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BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege 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

BeyondTrust Endpoint Privil...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (11th)
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 BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management is 3.8%, down from 5.3% 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

Marlin B Pohlman - PeerSpot reviewer
Admin rights can be granted and revoked within minutes and that is what everything comes down to, for us
The most important factor is the ability to invoke least privilege, which is required under 27701 and GDPR. We have used the solution to remove users' administrative rights and instead provide on-demand, token-based administrative rights. The latter is an option for a single, temporary increase in privileges for a trusted user for a specific time. We use it in a medical environment for HIPAA compliance or medical compliance in a GDPR case. For example, if you have a clinician who needs access to a specific piece of medical information, or if there is an administrator who needs to have administrator rights to a particular database for a limited period of time, we can give it and then revoke it. That's another reason the tool is useful. Also, the fact that we are able to add events straight from event logs and/or the database is important for crisis management and rapid reaction. This ability helps us meet our SLA requirements. In addition, we can elevate approved applications and actions without broad administrative rights. We can temporarily increase privilege based on tasks. If someone puts in a ticket, we increase their privilege for that ticket. We then watch to see if that ticket has been resolved and then we decrease it. Another feature of the platform is instant risk reduction solutions. We can do a risk metric with it, and we do that as part of our risk evaluation. We can increase and decrease privilege and we can actually show that in the ISO 13485 risk metric. And it provides a single solution for managing endpoint security preferences. It does a good job of that.
Muhammad Baber - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows IT and consultants to access the infrastructure environment but needs more security and better support
Initial setup was very straightforward. It's basically a hardware appliance. It's a software appliance, but it's a hard-coded appliance. It's just a black and white screen, and it has everything inside. BeyondTrust is a Windows-based server, and they usually harden the machine and have their own patches on it, even though it's a Windows machine, so we can easily log into it. With the current solution, it's very difficult to log in. It's just a black and white screen, and you need a support account to log in onto it. It feels more secure. It's a shell, and the database is embedded. But with BeyondTrust, it's SQL-based and Windows-based, so it's vulnerable. When we first set up the solution, it was only a few endpoints to give access to the vendors. Now, it's around 400-500 machines. It required a lot of maintenance. There were a lot of new patches and new versions of the appliance, and then the appliances would move out of support very quickly, which is another reason we are moving to BeyondTrust. At the moment, we are using the version which is very stable, but it is out of support within six to seven months. They keep asking you to upgrade to the new version, which is challenging. Once we upgraded, we had a lot of issues that support couldn't fix.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution's technical support is good."
"The features related to application elevate is amazing. It helped the company to remove almost all admin local users."
"It is straightforward. It is a good technology, and it is made to do one single thing."
"The implementation is quite easy because the documents are always online."
"The user experience is good, and there are many preconfigured platforms."
"Overall, I would rate this solution a nine out of ten."
"The asset discovery feature is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's very easy to pull assets into the database of the solution manager."
"The privileged access management into sensitive systems is very valuable. That includes control from the endpoint all the way through to the managing of passwords and credentials that are used by the person to access the sensitive information. It's very useful, because nobody ever really maintains passwords for those endpoint systems. It's maintained in the Dropbox password file."
"It's easy to use and easy to configure."
"The key benefits are we improve our governance. We ensure we can build more trust in the way we run and operate our environment, and most of all is the accountability."
"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 simple to implement and is suitable for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"The credential injection feature is highly valued, particularly for RDP sessions."
"It reduces the viral attacks on my website. It also allows certain users access to see what happens daily."
"Transparent login for users of privileged IDs (Linux, Windows). This prevents sharing of the password because it is never seen."
"We found that the architecture is scalable and very resilient."
 

Cons

"The product should improve its price."
"The program updates are very rare and the frequency is too far apart to take care of bug fixes and adding the latest features."
"They need to come up with better integrative options which should be customer-centric."
"Improvements could focus on adding more AI features to automate processes that are currently manual or challenging for end users."
"The weaknesses are related to the effort required to migrate from existing technologies or having no Privilege Access Management (PAM) at all to adopting technologies like BeyondTrust. It involves changes in processes and can take a significant amount of time, typically six to twelve months."
"There are three types of endpoints. If we need to use them in the solution, then we need to purchase the licenses separately. The tool needs to improve its licensing."
"There is room for improvement in having the solution align more with standards. We're always shoehorning the product into the standards. It's not that it doesn't work for standards, it does. But Quick Start Policies are pretty close to what we need. The vendor needs to keep looking at GDPR, 27001, and 27701. That's why our clients buy the product."
"The other area to improve is that they rely on MS SQL servers only. You cannot have any other database behind them. They have to be on MS SQL. If they can do something about these issues, this would be a better alternative for some customers."
"I would like this solution to be simpler. It should have a one-click access that works together with AWS."
"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."
"We have to do a lot of manual work to automate features."
"They should include some assignments in the test environment to explore the product's features."
"They need to have zero tier and active-active setup ​with zero minimum downtime, which they are working on it. ​"
"I’m no fan of Java as an application front-end, as it tends to have issues depending on what browser one’s using."
"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."
"The support for other remote assistance tools would be excellent. Free included tools in Windows (Remote Assist) and Microsoft SCCM Configuration Manager (ConMgr Remote Control) allow companies to reduce the amount of RDP connections and expand the usage of the tools are frequently used by companies to provide technical support for remote assistance."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution is expensive compared to its competitors."
"The product’s licensing is different for Windows, Linux, and Mac. The tool’s licensing is yearly."
"I'm sure everyone should have the cluster environment, which means more expensive, anyway, cheaper than the other solutions."
"PowerBroker for a Mac client is three times the price of the Windows version."
"Price-wise, it is very competitive. In our area, government entities and banks don't go for the monthly payment. It is a headache even for us in terms of finance and procurement to go for monthly payments. Quarterly might be more logical and reasonable, but the minimum that we go for is one year, and sometimes, we even try to compile and give one offering for three years."
"It was very expensive."
"The solution's pricing is high."
"Its pricing and licensing are okay. We were in the perpetual model when it was on-prem, and now, with the SaaS service, we have a subscription model. As a customer, I would always like to see a lower price, but it seems to be priced at the right model currently, and we are trying to get the maximum benefits out of it."
"Appliances are relatively cheap, don’t skimp. Make sure you have redundancy, high availability, and enough appliances to manage the concurrent workload."
"The licensing is simple and scalable."
"The prices are not low, but one can ask for a discount. It’s not the cheapest PAM solution."
"I would prefer better licensing options for the 20-100 users we have at a given time."
"Pricing is fair compared to other top vendors."
"It is more expensive than other solutions on the market."
"Cost-wise, CA was better compared to others in the market. ​"
"They offer per-device, per-user, or monthly and yearly licensing models."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Looking for recommendations and a pros/cons template for software to detect insider threats
This is an inside-out --- outside-in --- inside-in question, as an insider can be an outsider as well. There is no short answer other than a blend of a PAM tool with Behavioral Analytics and Endpo...
What do you like most about BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management?
The solution's least privilege enforcement has helped us ensure access is given to only the required people.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management?
Setup costs vary depending on the scenario. Sometimes we win orders, and other times we lose due to partner preferences or deal scenarios. Customers may negotiate on price, understanding that quali...
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

BeyondTrust PowerBroker, BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management for Windows, BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management for Mac, BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management for Linux, BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management for Unix, Avecto Defendpoint
CA PAM, Xceedium Xsuite, CA Privileged Access Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aera Energy LLC, Care New England, James Madison University
NEOVERA, Telesis, eSoft
Find out what your peers are saying about BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management vs. Symantec Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.