Review: NetWrix Identity Management Suite

 This suite includes Password Manager, Account Lockout Examiner, Inactive Users Tracker, Logon Reporter and Password Expiration Notifier. All these work together to create a fairly comprehensive identity management suite that helps both administrators and end-users manage accounts and perform account maintenance.

We found installation of this product to be quite simple, but it did require a lot of steps. There are a few prerequisites that need to be in place before the various components are installed, including a SQL server instance, Internet Information Services (IIS), and .Net. After the prerequisites are installed and ready, each bit of the suite needs to be installed individually. While the installation was not overly complicated and all installations were guided by easy-to-follow setup wizards, we would have liked to see an integrated installer to help streamline deployment.

With all that said, this set of applications offers a lot in the way of functionality. The Password Manager is designed to provide users with self service password and account management through a web-based portal. The Account Lockout Examiner provides automated account lockout management by monitoring event logs for lockouts and then automatically notifies specified recipients of the lockout. One of the most useful tools in the suite is the Inactive Users Tracker. This tool helps manage inactive accounts that may pose possible security risks. When an account is found to be inactive, this product automatically deactivates the account and notifies specified recipients of actions taken.

Documentation included administrator, quick-start and installation guides in PDF format for all the individual products. While we found the documentation as a whole to be well-organized and easy to follow, we would have liked to see a single guide for the suite as it is much easier to keep track of a single guide versus many PDF documents. We did find all materials to include a good amount of screen shots, configuration examples and step-by-step instructions.

NetWrix offers full phone- and email-based technical support for customers evaluating the suite for the first 20 days. After customers obtain the product, they must also purchase a maintenance contract to continue to receive support. With a maintenance contract, customers get access to eight-hours-a-day/five-days-a-week phone- and email-based technical support, as well as a portal on the website that offers a knowledge base, support ticket management and a full user forum, along with many other helpful resources.

At a price starting at just under $10 per user for up to 150 users, we find this tool to be a good value for the money. While this suite is more like a bundle of products for one price rather than a fully integrated suite of functionality, we do find it to have a lot of strong features that can make user management easy. We would like to see this suite become more integrated in the future, but overall we liked our experience with the NetWrix Identity Management Suite.

A nice set of products that would benefit by tighter integration.