Requests for PAR-controlled passwords are made through a Web-based Secure-HTTP connection or via a direct SSH2 link to the command line interface on the appliance. One or more administrators may be required to approve a password request that's been made, if that is how you established your policy.

When passwords are checked out, we found that they're displayed on the users screen for only 20 seconds.

We tested PAR with an RSA Secure ID system in place. The appliance reacted quickly to our requests for passwords, which meant that we had time to hit the password numbers on the SmartCard and get a privileged password with lots of time to spare.

We then used both the Secure-HTTP and SSH interfaces to make requests, and challenge the system to see how it tracked both success and failures in terms of requests criteria. It logged problems instantly in our admittedly small test bed environment.

The PAR logs are detailed and easy to understand but its HTML reports about the data were more limited than those produced by Cyber-Ark EPV. Missing were features such as EPV's easily formatted print-quality and customizable reports (when exported to a Microsoft Access or CSV format.)