Top Secret Other Advice

it_user558108 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Enterprise Partnerships | Wealth & Investment Management at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

When selecting a vendor, make sure they can keep up with you. The ongoing development, security, is an ever-changing item and they need to have sufficient development staff and capabilities to keep up with the industry. That is an area where I have a concern, because I don't see them keeping pace with what we're doing. Admittedly, we're at the forefront of a lot of stuff. It's all about the configuration. It's how you use it.

There are only three players in mainframe security. There is RACF from IBM, there's ACF2 and Top Secret from CA. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. RACF is very robust at this point in time, but it takes third-party tools or an extreme knowledge of the z/OS operating system to use it properly.

Top Secret is probably one of the easiest to use, but it's not quite as easy to customize. ACF2 is very, very easy to customize, it takes less technical knowledge than RACF but more than Top Secret. It's really a matter of finding a product that is suited to the way your organization does business. If it's a small organization with little in-depth security expertise, I would recommend Top Secret. If it's a very, very large organization, I would recommend something like RACF or ACF2.

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it_user814482 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Security Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The security environment is constantly changing. The support for CA Top Secret is constantly upgrading the product to ensure that it's current with the industry needs for mainframe security.


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it_user350628 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Security Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Choose wisely because you’re getting married for life. Once you install it, it’s expensive and painful to go with something else.

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it_user373287 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager of Operations Security at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

I'd give it a 9.5/10. I think it's a pretty good product. It was very well written and the ease of administration and the ease of the commands and the ease in which you can report on it are top notch.

I'd start by calling support and getting their best recommendations for the current environment. I think the support group does a great job and they will direct you. Also, read the installation guide to do best practices through that. For the most part, the product installs fairly easily and if you have an understanding of the product before you start to install is a key thing. If you don't, you can make some grave mistakes in implementing the product.

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it_user558438 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

When selecting a vendor, the most important thing is support. If you are looking for mainframe security, get this solution.

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it_user349389 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Supervisor Auditor at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

We’re always trying to evolve, and the enhancements help, but its intertwining of everything else we use isn’t as smooth as it should be, but that’s because we use software from IBM.

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it_user814479 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director with 51-200 employees

Make sure that there is a post-sale department in your country. We have experienced some post-sale problems to do with integration of CA products into our systems.

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