BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access pros and cons

We like the integration with Active Directory. It allows us to discover the endpoints and user accounts that need protection. It's a good way of securing our privileged access.

I like all of it. You can access computers that are on a DMZ. You can access computers that are off the network and on the network. You pretty much have access to computers wherever they are. As long as they have the client on them, you can get to them. So, it is convenient, but its main feature is that you can use your smart card to elevate your privileges remotely. That's a great feature.

When it comes to the Privileged Remote Access (PRA) solution, instead of depending on a VPN client, from Cisco or any other vendor, we can directly use this product from the internet. It is very easy to do the implementation, and it is easy for every user to access the server from outside of their organization. They can open the URL and put their name and password, and it'll do the multi-factor authentication. They can easily access the server. Prior to this solution, the users had to log into the VPN, which is not required with BeyondTrust. Now, they can use their computer over the internet.

We can truly elevate our admin rights while we're in there to fully take control of a system and manage it as if it was sitting right here on our desk. Most of the organization has gone to remote work or work from home. With that being the case, this solution allows us to be able to still work with our end-users, even though they're not always sitting on our network.

It is a real fortress. Its security is very strong. Multi-factor came as a feature out-of-the-box, which was big for us. That helps us meet another compliance requirement. It enforces encryption. Nobody can see what we are doing in our remote system if they happen to be listening for unencrypted traffic. That is its biggest strength.

One of the features that I really like about it is the ability to set a start date, time, and end date for the access. For example, you can set the access for a person from tomorrow, Monday, or Tuesday and ending on a specific period of the day or a specific date. That's really quite helpful.

The security provided by PRA when it comes to access for remote and privileged users has been outstanding. It has met all of our objectives, everything from password rotation to securing and allowing us to clamp down access to the auditing and monitoring features.

The visibility of the solution's Vault works as it is supposed to: out-of-the-box for domain accounts, endpoints, and local accounts associated with discovery jobs.

The scalability is excellent.

The project goal was to allow staff to run applications with admin privileges without being admins, which was the product's most important feature.

The integration client, backup solution, and SSO setup and provisioning could be improved. There isn't any documented or supported user provisioning currently, which slows down the processes of onboarding and assigning permissions. I would like to see this improved soon.

I would love to have a web console and the ability to use the smart card with the web console to provide remote support. If you are on a computer that doesn't have the Bomgar console, you should be able to use the web console to provide support. That's the only thing right now. A web console is nice when you're jumping into a computer, but if you need to elevate the privileges, you currently can't do it with the smart card. If they could figure that out, that would be money.

Its management is through two different portals, and you can't get from one portal to the other. I have to literally open up another website and go into it a different way. There are no inner links between the two. They should interlink the actual virtual server and the appliance. In general, there should be one interface for management for admins.

There is no connectivity to the appliance side. There is no API, and it is just difficult for me to capture what version the device is on without going in and doing screenshots. It is a little too secure in that regard, where they don't even trust their product owner. Since a lot of hacks come from the inside, they are probably doing what they need to do out of necessity. It is just that I have to work pretty hard to produce compliance data on the box.

At the moment, I don't see any major problems with it. If anything, they can just change the look and feel of the login screen because it looks too simple to me. It does not have so much information. When you get to the login screen of the solution, you should have more information. We also have BeyondTrust Remote Support, and the login page looks similar to BeyondTrust Privilege Remote Access. I would love to see more rich information on the login screen or landing page so that rather than having a regular sign-in screen or page where you just provide a username and password and get into the solution, you should have more insight into what the solution does. I've mentioned this to them every time I have had an opportunity.

In terms of the ability to automate the creation of new accounts within it, it's still a bit laborious.

One of our gaps or pain points is having multi-factor authentication at the endpoint and using the PRA password injection from BeyondTrust, which does not work in our environment. We can only have MFA at the login of BeyondTrust to check out the password. Therefore, we can't meet our security requirements of having it on the endpoint.

They could probably integrate a wizard or something like that to add a new use case. It could be something that makes it easier to add a new use case.

The solution is very flexible, which is a plus, but I would say the implementation requires someone with knowledge and experience, as it can be easy to get lost in all the details. The implementation process could be streamlined and simplified. Though the complexity of the solution provides greater flexibility, it requires a lot of time to understand it fully.

It would be very nice if it has an enterprise vault. Currently, it can interact with Password Safe, which is a separate solution and equivalent to Thycotic Secret Server. Instead of having Password Safe as a separate entity, they should combine it with BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access. They have done it in some way, but it is not an enterprise tech solution.