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AWS CloudTrail vs CyberArk Privileged Access Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

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

AWS CloudTrail
Ranking in User Activity Monitoring
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
CyberArk Privileged Access ...
Ranking in User Activity Monitoring
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
224
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Password Managers (2nd), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (1st), Mainframe Security (2nd), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the User Activity Monitoring category, the mindshare of AWS CloudTrail is 7.9%, down from 13.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is 16.0%, down from 24.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
User Activity Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

NabeelHassan - PeerSpot reviewer
Exploring management events and insights for enhanced compliance
More controls should be introduced in CloudTrail, especially to see the logs in CloudTrail itself without saving them in S3, as S3 starts to incur charges. Real-time log submission could be improved, as sometimes there is a lag of around two to three minutes, which should be under a minute.
Abdul Durrani - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables granular and secure access with just-in-time access and Zero Trust model
CyberArk provides a good amount of control over access types. However, as a future enhancement, having additional features for cross-platform integration would be beneficial. It would be good to have integrations with other tools and firewalls, such as Zscaler and CrowdStrike. Although I am not fully aware of recent updates, more cross-platform integration would be valuable. A SOC analyst would like to have centralized access in terms of information flowing in even for privileged access management. They would like to have control over everything instead of opening four to five tabs for different sorts of information. Cross-platform integration would help with that. Customers also want CyberArk's pricing to be better so that they can implement it further and have more licenses. Implementing a privileged access management solution can be challenging. It would be great if CyberArk could provide recommendations based on the compliance standards of an organization. It would help system admins ensure that all the required ports are closed and the systems are being managed properly. If any system is not being used anymore, any ports opened for that system need to be closed. Having such recommendations would be helpful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The management events and CloudTrail Insights are valuable."
"AWS CloudTrail provides significant efficiency gains as it allows thorough monitoring of the environment, contributing substantially to security improvements."
"I have not encountered any stability issues, glitches, or performance problems with AWS CloudTrail."
"It is a stable solution. AWS handles it well."
"AWS CloudTrail features a totally cloud-based deployment."
"AWS CloudTrail helps in accelerating incident investigation and response. It increases it because I pull out the logs to CloudTrail, and from CloudTrail watch, I'll send it to the Security Hub and do a visualization with Prometheus and Grafana."
"The product’s most valuable feature is monitoring. It helps us audit the changes in AWS account at the application and resource level."
"In one specific scenario, we encountered a situation where a terminated employee still had access to our environment without our knowledge. With AWS CloudTrail, we could track and monitor the employees' activities, revealing that they were downloading specific files from our customer's environment. Without it enabled, we wouldn't have been aware of this."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is session recording."
"I love how easily we could operate within Password Vault and get things done. It was almost effortless."
"Every aspect of the solution is very well integrated, and even that gives comfort. It is a fail-safe kind of environment."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is very powerful and customizable."
"The users have the ability to rotate passwords on a daily basis with a Reconcile Account. Or, if they want to do one-time password checkouts, we can manage those, check in, check out. I like the flexibility of the changing of the password, specifically."
"Identity and access management are fundamental in cybersecurity."
"I would recommend implementing CyberArk Privileged Access Manager as it is the best so far."
"The solution is highly stable."
 

Cons

"I have not experienced any challenges while using it."
"Filtering multiple values within the console is a feature that has yet to exist in AWS CloudTrail. You can look up a user identity, service, or action, but you can't search for multiple dimensions."
"Maybe if we could do direct queries on CloudTrail without needing to export it to Athena, that'd be great."
"More controls should be introduced in CloudTrail, especially to see the logs in CloudTrail itself without saving them in S3, as S3 starts to incur charges."
"AWS CloudTrail only supports AWS, and Azure has its functions, GCP has their own. Dynatrace offers more flexible dashboards and services, making it more adaptable compared to AWS CloudTrail."
"The platform’s reporting log sheet feature could be more user-friendly."
"AWS CloudTrail should be redesigned to capture non-API calls. It would be more effective to have one tool that can perform multiple tasks instead of relying on multiple services for non-API activities."
"The product's initial setup phase is not pretty straightforward."
"CyberArk has brought a feature called Vendor Team Manager, but it does not provide full access. It requires the vendor team leader to be onboarded as a local account instead of using their email address. Improvements could be made to onboard the vendor team leaders using their email, allowing them to manage their own team. That would greatly reduce the overhead in managing vendor team members."
"The usual workload is sometimes delayed by the solution."
"The solution needs better features for end users to manage their own whitelisting for API retrieval."
"They are sometimes not flexible with things. For instance, from one day to another, there might be something that had been done years ago by CyberArk, then they say, "We do not support that." You then have to initiate a complaint and start working with them. Things might become complicated and months pass while you are working with them. Usually, they are good and fast, but sometimes they seem to be blocked with problems, e.g., you will suddenly be working with another team instead of the team that you were working with the day before."
"CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault can improve the distributive vault feature. Distributing the vault in multiple areas and multiple data centers should improve."
"There are some options in the web portal where they can improve the user experience. For example, in remote, there is a parameter called 'access to remote machine.' When we put host names in that field, we are not able to search it. It"
"Performance of PIM could be better and intended for usability as well as security."
"There should be more models and licensing plans for this software."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS CloudTrail is free."
"AWS CloudTrail is pretty affordable, and I have to double-check, but the service is free to use. I can add logs on the console, but if I want to store logs long-term, then I have to pay a storage fee, but it's relatively inexpensive."
"AWS CloudTrail is a cheap solution."
"The solution is free if you don't need customizations but is not expensive otherwise."
"CloudTrail itself is free of cost."
"It is a very cheap service because management is a SaaS offering from AWS."
"CyberArk DNA is free if you purchase the CyberArk solution. There is no additional charge for CyberArk DNA, which is great."
"CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault's pricing is reasonable."
"Before we bought it, they were licensing each function individually, which got complicated and very expensive. When we decided to buy it, it was much more straightforward and still quite expensive, but it brings a lot of value and risk reduction to the organization."
"I focus more on the technical side, but I hear customers say that if CyberArk was more affordable, they might have acquired more licenses. Some clients consider alternative solutions due to pricing concerns."
"The price of this solution is quite reasonable."
"There are no additional costs other than the standard licensing fees."
"This solution is considered to be more expensive than others out there on the market today."
"The pricing for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is quite expensive, and the pricing varies from region to region. In APAC, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager can be obtained for less than in North America, according to my understanding."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Educational Organization
18%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS CloudTrail?
In one specific scenario, we encountered a situation where a terminated employee still had access to our environment without our knowledge. With AWS CloudTrail, we could track and monitor the emplo...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS CloudTrail?
AWS CloudTrail is categorized into management events, data events, and CloudTrail Insights. For one hundred thousand events, management costs are approximately two dollars, data events ten cents, a...
What needs improvement with AWS CloudTrail?
AWS CloudTrail should be redesigned to capture non-API calls. It would be more effective to have one tool that can perform multiple tasks instead of relying on multiple services for non-API activit...
How does Sailpoint IdentityIQ compare with CyberArk PAM?
We evaluated Sailpoint IdentityIQ before ultimately choosing CyberArk. Sailpoint Identity Platform is a solution to manage risks in cloud enterprise environments. It automates and streamlines the m...
What do you like most about CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
The most valuable features of the solution are control and analytics.
 

Also Known As

CloudTrail
CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

HTC, British Gas, Solinor, 2C2P
Rockwell Automation
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS CloudTrail vs. CyberArk Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.