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IBM Security Guardium Data Protection vs Oracle Advanced Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Security Guardium Data ...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
Database Security (1st)
Oracle Advanced Security
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Encryption (12th), Data Masking (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Database Development and Management Tools solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM Security Guardium Data Protection is designed for Database Security and holds a mindshare of 27.4%, down 32.2% compared to last year.
Oracle Advanced Security, on the other hand, focuses on Endpoint Encryption, holds 3.1% mindshare, up 2.0% since last year.
Database Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Security Guardium Data Protection27.4%
Imperva Data Security Fabric24.2%
Oracle Audit Vault8.2%
Other40.2%
Database Security
Endpoint Encryption Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle Advanced Security3.1%
Microsoft BitLocker14.2%
Sophos SafeGuard8.0%
Other74.7%
Endpoint Encryption
 

Featured Reviews

HA
Senior Business Development Executive at Digitaltrack
Centralized monitoring has improved audit readiness and streamlines investigations of data access
IBM Security Guardium Data Protection is a strong platform, but there are a few areas where I think it could be improved. One area is alert tuning and prioritization. Large environments can generate a significant number of alerts, and while the platform provides good visibility, reducing noise and automatically highlighting the highest-risk events would help security teams work more efficiently. Another area is ease of administration. As environments become more complex with cloud, hybrid, and on-premises databases, managing policies and configurations can require significant effort. Simplifying some of those workflows could reduce the operational overhead for administration. I would also like to see deeper automation and more advanced analytic capabilities. The security industry as a whole is moving toward faster threat detection and automated response, and having more built-in intelligence to identify unusual behavior with less manual tuning would be valuable. A couple of additional areas come to mind regarding needed improvements for IBM Security Guardium Data Protection. Integration is one of them. IBM Security Guardium Data Protection integrates with a variety of security tools, but as organizations adopt more cloud-native platforms and multicloud environments, smoother integration and simpler deployment processes would be beneficial. Many security teams are managing dozens of tools today, so reducing integration complexity can save a lot of operational effort. From a usability perspective, some administration and reporting tasks could be more intuitive, especially for new users. The platform is feature-rich, which is a strength, but it can also create a learning curve. Regarding support, my experience has generally been positive, but complex issues can sometimes require coordination across multiple teams before they are fully resolved. One feature I appreciate about IBM Security Guardium Data Protection is the detailed audit trail that IBM Security Guardium Data Protection maintains. When investigating an issue, having a historical record of database activity can save a lot of time and provide the context needed to understand what happened. That is especially useful for compliance and forensic investigations. As for a wish-list item, I would like to see even more intelligent alert correlation and risk prioritization. A challenge across the security industry is that teams often deal with a large number of alerts from different tools, and determining which ones require immediate attention can still be time-consuming. Although IBM Security Guardium Data Protection already provides strong monitoring capabilities, more automated context and prioritization could help security teams focus on the highest-risk events faster.
reviewer1458726 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Good support, stable, and offers encryption at both the column and table level
The most valuable feature is the data encryption option for columns and tables. We are also getting the benefit of detection data. If I want to share data with another Oracle user then the data sharing is automatically detected. We don't need to modify anything. This is a complete security solution and all of the features that we are using are available off the shelf.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"This is a textured product and the brand equity of IBM means it's reliable."
"The most valuable features of this product are activity monitoring on the database servers, discovery capabilities, and vulnerability scanning."
"One of the most valuable features is the accelerator. It has a predefined report for PCI SOX compliance and other compliances."
"It's allowing us to be more proactive than reactive on alerts and access rights and types of resources that are being hit. Before, there were a lot of different solutions, but this expanded that out and made it a more holistic solution. It provides centralization of monitoring, instead of multiple, disparate applications. It definitely allows more economies of scale, streamlining, less fragmented use."
"Overall, this is a wonderful product."
"Our primary use case for IBM Guardium Data Protection is audit logging, and we monitor transactions and access particular tables in the database with it."
"IBM Guardium Data Protection improved our organization by providing visibility into our database functions."
"You could easily throw it onto a VM or add additional hardware. One central manager supports about a hundred managed units, so scalability is excellent.​"
"The most valuable feature is the data encryption option for columns and tables."
"Overall, it is a good solution and I can recommend it to anybody who wants to encrypt columnar data and protect it against theft."
"The features that are the most used by the customers and partners are, at the moment, for GDPR, so obviously data encryption and data reduction. Our customers also like the partitioning option."
 

Cons

"Guardium could be improved in the area of data encryption."
"An area for improvement in IBM Guardium Data Protection is automation. I would want it to be more automated, as it runs too much on manual processes."
"The scalability is not that easy to use because, you need a lot of knowledge about it, on data security; basically you need to know where your sensitive data is."
"Setup cost is a little high as compare to other products available in the market but the service provided by vendor is great and there are many additional functionalities as compare to other tools."
"The biggest challenge is the cost associated with the product, and the cost of maintaining. Everything is not translated directly to the benefits we see."
"While Guardium is great at structured monitoring (DAM), the product is lacking features on the file activity side (FAM)."
"Deployment process is very complicated as you need to now all advanced parameters. Almost not possible to figure out for yourself."
"The most important requirements for us are integration with new database solutions and the ability to manage things like Jailbreak or something like that. Its reduction feature can also be improved. It has a functionality called reduction, which is like masking data, but it is just a replacement of characters. Sometimes the customer needs more than this. It would be good if it was more advanced or complete. We also have a problem with this solution because the IBM aggregator isn't working very well. IBM has created big data intelligence for Guardium, and occasionally, customers need three or four months of data, but they can't run it from the collectors. It can have a better dashboard and more pre-defined use cases for those customers who don't have any idea about data protection or don't have expert personnel in this area. For example, they can include five use cases for banks and five use cases for retail."
"Having a single command to encrypt a table would be an improvement."
"It is really constrained as an environment because you cannot change something that would be useful. It is a very good product because it is very similar to what you have on-premises. Yes, it is constrained, but it is expected because it is a platform as a service so it has to be constrained."
"Encrypting a single column is straightforward, but encrypting at the table level requires more work and takes longer to complete."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Guardium is most suitable for large scale enterprises because the pricing model is better if you are implementing a large number of databases."
"The biggest challenge is the cost associated with the product, and the cost of maintaining. Everything is not translated directly to the benefits we see. There are benefits, yes, but if I were writing the check, would I buy Guardium? No."
"The price of the solution could be better."
"My company purchased IBM Guardium Data Protection in a package, so I'm unable to give its exact licensing cost, but for the package of three IBM solutions, it wasn't very expensive. I'd rate the pricing for all three solutions three out of five. When my team deployed IBM Guardium Data Protection, all features were included."
"Its cost is good. With the new metric of licensing, such as PDO not being available now, customers are expecting a good price for the solution."
"Reasonable cost but could be lower."
"We haven't talked much about pricing and licencing. But it is not cheap for sure"
"The price is good for the quality of the solution."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise44
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

How does IBM Guardium Data Protection compare with Imperva SecureSphere Database Security?
IBM Security Guardium Data Protection is a solution for database security from IBM that gives complete visibility, control, and analysis to secure sensitive data and comply with regulations. IBM S...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Guardium Data Protection?
I don't remember the exact prices, but Guardium is an expensive tool because it is targeted towards corporate enterprises.
What needs improvement with IBM Security Guardium Data Protection?
IBM Security Guardium Data Protection is a strong platform, but there are a few areas where I think it could be improved. One area is alert tuning and prioritization. Large environments can generat...
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Also Known As

InfoSphere Guardium, Guardium, IBM Guardium
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
IBVI, illycaffe, Scottish water, trueblue, AirAsia
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