Google offers the Firebase suite of application development tools, available free or at cost for higher degree of usages, priced flexibly accorded to features needed. The suite includes A/B testing and Crashlytics, Cloud Messaging (FCM) and in-app messaging, cloud storage and NoSQL storage (Cloud Firestore and Firestore Realtime Database), and other features supporting developers with flexible mobile application development.
$0.01
Per Verification
HID DigitalPersona
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
HID DigitalPersona (formerly Crossmatch) provides a comprehensive multi-factor authentication solution. The vendor’s value proposition is that their solution frees users from cumbersome login activities while making it easy for an IT Team to secure access to their networks, data and applications.
Firebase should be your first choice if your platform is mobile first. Firebase's mobile platform support for client-side applications is second to none, and I cannot think of a comparable cross-platform toolkit. Firebase also integrates well with your server-side solution, meaning that you can plug Firebase into your existing app architecture with minimal effort.
Firebase lags behind on the desktop, however. Although macOS support is rapidly catching up, full Windows support is a glaring omission for most Firebase features. This means that if your platform targets Windows, you will need to implement the client functionality manually using Firebase's web APIs and wrappers, or look for another solution.
During the onboarding process, remote workers can enroll their fingerprints or create secure PINs. This eliminates the need for complicated passwords and enables them to safely access company resources and critical apps from remote locations. HID DigitalPersona's robust authentication techniques and access control features can assist you in adhering to data security laws.
Extremely robust. Has about any tool you can think of under one roof making it extremely useful as a backup platform for data analytics or small teams that need something quickly.
Intuitive and easy UI/UX. Being made and owned by Google, you expect nothing less. Very easy to use for anyone that has any marketing or analytical experience especially in Google Analytics (which I just assume all marketers do).
Safe, secure, and sturdy. Never need to worry about downtimes or misinformation as it's as clean and safe as it is being run by Google.
FREE! What else is there to say. Unless you're an extremely large application handling hundreds of thousands to millions of users, this pay as you go plan will stay free.
Firebase/Firestore has very limited support for querying more complicated items; for example, performing a simple string search is not possible.
While upfront costs are low, costs can grow quickly if you're not careful about what you are being billed for.
Dashboards have at times shown different information to what is billed, and support from Google is less than stellar and not as effective as that from Amazon or Microsoft.
Multiple domains - DigitalPersona struggles with multiple domains. Since the solution is licensed per domain, migrating users between domains can be troublesome to keep licensed. Additionally, migrating to a new domain removes the AD leaf objects that store all digital persona information, essentially wiping out and credentials or other stored information.
Password change - DigitalPersona can be confusing to update when a stored password for a website is updated. The password is entered, and then the user is redirected to the websites password change page. Users must then authenticate with a Digital persona credential again before being prompted by Digital Persona to update the password. If the user is allowed to change the password manually through the websites page, this will lead to what is stored in Digital Persona being out of sync with the new password, and eventually account lockouts.
Terminal Server - DigitalPersona has performance issues when utilized on a high-traffic terminal server. Often it causes big CPU spikes as well as hanging sessions upon disconnect.
It is wonderful for multifactor authentication and gives us many options for what we use to authenticate. All of our users use it and it is engrained into our group policies and people would be very disappointed if it went away.
Firebase functions are more difficult to use, there are no concepts of triggers or cascading deletes without the use of Firebase functions. Firebase functions can run forever if not written correctly and cause billing nightmares. While this hasn't happened to us specifically it is a thing that happens more than one realizes.
I think there are still fundamental enhancements needed to be added to the management consoles and I think there ought to be a Centralized, Windows Based "Thick" Management Application instead of individual utilities which vary from MMCs, Scripts, Wizards, etc.
Our analytics folks handled the majority of the communication when it came to customer service, but as far as I was aware, the support we got was pretty good. When we had an issue, we were able to reach out and get support in a timely fashion. Firebase was easy to reach and reasonably available to assist when needed.
Extremely poor; I've never encountered such. Professional Services completely dropped us for months. Crossmatch tech support seems like it has 3 techs tops! No response to emails, calls, the absolute worst! I will never recommend DP to anyone.
Could use tools to audit license usage at a more granular level as to allow an administrator to free up licenses from users whom seldom use their biometrics to login.
Before using Firebase, we exclusively used self hosted database services. Using Firebase has allowed us to reduce reliance on single points of failure and systems that are difficult to scale. Additionally, Firebase is much easier to set up and use than any sort of self hosted database. This simplicity has allowed us to try features that we might not have based on the amount of work they required in the past.
We evaluated Cisco DUO but ultimately chose HID because of their support for biometrics. With DUO every user would have to have the authentication app on their personal phone and pull it out each time they had to log in. We definitely did not want this for our frontline staff as it would slow the process way down
Firebase has been able to help us understand reliably, the drop-off in our user flows with their funnel feature. This has made it easy for us to be able to pinpoint weaknesses in our funnel and test and optimize with data as the dependent variable.
From an economic standpoint, we don't pay for Firebase which is great, but as the saying goes "You get what you pay for" also holds true in this context. As we looked to grow and scale, we looked for a paid solution.
From a developer resource standpoint, Firebase has been extremely easy to integrate into our app. Whether it be the event tracking, dynamic links or crash reporting we have not had to waste too much developer time thanks to their well-organized developer docs.
Provides a quick one finger authentication\log-on.
Logging onto a machine that is used by several other users, such as in retail is no problem because the DigitalPersona software does a switch user function instead of logging out the other user.
One negative that was apparent immediately after installing the DigitalPersona software was that users very easily forgot their Windows passwords because of the one finger log-on.
