Auvik SaaS Management (ASM) Reviews

Our use cases include tracking down what end-users are using. We leverage it from an onboarding and offboarding perspective, so that when a user is exited from an organization or separates, Auvik SaaS Management allows us to produce a report very quickly to see what they've been using. Beyond the stuff we know, we also know if they were sharing accounts with somebody. That allows us to quickly remove access and then ask people that are still there. 

And if we know that someone is coming into a company we know, based on similar users, what they need access to. It helps us to automate some of the onboarding and offboarding processes.

Overall, software discovery in an organization, what they're using, is the main use case.

The onboarding and offboarding aspects are valuable from an operational standpoint, as a managed service provider. Because we have that visibility, it really decreases the time we need to execute everything. We don't know what we don't know and Auvik SaaS Management closes that gap. With it, we know everything that they've touched from a software perspective and in terms of shared accounts. Without it, it would be virtually impossible to know those things.

When it comes to user offboarding, Auvik SaaS Management gives us a two-click checklist of everything that the user has access to, and it lays out what we're responsible to terminate access to and what stakeholders within the organization are responsible to terminate access to. We can use that playbook rapidly without anyone on my team or the client's team not knowing. We can reach out to a company's HR and say, "Did you remove that user's timekeeping, payroll app, et cetera, that we don't have access to?" It is important to check those boxes. Especially if they're subject to any type of compliance, they have to do that. The chances of that getting missed or of realizing we didn't cut access for six months because we just forgot—that doesn't happen anymore.

The efficiency that results from not missing things helps save us time. And the solution definitely cuts the amount of rework when onboarding users to see what they should have access to in comparison to other users, or when offboarding and not having to double and triple check if we have missed something. There are definitely time savings there. It adds massive efficiency to our user onboarding and offboarding processes.

From a software reporting standpoint, Auvik SaaS Management saves massive amounts of time. The tools that we had in place before Auvik SaaS Management would give us a complete on-prem software inventory, and then we'd have to spend lots of time interviewing, watching, and figuring out what people were using and how. And even then, we'd be missing probably 30 to 40 percent of the picture, because they didn't realize they were using something or the person we were talking to wasn't one of the two people in a 100-person organization leveraging a particular platform. Understanding what is in use within an organization would otherwise be a mostly manual process or a matter of pulling massive reports from our RMM platform, reports that we would have to dig through to figure things out.

And we're able to leverage the platform, in the context of our strategic consulting practice, to sit down with business stakeholders and discuss shadow IT and security; what they're doing, and why. It's an invaluable tool to have to help force those conversations. It helps our strategic consultants, our vCIOs have discussions around SaaS at a deeper level. The insights we gain from the platform help to drive major discussions about security as it relates to cloud-based applications and their use within an organization. It has really made an impact in that practice and has helped to drive revenue. It's an easy discussion starter about the bigger picture.

Understanding where data resides is absolutely critical, from both a day-to-day security and operational standpoint, but also in the event of a major issue or security event. If we don't know where our data is, that's obviously a major problem. Using Auvik SaaS Management to identify that on a lot of different levels makes it an invaluable tool for us.

Using Auvik SaaS Management has absolutely helped to mitigate our risk from shadow IT and data sprawl. Being able to visualize where stuff could be—giving us a starting point for all the apps that are touched within an organization, which is where data could reside—allows us to deal with it. That mitigates the risk of having people working outside of authorized applications, or a situation where the legal department is transacting within a personal Dropbox account instead of using OneDrive. There could be insurance issues where a policy won't cover us because someone used a personal space for data and it somehow leaked out. It definitely helps to mitigate that, broadly. It allows us to sleep better at night, for sure, knowing what is in use across the organization and what data could be in there.

Auvik SaaS Management is part of a bundled solution we offer to all our customers. We primarily use it for two things: shadow IT monitoring and SaaS license management. We also use it for SaaS compliance, i.e., to ensure people aren't using tools they shouldn't be using. Auvik SaaS Management itself is a web browser extension we can deploy across all of our environments regardless of where they are.

Auvik SaaS Management provides our customers with insights into what's happening in their environment to help them make decisions. From our perspective as an MSP, Auvik SaaS Management allows us to demonstrate value to the customers. It shows them we're paying attention to this stuff.

It offers visibility into SaaS platforms and other software because it monitors all the licensing. It knows about all the software on a system. We know what software they're using and how they're using it. We can show a customer where you're overspending and buying more licenses than necessary. That's extremely valuable.

Auvik SaaS Management gives an excellent overview of our client's SaaS ecosystem. That's the primary reason for it. We can show our customers what is going on and all the licenses they're using. It lets us know if someone is using unauthorized apps or if they're using apps in a problematic way. We can tell them if their employees are copying files to a tool that they shouldn't be. Many of our customers are in highly regulated industries subject to a lot of compliance oversight. Auvik SaaS Management helps keep them out of trouble.

It's essential for compliance to understand where data is housed. They have to keep their data in a secure place and maintain control over it. It often has to be encrypted at rest. They can't have their data just anywhere. Auvik SaaS Management allows us to keep an eye on what's happening with our customers' data to stop problems before they start. It has substantially reduced customer risk. 

Auvik SaaS Management has also reduced human error because people aren't always maliciously or intentionally putting data where it shouldn't be. Sometimes they don't understand that they're not supposed to use unauthorized solutions for work. It's just a human error kind of problem. 

It's a huge time saver because everything is right there. We don't need to go to multiple places to find licensing information and how much they use. We can tell what's going on by pulling the reports and looking at the dashboards. It gives us a single pane of glass for managing multiple customers' entire SaaS environments. While I can't say we've eliminated any other tools, it's possible Auvik SaaS Management saved us from adding other tools. When we started using Auvik SaaS Management, it provided a service that didn't exist in the industry. There wasn't anything else out there that we could have used at the time. 

Many companies have a lot of employees who use their own tools and personal accounts for various purposes, like data sharing or email. Auvik SaaS Management offers a way to control that and discover what everyone in an organization uses. It has helped tremendously because I now have a bird's eye view of what's going on with my clients regarding unauthorized applications and accounts that may pose data governance and security risks. 

Most of my clients are in the private sector, and only a few have on-premise infrastructure servers. Most are on cloud infrastructure.

A month ago, I was auditing one of my clients for data governance. Using Auvik SaaS Management, I came across an end-user with more than 20 GB of business-related data in a Dropbox account. I never would've known that he was using Dropbox for company data. Without Auvik SaaS Management, it would have gone under the radar.

I reported that to the CEO of my client, but I first spoke with the user and asked him why he was doing this. He explained that he had been doing this for a while to access company data anywhere. It wasn't malicious intent on his part. It was a lack of knowledge about what he could do with the tools the company already had. 

Auvik SaaS Management provides a bird's eye view of the client's SaaS ecosystem. It gives me that big picture I didn't have before. Knowing where your data resides is vital because it is such a precious commodity these days. Companies of all sizes need to grasp where their data is and how to protect it. The ability to see where things are being relocated is priceless. When end-users store their data all over the place, it creates a massive risk because you have so many different points of failure. You can better protect your data by keeping it tight and knowing where it is. 

It's not so much an issue of human error as it is a lack of knowledge on the end user's part. We can say that Auvik SaaS Management reduces human error by correcting a lack of knowledge. 

Auvik SaaS Management does a great job creating an inventory of programs in the cloud and the local desktop environment. It builds a catalog of what's being used. Other management tools also give me those reports, but I can easily find all that information in one place in Auvik SaaS Management. It doesn't matter if desktop applications are running on a particular endpoint or if cloud applications are being accessed. It has saved a lot of time because I have a single inventory from the local and cloud environment, and I don't have to go hunting.

Before Auvik SaaS Management, our biggest challenge was asking clients to compile a list of all the software they used. It was such a pain because it was so time-consuming for the clients. If you don't stay on top of it, you don't have all the software for the onboarding phase. Auvik SaaS Management enables us to put an agent on their computers and let it run for a month. Instead of asking the client for that list, we can provide them with a list of applications they use.

Auvik SaaS Management gives our cybersecurity program an advantage because we can demonstrate that we have a sophisticated solution for shadow IT. We can impress the clients by showing them that we see changes they're making that they haven't even reported to us. 

It helps reduce risks, especially when our clients terminate an employee. They gain visibility into what needs to be shut off. A specific example is an employee who was using a general email for the company for accounting. We could identify that using Auvik SaaS Management and change the password for an account that multiple people were using. If it weren't for Auvik SaaS Management, we wouldn't have known that this employee had access to a shared email account, and something terrible could have happened.

Overall, Auvik SaaS Management made the process of onboarding and offboarding smoother. We replaced another network detection tool, but we weren't using it. We thought Auvik SaaS Management provided a better overall solution.

We're using Auvik SaaS Management to manage our clients' technology environment. We use it to identify the applications people access with their business email addresses, so we know what the technology spread is. It also tells us if accounts have been created for business use with personal accounts or anything outside of the business domain that would be a potential security concern.

Auvik SaaS Management enables us to present potential risks to clients and see who logs into which accounts. Some of our clients have shared accounts, so we can see which of the client workstations are logging into some of those shared accounts. We want to lock down who has access. 

The reporting is helpful for offboarding clients. We can also pull a report showing which applications have the highest risk in their environment. Sometimes these factors aren't on anybody's radar. It's helped us reduce risks for our clients by showing them what applications might need to be reviewed on their devices or for their employees.

The overview Auvik SaaS Management provides of our clients' SaaS environment is sufficient, but the dashboard might be a little challenging for a client to understand. Still, I think it offers a solid overview of the applications in a client environment and how many are classified to give us an overall health or risk score.

Auvik discovers shadow IT. It identifies applications and systems running on employees' computers and how they log into those systems. It is deployed remotely via a browser extension. There is nothing on-prem except a lightweight agent installed on each computer endpoint.

Auvik allows us to offer insights to our clients that they don't have. Currently, companies have no idea how their employees utilize applications and systems. This gives us insight into how they're using the infrastructure so we can approach those employees who may not log into systems securely.

It's an integral part of what we want to do with our clients. Employees often do the wrong thing, and they'll continue to do the wrong things unless you can have a big bright flashlight on those things. Auvik tells us which systems people are using. It's a problem if they're outside the scope of the standard system provided by the company. That's crucial because employees don't necessarily protect their own systems adequately. 

Without Auvik, you have zero visibility into how employees use company infrastructure. Companies will set a policy. For example, they'll make all employees use Google Drive for document storage, but employees might use their personal credentials with Google Drive or use Office SharePoint, DropBox, etc. We don't know if those systems have multifactor authentication and strong passwords. It's vital to understand what people are using because employees doing their own thing aren't doing it securely most of the time.

If the employees are doing it incorrectly, we can flag that and follow up with them. I guess it would reduce human error because they will take no action otherwise. Employees won't do anything if you don't tell them to do it. If you don't want them to do it, and if there isn't accountability, they'll just go ahead and do whatever they want.

We use the solution to track unauthorized apps our employees use so we can talk to them or block the apps at the firewall if needed. More importantly, we track shared credentials and services employees access on company devices, especially when someone's leaving. If someone had access to a shared account, which we try to avoid, but if there was one with a logged-in password, we can change it when we off-board the employee or shut down their account.

The reporting features are the most valuable to me. They allow me to access all the information in one place.

We primarily use Auvik SaaS Management to understand a client's SaaS environment because everything is cloud-based nowadays. It provides a little more insight into what applications are in use. 

We deploy it across the whole organization and start collecting data. We've never had someone come to us with a scenario where they only want to run it for one specific department or group of people. We've not had that happen. 

The Auvik SaaS Management app helps us understand the depth and range of applications an organization uses, whether IT or finance tools. It allows us to pinpoint where we're vulnerable. We can reduce those security gaps by ensuring we are using applications and storing data only where we need to. That's one of the most important uses of the app.

Auvik SaaS Management is a crucial tool for providing an overview of a SaaS ecosystem. When it's collecting data initially, you might question the value, but you start to see a pattern as it pulls those reports over time. We don't know of any other tools that do something like this. It's unique. 

We need to know where our data resides for security reasons and in general. You can't secure your data if you don't know where it is, so you risk losing it. Many file-sharing apps exist, and an organization may have approved some that we back up or monitor, but it's challenging to control unauthorized apps. 

We also need insight into the various email accounts employees use. It's common for employees to check personal email at work. It's generally acceptable, but sometimes an employee might use a personal email account to share company data. Auvik SaaS Management helps us see that, and it's vital to know where your information is going.

Auvik SaaS Management reduces risk because we've identified where the data is and how many different sign-on tools people are using, so we can ensure company information is used for the right reasons. We can also understand what those other sign-on tools provide, which might signify that we need to switch solutions. It has helped reduce security gaps.

I can't think of a specific example where it has helped reduce human error. However, when we tell employees that we're deploying Auvik SaaS Management with a shadow IT monitoring tool, people become more aware of their actions. At first, they're wary that it's something being used to spy on them, but they eventually ease into it. Awareness that something is monitoring them makes people more mindful of their actions.

In terms of saving time, we probably don't see much benefit during onboarding. When we initially onboard a client using the Auvik SaaS Management portal, we see a large influx of applications, and it takes time to sit down and go through all of that. There's a significant time investment at the beginning. During the first two or three months, I was working with the tool and adding users, so we would see an abundance, but once you've classified most of your applications, you're only dealing with the new ones coming in. During offboarding, you already have the whole picture, so there are no surprises when it is onboarding.