No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

ACF2 vs Cleanup comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

ACF2
Ranking in Database Security
13th
Ranking in Mainframe Security
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cleanup
Ranking in Database Security
17th
Ranking in Mainframe Security
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Mainframe Security category, the mindshare of ACF2 is 12.1%, up from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cleanup is 5.2%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mainframe Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ACF212.1%
Cleanup5.2%
Other82.7%
Mainframe Security
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1077621 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Examiner at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
A reliable, scalable product for security and auditing of our mainframe environment
It is a good product. It has been used for years. As long as it is configured correctly, it is a very stable product. It depends on how an institution or a company configures it. It depends on an institution's risk appetite. You need to make sure it is configured as per the concept of least privilege, and the logging features, detection and control mechanism, and other things like that are enabled. If you configure it to give access to the public, then there could be compromises. You should also have someone who independently checks it to make sure that it is configured keeping security in mind. If it has been configured for a while, when there are enhancements to the product or when you enhance it, you need to make sure that security is also looked at, and it is configured according to an institution's security policies. I would rate it a nine out of 10.
it_user350628 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Security Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
It looks forward in the database, so if it’s not showing any activity, you can get rid of that profile. But, if I give someone access to it, I can’t control the scope of what they can see.
It presents problems. The problem is, if I give someone access to it, I can’t control the scope of what they can see. They can see everything. I want to make the information available and more integrated with other security components, and I want it to be more reliable. It also needs acknowledgement that clean-up data can come from temporary cloned environments that somehow need to be incorporated into enterprise view of usage.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The NOACCESS by default is another very good feature. Also, access rules are straightforward, and easy to understand."
"We use this tool to quickly assign privileges to different users as soon as they come in."
"Excellent real-time reporting that saves time and resources."
"I love their support. The support is great. They are number one."
"Without the product, extracting this information may take us as much as several days; instead, we can get it in real time."
"I am deeply impressed with the quality and depth and breadth of security and functionality in CA’s ACF2 and Top Secret products."
"By providing a high level of access control to the z/OS systems, ACF2 allows us to maintain tight controls on dataset and system access and helps us keep unauthorized users from accessing PHI or PII data."
"Know that this tool is a great tool, a good tool to use, because you can quickly automate, quickly provision, and deprovision new users, which is essential when you are bringing new people onboard."
"Technical support is good, and they're great once they agree there’s a problem."
 

Cons

"They can work on its ability to work in a distributed environment."
"It needs longer rules. The max rule is 32K."
"Initial setup could be complex if you rely on contractors to help with implementation."
"It needs longer rules. The max rule is 32K."
"Reporting can sometimes include false positives."
"The user access review could also be improved. It produces a lot of false positives."
"They can work on its ability to work in a distributed environment. It's a mainframe product. As many companies move to the cloud, depending on what cloud models they choose, such as a public, hybrid, or private cloud, it should be deployable. I am not sure if it can be deployed on those platforms. It has been there since the '50s or '60s, and it's still scalable. It has survived all these years, and it's scalable to many platforms, but I don't know about the cloud."
"I would like my team and me to be able to use simple browsers, like Chrome, to be able to access mainframe data and provision users using the browser."
"Use it as an indication of data, not as gospel. Don’t take action based solely on it."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Mainframe Security solutions are best for your needs.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Retailer
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
No data available
 

Also Known As

CA ACF2
CA Cleanup
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Sky, Rogers Communications
Standard Bank of South Africa
Find out what your peers are saying about CyberArk, IBM, Broadcom and others in Mainframe Security. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.