Secret Server (originally from Thycotic, now from Delinea since the 2021 Thycotic merger with Centrify) is an enterprise password management application, which is available with either a cloud-based or on-premise deployment which emphasizes fast deployment, scalability, and simplicity.
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IT Glue
Score 8.0 out of 10
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IT Glue, a Kaseya company since the December 2018 acquisition, is an information management platform that allows for efficient storage and retrieval of all the documentation an organization needs to help their MSP run better. By integrating PSA and RMM data, the vendor says they can help increase efficiency, and reduce onboarding times.
Great for managing access to secrets and servers and is more secure than storing passwords in a browser. The browser plugin to autofill passwords works well. Being able to schedule access ahead of time is a big plus for me as I can be forgetful. If you want a lightweight password vault, however, it may not be the best choice.
It is best suited for an MSP but it is also best not suited for an MSP. It is well suited for folks with a minimal knowledge of a client and are attempting to learn what they can. Perhaps just bumbling about and can find the same thing consistently. At my particular work, we pay somebody full time to manage the system. I feel this is unnecessary.
Password Management: Its entire purpose, really. Secret Server stores passwords in an incredibly easy to use way. They can be organized in groups, they contain all the information about the site or system the password is used for (including URLs for websites), and even a notes field. You can set up specific policies for expirations and complexity, and Secret Server can even generate strong passwords for you. Using a password is simple, too, since you can just click a button to add it to your clipboard; you don't even have to unmask the password.
Security: The passwords are stored encrypted in a SQL database, and the application requires an authenticated login. This could be local, but we tie it into Active Directory. Each folder of passwords has groups assigned (in our case, again, AD, but you can make them local groups) with different permission levels, so we can compartmentalize passwords. Desktop technicians don't have access to network switch passwords, etc.
Easy Setup: It took me about an hour to get the server running, from spinning up the VM to importing our old password list. It took a little longer to organize the passwords into proper folders, and then assigning groups, but it was easy to do.
Personal Passwords: Each user also gets a personal folder, where they can keep their own, unshared passwords. This is nice for sites or systems with individualized logins (e.g., a firewall, VPN, etc.)
Favorites: Secret Server lets you tag passwords as "favorites" so you can easily find ones you use constantly. The search feature is nice, but this is nicer.
The UI has been set up perfectly, there is a sub-menu for every possible bit of information you wish to store.
There are a number of excellent features such as the autohiding passwords and quick searching from anywhere on the page.
The recent addition of the IT Glue is also an excellent feature, it features online self-guided courses to become a certified IT Glue user.
You can create and group custom documents together.
IT Glue can be integrated with a number of platforms such as Autotask.
IT Glue also integrates well with N-Central to automatically populate the configurations tab with all the relevant Workstation, Printer, and Server information making client on-boarding a breeze.
The sharing functionality NEEDS improvement. We share most passwords at a group level, but then it becomes impossible to share them with a dynamic group and one or two one-off people as well. This is a major shortcoming.
I don't love the interface. I feel like there is an attempt at a dashboard, but it is really not effective.
I've heard, but never seen, that the software can actually change passwords in the target systems. If this is part of its deliverable, I do not know how to use it, and I don't know how you would do that. Seems like a great feature for password management.
Like many other MSPs we had the majority of our SOPs and KBs in Word docs. The best case scenario would be to simply drop those files directly into ITG without having to import them into the ITG documentation format. The import function is so broken as to not be an option because it completely ruins formatting and tends to drop images. Thus we have to manually copy/paste text and individually upload each image.
They marketed the product as having true branding but that is stretching the truth. SSL is not an option so client-facing documents will give security errors in browsers. ITG does not appear to be concerned about this even though security is a major concern for all MSPs.
Easy to train and use. Everything is in the same place. Multi factor authentication and access from anywhere make secure and convenient. Can do my job with out it. It also has a free read and paid write option for the client. We up sell this option making it a money maker as well.
Other than a few access outages, ITGlue is always up and available to us. Their ability to export Playbook, that contain our customers data, and securely send those over to them is amazing and are produced pretty fast. We have IT Glue linked with several other services and software and we have not found that it slows anything down.
No problems with support when needed it. Their answers on how to handle DR/BC situations when ITG is down are not stellar. They don't seem to get the business risks of their suggestions to just give the xls backup to engineers (aka give all passwords of ALL clients to engineers in an unencrypted flat-file where it is easy to copy, print, etc.)
There were not very many solutions that provided the entire package of taking an account from creation and deactivating it when no longer needed, as well as providing the discovery of unknown service accounts. Other solutions like RoboForm and LastPass did not offer the ability to manage your service accounts and added layers of complication to ensure security.
We chose IT Glue particularly because it's tailored to IT documentation. As a managed IT service provider, it's perfectly in line with what we were looking for. The flexibility and tagging in particular were the kind of features we were looking for. Confluence is very good, and can be used for a number of things, not just IT documentation, but IT Glue shines for that.
