IBM Security Guardium Data Protection Reviews

Database activity management to ensure compliance audit regulations. It is also to manage risk. It is performing well, but we have a large journey to go.

Previously, we had no monitoring for our databases. Now, we have the ability to  begin to understand how people, applications, and service accounts are interacting with data to better protect it.

We use IBM Guardium to support security initiatives and compliance policies.

We have integrated IBM Guardium with QRadar.

Being able to go back to see what people are touching, and when they are touching it, then look at the risk of who is touching what and how they are touching the data. This will give us a better understanding of how people interact with our data. 

We do not use many of the advance features, but we will soon. We are looking at Sensitive Data and User Behavior Analytics.

It will not go as fast as you want. 

We are about 50 to 60 percent there. A lot of that has to do with us implementing it a little better, and redesigning what we thought would be their protection. We need to do a bit more efficient architecture, as some things are coming down the pipeline for the roadmap of the product.

The scalability is not an issue, though it is not the easiest thing to scale. However, I seen the coming roadmap, where the scalability will be easier.

I would rate technical support as fair. Unfortunately, it takes time to figure out an answer to our issues, because they are unique, not just a standard answer.

It is very complex.

Pushing agents and tabs seems pretty standard from a technical perspective. Once you start interacting with people's databases, they get very hesitant. Then, the amount of social tasks to socialize the solution ensuring people are comfortable with it became a much heavier lift.

There are a lot of things that could be better, but it is performing pretty well.

Take your time and learn each step. Make sure that you understand each step, because if you miss something, it will come back. Then, you have to circle back and figure it out anyway.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Price
• Support
• Reliability in the marketplace
• Integration with other systems.

• Database access monitoring
• Vulnerability assessment
• PCI compliance
• SOX compliance
• GDPR compliance 

• It provides us regulatory compliance proof and evidence for audit. 
• It allows us to find bad actors. 
• It allows us to find people who are doing stupid things, and do it without the intervention and loss of data integrity of the people that we are monitoring manipulating the data.

We have integrate IBM Guardium with ArcSight and Splunk.

The ability to collect the data without database administrators being able to modify it.

• There are some GUI improvements that I have provided to development already.
• Performance and the ability to use resources could be improved. 
• The ability for Central Managers to talk to one another could be improved. I have 26 Central Managers and 26 silos which are independent.
• Some of the data handling or data recording could be improved. We are doing it with external software, components, etc. 

For the most part, it is stable. Depends on the year.

It has scaled. It was pulling teeth, but it does scale. 

We taught IBM about the limits of the product. They did not think there were limits to the product. There were, because we do very extensive testing of performance. We can tell you when a product is going to break. Their development thought this was valuable because they do not have the facilities to do this sort of extensive testing.

Technical support is very knowledgeable now. 

At one time, they were horrible since they were blue washed. After the blue wash and a couple of years on the honeymoon, then they have gotten considerably better. They have had problems understanding that they do not know as much about the company's environment as the employee does. This will result in them downgrading tickets, and they will just do it on the fly. This is not a good thing because they do not understand the issue. This may not look like a sub 1 ticket to IBM support, but it is.

We went in and tested it. We continually test everything that is in the industry. Guardium has significantly gone past the mark of acceptable every single time, as compared to their other competitors.

Overall, it is a very solid product. 

It's a security product that works across multiple platforms, in our case it's the mainframe and the midrange. We use it to detect when somebody accesses restricted data and report on it.

So far it has performed quite well, we're happy with it.

We used to use cobbled-together scripts, different products and different pieces on different platforms. This is one consolidated tool so one report comes out for each director and it's clean and easy. There is some scripting involved to tell it what is important and what is not important - which is important to us.

In terms of security initiatives and compliance policies within our organization, that's basically what we use it for: the reporting of who touches what data. And that goes up to the directors and they approve or get mad at you and ask you why you did something.

IBM Guardium probably helps us comply with industry regulations like SOX, PCI, or GDPR, but the big driver was more internal and audit-related, rather than industry-related.

We haven't integrated Guardium with other systems we have.

It has saved us time and money. As I mentioned, we had a bunch of cobbled-together scripts that were manually maintained for different platforms. This solution automated all that and made it such that the security administrators can run it themselves and not involve us. So there is less "people effort." Senior management is aware of the savings.

It makes the auditors happy.

It does not require our involvement to run it. It runs in the background and the people that do the reporting do so. The reports go to the directors who are in charge of the various data areas. It's pretty clean. Clearly there is some setup, but after you get it set up it just goes.

I have no idea what the advanced features are, so we're probably not using them.

Lower pricing would always be good but apparently we're getting our money's worth or we wouldn't be using it.

I'm pretty impressed with the stability. There was medium-sized initial effort getting it configured and set up and doing what we wanted it to do, but it just runs and we don't have to deal with it.

We run it on the mainframe and on the midrange platforms and we haven't had any performance issues of any kind. We haven't really had to scale it. We pick and choose what's important to us, so we don't monitor everything. If we were going to monitor everything it would probably be an issue, something we would have to address.

I have not used tech support personally. We did have some support help at the beginning, learning it and getting it set up.

We were previously using homegrown scripts. We decided to switch primarily because this is a multi-platform solution that consolidates everything and centralizes support for it.

When selecting a vendor, we reviewed two other products, but the main reason was that this is a multi-platform solution and it worked well in our environment.

I was not directly involved but I was involved somewhat since I had worked with some of the systems in the past, so maybe some requirements gathering.

The setup seemed pretty straightforward to me.

We're very happy with it. It depends on what your needs are, but it meets our needs.

• Monitors database activities of end users who are connected to databases (DBAs and developers)
• Classifies critical objects on the databases
• Discovers databases on your network
• Finds vulnerabilities of your databases
• Blocks critical activities

• Helps us define and monitor critical data in the environment, even when stored in RDBMS, big data, or unstructured files.
• Helps us to pass compliance audits, such as like HIPAA, SOX, and PCI.

The blocking and dynamic data masking features need improvement.

I am working as an IBM partner. We have provided solutions for nearly 50 customers for five years. Most of our customers are banks and telecoms.

IBM Security Guardium is a mature product. Although it needs agents on the server to monitor their database or file traffic, we did not encounter serious issues so far.

IBM has three layers for Guardium support. In critical cases, technical support analyzes the issues very quickly to find a solution.

I did not use another solution before this one.

The setup is straightforward. There is an ISO file that is developed by IBM that contains all of the OS and Guardium application files. All that remains to be done is to configure the post-installation settings.

Licensing is the worst part of the product. This is because IBM uses Processor Value Units (PVUs) to calculate the license. The customers complain about this.

In the latest version of the product, there are four types of licenses:

• DAM (Database Activity Monitoring)
• DAM Advanced
• FAM (File Activity Monitoring)
• FAM Advanced

If you only need database activity monitoring, then DAM is enough.

If you need blocking and masking features, you will need the DAM Advanced license.

I did not evaluate other options. I am an IBM partner.

There are three main steps when implementing a Data Activity Monitor (DAM) solution.

1. Discover and Classify: Find your databases in your environment, and decide which one of them has confidential data that you need to monitor. Classify your data in your database if it includes critical data like personal ID, credit card, or IMEI numbers.
2. Monitor Activities: Monitor all end-user activities while developing your policy rules and critical activities.
3. Block Critical Activities: Define and block critical activities to prevent data leakage.

It captures all data requests regardless of the source and consolidates them for analysis.

The ability to audit across multiple data environments led to a greater understanding of the data traffic and the potential weaknesses in the access controls. This eased the creation of audit trails for customers.

Reporting has always been a weakness, but it has improved across the versions. In early versions, the reporting always seemed like a late add-on, and the graphics were poor. This has improved over the years and the reporting is a lot better now, with greater filtering and display options.

I have used this solution with various clients for ten years.

There were issues with stability of the agent software in previous versions, but it is less of an issue now.

The only issues are when users have not maintained the collection policies or the archiving and aggregation policies correctly. Units can fill up if not maintained and managed.

Over the years, it has changed many times, but the US support is very good.

I have often replaced internal database auditing features with Guardium. The main reason for the switch was to segregate the auditing from the database administrators.

It is very dependent on the environment in which it is being installed. It can be complex if users do not take the time to build their policies carefully.

Take your time. Think about the elements you want to audit. Don't just audit everything. Understand the normal traffic, so you can focus on the abnormal traffic.

The database activity monitoring and firewall features of Guardium address our database security requirements. The combination of policies, alerts, baselines, reports, and query rewrite functions are easy to use and provide enough room for customization.

It provides us more visibility and control of our business functions. The query rewrite and redaction functions also provide flexible/dynamic control of our data, which is indeed helpful for complex scenarios.

The backend database requires improvement for faster searching. This makes it easier for analysts to investigate older data.

I have been using Guardium since mid-2013.

I did not encounter any major stability issues in the last three years, except a couple of minor issues with S-TAP agents.

The solution is easily scalable.

I mostly get quick support although I did not encounter any complex error yet. I rate technical support at 7/10.

The installation and configuration of a collector is simple and straightforward. The ease of deployment is dependent on whether you choose agent-based monitoring or network traffic, SPAN-based monitoring.

The Guardium licensing is based on PVU and as a result, the solution became a bit costly. I am not aware of the licensing and pricing model of its competitors. But if the focus is pricing, then one can consider other options as well.

We were considering DbProtect but at that time, DbProtect had no support for Teradata.

If you have enough budget for database security, you must evaluate this product for your use cases.

I mainly use this solution to monitor the activity happening in the database.

The most valuable features are the modules, discovery classification, and vulnerability assessment. The reporting side is also very, very good, especially its flexibility which allows you to tailor the reports to whatever information you want. It also has the advantage of architectural data collection from the database.

An improvement would be to make the pricing relative in terms of regions. In the next release, IBM should incorporate more AI capabilities to better detect vulnerabilities.

I've been using Guardium for four years.

Guardium is a stable system.

You can scale Guardium up and down according to your needs.

IBM's technical support is very good.

Positive

The initial setup will be straightforward for those with technical experience but may be more challenging for less experienced users.

Guardium's pricing is quite high, but it gives good value for money for all sizes of enterprises, especially for partners.

I would give Guardium a rating of eight out of ten.

We use IBM Guardium Data Protection mostly for data masking and firewalling. We restrict the administrators and other users from altering or deleting anything from the databases.

There are different modules but the most valuable ones are firewalling and masking. Additionally, the auditing of the entire database is helpful, which includes all the activity of the database users and administrators. We can monitor everything and log as well.

If IBM Guardium Data Protection could find a way to not have a lot of coding and development required to get the solution up and running it would be an advantage. The information of the agent could improve, which is necessary for us to monitor the databases would be a great benefit.

I have used IBM Guardium Data Protection within the last 12 months.

The solution is quite stable compared to the other solutions that we have worked with. However, it requires a lot of development, or it requires a lot of effort to make it deployable in a customer location, which makes it very difficult.

IBM Guardium Data Protection is scalable.

The solution is good and stable but you need some manual efforts in terms of development and programming or coding to get the solution up and running, which does make it a bit challenging if you don't have a large team.

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