StrongDM: The Dynamic Access Management Platform

I have been using StrongDM  for around one year as a client. My main use case for StrongDM  is to authenticate my user to get access to the cloud environment.

A specific example of how I use StrongDM to access my cloud environment is that I typically need to access Kubernetes  resources, and to do that, I use StrongDM to find the resource inside SDM and connect to it. This is the only use case I have.

The best feature StrongDM offers is that it is easy to integrate with a command line.

The command line integration helps me in my day-to-day work because our DevOps team created a script that automatically connects StrongDM to the correct cloud resource, and it works all the time.

I find the ability to integrate StrongDM via command line and UI that allows me to connect or disconnect specific resources useful and unique; the ease of it stands out for me.

StrongDM has positively impacted my organization by ensuring that every developer has access to cloud resources, which are audited by the organization, allowing us to keep track of who accesses what and control the access.

StrongDM is very stable in my experience.

Regarding StrongDM's scalability, since I am using the StrongDM client that runs on my laptop, I cannot assess much about its scalability, but the response time is very fast, so I assume the scalability is good.

I did not use any different solutions; this is my first time using it in this company.

I am not aware of StrongDM's AI capabilities, including its governance and security.

I don't know about StrongDM's AI capabilities regarding its accuracy and reliability of output since I don't use this feature.

I would say that StrongDM is deployed on-premises in my organization, but I am not certain because I am not involved in those details.

I assess StrongDM's effectiveness in closing breach paths in real time as a very effective way.

I don't have an opinion on the importance of StrongDM's continuous authorization versus periodic checks for my organization.

I am not aware of how StrongDM's credential-less access control integrates with existing vaults and secret managers, but I am getting access to cloud resources and have not explored those features.

I assess StrongDM's ability to unify access across different systems in my organization as effective; we mostly use access to our cloud resources and work with different cloud providers.

I am not involved in the pricing, setup cost, or licensing, as it is managed by different DevOps teams.

I have not interacted with StrongDM's customer support, so I cannot comment on it.

It is difficult for me to give any advice because I am using StrongDM as a regular user, but I am very satisfied. I give StrongDM an overall rating of ten out of ten.

My main use case for StrongDM  is secure remote access to servers, databases, and internal infrastructure. I help manage user access, improve security, and make it easy to connect to resources without using multiple VPNs or credentials.

For example, when I need to troubleshoot a server or network issue remotely, I use StrongDM  to securely access the required infrastructure. Instead of sharing passwords or using multiple access methods, StrongDM provides controller access with proper permission. This helps me quickly investigate issues while maintaining security and tracking access activity.

The best features of StrongDM are secure access management, role-based access control, and detailed activity tracking. It allows users to securely access servers, databases, and other infrastructure without sharing credentials. I also value the visibility and audit logs because they help track who accessed resources and when. These features make remote access more secure and easier to manage.

The role-based access control feature helps our team provide the right level of access to the right user based on their responsibilities. This reduces the risk of unauthorized access and makes permission management easier. The activity tracking feature gives us better visibility into user actions, which helps during troubleshooting and security review. For example, when investigating an issue, we can quickly check access logs to understand what changes were made and by whom, which saves time and improves security.

StrongDM has positively impacted our organization by improving security, simplifying access management, and increasing operational efficiency. It helps our team securely access required resources without sharing credentials and provides better visibility through audit and access logs. This has reduced manual processes, improved troubleshooting speed, and helped maintain better control over infrastructure access.

StrongDM is already a powerful and secure access management platform. One area where it can improve is by adding more advanced reporting options, improving customization features, and making some administrative workflows even simpler. More integrations and enhanced user guidance could also make the experience better for teams.

StrongDM could further improve by expanding integrations with more third-party tools and providing more detailed documentation or tutorial guides for new users. This will help teams set up the platform faster and get maximum value from its features. Overall, the platform is already effective, and these improvements would make the user experience even better.

I have been using StrongDM for approximately eight months.

StrongDM has been stable in our experience. We have not faced major reliability issues, and the platform has consistently provided secure and reliable access management. It performs well for day-to-day operations, and availability and performance have met our expectations.

StrongDM scales well. As our environment grows, it has been able to support more users, systems, and access requirements without creating additional complexity. Adding new resources and managing permissions is straightforward, which makes it easier for our teams to expand while maintaining proper security controls.

My customer support experience has been good. The support team is responsive, knowledgeable, and helpful when we have questions or need assistance. They provide clear guidance and help resolve issues quickly, which makes the overall experience smoother.

We previously used a different access management solution. We decided to switch because we needed a more flexible and centralized way to manage access across different systems. The previous solution required more manual effort and was harder to manage at scale. StrongDM provided better visibility, easier access control, and a smoother user experience without requiring major changes to our existing infrastructure.

StrongDM's ability to integrate without requiring a full vault migration is a big advantage. It allows organizations to improve access management while continuing to use their existing systems and security processes. This reduces implementation effort, minimizes disruption, and helps teams adopt the platform more smoothly.

We have seen a positive return on investment with StrongDM. It has helped us save time by simplifying access management and reducing the manual effort required for granting and troubleshooting access. Our team spends less time dealing with permission issues, and troubleshooting has become faster because access is more centralized and easier to track. While we did not measure exact dollar savings, we notice improvement in operational efficiency, faster onboarding, and reduced time spent on access-related tasks.

My experience with StrongDM regarding pricing and licensing is generally positive. The setup process is straightforward, and the platform provides good value considering the security access control and operational benefits it offers. The licensing model is easy to understand, though pricing may depend on organization size, requirements, and the number of users.

We evaluated a few other access management solutions before choosing StrongDM. We looked at options including traditional VPN-based access tools and other privileged access management solutions. However, StrongDM stood out because of its easier implementation, centralized access control, better visibility, and ability to integrate with our existing systems without major changes.

StrongDM makes access management much easier and more secure. It helps our team save time, reduces manual access processes, and maintains better visibility into who is accessing which resources. Overall, it improves both security and operational efficiency.

StrongDM provides a good balance between security and usability. Features such as centralized access management, audit visibility, and easy permission control help our team work more efficiently while maintaining strong security standards.

We have seen improvement in our workflow, especially in reducing the time required for access requests and troubleshooting. StrongDM provides quick and secure access to resources, and the audit logs help us identify issues faster. It has also improved visibility into user activity and reduced the risk of unauthorized access.

I rate StrongDM nine out of ten. It provides strong security, easy access management, and good visibility into user activity. It has helped improve our workflow and makes mapping infrastructure access more efficient. There is still some room for improvement in areas such as investigation and customization, but overall it is a very effective platform.

I chose nine out of ten because StrongDM provides excellent security, easy access management, and great visibility with solid tracking. What stands out the most is the ability to securely access resources without sharing credentials and improved control over permissions. The reason I did not give it a perfect ten is that there is always room for improvement around expanding investigations, customization options, and making some administrative tasks even simpler.

StrongDM's AI governance and security approach is good. It focuses on keeping access control and protecting sensitive information while maintaining visibility into user activity. The security controls and permission features help ensure that AI features are used safely and responsibly. Overall, it gives confidence that data and access are being managed properly.

StrongDM's AI capabilities are strong. The AI capabilities provide accurate and reliable results for new tasks and are designed for effectiveness. The output is helpful for improving efficiency and gaining insights faster. Like any AI tool, it may still need human review for critical decisions, but overall it provides useful and dependable support.

StrongDM is a very effective platform. One area where it could improve is by making the user experience even more intuitive, adding more integrations, and providing more customization options for different time requirements, better documentation, and onboarding support. This would also help new users get started faster.

StrongDM is effective in reducing security risks by controlling and monitoring access in real time. Its role-based permission, credential management, and activity tracking help prevent unauthorized access and quickly identify unusual activity. It helps close potential breach paths by ensuring users only get the access they need.

Continuous authorization is more important for our organization because it provides ongoing verification and better security compared to periodic checks. Access requirements can change quickly, so real-time monitoring and validation help reduce security risks and ensure users have the right level of access at all times.

My impression of StrongDM's credential-less access control is very positive. It simplifies secure access by reducing the need to share or manage individual credentials while still maintaining proper permissions and visibility. Its ability to work with existing vaults and secret management systems helps organizations maintain security standards without disrupting existing workflows.

StrongDM does a good job of unifying access across different systems. It provides a centralized way to manage access to servers, databases, and other infrastructure resources without requiring multiple access methods. For example, instead of managing separate credentials for different systems, our team can use StrongDM to securely access resources with proper permissions and tracking. This makes daily operations simpler and improves security visibility.

I would recommend that others evaluate StrongDM if they are looking for a more secure and simplified way to manage access. Before implementing, it is important to understand your access requirements and plan the integration with the existing systems. StrongDM provides good visibility, centralized control, and can help reduce the operational effort required in managing permissions.

StrongDM has been a positive experience for us. It has helped improve access management, increase visibility, and make it easier to control and audit user access across different systems. The platform is easy to use, reliable, and has helped our teams work more efficiently. We would consider it a strong option for organizations looking to improve security and simplify access management. I rate StrongDM nine out of ten overall.

In our environment, we have managed Linux servers, cloud resources, and production systems, and we use StrongDM  as a privileged access management solution. StrongDM  authenticates users through the identity provider, authorizes access based on RBAC, and establishes secure SSH connections. We also maintain complete audit logs of all user activities.

For example, if our team needs to access an app server, DB server, or a Kubernetes  cluster, instead of using SSH user@server, we first authenticate them through StrongDM. Then, StrongDM checks if the user is active and belongs to the cloud operations team, and if they have production access. If the criteria are met, StrongDM creates the security connection for them. Once the security connection is established, the cloud engineer logs in to the StrongDM portal, it performs SSO  authentication, and the role is verified. Then, they are redirected to the StrongDM gateway, and the person can connect. No passwords need to be shared.

Regarding the workflow, suppose there is an incident. Without StrongDM, we would have to find the key and then SSH to the production VM, which would take several minutes. With StrongDM, we go to the StrongDM portal, select the production VM, connect, and start troubleshooting. This saves time. The focus shifts from managing access to solving the incident within a few minutes.

Regarding the audit process, everything will be recorded in StrongDM. The administrator knows who connected, which resource was accessed, and for how long they were active. We can get all of this information from the complete audit logs.

The best feature of StrongDM is that it is a time-saving tool for us, and it also provides centralized access management, which is the biggest advantage of StrongDM. Another feature is single sign-on (SSO ). Instead of entering passwords, we can use the single sign-on option. Apart from that, role-based access control is also a great feature.

StrongDM has had a positive impact on my organization by providing faster access to production servers. Instead of remembering SSH keys and multiple passwords, the positive impact is an easier login process, which reduces login issues.

When it comes to periodic checks, one is periodic authorization, and the other one is continuous authorization. In periodic authorization, access is checked only at specific intervals. However, when it comes to continuous authorization, StrongDM continuously validates the session instead of checking only once, so the access is constantly re-evaluated.

From my experience with StrongDM, the biggest advantage was its credential-less access model. As an engineer, we did not have to store or handle SSH keys, database passwords, or any other privileged credentials on our laptops. We authenticated using our corporate SSO account, and StrongDM established a secure connection to the target resource based on our role permissions. I understand that StrongDM can integrate with secret managers like HashiCorp Vault  or cloud KMS services, so credentials can be centrally managed and not exposed to end-users. That is a significant advantage.

StrongDM can be improved in many ways. For example, the access approval workflow could be faster. We face a challenge where we sometimes need temporary access to production but have to wait for an administrator to grant permission. This could be improved and streamlined. If they could provide a just-in-time access approval workflow with integrations to Slack or Microsoft Teams , that would greatly help, especially during production incidents. A faster approval workflow would be beneficial. Additionally, for large environments with many servers, features such as smart automations and resource tagging would be helpful and save time.

One more feature I would like to add is more built-in operational dashboards. Although StrongDM has some dashboards, if they added more comprehensive dashboards, it would be easier to see who has access to what.

I have been using StrongDM for five years.

StrongDM is very stable, and we have not experienced any downtime or faced any issues with StrongDM. From my experience, it was reliable and generally stable. We used it to access our production Linux machines for troubleshooting, OS patching, and maintenance. I do not recall any major outages that significantly impacted my work.

StrongDM can easily handle growth because it is very scalable and very reliable as well. From the past few months, we have been using it continuously. We access the resources through the same platform without any visible changes in performance. I was not responsible for the deployment, but I can tell you that my user experience remained consistent.

The customer support was good, and we had a positive experience with StrongDM's support team, as they have been assisting us in a prompt and professional manner.

In my company, we have been using StrongDM exclusively.

The implementation was straightforward, as we have a separate team that handled it.

I was not involved in calculating the formal return on investment, and I do not have exact financial metrics on that. However, from an operational perspective, we have been seeing improvements in efficiency. While I cannot quantify the savings, it definitely reduced operational overhead and improved security.

StrongDM is very effective in closing initial breach paths because it follows a zero-trust platform and centralized privileged access management. Instead of allowing users to directly connect to production resources using shared credentials, StrongDM authenticates the user through SSO, enforces role-based access control, and logs every access attempt. This significantly reduces the chances of unauthorized access, which is often one of the primary breach paths in enterprise environments. I give this solution a rating of nine out of ten.

My main use case for StrongDM is to assess identity and authentication and authorization access control reviews. When I conduct internal audits or assessments to check the presence of security controls, I use StrongDM to navigate to the configuration settings panel to check what flags and features are enabled or disabled. I appreciate the UI of the overall tool and its functionality.

There was a situation where I had to check whether the privileged account credentials maintained in StrongDM PAM tool are actually encrypted. I configured and opened StrongDM and checked the settings in the configuration window where I was able to verify that StrongDM contains controls and features which enable it to encrypt privileged account credentials. Additionally, it has features for auditing, generating audit trails, and log trails for all activities conducted by any user who is using privileged accounts. Apart from that, there is a database active monitoring tool embedded within StrongDM. These are certain cases where I have navigated this tool and found the UI to be very user-friendly.

The best features StrongDM offers include the JIT access and workflows, which is the Just-in-Time access provided by StrongDM. Apart from that, there are features like the context-aware policy engine, which helps this tool integrate with endpoint security providers like CrowdStrike and SentinelOne. It also offers comprehensive session visibility and auditing, which helps in session recording and captures all the SSH and RDP terminal sessions as replayable video files. Additionally, it has the ability to navigate with SIEM tools, such as Splunk or DataDog, used to capture all the logs of the servers or cloud storage tools such as Amazon S3 bucket or EC2 instances. Those features are very handy and can integrate very easily with StrongDM. It also offers infrastructure-wide protocol support, whether it talks about PostgreSQL, MySQL, or any database tool. It has secrets management and offers a secret vault agnostic feature through which it can be integrated with any encryption key management tool such as HashiCorp or AWS Secrets Manager. The best thing about it is that it offers a developer-friendly deployment, which is very straightforward and simple with StrongDM PAM tool.

StrongDM has positively impacted my organization by saving me a lot of time as a security auditor, because I have to navigate settings and configurations to check the presence of certain security controls in place. When I am auditing StrongDM, it obviously helps me. It has a very user-friendly UI, with which any auditor or any security professional will find it easier to navigate different options to check the presence of security controls. Apart from that, it also offers dynamic access control, enforcing restrictions based on user role, time of the day, location, and device context. These features help auditors significantly.

I think StrongDM could improve by focusing more on network device management by allowing the addition of PAM for network devices, managing legacy network equipment, or helping to initiate enterprise onboarding where a lot of complex environments and initial setup are required. I think that would be a good area for StrongDM to work on.

Apart from that, integration with SIEM and SOAR tools, regarding the logs generated by any privileged user account in these SIEM or SOAR tools, and how to ensure these logs are encrypted, are areas that if StrongDM focuses on, will help it gain advantage over other products in the market right now because they do not have it.

Another area for improvement is the client-side footprint. If StrongDM can provide an installation for user workstations in strict or heavily lockdown environments, maintaining and deploying these desktop clients across thousands of machines can pose a logistical challenge for IT teams. If StrongDM can work on that area as well, it will be a great product.

I have been using StrongDM for approximately three or four months.

I have not noticed any issues with StrongDM's stability or reliability.

StrongDM's continuous authorization is advanced, and using credential-less accounts offers a lot of flexibility to the users within the company. I believe it is a great initiative.

StrongDM works best to unify access across different systems.

I have not personally interacted with StrongDM's customer support, but I have not heard any complaints from any vendors who are using StrongDM.

I can share that in terms of the number of hours, as an auditor, if I require 30 hours to audit a PAM tool, with the help of StrongDM, when I am auditing the tool, it will help me to audit the whole thing within 10 hours or maybe 15 hours. This amounts to approximately 50% of the time saved for me as an auditor.

My advice for others looking into using StrongDM includes its user flexibility, good scalability, and providing advanced features. If they are looking for these things, they should proceed with StrongDM. My overall rating for this product is 9 out of 10.