StrongDM: The Dynamic Access Management Platform

My use case for StrongDM  is Privileged Access Management . I have privileged accounts because I am working for the Identity and Access Management  team at my company. As an engineer, I have really privileged or elevated accounts for which I need my account onboarded to StrongDM , so I have to regularly use it.

The best features in StrongDM are the password rotation capabilities, which I think are pretty cool, and also how you can literally log in to any of the privileged servers through a single platform. You just copy-paste the IP and the port number and log in over there through RDP, so I think that's pretty cool. I have used CyberArk before, but I think StrongDM as a product has pretty good potential.

My impression of the credential-less access control is that it's pretty good because it reduces the attack surface. Basically, if you cannot see the password and everything, even the privileged users cannot see the password. It's a password-less system where you just log in to the servers without knowing your password, and even if you know your password, it's probably going to be rotated after a while. So, I think that's a pretty good use case for reducing the attack surface and maintaining zero trust throughout an identity perimeter.

StrongDM helps with runtime features in a twenty-four-seven dynamic environment. Whenever I try to access at maybe two a.m. or three a.m. at night and I have a production issue on a server located in a different continent, I can access it right at that moment. I think the application works pretty much like a charm. It's readily available, and I think the runtime feature is pretty cool, although the application sometimes crashes when it's downloaded locally on your machine.

Regarding pricing, I find StrongDM to be definitely cost-efficient. We used to use CyberArk before, but StrongDM is more cost-effective, which is why we are using it. Our director is a board member at StrongDM, allowing us to utilize the product and the flexibility it provides, which tailor-suits our needs based on the organization and is something we do not get from other PAM products.

StrongDM regularly requires patches and maintenance, but I think that's a good question for the PAM architects in our organization.

If you guys could offer only a cloud-native solution, you would likely cater to different organizations. That could grow the product more.

I have been using StrongDM for the last one or one and a half years.

I think the stability of StrongDM is about four to five due to the occasional crashes that I mentioned. The gateway sometimes crashes, and you are unable to retrieve passwords, which I hope they address in the future as the product evolves.

Regarding scalability, it's difficult for me to assess because we are a mid-sized organization. Although we have many users, we only have a limited number of privileged accounts that StrongDM caters to. If a larger organization such as Microsoft or Dell adopted it, there would be more privileged accounts, showing the product's potential to grow if issues in maintenance and crashing are resolved.

I would rate the technical support seven to eight, for sure.

We have used CyberArk before. While CyberArk has a lot of fine-grain solutions, the problem is it lacks flexibility. CyberArk is fantastic and has been around for a long time, but it doesn't offer the tailored solution that different organizations need because every organization behaves in different ways. StrongDM provides that flexibility, as it is still growing and works on feedback to help integrate with your environment.

I would assess StrongDM's ability to unify access across different systems in my organization as pretty good, despite sometimes facing issues using the platform, probably because of maintenance. Sometimes you are not able to retrieve the password, so it has happened. I'm not going to say that it's a perfect product, but I think they're slowly getting better, and as I said, in the future, this product has potential for hybrid solutions in my company, especially after they got acquired by Delinea.

Regarding the continuous runtime authorization feature, I haven't utilized that feature in the product myself, but someone else in the organization has. I mostly work with StrongDM as an end user who has privileged accounts onboarded.

I believe the importance of continuous authorization versus periodic checks is significant. Automatic credential rotation means we do not have to worry about manual checks repeatedly. It is a good solution for continuous authorization, although the challenge remains about how it will support larger organizations with many enterprise privileged accounts.

I would definitely recommend StrongDM, especially for mid-sized to small organizations. If it's a large organization, I would suggest having them view a demo to see if they are ready to adopt it as a product. My overall review rating for StrongDM is seven out of ten.