IBM Security Guardium Data Protection Reviews

Database monitoring. At the moment, we are using it to do a lot of data discovery from a data classification for structured data.

Its ability to find data. Once I find data, I can leverage it to perform specific select statements against PII data and do smarter controls rather than monitoring the entire database. 

My only negative thing on Guardium would be it is too smart. I am struggling getting through to social. In an ideal world, I would be able to populate every US zip code and have Guardium find the number, then identify it as a zip code. Right now, I have to pull it down and compare it.

It is a stable product. We just finished upgrading to version 10, and had no issues with the upgrade. We are excited about working with the newest version.

It should meet our need going forward as it is a huge product. We have scanned 7000 SQL databases and 1500 Oracle Databases.

We have a strong partnership with IBM. Their tech support is very knowledgeable.

The initial setup was before me.

We are doing what we call a reboot of the product. We are calling it the Guardium reboot project. We are starting back with the classifications to understand what controls we are implementing, thus stepping back to step forward. We are doing this because in the beginning we moved forward by getting everything monitored without being smart about what data was monitored.

We implemented the most recent upgrade in-house.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: At the end of the day, it would have to be the support and relationship. There are a lot of smart people out there building products which do things. However, not everyone can use them, and without having someone to call, it is sort of its own disadvantage. 

Database activity monitoring.

Its performance is good, most of the time.

The benefit is that it's made database monitoring more visible to the business, creating more conversations about how we should do it better. So it's increased the visibility and discussion.

It also helps us with GDPR and SOX compliance and just looking at specific policies around; protecting sensitive data. 

We haven't integrated it with other systems we use.

In terms of saving us time and money, I'm not sure if Guardium does. I know we spend more time and money to cover monitoring, this is something we didn't do before, so I think it's more about the capabilities it's given us.

The architecture and the robustness of the data it produces.

Regarding advanced features, I'm using enforcement in the policies. In the future I would like to do more classification. 

More cloud support. 

For the most part, it's pretty stable. We've had some issues recently that we're working through, on the agent software that runs on the databases.

The scalability is good.

I would say tech support is about a seven out of 10.

It can be complex. The documentation is in so many different locations, and a lot of times we have to leverage support and higher level resources to figure out the right steps to take.

Our most important criteria when selecting a vendor are stability and architecture.

I rate this solution a nine out of 10 because there are a few things I'm working through that I would like to see improved, mostly around the stability on the agent software side, working with the database vendors.

Regarding advice, I would recommend you use it and that you try to leverage IBM's support and services as much as possible to help get through the initial installation and configuration.

It's being used to identify who is using what data, what resources, what they're using them for, providing audit trails. We also use it to set baselines for usage patterns, to start building cases if there are any erroneous accesses happening, and to start allowing more intuitive alerts.

So far it's installed. It was a little rocky at the beginning but everything is working pretty well now. I think the baselines have been established and so far it's performing as expected.

Now that they have the base, they are going to start creating other use cases. I'm not sure what they are, but they are going to start expanding the usage and provide more education to the security staff.

It's another layer to help us identify, especially from audit perspectives. 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.

We also use IBM Guardium to support security initiatives and compliance policies. For example, our audit area can verify if someone has access to information that they shouldn't have, for their regular job functions. For instance, a customer service rep is looking at his ex-wife's records. We can now see all those accesses and we can verify, and if it's true and it wasn't part of their job duties, they can actually be terminated - and a lot of that has happened since.

In terms of whether it has helped us comply with industry regulations like SOX, PCI, or GDPR, with workflow, reports, and accelerators, I know we're working on becoming high-trust certified, but I'm not part of that process any more. I would have to guess, though, that it has helped, as another tool in the tool box.

I also think we integrated it with our SIEM tool, and I don't think there were any issues.

I think the solution will save us time and money. We're still in that "ROI phase" where we're building towards that. I'd give us probably another year to year and a half until we achieve that all back. But every time an inquiry comes in, instead of it taking tens of hours, now it's taking minutes.

Senior management is definitely aware of the improvements.

I'm not aware of our using any of the existing advanced features. I was only in on  the initial implementation, so if they have added new things since then, I'm not aware of it.

If I used it every day I'd probably be able to give you a really good answer. But I don't.

I haven't heard of any issues. I think it's been pretty stable, once they got over the initial bumps. The bumps were just our staff knowing how much information needed to be monitored, and at what level. I think they were fluctuating between levels of granularity as well.

We started out with as much as we could from the beginning. I don't think there have been any issues. It's our internal skill set and maturity with the tool that have been growing. I think it has TAPs in every piece of our data in our datacenter, so it's already been able to scale to what we need.

I personally haven't used tech support, but I know that during implementation, when they were reaching out, IBM was always really responsive.

We have a really good relationship with IBM, regarding PMRs being taken care of. We actually have monthly meetings with the sales and technical support staff to make sure everything is being addressed, and they do a good job.

We knew there was a gap that needed to be filled, I believe, when they engaged IBM. We had some pretty specific, and general, requirements around auditing and security. I don't recall who else they looked at in that space, but IBM seemed to fulfill every requirement we had on our list. And some issues we didn't even know about, because of our level of maturity; you don't know what you don't know, until you find out, "Oh, we can do that?"

A lot of it was just knowing where to put all the S-TAPs. There was a lack of skill set on our implementation team, so IBM had a partner come in and help. There was that gap of knowledge that had to be crossed, and once the skill set was built it performed a lot cleaner.

I don't know. They went through the RFP process and selected the tool, and then I got involved, and then I hopped back out.

If it's the vendor or a third-party telling you how things should be set up out of the gate, go with that and don't argue with them. That saves a lot of time.

I would rate it a nine out of 10. It has done a really good job for us.

Our primary use case is for managing and monitoring the database in real time.

The most valuable feature I have found is the performance of client monitoring. The other competitors are unable to do this.

I would like to see AI and machine learning added in the future.

I have been working with IBM Security Guardium Data Protection for two years. 

We have found the stability is very good.

All that is necessary for scaling IBM Security Guardium Data Protection is to purchase a license. We have a lot of customers since we are in the finance industry in Vietnam.

We have excellent technical support in-country and out of the country.

The initial setup is straightforward and takes a short time to install.

The price is good for the quality of the solution.

I would rate IBM Security Guardium Data Protection an eight out of ten.

Currently, my customer has 10 different types of databases for their various banking applications and they intend to deploy IBM Guardium Data Protection to secure their database activities. As soon as it is deployed, we're able to get some insights into what is going on with their databases, to help ensure the integrity of their data in the future.

Two banks are also working on two opportunities with IBM Guardium right now. I believe this is a compliance requirement; nowadays, everyone has to buy database protection. In that case, technically, Oracle will get the added advantage here, because most of the banks are already using Oracle database.

IBM Guardium Data Protection has better integration options than most of the leading competitors on the market, and the price is always better. 

One thing I'm always thinking with regard to Guardium Data Protection is that, when compared to Oracle AVDF, Oracle's often got the upper hand when it comes to the standard features. So I believe that needs to be addressed by IBM. 

Guardium Data Protection is far better in terms of external integration. But in terms of firewall features, like when you're blocking activities, it's as if Oracle AVDF simply has superior features. This is just from third-party observations, but the users of Oracle AVDF are saying that when it comes to the firewall and protection functionality, they're much more inclined to AVDF. Considering the competitive benefits that AVDF is providing compared to Data Protection, I can see that some improvement is required in terms of the firewall-related features.

Another observation I have is that industry resources are not available to handle this product, and I believe that deployment should be much easier than what we have right now. I'm thinking along the lines of some kind of wizard that makes it easier for users to get started right away. For example, to make it so they can do the deployment easier with drag and drop, etc.

It has to be more user-friendly so that anybody can deploy it, anybody can adopt it, and anybody can do the configuration. It has to be built in such a way that even if you are not a product expert, whether from IBM or otherwise, or that if you know only Word, then you can still configure it. So they have to offer that flexibility in the product.

They can hide the complexity by bringing in more GUI elements so that people can more easily get on board. And also they can introduce the knowledge base side by side so that whenever they are using the product, they can quickly check what exactly needs to be configured. You have Redbooks, and Redbooks can help but maybe they can include something extra. While users are installing maybe IBM can put in some guidance, "Okay, if you do this then you configure this and that."

At the same time, the market has lots of Oracle expertise here. But for IBM, there are no local resources available, and we are highly reliant on external resources. So, I would highly recommend that IBM initiates something like a certification campaign for the end user, as well as for the partner. As a partner, we are trying to do our level best, but I believe it would really benefit users for IBM to come up with some pre-certification campaigns like AWS and Azure do, especially in terms of how they promote their products through learning.

What I believe is that, in order to establish the product in the market, IBM has to invest in developing resources. IBM need to strategize in such a way that it's not just selling. IBM has to develop the resources within the industry, so that there's more word of mouth; people are now talking about AVDF, because they only know about AVDF.

I have been working with IBM Guardium Data Protection since last year. 

I can say that it's a stable product. 

Scalability is no problem. 

Support is where the problem is. Since IBM is not in this country, in terms of technical support and also skill sets in the market, there is not much help available to handle Guardium Data Protection. That's where I suggest that IBM should bring marketing people and do some campaigns, like certification campaigns, so that we can have some skilled experts who will develop resources within the industry to promote and support this product.

Since it comes as an appliance, it's kind of plug and play. I can't be too precise, but it only takes around two hours to initialize the virtual appliance.

For IBM Guardium, licensing is very simple and straightforward. There are no issues I can speak of.

Regarding the pricing, Guardium's price is always better compared to competitors like Oracle. It's not expensive compared to what the leading competitors are providing and on top of that, the integration options with IBM are also better for the price you pay.

I can definitely recommend IBM Guardium and we are going to continue using and promoting it in the future.

I have been working with IBM for approximately 13 years and I've personally found that IBM products are very useful. However, the problem is that IBM's product stack isn't fully present in this country and there is a clear lack of industry resources, so customers remain unaware of their products and they are not adopting products even though this product is very good. Whenever we are talking about the idea of data protection we talk about IBM's solution, Guardium Data Protection.

The main problem is that customers often throw questions like, "What about deployment? What about the support? Are we going to get good support from the local team?" They're not bothered about portal support, they talk about the internal market industry resources. That's where we come in. So even though I am recommending IBM, I know some customers will also like Oracle AVDF.

I would rate IBM Guardium Data Protection an eight out of ten.

One of my customers is a company that manages telecommunications in Mexico. It is a very important company, and they use Guardium for compliance purposes. They use it to comply with PCI, for example.

We have on-premises and cloud deployments. We are currently deploying a customer's environment in Microsoft Azure with SQL Server.

One of our customers uses IBM Security Guardium to discover the production time and to know the transactions about their databases.

One of the most valuable features is the accelerator. It has a predefined report for PCI SOX compliance and other compliances.

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.

I have been using this solution for eight or nine years. I have been using Guardium before it was bought by IBM.

Its stability is very good. It is quite available all the time.

Its scalability is perfect. In Mexico, we did most of the implementations for medium and large customers. Our company implemented this solution for banks and telecommunication companies.

IBM's technical support is good, but it can be improved. They can improve the response time for the tickets and the availability for the resolution of the tickets.

It is not complex now. Prior to version 11, in general, the console and the environment were not good. They were bad, but they are good in version 11. The deployment duration varies, and complete integration in Windows can take three weeks to two months.

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.

Oracle Vault, Guardium, and Imperva are the three main solutions that clients consider. Easy deployment and good compatibility with all the solutions that customers have gives Guardium an advantage over other solutions.

We would recommend this solution to others. It is a good solution at a good price, and your data is invaluable.

I would rate IBM Guardium Data Protection a nine out of ten.

The primary use case is for ensuring compliance with databases. It allows monitoring of what kind of statements and alterations are going on, as well as who is accessing what data.

IBM Guardium is useful for organizations that require compliance such as banks, insurance companies, and pension plans. Having it available allows us to focus on those clients.

The most valuable features are data loss prevention and data protection.

From the perspective of analysis and prevention, this product is pretty accurate.

Sometimes the connectors to the databases need to be manually updated and we have to configure them again, which is something that should be improved.

I have been working with this solution for one year.

This is a reliable product.

It is easy to scale. There are more than 5,000 users in total, although it does not run on all of the servers or user workstations.

The technical support from IBM for this solution is pretty good. Support via email is available and overall, it is reliable.

This is the first database security solution that I have worked with.

I found the initial setup to be complex. There are a lot of connections between different components and it is not straightforward. Our deployment took approximately three days.

We had the assistance of a system integrator.

From my experience, I find that IBM Guardium is pretty good and I would recommend it.

The monitoring and analytics capabilities make it a very good product, although we have had intermittent problems with our database connectors so it is not perfect.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We want to protect our data. That's the primary use case.

So far, performance has been okay.

We are able to identify who does what, when, and we are able to go back to them and say, "Is this an authorized activity? Is it not an authorized activity?" Why are they doing it? Is there an outlier? Go back and find out if that is normal, unusual? It has helped the overall perspective of making our operations more compliant with the regulatory requirements.

We use Guardium to support security initiatives and compliance policies in our organization. For example, we create reports that tell us how often is a password locked, how many exceptions we are getting, how many failed login items we are getting. We send those reports to the compliance and auditing folks. We do vulnerability assessments, detect vulnerabilities and send reports.

Currently we are not focused on GDPR because we are mainly a US-based company. I don't think I would say that Guardium has saved us time or money.

It does the monitoring of access very well, although we currently don't use any of the advanced features.

Get rid of the collectors. Stream the data directly from the agents to the Big Data link.

The solution is very stable, but it has its challenges. 

I would rate tech support about seven out of 10.

This was a management decision. I think when they found Anthem was getting breached they decided, "Hey, let's try something else."

When selecting a vendor, the most important criteria for me are the

• reliability of the vendor
• name recognition
• support model
• cost, of course.

If you know it, it's pretty straightforward. Otherwise, there is a little learning curve.

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.

It's pretty good. We have the latest version, so we are able to scale.

I would rate this solution six out of 10. The benefit to the cost is not justified, in my opinion.

I would say Guardium is a good product. It's a very good product, but you want to weigh how much you want to implement. Do you want to focus on only certain applications? Certain databases? Don't do it across the enterprise. So think about that.