Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users
reviewer933939 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Jan 5, 2022
No crashes and great accountability
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features of this product are activity monitoring on the database servers, discovery capabilities, and vulnerability scanning."
  • "An area for improvement would be the user interface - currently, it takes around two to three months to become comfortable using it."

What is our primary use case?

My primary use of this solution is for database activity monitoring.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of this product are activity monitoring on the database servers, discovery capabilities, and vulnerability scanning.

What needs improvement?

An area for improvement would be the user interface - currently, it takes around two to three months to become comfortable using it. In the next release, I would like to see more integration with other vault vendors.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using this solution for five years.

Buyer's Guide
IBM Security Guardium Data Protection
January 2026
Learn what your peers think about IBM Security Guardium Data Protection. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.
880,745 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product is stable - during my time using it, I have not had any crash problems with the servers, and I haven't needed to do any restarts.

How are customer service and support?

I haven't had any problems with the global and local support for this product.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was basic and easy and didn't take much time.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The cost of this product is reasonable but could be lowered to a more competitive level.

What other advice do I have?

Guardiam's accountability is good - by design, it doesn't give any root privilege to customers, which means we don't have highly important privilege for access to Guardiam. They use only a user level, so kernel-level users are prohibited, which means there aren't any accidental effects from the customer side. I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
it_user1681524 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Specialist at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Oct 6, 2021
Has good document protection features
Pros and Cons
  • "Setting up Guardium was easy and straightforward."
  • "Guardium's storage capabilities could use some improvement. I'd also like to have some better integration using digital technology or a connector."

What is most valuable?

I like Guardium's document protection features.

What needs improvement?

Guardium's storage capabilities could use some improvement. I'd also like to have some better integration using digital technology or a connector.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Guardium is scalable. I've been able to integrate it with other solutions.

How are customer service and support?

I have initiated tickets for various reasons, and IBM support was very good.

How was the initial setup?

Setting up Guardium was easy and straightforward. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It's an enterprise license.

What other advice do I have?

I rate IBM Guardium nine out of 10. I would absolutely recommend the solution to others.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
IBM Security Guardium Data Protection
January 2026
Learn what your peers think about IBM Security Guardium Data Protection. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.
880,745 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer1681527 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Specialist at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Oct 5, 2021
Supports many databases, scalable, and straightforward installation
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution supports a lot of databases."

    What is our primary use case?

    We are using IBM Guardium Data Protection for activity monitoring, blocking users,  entitlement for knowing the privilege for users, and Guardium data features.

    What is most valuable?

    The solution supports a lot of databases.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using IBM Guardium Data Protection for approximately three years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    IBM Guardium Data Protection is stable.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The solution is scalable.

    We have approximately six people using the solution.

    How are customer service and support?

    The technical support has been very good.

    How was the initial setup?

    IBM Guardium Data Protection's installation is straightforward and takes a few hours.

    What about the implementation team?

    We have five people that do the implementation and maintenance of the solution.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    The price of the solution could be better.

    What other advice do I have?

    I would recommend this solution to others.

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

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
    PeerSpot user
    Junior Software Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
    Real User
    Sep 19, 2021
    Secure, easy to scale, easy installation, and reliable
    Pros and Cons
    • "IBM Guardium Data Protection is very good at keeping your database secure."
    • "It would be helpful, and convenient to improve the Chat support."

    What is our primary use case?

    We are using this solution for a PoC.

    IBM Guardium Data Protection is used to create policies, and rules for database access management.

    What is most valuable?

    IBM Guardium Data Protection is very good at keeping your database secure.

    What needs improvement?

    It would be helpful, and convenient to improve the Chat support.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using IBM Guardium Data Protection for four months.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    I have not had any issues with the stability.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    IBM Guardium Data Protection is a scalable solution.

    Currently, as we are conducting PoCs, I am the only user. We created an in-house environment at my office. It is not yet ready to be used at the commercial level.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    They have good support when they are opening a case, but when on the Chat, the support is not good.

    It would be helpful, and convenient to improve the Chat support.

    How was the initial setup?

    We had IBM appliances, which made it very easy to add. 

    We added it to the virtual machine.

    The installation was complete in 20 minutes.

    What about the implementation team?

    I was able to complete the installation myself.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    We are working with the trial version.

    Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis.

    I don't have all of the information regarding the pricing, but my understanding is that it is on the high side. 

    What other advice do I have?

    IBM, in general, is the best. I would recommend this solution to others.

    I am not familiar with other products. I only know IBM Guardium.

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

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
    PeerSpot user
    Socio Director at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
    Real User
    Dec 23, 2020
    An easy-to-deploy solution with good price, compatibility, stability, and scalability
    Pros and Cons
    • "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."

    What is our primary use case?

    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.

    How has it helped my organization?

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

    What is most valuable?

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

    What needs improvement?

    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.

    For how long have I used the solution?

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

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    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.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    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.

    How was the initial setup?

    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.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    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.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    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.

    What other advice do I have?

    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.

    Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
    PeerSpot user
    reviewer1360929 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Information Security Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
    Reseller
    Jun 8, 2020
    Good reporting and supports data-level access control
    Pros and Cons
    • "The most valuable features are the reporting and data-level access control."
    • "The price of this solution is quite high for smaller organizations, so they should release a version that is affordable for small and medium-sized businesses."

    What is our primary use case?

    We are a solution provider and IBM Guardium is one of the database products that we implement for our clients. Our customers for Guardium are mostly banks and they use it for PCI compliance.

    What is most valuable?

    The most valuable features are the reporting and data-level access control.

    The interface is easy to use and the learning curve is not very steep.

    What needs improvement?

    The price of this solution is quite high for smaller organizations, so they should release a version that is affordable for small and medium-sized businesses.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been working with IBM Guardium for about a year and a half.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The stability depends, in part, on how much the client can give the appliance in terms of resources. Overall, I think that it's a really stable appliance, as long as you keep it up to date with all of the patches and updates.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    I have done at least one really large-scale deployments and my impression is that it scales really well. 

    How are customer service and technical support?

    I have not personally interacted with IBM's technical support. Normally, my seniors in the company would do that.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup is straightforward. It took about a month for me to get started on it. I used the resources from the security learning academy to begin.

    The length of time required for deployment depends on the scale and the internal processes. The largest that I have done took more than a year to complete, although these clients have lots of stuff happening in their environment that had to be taken care of. At times, things like this put us off of our schedule.

    What about the implementation team?

    We implement and deploy this solution for our clients. People from the client's side are also required. We have the Guardium Administrator, who is usually the project lead. The client will have database administrators, network administrators, IT staff to set up the appliance, and somebody from information security.

    What other advice do I have?

    My advice to anybody who is implementing this solution is to start small, with a test environment, and then scale it up. This way, if there is a fault at the beginning then it won't be multiplied by the time you have a larger deployment and are fully integrated. In this way, you will see if it meets the requirements.

    Overall, this is a wonderful product.

    I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Reseller
    PeerSpot user
    reviewer1290021 - PeerSpot reviewer
    VP - Enterprise Security & Cloud Business at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
    Real User
    Jun 4, 2020
    Textured and reliable with secure data privacy provisions
    Pros and Cons
    • "Ease of deployment is a valuable feature."
    • "Flexibility could be improved."

    What is our primary use case?

    We deal with a range of customers and lately the issue of data privacy and user identity has become very important and many companies are now seriously evaluating tools like Guardium. Companies want to know who is accessing database applications and what they are doing. This product is geared towards medium and large size enterprise companies. We're partners of IBM and I'm a company Vice President. 

    What is most valuable?

    The ease of deployment is a key feature of this solution. 

    What needs improvement?

    With these solutions, flexibility is always an issue and that applies to Oracle and other similar products. Integreon, which is much smaller in size, is likely to be more flexible than IBM. 

    There is a big concern here in India about deploying on cloud so the one thing I would like to see in the next release is a fast option from IBM that is hosted from their India cloud data center.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've been using this solution for a few months. 

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    I think this is a stable solution. 

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    It's easy to scale this solution. 

    How are customer service and technical support?

    Technical support is good. 

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup is a little complex and requires some effort. It generally involves some customization and configuring and will require good online support. If you have a fair idea of the customer environment I don't think it takes a long time. There is very little, if any, maintenance required if the solution has been configured properly.

    What other advice do I have?

    This is one of the core applications for customers and is not something like an endpoint security or perimeter security. It's a specialized use case. This is a textured product and the brand equity of IBM means it's reliable. I have long-term relationships with my clients and wouldn't like to deploy something that gives me problems. This is a good product. 

    I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
    PeerSpot user
    Information Technology Consultant at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees
    Real User
    Top 20
    May 11, 2020
    Good monitoring, analytics, and data loss prevention capability
    Pros and Cons
    • "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."

    What is our primary use case?

    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.

    How has it helped my organization?

    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.

    What is most valuable?

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

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

    What needs improvement?

    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.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been working with this solution for one year.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    This is a reliable product.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    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.

    How are customer service and technical support?

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

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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

    How was the initial setup?

    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.

    What about the implementation team?

    We had the assistance of a system integrator.

    What other advice do I have?

    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.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free IBM Security Guardium Data Protection Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
    Updated: January 2026
    Product Categories
    Database Security
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free IBM Security Guardium Data Protection Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.