Symantec Siteminder Reviews

We use it for authentication and authorization for our website. We have multiple external and internal websites that we host, so we are using SSO for authenticating and authorizing for all those websites.

It has performed quite well. We have been using it more than 10 years now.

• Authentication
• Authorization

for our websites. These features are important because all the sites need authentication for security purposes. That has been handled pretty well all these years with SSO.

It doesn't take time for us to configure, maybe because we have been using this product for so long. In terms of security rights, a lot are covered under SSO, so we don't actually have to go and do something on the back end.

We would like to the OAuth be more stable, more issues being fixed rather than not.

We're pretty happy, but there are some scenarios with the new stuff, like OAuth - where authentication happens from Google, Amazon - in which they're still lagging right now. They're developing it, but we have been using SSO for a long time and Oauth capability was not there, and it recently started this year. So we had a little bit of a question, "Should we still use this product or we should go to another product?" That was the one concern.

Stability? There have been some issues but over the years but it's pretty stable. The issue we encountered was a whole site going down. But we were able to bring it up.

Scalability is pretty good.

They're pretty good on some of the non-issues. There are some delays, however, and they keep on asking for logs or try to delay it, maybe it's stuff they don't know. But in most of the cases they respond pretty quickly.

I wasn't in on the initial setup, but I have been installing a lot of the newer versions. Compared to six, seven years ago, now it is very, very smooth.

I would still not rate it a 10 out of 10 because, like I said, we had some issues with the OAuth here and there. Once those are done right, I think it would be a nine out of 10.

Regarding advice to a colleague who is researching this or a similar solution, it depends on what they are trying to accomplish. Are they going legacy, where you authenticate, versus the newer federation?

But I would recommend SSO as a solution.

It is reliable.

I do not think there is anything to improve. It is a pretty complete product.

We are using it as we have implemented it. I have not seen anything that is missing.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

The tech support has not been very good for us so we don't use them anymore. We have had some issues. Nobody is perfect.

It was a long time ago, but we stopped using them because of it. It was very long time ago. It might be better now, but it used to not be so good. Now, we solve problems in another way.

We started to use the product before it was CA. It used to be another company's product. CA bought the company a couple of years ago. I do not remember who it was actually.

• Simplified federation
• Integrated Windows Authentication (IWA)

Our customer had two requirements:

• Authentication without any challenges
• Access to the partner's application without any additional login required

The first requirement got covered by IWA. The second requirement was covered by simplified federation.

IWA is an out-of-the-box feature. The SAML-based federation is standard for all tools. However, CA Single Sign-On has made the federation configuration way too simple and handy to set up and use.

Updates as on 09/21/2017

CA SSO is helping us a lot in providing the access solution to the customers. The enhanced features in the Simplified federation and the support for a number of different User store types allow us to support almost anything that customer needs. Very pleased with the new Reporting tool from CA that has ut of the bx integration capabilities with CA SSO and is an excellent tool for simplified and useful reports.

My customer is able to get seamless authentication done using IWA and straight access to the partner's application without any further authentication.

Reporting an auditing was one of the most needed requirements that was fulfilled very easily by CA SSO.

The upgrade/migration process can be simplified further.

If the reporting feature can be integrated into SSO itself that will be an icing on the cake.

I have used this solution for almost eight years.

Not until now form CA SSO side. Only one time we had to deviate from requirement because CA SSO does not support Oauth as a token provider and need additional tools to achieve this.

We have never experienced any stability issues.

Up until now, there were no scalability issues. We are able to manage around 25K users without any issues.

Good customer service for the support and comfort to the customer.

The technical support team is not very proactive. CA can improve in this area. I would give them a rating of 5/10.

This is the first solution that we have tried.

The initial setup was very easy and straightforward.

In house implementation

It is a good return on investment and we are able to deliver SSO as a service.

The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market. Since it has a user-based license, one should plan in advance regarding the scope in scalability.

We looked at similar solutions from Oracle and IBM. However, CA was much better, in terms of its user-friendly nature and the cost.

The major focus should be on planning, design, scope, and scalability. The rest is a piece of cake.

It provides the breadth and the width to provide solutions for the different kinds of technologies which we have. Stability is the most important thing for us. It just allows the user a simple, one way of authenticating. They really made life simple for the user and and the user experience has improved. The user doesn't have to memorize and retain many passwords. They provide a secure and an easy to use solution.

As we are moving in to the mobility space, this is where we really see SiteMinder and their other product really come together to provide a solution base to a different area where the IoT is coming, the different business communications are happening. All of those things require authentication and we really want to see this product grow into that role.

We have been using SiteMinder for the last 15 years and we have been very good and successful in implementing the solutions. The solutions have been working for us. We have not used up any of those solutions since 2001.

Regarding the implementation aspect of it, any Single Sign-On solution has multiple components to it. The client side solution has a required plug-in, which is very easy because the majority of the web servers which are out there, their support is always available and for any kind of a new web server comes in and then similarly on the back end side where the servers are really running and it is very easy to incorporate and adopt.

The solution is very stable. It is the most important thing because all of our applications use this product. If the solution goes down and the product doesn't work then we have a major outage in the company, so it is very, very important that any solution we use, not only is it ease of use, but also that it is important that the solution is stable, and it works the majority of the time. Of course, no software solution is 100%, but as long as it provides 99.9% availability, that's what we look for.

It's very scalable as a self service solution and you can add as many servers as you want, and as many locations as you want. There was a time that we had 20 million customers based on this one solution. It can support a variety of ways, but there is a number of applications, number of users. All of these things really provide very good and easy ways to scale without many changes to the environment.

The important thing is not only the scalability and availability, but also having a good partnership. When the problem comes up, how quickly can we can solve it? That's one of the best things what CA gives us. To establish a relationship which is based upon the partnership and they are there to help us whenever we have any problems.

They have a tier support model just like any company has, so depending upon the type of issues we are having we usually get a good response very quickly. A back end engineer on our case if this is going on a severity level one, then we get very good support immediately.

The product is 8-9/10. It's very high because of their availability and supportability on different web servers is very, very, highly ranked.

My advice and best practices is always engage with CA. Make sure that you're working and getting their input and to also see what their best solution is. They provide a very good partnership. They give you a suggestion and recommendation. You'll her from them - What is the right thing? What is the right solution? If you engage and build a good relationship you always have a good solution.

The advice is that whatever you are thinking of the product make sure you are talking to the right people. The majority of them are good people and they'll give you the right solution.

Obviously, the most valuable feature is the flexibility of the solution, it being able to be integrated with a number of applications and solutions; and also, the configurability of the solution.

Security is a big concern of our client and it is certainly something that helps the client be able to secure the application and provide a better user experience; doing a single sign-on instead of multiple logins, for example.

I've seen a lot of analytics capability being built in for a number of products. Obviously, I want to be able to use analytics on CA SSO as well.

The client that I manage it for has used it for four years already.

It's a stable solution. It's been in place for quite some time already. There aren’t a lot of operational or technical issues that are related to the system, so it's a stable solution.

It has been scalable, to us, at this point in time. It's been able to support quite a number of applications for our client. It's scalable to us.

Technical support has been great. Generally, support is very responsive, timely, and obviously, we have account support folks that we can reach out to, to be able to support us if there's any technical issue.

With the setup, obviously, with a large organization, there are quite a number of things to be done. There is some complexity involved, but generally, I would say that it's been quite successful.

We knew we needed to invest in a new solution because, obviously, again, security is a main concern of a lot of clients. Generally, the solution is stable, it's one of the leaders in the market, and it was chosen to be implemented.

I think what we will be looking for when selecting a vendor is in terms of support, technical support, when there is an issue. I think that's a key component to us when we implement a product. We want to be able to deal with issues when they arise. Can we support it? That's what we will look for from a vendor.

Generally, it's been a great product for us to use. It's been stable. It's been a good product.

The most valuable feature is being able to debug problems, even though it can be a little bit complex and you have to know quite a bit to be able to dig around, root around, and figure out what the problem is. But I think getting into it, once you understand it, it's not too bad.

It definitely makes customers' or users' lives easier. People don't really appreciate it until they don't have it. Once everyone has SSO, if you took it away, they'd say something like, "Oh my God. I've got to put my password in every single time."

Just having it there, even though people may not consciously realize it, is a big benefit for companies. It simplifies things; reduces user/customer frustration.

• I would like to have a really simple interface; a more modernesque, cloud-based interface, with dynamic real-time information on the various configurations or object configuration points that associate with the applications.
• Ease-of-use
• Smarter error messages

It's had its moments in the past couple years. We've had interesting bugs that we've hit. When you see those bugs, and when they hit you, and it hits production, you get this big skew of, "This is a problem. This is not good." You feel like, "Why did this make it through QA?" Ultimately, there's going to be explanations, potential revenue loss.

CA SSO does have stability issues. Once you can find ways to get around them, whether it's fixes or you configure around them, it starts running for a while and it's OK.

It can scale. You could add more infrastructure. It's very manual.

CA was talking about doing a Dockerized solution, or being able to push out and basically configure new instances of the components. I haven't heard much about it recently.

CA SSO can be scalable, but it's not exactly the easiest thing to do. There is a lot of manual work involved.

I'm not very happy with technical support. I know the people in technical support. I usually give the frontline guys a chance but usually, when I report issues, I've kind of gotten as far as I could and I usually need somebody on the back line. With my recent cases, I haven't been too happy with the technical support that I've gotten.

I wasn't involved in the initial roll-out or the initial discussions around the solution. From previous experiences, it's usually, a company realizes, if you're part of the security team or the identity team, if the company gets to a certain size, they try to find ways to make things easier to do; not only for employees and customers, but also for audit compliance.

Within that space, there are a handful of companies that do it and they each have their own reputation. CA has a reputation of being a simpler product to use, in some ways, as compared to Oracle, which is a pretty complicated product to roll out. There's a handful of players. Usually, if CA wins, then CA is there.

If you compare it on a spectrum of really easy products to deploy – like single-clicks that can maybe even automate themselves and push out their own instances of themselves – versus, here's a big book of steps that you have to go through, I think CA SSO is kind of on the left side of that spectrum.

Whatever you're considering, this is a good solution. It's got all the plug-ins and the various components – app servers, web servers – and you can customize it quite a bit.

In its space, most of the other competitors have the same sort of challenges. It's probably a little bit easier out of the box to get it to work.

For what it is, it does things reasonably well, once you get it working.

It definitely has maturity, but for all the number of releases that it's been through, I kind of expect that over those years, it just gets better and better. Like, with Microsoft, after three times, Microsoft usually gets something done really well.

CA has gone through SiteMinder/SSO 3.5, 4.0, 5, 5.5, 6, 12, 12.51, 12.52, so you start getting into the game of semi-releases, for different reasons. There hadn't been much changes in SiteMinder significantly until the 12.5 series, so between 6 to 12, there wasn't that much change, and then 12.5, there's a bit more change.

This solution is meeting our requirements for all of our applications. The newer version supports Grid Authentication.

This tool helps our organization with multiple applications. The solution is meeting the requirements and it is easy to use.

We are looking forward to implementing the uptime automation that was mentioned in the roadmap. We will go with the upgraded tool.

Once CA has finalized the cases that we have brought to them, it will be a better product to use.

In terms of stability, it’s good.

The scalability is good.

We have used technical support. We used them for a few cases we had during our upgrades. Anytime we need help with troubleshooting, we normally use support. We have spoken with them and they are good. They provide us with the proper solution for most things.

This is a product that I would recommend.

The security and single sign-on (SSO) features are the most valuable.

It's one login. You log in once and you can access all of the applications that have been integrated into SSO. That's the main advantage that we have seen in the organization.

I would like to see more usability; more customer usability.

Stability is good. The security by CA is good. It's a great company. In England, CA is very good.

Scalability is also good.

We always use technical support when using these solutions. It's okay, with response time, for example. If you have any issues, you open a ticket to support and there are some very good support technicians. I know most of them. However, I do know quite a few of them that are not that knowledgeable. That's where the frustration comes in, when you really need an answer. When the ticket is assigned to that tech, you cannot be switched and start over. That's the only thing I faced. Other than that, if it goes to the right tech that knows the product, boom!

With the initial setup, there was some complexity and some straightforward things.

Cost is the most important criteria when selecting a vendor.