ARCON Privileged Access Management Reviews

We have a team of people who do the administration activity for servers and databases before our kiosk came into the picture. They used to share a common user ID along with the password among each other. Now, after our kiosks came in, they login into our kiosks with their old user ID, enter the ID, and the underlying connection is a common ID, but the password, they do not know.

Initially when we started, the function for automatic password change was not available. Also, Windows-based logins were not available. These two features came in later on about four to five years back. These functions have helped improve the product within our organization.

Once logged into our kiosk, I can go to 10 different servers and everything is logged. We can use this to identify which user is logged in, because the login being using to connect to servers will be a common ID, and that ID will not tell you who is the person logged in is.

With this log available, we can drill down to the activities performed by the people within our kiosk. There is a great feature where in the case of Unix servers, we have our own text-based logs. In the case of Window's server, we cannot create a text-based log, so our kiosk takes the screenshot or picture of the screen when I am working. It does this every three seconds. 

Another feature is the password can be changed automatically. For example, if you have a 60 day password change policy, your cards will change the password on its own and keep it within the system.

The auto-password change feature which was recently added. It is supposed to change the password. However, in some cases, while changing the password, it has caused me to lose to connection due to network-related issues or something similar. What we need to have is a type of log for failure of password change. We would like to have something that somebody can act upon, then rectified the problem.

We have not had any issues in the last eight to 10 years. When we were just implementing or just after implementation for six months or so, there were some stabilization issues, but those were immediately resolved.

Our kiosk structure is a very good structure. It will just connect to a server and show you the screen. 

They have very good support. They provide 24/7 support, because we do critical things, and also we work 24/7. Therefore, if an issue comes up, we require support, and they fix it.

There was a previous solution, but it was not writing in the logs properly. It was writing the logs only for the Unix-based system, which is text-based. Those logs were available. However, Windows and other systems were not available in that previous system.

The initial setup was very simple. There was only one server we had to setup. We needed to store all the passwords, and a secure database is used. There is a product center, so if production goes down, it will immediately switch, and our work will continue as is. 

The initial set up of the Client installation on each and every server. This is a slightly critical thing, but we had to make sure everything was perfectly installed.

Implementation went very smoothly because you are just changing the password on the back-end and handing it over to our kiosk, which will take care of it.

There are no major concerns with licensing because we can handle multiple servers in our kiosk system. 

This was over 18 years ago. We looked an IBM and CA product (something with single sign-on).

The first time, we manually updated the password. Afterwards, it changed on its own automatically.

For our requirements, this is the best product out there.

The primary use case is we want to control the access of the administrator. 

We have a lot of the administrators in our organization who have privileged access on the infrastructure, devices, servers, and network devices. We want to control this access, and at the same time, monitor this access. We use it to control privileged access of administrators on infrastructure and security devices, then monitor them from time to time.

It gives us a lot of control functions, which we were lacking in our organization. The privileged users, who are mostly administrators, are configured on the endpoints. We were not previously able to monitor, review, or control this. Therefore, it gives us a lot of comfort in terms of security level. Now, our infrastructure devices and servers are secured and nobody can have unauthorized access to them. Only the authorized users, whom we provide and approve access during any point of time, can access critical devices and mission critical systems. This is the benefit that we receive from this tool.

The best part of this product is the administrator convenience. The portal is very user-friendly. An administrator can use it very easily. This is the most important part of any privileged or anti-management solution. If it is not user-friendly an administrator will not want to use it. It has to be very user friendly and easy to use. 

What is a good feature here, just insert whatever target that you want access, then click next, and you will be in the system. I would suggest this should be the most prominent feature for any of the privileged or anti-management system.

What I like on this product: It is very easy, user-friendly, and an administrator can access it at any point in time without any hassle.

This product is lacking in terms of dashboarding analytics and should have user behavior analytics. It should also have better dashboarding for executive management and security managers, which this product is missing. 

Another important feature where this product is lacking, in terms of the managing the accounts, is in the active directory (provisioning and non-provisioning), or bridging it with the active directory. Thus, it needs anti-bridging.

ARCON needs three important things:

• The user behavior analytics should be there. 
• The dashboarding should be improved.
• Anti-bridging should be built into product.

This would make the product a comprehensive privileged R&D product.

In the future, I would like to have a type of functionality for the product with the mobile application. This would be helpful for some of our approvers, so they can approve at any point of time, sitting anywhere in the world when requests come in through the mobile application. Using the app, they can upload requests of the administrator or users. We would like to see this type functionality go on the product roadmap.

This product's performance is good, especially in terms of user access and approval metrics.

We have never faced any issues with scalability. This product is scalable enough. There are:

• Any number of services that you can add.
• Any number of users who can use it.
• Any number of infrastructure devices which can be added.
  

There are no issues in terms of support for this product.

Whenever we have had an issue, we raise a tech support ticket and immediately their tech support engineers come on a call. They do their best to try to resolve the issue. If they fail, sometimes to resolve the issue, then they work with their product team and come up with a solution immediately. The technical staff are good, and they are not facing hard issues in terms of support, because their technical skills are quite good.

We were not using another solution prior to ARCON.

It is not complicated; a very straightforward setup. Whenever they have to upgrade it, it is a 10 minute job. They upgrade the entire thing at one time. We have a two-tier architecture with a Gateway and a back-end application. Everything is deployed on the application, and the Gateway is only to connect to the end system. 

It is not multiple servers. It is not jump server technology. It is a very easy setup. You can have two servers and run it at any point of time.

The implementation is very simple. Whenever we have faced any issues, the vendor team can easily come and troubleshoot it, because of the simple setup which they have.

It is good value for our business. According to me, their competitors are more costly. Therefore, it is quite affordable. I find the ARCON to be much cheaper than the other products in the market.

Their licensing model is very simple, as it is based on the number of endpoints which you want to manage along with the number of users and administrators which you want to use. In terms of licensing, they are very flexible, because it is not a hard license. The licensing is simple, and there are only two types licensing: device licensing and user-based licensing.

We evaluated many other solutions along with the ARCON. We identified this solution as the best in terms of its accessibility. That is a main point. If an administrator can accept this, and it is very easy to use, it will be a successful product. 

We evaluated other products in the market, besides CyberArk. Ultimately, we decided to stick with this product. The cost is also a technical factor apart from the user convenience, which was the prime factor along with user acceptability. These were the two factors that we considered. Then we went ahead with ARCON.

While I have seen other products, and they are very good with dashboarding, reporting, etc. However, the analytics are so complex that the user is not able to use the product. There is a restriction in connection and containerization. You cannot take sessions, because others have taken sessions. Those are the constraints and challenges with other tools. 

Those challenges were there with the other tools, which I do not find in this tool. This tool is very simple and straightforward. If you have access, you can access the end system. From the moment our administrator accepted this tool, we did the PoC for this tool and they liked it.

The product is really a good product and a good value for the money, in terms of costs, user convenience, and functionality that they offer. It is a comprehensive, apart from a few things. The dashboarding and analytics are not very good, so they have to work on these two parts. Apart from those, they should have an anti-bridging functionality too. They are lacking only with these few things. I am sure they will be working on these points very soon, and they will be add to the roadmap to bridge the gap.

If any customer is looking for this product, and comparing it with another product in the market, I would suggest that they do a proper PoC. Do not go with marketing and branding terms. They should do proper business cases and give it to their administrators, then ask them to use it for at least a week or 10 days time. Afterwards, they should decide whether they want to ahead with this product or another product in the market.

We use it for privileged access management for our production environment. We use it to record all of the changes that take place in our entire environment. That is the main function because there is a lot of compliance that we need to meet. It helps us meet those requirements.

Initially, we did not have any record of the production changes, what was been taking place in our infrastructure and environment. To work on this, we got in touch with ARCON. After the implementation, we were able to make changes and record all of the changes, either in the GUI mode or the command mode. This helps us to build on the changes that take place.

Because we are a financial institution, the compliance aspect is the most important for us. Using this ARCON product, we are able to leverage the compliance and auditing to meet the regulatory information and share it when we are required to.

The product is good but a lot of things can be changed, the way the system has been designed. All the access levels have currently been provisioned so a little more effort could be put into it to have a more friendly environment and user experience. The management portal could be a more friendly environment wherein I could deploy with fewer management resources from my side. We have been requesting from the ARCON team to have fewer management activities.

It's a really good, secure system. It meets all the requirements. We have a high-availability environment so even if the system goes down, we always have the backup available. Functionality-wise, the cluster setup means the product has HA capabilities.

We've had problems along the way but they were not major. The product support team has been very good. There was an issue with functionality within the product, which, as a technical team, we were not able to resolve. With the help of the product vendor, we were able to resolve it.

We did not have a previous solution. We were looking in the market for a product but we couldn't find one that met our requirements. ARCON provided a product that was able to meet the requirements and that's why we went with it.

Initially, because it was a new product for us, it was a bit difficult for everybody to understand the product. But since we've been using it for quite a long time, even the new features, the new screens, that have been deployed in the latest versions, are very user-friendly. It's not that difficult for the users to understand.

The product's pricing is a good value. We haven't had any issues with licensing.

We went through a few of the other products which were available but, as I mentioned, they did not meet all our requirements. In the end, we evaluated this particular product and chose to go live with it in our environment.

It's a go-ahead for any organization that is looking to meet their compliance and audit requirements. This is a very good product to go with for getting your work done.

It meets most of the requirements we have. I did not give it a nine out of 10 because there are still more requests that I am looking to have fulfilled, changes to be implemented in a new version. These would make the product more stable, as well as a better product on the market.

Controlling the privileged access to all the target servers.

Provisioning of all administrative access through this solution. The privileged administrators are logging in to the solution using their domain ID and then getting access to the required servers based on their credentials. The administrators do not need to know the actual administrator's password. Otherwise, in an environment if you have N of servers, the administrator needs to know the ID password of each and every server. After implementation of this solution they are all stored in the password vault of this solution.

So in this case, let's say one administrator is managing a hundred servers. He may not know the different passwords of the different servers. That person will log in to this solution using his domain ID and password and he will get access to the servers he is managing. This is a primary use of this particular solution.

And then, after storing this administrator password in this password vault of the solution, the solution can automatically go and change the password based on the defined frequency with the defined complexity.

Additionally, it is recording video records for Windows and command-line reports for others, Linux and AIX, of whatever activities being carries by that particular administrator.

One thing which needs improvement is where it is keeping video logs of Windows Servers, whatever activities are being carried out by the administrator. Because Windows logs are a video, they are unsearchable, so if you need to search for a specific administrator and what he has done on a server, right now you need to go through different video logs of that particular timeframe. I think they are coming up with an additional feature where in it can be indexed and can be searchable.

We haven't had any issues with stability.

We have designed a solution such that it has been implemented in both the production as well as the DR environments. Whenever we wanted to upgrade the product to the next version, we upgrade the DR first, then production. And whenever production is being upgraded, the entire access is switched over to DR for all the users. So effectively there is no down time for the end users, the administrators.

The stability of the product becomes very important. Otherwise, if the server in the solution is down, all the administrators lose their access for administration. It has proved its stability over the last five to six years.

We never had scalability issues. The primary issue will be storing the logs. The storage is attached to the SAN, so whenever there is a space crunch, in terms of storing the logs, we just increase the SAN storage. That's it. In terms of computer requirements, we never had an issue in terms of performance.

We had a little different model altogether. We had their resource on site for our support. We used to talk to the onsite person only. So I wouldn't be a right person to give you feed back on the tech support, as such. But whenever we had to escalate to tech support, there was a good response.

We did not have a previous solution.

The setup is pretty straightforward, it is normal. There is application server, there's a gateway server and there's a database server. I don't think there is any complexity in that. 

The product's pricing is good value.

In terms of licensing, go for user-based licensing, without any limit on the target servers.

We evaluated different solutions. We evaluated CyberArk and, if I remember correctly, we had evaluated one more Indian product. I don't recollect its name.

Primarily we took the decision to go ahead with ARCON because the criteria for privileged administrative environment as a domain was evolving a lot at that time. It was in 2012. We felt that they offered many customizations, anything which was required that was specific to the customer's environment. They offered that customization to us. And they have come up with a number of customizations, and a number of good features over that period of time. With CyberArk, we didn't have that much flexibility in terms of customizing the product.

Obviously your administrators should participate in the decision to buy this product, because they will have to go through the solution to access any server or any device on which they wish to do administration. At times, initially, it may seem to people who are doing administration that their flexibility is removed. You have to make them aware that the solution brings them flexibility in terms of not remembering the passwords of many servers; when they have a number of servers to be administered, they write down the passwords. Those issues are taken away.

It also provides a lot of security to the administrator himself. He can also review what commands fired, what commands did not fire.

The solution was suited for the purpose when we evaluated it, and it has also evolved to meet the different needs, additional needs. I think it's continuing to evolve.

We use it for privileged access management.

Our purpose initially was to have a few critical projects. Not to have password management of all projects. So we started on a smaller scope. Later on, we implemented it across the organization. So now, all technical solutions are being controlled by ARCON. And the main area of improvement here is, we have ease of access. People have password-less access and a need-to-know-basis access whenever they require, when the approvals are in place for access. Previously, all this things were handled manually in the environment. Those we have automated, we have eliminated dependency on any manual intervention.

Everything is in the system. When a person wants to have access, they put in the data, the requirement, the timing, the other technical parameters. The project managers in charge of the infrastructure, they approve it and the access is available to the person who requires it, all the time. 

Equally we are able to monitor it all. It gives us the capability of monitoring it online, rather than going to the persons' desk for the activities being done. We sit in our office and monitor what is happening in the target device, using ARCON. The recordings and other things are available, in case any forensics are required.

Mainly the password vault. So, we have all of our generic IDs, which are present in the infrastructure, we have it securely vaulted. When we want to have access, we use ARCON only to have the access of the target devices or systems.

We have the load balancer and we have certain cloud environments. So, if you take Microsoft hypervisor - which comes with its own interface, its own web layer, etc. - something like that also requires privileged IDs. As per our institution policy now, everything has to come through ARCON. We have demanded that these kind of advanced features also should be there.

They have improved a little bit in providing all the interface, but as of now it is not comprehensive, not at all the interfaces, but the major ones are covered. Whatever we have demanded, they have tried to provide the solution. In fact, with a little bit of time, because of new technology, integrations, and dependency on the OEM side - taking all these things into consideration - they have done a good job in integrating many of the technologies which we have demanded.

For example, vCenter that is a hypervisor for VMware. They have a vCenter environment. Now it can be easily integrated with ARCON. We have a plug-in for that. It was not there last year, now they have come up with it and it is working very well. So my cloud management user IDs are now using ARCON for managing the cloud.

In the basic functionality of the solution, there have not been any challenges. The product is very well designed so that it actually adapts the scalability well. 

But we have seen changes over the last year in terms of security. I would rather not say it is a product deficiency or a deficiency the company. I've been reviewing other products as well, and when we see a product releases something it challenges the other market players. We are seeing that the security trends are becoming very stringent, now providing a high level of security. There has been a lot said and recommended about the access of the infrastructure.

We have our own infrastructure management team which actually looks into the vulnerabilities and the old architecture, protocols, etc. When we start eliminating tools, it's becaue they only support the old communication mechanisms. The migration from SSL to TLS. This is one example. Lately, TLS 1.2 has been recommended by the IT industry. This product was working last year in SSL only. We migrated to TLS 1.2. The adaptability to move quickly towards a new environment is lacking and they are deficient in having integration with other OEMs. I am not naming company names but I would say, for example, one load balancer should be integrated.

For about the last one year or so, everybody has their Web layer for their own product, for their appliances, for their load balancer. Those Web layers are developed by the particular OEM of the appliance. They all have their own logic for providing their access. This solution, doesn't immediately provide any way to integrate with that particular Web layer. So what we do is, whenever we have a new appliance and there is a Web layer above it, we report it to ARCON and they look, see whether it matches any existing solutions, or whether it requires new development.

That is something that is happening every time a Web layer comes out, which is proprietary to an OEM. We have to have them look at it. We cannot directly integrate with that. But that is the scenario with all the products in the market. They cannot integrate directly with any proprietary system. ARCON tries to provide a quick solution.

Earlier they were having issues, only releasing upgrades quarterly. Now they have changed the frequency to monthly, for about the last six months. So that is some kind of improvement.

Updates are not a problem, our in-house team is capable of implementing them, even without support from the company. They provide documentation with the  technical dependencies and the steps.

I would rate it eight out of 10, mainly when we ask about regular technical issues. We do a certain hardening of infrastructure. Whenever we start doing hardening, it affects the access management. So troubleshooting on technical aspects, on these kinds of things, which are a regular technical issue, they are good.

But when it comes to new implementations or new integration - because in the last six months we have given them 15 to 20 new integrations, new Web layers, new appliances to integrate and other things - those are new for them also. So they take their time for checking the feasibility, seeing how it works, and then releasing it. So, in these cases they are taking time. 

But otherwise, the support is good. For regular activities, their support doesn't have any challenges. People are available on the phone. There is a portal available for us to look for technical support, and they do update it regularly.

This is the first solution.

They set it up for us and then we trained our people.

I am not in a position to give any financials, but whatever we have paid, it is value for money.

Their licensing model is good. They have been flexible for us.

We have evaluated two solutions, for two projects - two of our projects required access management. Then we selected this and we extended this solution for multiple projects as well.

It was an open RFP for us in 2015. There were eight products in that quadrant. So we referred to all of them. For us it was an open tender. Then we technically evaluated, compared them, and then selected one product. It was open to the global market and we saw all the products which were present at the time. I think ARCON is one of the leaders now.

Have your access management process is in line. If you have complex processes, or you have not defined it, it will be rather difficult to implement any such product.

I give ARCON a nine out of 10. The missing point is for not quickly adapting, as per the example I mentioned above, regarding integrations. I don't know whether it's a deficiency at their end, maybe that proactiveness is not there. Or maybe there are too many changes happening in the market, they might not be able to cope with all the changes that are happening.

Lately, in the last year or so, all technical products in the IT world have come up with their own access management portfolio. These kinds of products require integration with this portfolio. I have received 15 to 20 items which require integration, 75% were already available and 25% had to be built. So that minus one is because of that 25% they could have integrated even before I asked them. They could have done a workflow just by surveying market.

Used for server access management.

It has all the features that we require. In this regard I cannot tell you much other than that this solution is good for us, and we have been using it for a long time.

The most important feature is to know who is accessing the servers, the entire conversation that is happening between the servers and the client is recorded. It is a good feature if you want to do some analysis, and for investigation. So it is helpful to us.

I can't think of anything because the features which we require, it has everything that we need. So I cannot tell you much about the improvements required for this product. We are using all the features, and it is good to have.

The only thing is, while the product is good, they could do something on the support side. Support is quite good, but some improvements are required because the time to resolve is four hours. If they could reduce that to two hours, that would be good for us.

There has been no problem.

No issues with scalability.

Technical support is good, whenever we have issues they will resolve the issue, so the support is good.

The setup is not complicated because we implemented it in a single virtual platform, and using that console we integrated all the server platform for access, and directed user privileges. We provided users with a single sign-on.

The pricing works for us. Comparatively, this software's pricing is good.

We have suggested to other operations that they test this product. We have always spoken well about this product.

Privileged access management, to protect privileged access.

It prevents unauthorized authentication changes and improves our security.

Video capture.

They need to support all web browsers. At the moment it only supports Explorer, IE. They have to come up with a solution to support all browsers.

Stability is fine, it's good actually.

Yes it is scalable, it has capacity to scale up and expand.

Tech support is very good.

No previous solution, this is our first.

It's simple.

Pricing and licensing are good, very aggressive.

We evaluated three products. CyberArk, ARCON, and one more product but I don't remember the name.

I give it a seven out of 10 because, as I said, it does not support all browsers.

Provides more secure access to servers and also provides audit trails.

Ease of configuration and management. All features are available and cover all the use cases, like database, thin clients, file sharing clients, etc.

The usability should be expanded to other browsers like Chrome and Firefox. That would help us roll out our solution quickly.

No issues with stability.

No issues with scalability.

The support is prompt and readily available.

No previous solution was being used.

The initial setup was straightforward. The implementation team configured the solution in a very short amount of time.

The pricing and licensing model is very economical.

Product is very efficient. Thorough testing needs to be done prior to implementation to test the solution in your specific architecture.