Review: Proginet Corporation SecurForce

For: Comprehensive user password management. Against: Not designed for password vaulting or managing hard-coded passwords. Verdict: A specialised product for specific applications, but very good at what it does.

Proginet SecurForce is a little bit of a horse of a different color for this month's Group Test.

It focuses more on managing passwords from a user perspective. With this product, administrators can create password policy and allow users to easily sync their passwords across the many enterprise platforms. These pass­words are then validated against SecurForce or by an external security provider.

Furthermore, changes are detected and applied by agents based on the Identity Server's rules and confi guration. This tool also allows administra­tors to slim down the number of passwords a single user needs.

SecurForce was simple to install and we had it up and running in just a few minutes. The installer includes all that is needed to get the product up and running, including the necessary web server. From a user stand­point, the password reset tools are also quite simple and intui­tive to use.

From a performance stand­point, Proginet SecurForce does integrate quite well with the existing environment by plugging into systems, such as Windows Active Directory, RACF, ACF2, Top Secret, AIX, Solaris, HP-UX and Linux, and applications, such as SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, SAP and LDAP.

However, we did find that this product does not lock passwords in a vault or manage hard-coded passwords. SecurForce leans more toward identity and pass­word management for users.

Documentation for SecurForce includes PDF installation and user guides. These are well orga­nised and provide some confi gu­ration examples. We found these documents to be easy to follow with a good sampling of step-by­step instructions.

Proginet offers 24/7 phone and email support as part of a standard maintenance agree­ment. Also available to customers is onsite service for deployment and installation at a rate of US$2,000 per day. Customers also get access to a support portal with a knowledge base and a FAQ section.

At an initial cost of US$10,000, we find the Proginet SecurForce to be an average value for the money. While it does have some excellent password management features, it is lacking in critical systems management and secure password storage.

See original article on SC Magazine US

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