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ARCON Privileged Access Management vs Symantec Privileged Access Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 6, 2024

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

ARCON Privileged Access Man...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Symantec Privileged Access ...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
19th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category, the mindshare of ARCON Privileged Access Management is 4.0%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Privileged Access Manager is 1.5%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

Featured Reviews

PRAVINKHISMATRAO - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced compliance and security through detailed action recordings
We have used ARCON Privileged Access Management for recording videos of user actions taken after logging into systems. Around thirty people, including network engineers, server engineers, and application engineers, use it in the company There hasn't been a notable financial benefit for our…
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
Secure management of sensitive servers and seamless applications with direct linking
The credential injection feature is highly valued, particularly for RDP sessions. A majority of customers use it for RDP, and a couple for Linux servers. The broader capabilities, including access to multiple systems, web-based applications, and clustering, have never posed an issue. The threat analytics aspect is also a robust feature that analyzes all pertinent information.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Video and audio logs are there for any activities that the privileged admin carries out."
"For compliance, each change I do, in each of the servers, is clearly recorded. We recently faced an audit and this was an awesome feature. Even our auditor had praise for it saying, "This is really a good feature.""
"Recording all videos of commands entered into devices is highly valuable."
"It was very easy for us to move this application and database from on-premise to cloud, as well as configure new things, such as load balancing. The product is very compatible."
"Logging, particularly screen recording for Windows RDP sessions. Also, command-logging for SSH sessions. This really helps us to see what commands/changes have been executed in a particular service at a given point of time, and by whom."
"They don't just stick to a base version; instead, they actively enhance and improve it based on client feedback and industry trends."
"The most valuable feature of ARCON Privileged Access Management is the recording of sessions. It has all the basic features we need to fulfill our use case."
"One of the main benefits we've experienced is that Arcon helps us manage all our team's tasks and provides recording capabilities."
"It reduces the viral attacks on my website. It also allows certain users access to see what happens daily."
"It will provide us with more security."
"The two factor authentication, and the single most important capability was it supported PIV and CAC as one of the two factors. That was pretty huge for us."
"It is great for identity governance."
"It gives you list of servers, so you can see which users have access to which servers. This is really useful, so we can make sure nobody is getting extra access than what is needed."
"The interface is very friendly, colorful, and bold."
"Symantec PAM is easier to deploy compared to its competitors, such as BeyondTrust."
"We found that the architecture is scalable and very resilient."
 

Cons

"There is often a slow response when logging into routers, switches, or servers compared to direct access."
"They they should focus on support. The support needs to be very strong. Since the product is becoming stronger, their support team also should be equally strong. They should respond to open queries within the time limit they have set. Their support team should be more technical, to understand the issue or the set up."
"One thing which needs improvement is where it is keeping video logs of Windows Servers, whatever activities are being carried out by the administrator. Because Windows logs are a video, they are unsearchable, so if you need to search for a specific administrator and what he has done on a server, right now you need to go through different video logs of that particular timeframe. I think they are coming up with an additional feature where in it can be indexed and can be searchable."
"If you take Microsoft hypervisor - which comes with its own interface, its own web layer, etc. - something like that also requires privileged IDs. As per our institution policy now, everything has to come through ARCON. We have demanded that these kind of advanced features also should be there."
"It should be browser-agnostic and, frankly, it is working well on Internet Explorer. It should work on popular browsers like Mozilla and Firefox."
"It would be helpful to have a "Favorites" list. For example, if I have 100 servers but I only go to 10 servers frequently, a Favorites list would allow me to go through those ten servers only."
"For the in-house built applications, they need to provide good, solid access through their portal."
"Anti-bridging should be built into product."
"It's difficult to locate the reports, there are limits on what reports can be run from the GUI, and the report formats are lacking."
"They should include some assignments in the test environment to explore the product's features."
"It'd be great if you just stuck in your PIV card and Windows popped up, asked you for your password. You typed it in, then it remembered your credentials."
"They need to do a little bit more on the mainframe side.​"
"Bring more technology into the portfolio and being able to collapse those products into a much more integrated way."
"What I hope happens with the new product CA PAM is to keep all the useful features that exist in PA, but what I’ve noticed with many new products is the UI gets polished but systems lags stability and performance or it adds additional complexity instead of simplifying the user experience."
"An improvement for this solution is that it should not be constantly based on user name and password. There should be a condition to edit and update your username."
"We experience stability issues after every patch upgrade. This is a place where CA needs to improve drastically."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of this product is very cheap, comparatively in the global market."
"Pricing is reasonable."
"Pricing and licensing are good, very aggressive."
"There are no major concerns with licensing because we can handle multiple servers in our kiosk system."
"I am not in a position to give any financials, but whatever we have paid, it is value for money. Their licensing model is good. They have been flexible for us."
"The product is available with competitive pricing. Licensing is not complex. We calculated the license requirements by counting the number of admins and the number of devices which were going to integrate with it."
"We have a subscription to use this solution."
"The pricing and licensing model is very economical."
"They offer per-device, per-user, or monthly and yearly licensing models."
"Don’t go with an agent model. Don’t go with a model that has you buying a thousand different parts. Go with PAM that gives you everything, or you’ll just be paying costs of implementing another tool that PAM would have just given you up front."
"I would prefer better licensing options for the 20-100 users we have at a given time."
"It is reasonably priced."
"It is more expensive than other solutions on the market."
"Appliances are relatively cheap, don’t skimp. Make sure you have redundancy, high availability, and enough appliances to manage the concurrent workload."
"The version we are using is affordable compared to BeyondTrust, which is maybe three to four times as expensive, but it depends on the features."
"The licensing is simple and scalable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
54%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Retailer
3%
Computer Software Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with ARCON Privileged Access Management?
From an end-user point of view, it would be beneficial if the system could provide information about the last login. This would help identify if the server was accessed by me or if someone has pote...
What do you like most about Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
We can check the activities in the server for fragile files and documents in case of any issues.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
Due to the nature of the solution, it is hard to gauge, but compared to competitors, the pricing is very good. I would rate it as an eight and a half out of ten.
What needs improvement with Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
Recent releases need improvement in webpage management. For instance, navigating through a webpage that acts like a wizard, where I proceed to the next page and enter more information, is not handl...
 

Also Known As

ARCON ARCOS, ARCON PAM
CA PAM, Xceedium Xsuite, CA Privileged Access Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RAK Bank, AXIS Bank, Reliance Capital, Kotak Life Insurance, MTS
NEOVERA, Telesis, eSoft
Find out what your peers are saying about ARCON Privileged Access Management vs. Symantec Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
852,764 professionals have used our research since 2012.