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AWS CloudTrail vs Idira Privileged Access Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 2, 2026

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
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Idira Privileged Access Man...
Ranking in User Activity Monitoring
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
230
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Password Managers (2nd), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (1st), Mainframe Security (1st), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the User Activity Monitoring category, the mindshare of AWS CloudTrail is 12.0%, up from 7.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Idira Privileged Access Manager is 13.1%, down from 16.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
User Activity Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Idira Privileged Access Manager13.1%
AWS CloudTrail12.0%
Other74.9%
User Activity Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Chukwudi Uzoma - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of IT, Infrastructure at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Comprehensive audit trails have transformed incident investigations and strengthen security posture
The best features AWS CloudTrail offers are complete API activity logging, multi-account audit visibility, integration with AWS Organizations, event history for investigation, integration with CloudWatch and Security Hub, S3 log activity, and compliance and forensic support. Using AWS CloudTrail in that investigation has significantly improved my security posture, governance capabilities, and audit readiness. It provides data accountability across the AWS environment that helps me investigate incidents much faster than would ever be possible. AWS CloudTrail has reduced investigation times dramatically. Activities that previously required hours of manual analysis can now be resolved in seconds because the audit trail is readily available. It has also simplified audit preparation because evidence of AWS activities is automatically captured and retained. I particularly value the ability to answer the questions: who did what, when, and from where. Those are the most important questions during incident investigations and audits. AWS CloudTrail has positively impacted my organization by significantly improving my security posture, audit readiness, governance, and control capabilities. It provides accountability across AWS environments and helps me investigate incident management much faster than ever was possible. I noticed that my investigations during incidents are significantly more surgical, more reliable, and straight to the point.
Atul-Gujar - PeerSpot reviewer
CyberArk manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Secures critical infrastructures with essential user session audit records
A potential area for improvement is enhancing support for cluster environments and distributed Vaults. Clients in multiple countries that need central access have different challenges that require better solutions from CyberArk. For financial services, CyberArk can improve incident response by ensuring fast support for critical priority tickets to meet compliance requirements. Providing more documentation on CyberArk is recommended for new team members to enhance their troubleshooting capabilities. I understand it's up to the client, but 99% fail to change the demo key, so it's crucial for CyberArk to emphasize changing the key and documenting it as part of the installation process.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"AWS CloudTrail is very reasonably priced and I definitely recommend AWS CloudTrail to those who are planning or considering using it; it is a must-have service in the AWS environment, and it should be used."
"AWS CloudTrail provides significant efficiency gains as it allows thorough monitoring of the environment, contributing substantially to security improvements."
"AWS CloudTrail features a totally cloud-based deployment."
"AWS CloudTrail has positively impacted my organization by significantly improving my security posture, audit readiness, governance, and control capabilities."
"The solution is good as a central logging platform for showing all cloud events."
"One of the most valuable features of AWS CloudTrail is its ability to track and monitor API calls detailedly."
"It is a stable solution. AWS handles it well."
"What I found most valuable in AWS CloudTrail is that it provides a good context of what's happening in the environment, so it's an excellent way to baseline what's occurring. I also like that AWS CloudTrail helps with audits."
"CyberArk is a more secure product - much better than Thycotic."
"The password vault and session monitoring are useful."
"CyberArk has the most extensive hardening and encryption techniques I have seen in a product, with equal intentions."
"Identity and access management are fundamental in cybersecurity."
"If any intruder gets inside, they would not be able to move around nor do lateral movements. It minimize any attack problems within our network."
"The most valuable feature of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is privileged threat analytics."
"Overall, I would rate it a ten out of ten."
"The technical support for this solution is very good. If I was to rate it on a scale of one to five, I would give it a five."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"Once the organization defines its policies, it must immediately enable AWS CloudTrail and integrate it with auto-remediation procedures using Lambda functions. This ensures that the main administrator can receive information quickly and on time without delay."
"I have not experienced any challenges while using it."
"Maybe if we could do direct queries on CloudTrail without needing to export it to Athena, that'd be great."
"The solution should incorporate visibility for CloudWatch events."
"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."
"AWS CloudTrail does not fit directly into our architecture as it functions more as a helper service, which limited our utilization of its capabilities."
"The main challenge was integrating with in-house IT and business applications, which are not standard. We needed to create special updates for that kind of integration."
"New functionalities or discovered bugs take a little longer to patch. We would greatly appreciate quicker development of security patches and bug corrections."
"The turnaround time for technical support is lengthy."
"We had an issue with the Copy feature... Apparently, in version 10, that Copy feature does not work. You actually have to click Show and then copy the password from within Show and then paste it. We've had a million tickets and we had to figure out a workaround to it."
"I think they can improve account onboarding. For instance, you have to use the Password Vault utility, whereas in Thycotic I think there is a feature in the user interface that allows you to upload your account with an Excel file. So I'd like to have a similar thing in CyberArk."
"One thing that could be improved is to create of a better alternative for fixing group policy fees. We currently use Microsoft, but they have introduced new policies that may not be compatible."
"With regards to potential improvements for the CyberArk product, I find the product quite expensive and I would like to see the cost reduced."
"The major pain point that we have is the capacity of CyberArk due to the sheer volume of NPAs that we are managing. We are a large organization and we have hundreds of thousands of non-personal accounts to manage. We have already found out that there are certain capacity limitations within CyberArk that might introduce performance issues. From my perspective, something that would be valuable would be if the vault could hold more passwords and be more scalable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS CloudTrail is a cheap solution."
"The solution is free if you don't need customizations but is not expensive otherwise."
"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."
"CloudTrail itself is free of cost."
"It is a very cheap service because management is a SaaS offering from AWS."
"AWS CloudTrail is free."
"This product is very expensive."
"My company always complains about the cost of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager because it's too high."
"The price of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager could be less expensive."
"The SaaS version of CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault is very expensive, but the on-premises version is relative, e.g. depending on the size of the environment, it can be a bit pricey, but it's relatively okay compared to the others."
"Compared to other solutions, it is costly."
"This solution is considered to be more expensive than others out there on the market today."
"CyberArk DNA is free if you purchase the CyberArk solution. There is no additional charge for CyberArk DNA, which is great."
"The product's licensing is yearly. I would rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise175
 

Questions from the Community

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 could be improved by adding more intelligent anomaly detection capabilities, stronger AI-assisted investigation workflows, easier root cause analysis for complex event chains, and im...
What is your primary use case for AWS CloudTrail?
The primary use case for AWS CloudTrail is auditing and security monitoring. AWS CloudTrail allows me to track all API activity across my AWS organization, investigate security events, support comp...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
My thoughts on the pricing of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager depend entirely on the vendors' requirements. If they want their things to be secure, they have to spend accordingly. We have four t...
What needs improvement with CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
I believe account discovery and rolling support need to be improved. Account discovery is important when integrating with other systems, as other PAM solutions can perform account discovery and onb...
 

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. Idira Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
906,829 professionals have used our research since 2012.