Imperva SecureSphere Database Security Reviews

We primarily use the solution for auditing purposes so collecting and archiving of logs.

The solution is very good for auditing purposes, including collecting and archiving logs. 

We appreciate that we can use it on the DB server without harming the performance of the database is fantastic. It doesn't feel like it's lagging.

The initial setup is very simple. 

Overall it's a solid product.

The pricing is okay.

The support could be improved.

The product needs to perform better in extremely busy databases. It does not do really well where the DB is extremely, extremely busy. 

The updates could be better.

The UI can be improved. 

The ability to narrow down to the right environment could be helpful. They need to allow users to find an easy way to drill down to what's important.

I've been using the solution for three years now. 

The solution is solid. The stability is good.

The scalability is okay. However, if you're going to set up a redundancy, it needs to be in the same data center, as the manager that manages the entire system needs to share the data, and therefore they need to basically work in the area where they have direct connectivity between the sites. In our case, we have multiple data centers, and we distribute the connectivity and we can't achieve that. 

The solution's scalability isn't based on users. Even if you have one person using it, you might have 300 databases. It's not about the number of users, it's the number of databases.

The support isn't as good as it could be. We are not quite satisfied with it.

We previously used Oracle.

The solution is very simple and straightforward. It's not too difficult or complex. 

The solution isn't crazy-expensive. It's reasonable. 

We pay for the solution on a monthly basis.

I'm a customer and an end-user.

I'd recommend the solution to others. It's a very solid product. 

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

Most of our clients are banks and insurance and financial institutions that want to achieve compliance. They want to achieve auditing for their regulatory compliances as well. On the database side, that includes being able to monitor DBS and to block certain activities on the DVF. On the application side, it also has to be preventative and that's also part of compliance. This solution enables clients to achieve data security, whether on cloud or on prem. We offer support services and we are a service provider for database security through Imperva and also application security through Imperva to our clients. I'm a cyber security engineer and we are gold partners of SecureSphere DS. 

I would say the discovery module is the most valuable feature as it provides good visibility of the database environment to particular sites. It scans the entire front of the environment to detect any new databases found just to make sure there are not any malicious things going on. I think it's a very powerful tool in that sense. It also helps that the solution is able to block queries that are able to be run by given database administrators on databases and manages user rights. 

I've been part of various projects and also interact with clients because I do pre-sales. Most of the feedback I receive relates to clients wanting to see an improvement in the reporting. They like the ability and functionality of the solution but they feel the reporting is lacking. The general feeling is also that the GUI has been the same for a very long time and there is room for improvement there. It could look a little better and then if the reports are also improved that would make a big difference all round. 

From a basic implementation point of view, there are some features that are very technical, clients want everything very granular and they always say Imperva bundles everything. You do a signature, and ABC updates and you trust what the ABC is doing. I think if it were a little more granular and detailed in terms of how, for example, a query stream is being detected or something like that, rather than just blocking something, it would give the administrator a better view and understanding of what's happening. 

I've been using this solution for almost a year. 

The physical appliances are always very stable. In terms of CPU usage, things like the gateway load, payway load, they come with a little bit more capacity on that front. I think the issue always comes with the virtual appliances where you may run out of space, or maybe there are new versions of whichever hypervisor you are running that could change and maybe affect the virtual machines running on top. On the physical side, there's never an issue, it's stable. 

Database security is highly scalable because depending on the number of sites available, you're able to assume that you have the running agent. You can then access the IP for the gateway, you can log in your logs which are managed by the NX, so it's all fine. It's highly scalable for the database. I think even if you have branches all over the country, you can manage them centrally where you have agents monitoring whichever database is allocated to whichever site. We have deployed over 60 projects all over East Africa. I currently handle four, which are two application and two database.

Their technical support is good and the response is guaranteed until the problem is solved. I think when it comes to response time, it's always very quick. Maybe just one simple criticism would be that it's very hard to get a remote station with them and everything is always email and sending logs. I'd like to see more hands-on and direct contact with the environment. 

Complexity really depends on the client's environment, but I would say the initial set up for basic deployment of the components should take roughly six working days. It has to be integrated with everything. Installing links to all the other databases could take maybe another 10 work days, so around two weeks. I do the deployment. 

Customers are very, very satisfied with the licensing costs and there's not really anyone that competes with Imperva so the clients are very happy. Their requirements are covered. 

I would definitely recommend Imperva. I swear on it and try to pitch Imperva every time. I know its abilities, I know what you're going to get. I know how user friendly it is. It's easy to create policies. Reports are very okay. It's got various compatibilities, desk deployment, so Imperva is what I would recommend. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

We primarily use the product for data security.  

The feature that I have found the most valuable is the firewall component.  

What I would like to see improved is Imperva making further development in terms of them going to the Cloud. Our business is moving to the cloud, so we want to have cloud availability as an option. Imperva can do the cloud database, but they are still working at building it out and it does not seem to me to be fully operational.  

We have been using Imperva for a little bit more than six years.  

We are experiencing good stability with this product. We have not had any crashes and no major problems navigating its management.  

I think that SecureSphere is very scalable. Across our whole company, everyone is using it. We are 50 people. Right now at this size, we only require two people for maintenance.   

The technical support for Imperva is super, super, super. They have a very experienced support team. They can diagnose all of our issues and are always very fast. They have very good documentation and knowledgebase resources that add to the depth of their support.  

I have previously used McAfee as a similar solution. We decided to switch because McAfee is a little bit tricky to get to work the way it should work. I had experience with their version 6.4 solution and it used a lot of resources and had too much overhead.  

The initial setup is moderately difficult. You have to understand the database and how the database communicates and also some knowledge about the platform. For example, if you have got the Unix environment you have got to understand how to work with that together with the product.  

Initially, SecureSphere was expensive but they have incentives on their packages now. They have introduced new price models, which makes the product more affordable now. It is now at a pricing level in the range where most people are looking for this type of solution.  

Before choosing Imperva, we did evaluate other options including IBM Guardian Data Protect and also Oracle Audit Vault. In the end, we finally made the choice to go with Imperva first of all because they are a company that is very much into digital security. Security is the central focus of their business, so that is one of their strong areas. Then their product support is one of the best. The solution is very advanced in terms of comparing their available resources and training to other companies. These resources make it a very complete solution.  

Imperva Security Sphere is something that I recommend any day, anytime because they are very much focused on security as a passion. So you find it has tons of capacity for scalability. It is focused on security. Even the solution's usability is very good.  

On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate this product as a nine scored out of ten possible points.  

Features that I would like to see to make it to ten-out-of-ten means that they will need to add a few things. First, they need to onboard database encryption features. Then they need to add some of the other features which they do not have that other competitors already have. They can do more to offer a broader range of features and be more feature-rich.  

We primarily use the solution for monitoring database activities.

Currently, we have audit features for auditing databases, for example, granular auditing, which we really enjoy. We've been using it to check what users do. 

Apart from the WAF, which we've had issues with, every other feature we've been able to use very well. We use it for scanning databases, which is perfect. We need to run vulnerabilities counts as well, and this solution is great for that.

The feature right now that we have not been able to use successfully is the firewall aspect, the WAF.

In terms of the WAF, we tried their blocking functionality at some point, and our entire company came to a halt due to the fact that it was blocking even database connections. It was hanging our databases. Until now, we've not been able to fully use their database blocking functionality very well. That is the only aspect that I wish could be improved tomorrow.

The entire system is not user-friendly for me, and definitely not as user-friendly as Oracle Vault. It should be more user-friendly, to make it much more competitive in the space. 

The technical support is not offered by the company itself. Rather, you can only get technical support via partners. It isn't that good and because of this, we want to leave the product.

The solution is expensive.

If we can look at a system that can do 360 annual. There is an app call bridge that is something they've introduced, however, we don't have that yet. I don't know if that is able to do application monitoring as well, but I wish they had a feature that could do both the database and application monitoring.

I've been using the solution for about four to five years now.

The stability is okay. I don't recall any kind of bug or glitch. It doesn't freeze or crash. Aside from issues with WAF, it's good.

The scalability is fine for our purposes. We are able to modify the product, and we are able to do things to suit what we need, so it's okay for us. If I were to rate them out of ten on scalability, I'd give them a six.

One of the reasons we want to leave this solution is the fact that we don't have any technical support whatsoever. If there was some on offer, it might convince us to stay. Technical support is typically handled by partners, and they do not do a good job. We've been trying to reach the parent company directly because we are unsatisfied with the level of service we've received and we've had no luck. Therefore, we'll probably leave the service altogether.

The solution is pretty pricey. It's not the least expensive option. An organization will have to ensure they have the budget to cover the cost or having the product. I'd say that the amount of money they charge is unreasonable sometimes. If I were to rate them out of ten on pricing, I would give them a one.

We're currently looking to move away from Imperva. We're considering Audit Vault.

The solution is okay, however, there is a lot to be improved upon. For that reason, I'd rate them five out of ten overall.

It's not a bad tool. It's a good tool. I tend to recommend it to others, however, if you're a small company, it may not make sense due to the fact that it is quite expensive.

We use this product to monitor database administrator events and activities on all services. We also use it for preventive measures. Some sensitive queries can be blocked in line before transactions occur.

It's great that we're able to send light event monitoring and administrative activities. SecureSephere has a robust recording system.

We have a lot of lost communication between the clients and the management server. This is a client-on-server solution and sometimes the agent stops communicating and it can take a lot of troubleshooting to solve the issue. It would also be helpful if they'd improve artificial intelligence. 

We've been using this solution for six years. 

The stability is pretty good. 

The scalability is good. 

The customer support is not very good. 

I don't recall the name of the previous solution but we switched to Imperva because it was less complex. 

The initial setup was reasonably straightforward. The deployment took about three months and we had some external assistance. 

This is an expensive solution. We pay an additional amount for support. 

Staff need training prior to using this product. 

I rate this solution nine out of 10.

Imperva SecureSphere Database Security is used to store data for if there is an emergency we can restore it.

The performance of the solution is good.

The solution could improve by having more integration.

I have been using Imperva SecureSphere Database Security for six months.

The solution is stable.

Imperva SecureSphere Database Security is scalable.

We have three people in my organization using the solution.

I have not needed to use the support.

The installation is straightforward.

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

The price of the solution is reasonable and it requires a license.

I rate Imperva SecureSphere Database Security a nine out of ten.

Our primary use for this product is as an application firewall.

The system reports vulnerabilities in my vulnerability assessment, but I need something to generate warning messages.

I would like to see integration such that there is support for different kinds of environments, such as on-premises versus cloud.

We have been using Imperva SecureSphere Database Security for more than five years.

This is a stable product.

We are not concerned with scalability because we do not have the need.

We don't speak directly with the vendor. We only call the managed solution provider.

We did not use another similar product prior to this one.

This is a managed service, so I did not handle the installation.

This is an expensive solution and the price should be reduced.

We may or may not continue using this product in the future, and I may recommend it to others, depending on their environment.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

We use it to prevent threats to the database. It is like a firewall in front of the database servers.

The cyber intelligence feature is the most valuable. 

It is very expensive. Its price can be better.

I have been using this solution for three years.

It is stable.

It is easy to scale technically, but it is so expensive. 

We have about five administrators who use this solution.

Their technical support is very good. In a few situations, they took too long to respond. I would rate them a nine out of ten.

The initial setup is easy. It took us four weeks to deploy it.

It is very expensive.

I would advise others to use a professional service to certify for the latest implementations. I would rate Imperva SecureSphere Database Security a nine out of ten.