 people using the solution across every level of the organization.

Scalability doesn't really come into play since it's applicable only to the endpoint. BitLocker is applied to the laptop. You can set the policy to apply to all the drives on the laptop, and you can set the policy when the system is starting up and ask for a pin or just run it without the pin when it starts up. All that stuff is configuration-driven. There's no issue with scalability there. It just applies to all the machines, and once encrypted, all the machines will report to the central consoles.

Technical support varies since Microsoft tech support is outsourced to other organizations partnering with Microsoft. Therefore, even though I'm raising a ticket with Microsoft, it can go anywhere across the globe. Eventually, it is a third-party organization that's representing Microsoft that will handle the ticket.

The problem is the individual's expertise will vary. Some of them are very well versed in a particular product. Some are not so well versed. Eventually what happens is if they're not so well versed, then they'll go back to the Microsoft documentation and give you details based on that, and they'll work it out with you. The important thing is they always make it a point to achieve case closure. I'm not saying that it's very brilliant, however, it does a very good job. 80-90% of the time, it actually works.

Positive

We did not previously use a different solution, however, the critical thing to note is Windows 10 and 11 come with built-in encryption enabled. You have to disable that encryption. Only then will your centralized policy for BitLocker take over. Otherwise, it will throw up an error.

The initial setup is pretty simple. You might have to do a bit of education in terms of understanding the logic, however, after that, it’s all very simple.

For the actual deployment, basically, I did it in pieces. I did the initial deployment on my laptop. I had raised queries with Microsoft Support for this. Once I got the basic settings in place, I stabilized this as my policy, and then I drove it out to all my users.

I handled the initial setup myself. I didn’t need the help of any integrators or consultants.

You only have to pay for it. BitLocker is already present within the operating system. It's part of the OS. When you buy your laptop or a desktop, BitLocker is already present. The important thing here is the configuration part of it. BitLocker comes on your laptop, and it's 128-bit encryption, which comes by default. It's the unmanaged variety. The managed variety can be 128 or 256 bits. As a matter of industrial practice, we will all deploy 256 versions and there's no software cost coming in.

The important thing here is the deployment tool that you have. There are lots of tools in the market. Microsoft has an app called Intune, which gives you native control of the system. If you don't use Microsoft, if you don't have Intune, then you could look at some other products which give you control over the native encryption rather than deploying their own. Many products are there in the endpoint security domain which provides you encryption. If I decide to go that route, I will disable the BitLocker on both and I will apply this encryption software. However, I’m forced to rely on that encryption tool to do that management.

I’m using the latest edition. I started off on a trial basis for a couple of weeks, and now I've taken it to production. All my laptops are now on BitLocker.

I’d rate the solution nine out of ten.

If you want a free solution and work on Microsoft, use Windows BitLocker. That should do the job for you. Unless otherwise explicitly required for business needs, Encryption is basically a compliance requirement from an audit compliance requirement perspective. Encryption of your hard drives is a compliance requirement. However, there are businesses and industries wherein the data has to be encrypted, and it’s mandatory. This is not an issue of compliance for them. It's a work requirement. In those kinds of scenarios, then you would have to probably look at third-party solutions, which give you something beyond just the basic encryption. If you want to do basic encryption and you have your Intune, just use that. No money needs to be spent. You just need to put a little effort into creating a policy to push and apply to all the systems. End of story. However, if you have something more significant, you may have to look at other solutions.

We used Microsoft BitLocker to protect our laptops from theft. We have auditors that come and check to see the security of our systems and with this solution we are secure.

The solution could improve by having a centralized GUI for management.

I used Microsoft BitLocker within the past 12 months.

Microsoft BitLocker is stable.

I have a very small project and I implemented Microsoft BitLocker using GPO. Previously, we deploy Microsoft BitLocker using MBAM.

You can do a silent remote deployment very fast.

Microsoft BitLocker is a free feature when you are using Microsoft solutions.

I could advise any company to then deploy Microsoft BitLocker, first of all, because the product is free and the end user's computer performance is not affected. There are some products that when you install it on the end user's system, their system can become very slow.

I rate Microsoft BitLocker an eight out of ten.

We use it for encrypting data and storage for the most part. We keep it up to date in terms of the version.

It basically brings us in compliance. We are required to encrypt the handling of data, the transmission of the data, and storage of the data. So, when people are working with the data, and they download it to the laptops, we can safely say it is encrypted at that point to meet our requirements. It is pretty transparent to the end-user since the encryption is done without them really doing it.

Our need was to protect our portable devices. So, our thumb drives get automatically encrypted. Any attached storage gets automatically encrypted for our laptops in case they get lost or stolen when people travel.

I liked the way it works with our Microsoft tools. As we roll out Intune, we can validate if the device has been encrypted, and if not, we can push it down. It is pretty simple to deploy. 

Their interoperability with our tools, which are the Microsoft tool, can be improved. It needs to be geared towards more of the wraparound of the zero trust. There are solutions we're looking at that do encryption plus X, Y, and Z. So, we're looking at the ability to wrap around the product with other features.

The biggest one for us is revoking access. So, even though someone downloads something to a device, we want the ability to cloak that device or data and bring it back or make that data unusable for that person. Currently, BitLocker doesn't give us that ability. It basically encrypts it. We're seeing if identity management or IAM allows us to do that. We're kind of looking at third-party software that does that for us.

Usually, Microsoft sees what other third-party companies do and then either adopts it or buys the third-party company, and that's kind of what we're looking into. That's our need. It'd be a lot better if it was all under one mirror or one window, instead of having a couple of different vendors working on it. So, if Microsoft could solve that, it would be awesome. They should look at the third-party enhancements that people are doing, and then take the encryption a step further by adding those features to BitLocker. Microsoft has different components. They have identity management, but is it tied to encryption? BitLocker is mostly tied to devices, but it would be best for me if I get a piece of data and I am able to encrypt it all the way through using BitLocker. Currently, BitLocker is basically tied at the device level instead of the data level.

I would just like them to look at what other people are doing in terms of encryption as a whole and offer the encryption not only tied to the device, but also to the file level. They should add features on that in terms of access control and reporting. We should be able to see who has access to it and who has touched a file. So, we're going towards the zero trust model and the zero trust reporting. It is a "We don't trust anybody" type of deal. So, it is not just the device, it is the data. They should try to wrap it around the data at the file level and not at the device level.

I have been using this solution for about three years.

So far, so good. We haven't had too many problems with managing the keys or anything else. Probably the only concern is that we manage it. Individuals are not doing it themselves. The other thing is as we take over companies or merge companies, or the other way around, we have to make sure that we get those keys to the kingdom per se. So, we always got to look out for that as well.

So far, so good. Mostly, anything we deal with Microsoft is pretty scalable. Again, it is kind of tied to devices, but you can essentially manage it, which makes it simple.

In terms of its usage, we force it on everybody, so it is non-binding. No matter who you are in a company, if you have a managed device, it is going to be encrypted. It is a requirement, so it is being used extensively. Its usage will increase as the number of employees increase.

I don't think we've had many issues with them. We push it through our SolarWinds product, so for most of the issues we've had, we probably had to deal with SolarWind's side to make sure that everything was pushed correctly. We didn't go to the Microsoft side. Our software vendor might have dealt with Microsoft directly but not us.

The only solutions that we've had in place were standalone encrypted thumb drives. We had not rolled out BitLocker until then, so we had a need to encrypt thumb drives. We had bought Aegis thumb drives that came encrypted. After we got the encryption rolled out, when someone connected a thumb drive, it was automatically encrypted, or they couldn't store data on it. Once we went to that method, we didn't purchase any more Aegis encrypted thumb drives.

We have it on-prem, and we have a couple of devices in the cloud, but we are a hybrid environment. Our main thing was to get it on our traveling laptops and protect them. We push it through another vendor, not Microsoft. We push it through another SolarWinds vendor, and then we push it down. The only thing that we've had problems with was that the encryption level wasn't as high as we needed it by default. So, we had to do some tweaking to get the correct encryption level that we wanted. It is all default. So, you have to be aware of how you deploy it. If you deploy it one way, it doesn't really fully encrypt the machine.

It took days only because it was a slow rollout. It was intentionally a slow rollout. It didn't take long to do it, but we just wanted to make sure it was done right and correctly.

We just implemented it in-house. In terms of maintenance, it is a small staff. We rely on our software to help us with the patching and everything. We have reports that kickback to us. If for some reason, encryption was turned off or encryption wasn't deployed correctly, we'd get reports sent to us. So, a lot of stuff is automated in terms of monitoring the compliance to encryptions, and our response to that is pretty fast. We just manage it with our current staff. We don't have anybody directly tied to just doing that.

I don't know the costs. In terms of Microsoft licensing, we are at E3 on the business, and we're in the process of pricing out and moving to E5. So, a lot of this is included within our licensing agreements.

If you don't implement this, you have to implement something else. You have to have some type of encryption. In the past, people wanted a layered approach to security. They wanted to have different vendors, and they wanted it to be able to have that overlap of vendor support on security, but the reality is that everybody looks to Microsoft. If you look at the SolarWind attack, who do they go to help resolve it? They went straight to Microsoft. Therefore, we're getting away from that thought process of divide and conquer. We're just trying to align everything up with a single pane of glass so that we can build on our Microsoft tools. In the past, we would have resisted being tied to one security.

I can't rate it any lower than eight out of 10. The only reason why I don't rate it a 10 is that they can do more with it. It is good at what it does, but it needs to do more. It is never going to get a 10 from me because it is never going to be perfect, but there is more to do. 

BitLocker is a feature of which enables hard drive encryption. It's similar to Symantec Endpoint Encryption. For us, both go hand-in-hand, however, BitLocker has an advantage in that it stores the key in TPM. 

The hard drive encryption is very good.

Right now, the problem for us is, if a laptop is stolen, how they address it with the hard drive if it is already protected in BitLocker? We cannot protect anything until we have a centralized server feed where w can get all the information from all the laptop and the device if it does get stolen. Currently, to solve this, we are using a solution called Unbound.

I'm a hardcore developer. I don't know whether the solution has any source files. That said, I don't see anything that's really lacking, feature-wise. 

It's possible that the time it takes to pull items in to BitLocker could be reduced a bit. It can take a long time - sometimes up to 90 minutes.

I've been using the solution since I started working for my current company. I haven't been with them for so long and therefore haven't been working with the solution for too long just yet.

We have about 80,000 laptops and an encryption rate of approximately 99%. The stability seems to be pretty good.

I haven't attempted to scale the solution. I wouldn't be able to properly discuss how scalable it is at this time.

Currently, we have the solution on approximately 80,000 laptops.

I'm not sure if we will increase usage. I'm actually considering changing the solution in the near future.

I haven't really had any contact with technical support. Since I've never used them, I can't really discuss if they are responsive or knowledgable. Right now, my sole purpose is to look for an alternative to Unbound, and therefore I don't work too much with BitLocker troubleshooting.

I didn't handle the initial setup. It would be impossible for me to discuss the process or to talk about if it is difficult or straightforward. I didn't handle any aspect of the implementation.

I'm not really involved in the pricing aspect of the solution. I don't know if it is expensive or reasonably priced.

I essentially joined the company and since I got here all the laptops and endpoints have been encrypted using BitLocker. We are using IBM as management for all the data and to stop Microsoft from taking away Unbound support.

We are looking for an alternative. We're curious about Symantec or endpoint encryptions that I can use with BitLocker, on top of the Symantec client that I have. 

We're using the latest version of the solution, from what I understand. We load the solution directly onto laptops.

I would recommend the solution. However, if I find another endpoint solution, I may switch. I'm not tied to this product.

I don't have a lot of experience on the solution just yet. I'm still evaluating it in a lot of ways, and discovering the features.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

I use it to store sensitive information in vaults.

For the usage that I described, it was rather limited, however, it seemed easy, straightforward, and secure. I have found it beneficial for my organization to store sensitive information in vaults, which is helpful for our purposes.

The overall company should improve its billing support. My experience with the billing system at Microsoft was very frustrating. It took me about five months to solve a simple issue.

I have been using it for about three years.

There have been no stability issues.

I have experienced scalability issues.

Microsoft's customer service is pretty good. I am a Microsoft partner and have consulting hours with them. Their replies are good, and when I needed it, I got the solution, so I have nothing to add.

Neutral

Internally, I use LastPass.

I have not seen a return on investment yet.

Not right now. However, I know that I made the comparison, and it was more expensive.

I felt it was too expensive for the service that I required. From what I see, I would rate it as a seven out of ten.

It is an encryption tool and provides security.               

I have been using Microsoft BitLocker for the last two years.

The stability is satisfactory but I would rate it eight out of ten.

I have never contacted support myself, but they are extremely well-supported.

Positive

I would rate the overall product eight out of ten. 

I use the solution to log into my admin-protected computer.

The most valuable feature is the authentication process which is very fast.

My overall experience is based solely on one point: the gateway to the admin site. Even though my password is correct, I often have to make multiple attempts to log in. Microsoft BitLocker can help streamline the login process so that it works on the first attempt.

I would like the next release to include a fingerprint unlock feature, as I am currently required to use the PIN provided by my organization.

I have been using the solution for two years.

The solution is stable.

We have between 300 to 400 people using the solution in our organization.

I give the solution a seven out of ten.

I recommend the solution to others.