We performed a comparison between BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access and Microsoft Remote Desktop Services based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Remote Access solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."We like the integration with Active Directory. It allows us to discover the endpoints and user accounts that need protection. It's a good way of securing our privileged access."
"This product is very stable and scalable. This is an excellent platform."
"PRA stands on its own as a full solution. This is important because it reduces the need to maintain a lot of different services. Also, the integration between those services are sometimes not easy to maintain. So, having a solution like BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access reducing our workload gives us enough time to work on our other issues. The system just runs and does what it is supposed to do."
"It is a real fortress. Its security is very strong. Multi-factor came as a feature out-of-the-box, which was big for us. That helps us meet another compliance requirement. It enforces encryption. Nobody can see what we are doing in our remote system if they happen to be listening for unencrypted traffic. That is its biggest strength."
"I like all of it. You can access computers that are on a DMZ. You can access computers that are off the network and on the network. You pretty much have access to computers wherever they are. As long as they have the client on them, you can get to them. So, it is convenient, but its main feature is that you can use your smart card to elevate your privileges remotely. That's a great feature."
"Its security, simplicity, and ease of deployment and maintenance are the most valuable. It is FIPS compliant, so it goes through severe penetration testing every one year or two years. They have to maintain this compliance. It is very safe. Customers have been using it in the last eight years because of the simplicity of getting it deployed quickly. Most of the people using the solution had been hacked already, so they needed it quickly. As compared to the other solutions in the market, it can be turned on in production very quickly. You don't really need to have a server. It can be deployed very rapidly on VMware or Hyper-V, and you don't need to do an installation. It is a kind of an all-included package that you just deploy in a VM environment. It is basically a VM that is specifically built for a customer. The way the PRA data solutions work is that you need to build them for each customer because of being hard-coded with their SSL certificate, their web page name, and all that."
"I like the enterprise credential manager. It's a connector that sits in PRA and tests the credentials for the end user with a process that will clean the password. This is one of PRA's primary features and simplifies user onboarding. There aren't many restrictions or complications. We can add the user while only opening one port, which is more than enough to access the PRA server. Every organization requires only four critical servers out of a hundred and some 50 production servers."
"Its initial setup process is straightforward."
"The most valuable feature is ease of use."
"I give the stability a nine out of ten."
"We use cloud remote support because we need to assist our customers. It allows them to connect from the web. I"
"The most valuable features of the solution are ease of use and the simple environment."
"I've had good experiences with Microsoft customer support."
"It is a stable product."
"The solution is stable."
"It's part of the Microsoft Operating system and is free."
"They could probably integrate a wizard or something like that to add a new use case. It could be something that makes it easier to add a new use case."
"One of our gaps or pain points is having multi-factor authentication at the endpoint and using the PRA password injection from BeyondTrust, which does not work in our environment. We can only have MFA at the login of BeyondTrust to check out the password. Therefore, we can't meet our security requirements of having it on the endpoint."
"I would love to have a web console and the ability to use the smart card with the web console to provide remote support. If you are on a computer that doesn't have the Bomgar console, you should be able to use the web console to provide support. That's the only thing right now. A web console is nice when you're jumping into a computer, but if you need to elevate the privileges, you currently can't do it with the smart card. If they could figure that out, that would be money."
"There is no connectivity to the appliance side. There is no API, and it is just difficult for me to capture what version the device is on without going in and doing screenshots. It is a little too secure in that regard, where they don't even trust their product owner. Since a lot of hacks come from the inside, they are probably doing what they need to do out of necessity. It is just that I have to work pretty hard to produce compliance data on the box."
"Multiple areas can be improved. We've seen lots of updates in the past year. They have a portal where we can submit our ideas. BeyondTrust is immediately implementing user suggestions. The UI could be more informative. Initially, there were two or three connectors, and now we have five or six. It would be nice if they added a few more connectors for third-party integration. There are multiple tools, but the clients may require more for their convenience."
"When doing protocol panel jumps, the tool does not restrict what is recorded on the user's computer."
"Some of the capabilities in the solution were not as available or not as outstanding as CyberArk. We had to manage whatever little was available for us, especially its recording capabilities, logs, and a number of things."
"The issue I found with the product revolves around the fact that RDP and SSH sessions take too much time, making it an area of concern where improvements are required."
"I want to connect easily from an external network even when I'm not in my enterprise or company. It should be easy to connect or integrate Microsoft Teams, for example, with Microsoft Remote Desktop Services."
"In a future release, they could improve by providing more advanced technology and better buffering for if the connection is degraded or lost."
"I would like to see the hard drives work without locking up and integrate the local drives in the next release."
"From the perspective of an IT professional, Microsoft Remote Desktop is very easy to use. However, it could be made easier to use for the end user, especially when it comes to activating it."
"I would like to be able to access the remote desktop using a web-based interface, rather than having to use the client."
"The solution is unsuitable for direct external internet connections. You must set up a VPN and password handling to use it."
"Sometimes, the updates break the system."
"Sometimes the server stops working, and we don’t know why. Occasionally we’ll get a message to the effect of "There is no remote license.""
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BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access is ranked 6th in Remote Access with 21 reviews while Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is ranked 2nd in Remote Access with 76 reviews. BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access is rated 8.6, while Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access writes "Our support team can do so much more without having to actively engage our customers, which saves us time and money". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services writes "Easy to set up and reliable, but needs an additional control panel". BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access is most compared with CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, WALLIX Bastion, Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service), BeyondTrust Remote Support and F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM), whereas Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is most compared with TeamViewer, VMware Horizon, Citrix Workspace, VMware Workstation and Parallels Access. See our BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access vs. Microsoft Remote Desktop Services report.
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