Easy to integrate, good documentation and automatically picks and provisions new resources based on tagrs
What is our primary use case?
We use it for zero-trust privileged access.
How has it helped my organization?
Any time we have a new resource, we can have it automatically picked up and provisioned based on tags to give the right people access to the right resources.
I don't have to think about giving anyone access to anything. All of the logging is handled for us, including for auditing purposes. Looking through the audit logs is not a painful experience. Everything is in one place if we need to go back and look at what happened.
What is most valuable?
I like the easiness of integrating it with all of our existing data sources. We've also found a few other use cases where we've been able to grant access to third-party resources that require IP-level whitelisting in addition to authentication for remote workers.
What needs improvement?
We started to use it as a client-side or split tunnel VPN. We are unable to overwrite the endpoints and direct traffic that way, but that's a technical limitation, and I understand why it's there.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for about four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We've had a few issues in the past, but those have all been resolved based on interactions with StrongDM and the addition of some new features to the product. For example, the egress routing functionality solved a fair amount of our problems. So, I don't think there are any outstanding issues that we're aware of or have complained about.
I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. The only reason it's not a ten is that there's some automated patching that happens in the background. This was years ago, but we had some issues where that were causing us problems, and we had no way of scheduling it at different times.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We haven't run into any issues with scalability at this point.
The only issues we've encountered are when you have a very large amount of data sources, we're talking above 2000. Then, the routing algorithm for directing traffic on the StrongDM backend takes a little bit of time to figure out where to route traffic whenever you bring up and down relays or gateways.
We do not have any issues with StrongDM's scalability at the size of our organization right now.
How are customer service and support?
That's how we got some of those feature requests in. We've only contacted support one or two times without a feature request. The support interactions have been minimal because of how good the documentation is.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was fairly straightforward as we run everything in Docker. From that side, there wasn't much effort required from StrongDM. However, integrating it into our environment was completely on us.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The licensing is per user per month. It's pretty close to the same or in line with all of the other pricing for tools that do similar things.
What other advice do I have?
A first-time definitely needs to have some background experience with setting up services to run, but it's no different than onboarding any other service.
My recommendation: Do not change the gateway or relay names, and everything will be great. But that's only really a problem if you deploy within Kubernetes and use a deployment rather than a stateful set.
Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten.
It is really very cool and important PAM software.
What do you like best about the product?
UI and the way they put all minimal things describe in their documentation.
What do you dislike about the product?
They have to improve StrongDM app. some time it is run in background app and was not open in display.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We can easly find who is using that perticular resources, so we can easly find if any issue occure.
Product and Service, both are top notch !!!
What do you like best about the product?
What I like best about StrongDM is how it makes managing and securing access to servers, and Kubernetes clusters so easy.
The user interface is straightforward, and the audit logging feature is great for keeping track of user activity.
And the customer support toemphasize, very prompt, clear responses and followups.
What do you dislike about the product?
One thing i felt the initial setup and configuration can be somewhat time-consuming if you're not familiar with similar tools, but that's not really an issue as we have their uncomplicated and clear documentation to go through.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It's solving the main problem of secure and efficient access management to databases, servers, and k8s clusters. Also centralizing access control in their dashboard eliminating the need for managing user, credentials and permissions separately.
Great experience and most importantly - StrongDM is implementing new and very useful features fast
What do you like best about the product?
- comprehensive list of resources, everything one might need
- support for modern resources such as various flavours of Kubernetes clusters
- automation - possibility to manage entire PAM solution with Terraform is real killer feature, making resource available to end users few seconds after it's provisioned in your cloud provider (change management is important here!)
- useful integrations such as StrongDM
- helpful team and support specifically
What do you dislike about the product?
Not much to dislike, sometimes documentation is not up to speed with features released , requires spending more time and working with StrongDM support
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
- access multiple types of datasources and servers/services from a single point
- having logging and audit for any access event on multiple platforms
- good user experience for remote access
One of the only Enterprise tools I keep coming back too
What do you like best about the product?
StrongDM is the tool to make my job easier, and I use it everyday. Granting access for others to use potentially sensitive systems couldn't be simpler.
What do you dislike about the product?
Initial sticker shock is bound to hit you for pricing, but it does make up for it in having to spend way less time supporting just in time access patterns for sensitive systems.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
For compliance reasons, having temporary access with required approvals as well as full logs of what transpired during the sessions, all wrapped in a simple to use system. What more could you ask for.
Easy Privileged Access Management with StrongDM
What do you like best about the product?
StrongDM has helped us simplify the process of managing access to our database and server. We have been able to establish this across different environmets easily. The robust access control features that allow us to manage permissions seamlessly across our team have been a very useful implementation. The support has been very helpful and quick when needed and for the additional feature requests there has been a good turnaround time compared to other vendors. All this has helped us use StrongDM on a daily basis with no hassle.
What do you dislike about the product?
The initial setup could be hectic and complex, but the team at StrongDM will help as much as possible with the set up. Once we have a good working knowledge of the application, we should be able to use it with ease.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We use it mainly for the Privileged Access Management for our servers and databases and has helped greatly with achieving the compliance standards we strive to achieve.
StrongDM as a single proxy secure layer for all our critical workloads.
What do you like best about the product?
Ease of integration and managing the RBAC in the system is a piece of cake, definig roles and creating ACL's specific to our usecases were always starighforward and the integration with SSO tools. Many features for automating the usecases and onbarding the dataspurces using terraform modules.
What do you dislike about the product?
There are times when the Gateways and the ACL's didnlt reflect newer changes soon but the UI has developed a lot comapred to the first few versions, some of the logging policies can change if people want to move away from the syslog storage in the gateway servers.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
StrongDM provided us a way to implement an automated datasource onbaording and also implement a robust RBAC and priviliged Access management mechanism using best practices. We have multiple AWS accounts with multiple datasources like EKS, RDS, EC2 etc..., The case to use a datasource with out password and user credentials was centralized for all resources which saved us a lot of management overhead and also the case to rotate and secure the credentials often.
Great support
What do you like best about the product?
Very helpful support. They are quick to reply, friendly, and understanding.
What do you dislike about the product?
It's extra friction getting access to the database. However, its purpose is to add an extra layer of security, so it's serving its purpose.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Since our company works remotely, security is very important. Having StrongDM does help not put all of the security responsible on the individual user.
Very helpful support
What do you like best about the product?
It is an easy to use tool. Employees find it easy to use. Customer support has responded very fast. Easy IAM feature
What do you dislike about the product?
The new ui update. I prefer to have a dropdown of all our sdm resources rather than a popup. Also the popup always opens behind my browser.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Instead of a VPN
An excellent tool to fulfill your JIT access needs
What do you like best about the product?
StrongDMs ease of use is one of its best features. Getting start takes only a few minutes and defining access workflows and onboarding users is a breeze. We were able to integrate StrongDM into our existing infrastructure in under an hour. The SSH replay and DB query auditing are top notch and helps give us confidence that we know what is being done with privileged access when it is granted.
When we had a few questions about how to accomplish certain tasks within StrongDM, their support was quick to respond and helpful. In cases where a functionality wasn't available they logged a feature request for us so that the development team would consider it for the future.
What do you dislike about the product?
We haven't encountered any real downsides to StrongDM as of yet. The only thing that it lacks which we would love to have is a multi-level approval workflow that'd require multiple people to approve access. Based on discussions with their team this is on their roadmap and at the current time we could accomplish it if we had a ServiceNow integration. Beyond that though, StrongDM has everything we need to satisfy our use case and we're very pleased with the tool.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
StrongDM is solving the just-in-time access problem for us with full auditing of what is done in those access sessions. It helps give us confidence about what is being done and by who in addition to scoping access to only small windows of time.