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CA Privileged Access Manager Server Control [EOL] vs Symantec Privileged Access Manager 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

CA Privileged Access Manage...
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Symantec Privileged Access ...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
Privileged Access Management (PAM) (16th)
 

Featured Reviews

it_user558603 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
I like that the access control on the agent. Installation is difficult.
I would like to see some improvements, specifically in terms of some set-up items. We have spoken to CA quite a bit about the ability to have 'always-on', or 'active/active' status options, so if the infrastructure goes down, we don't lose transactions. This is very important for the environment and for the users so we cannot really afford any downtime with the solution. We have had problems with deployment, and we are concerned with the possibility for outages and how they can have a negative impact on the environment.
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior technical Consultant at CA Africa
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

"No, the product been stable and robust, and boasts with new additional features."
"This product has improved the security of the corporate network and made compliance with the safety regulations of our country."
"It gives us the ability to track who is using what ID and for what purpose."
"Access Control enhances the security of business systems through a secured authentication and validation of users credentials before accessing organizations resources."
"It efficiently controls the access to the resources from the privileged user thus implementing the security aspects and this provides fine granular access."
"We're happy to see it working so well with our IBM solution, saving us time and costs."
"It depends on the client's requirements, but for me the most valuable one is the security access management with distributed architecture and centralized management."
"Access Control has greatly prevented the misuse of administrator rights which is very rampant."
"We do not have to authenticate users due to automatic authentication, so this allows us to be much more secure."
"CA PAM is working well for us."
"The password manager is a valuable feature."
"The reason we chose CA PAM is it worked in the scenarios that we wanted it to, and it just worked without problems."
"You can do A2A integration. You can have your own script, which can then run outside of PA to retrieve the password and perform other tasks."
"CA PAM has session recording, which is a very valuable feature."
"Monitoring privileged users’ actions is valuable because of the high level of trust and wide-ranging access insiders typically enjoy."
"Xceedium/CA PAM support has been excellent and that is one of the main reasons we have stuck with this solution."
 

Cons

"Sometimes we encounter issues whilst generating the reports."
"We have had problems with deployment, and we are concerned with the possibility for outages and how they can have a negative impact on the environment."
"I have faced a few challenges due to the system complexity, as it involves two integrated authentication systems that have to be purchased."
"The manuals for this product used to be good. We could find in one place answers to pretty much every question or situation we had. However, it's now in piece-meal fashion."
"I found the installation process of Access Control challenging due to the much networking work involved in order to grant access to authorized users."
"Yes, I encountered lots of issues."
"Automated deployment did not work as expected, had to go to a manual deployment."
"User Interface needs to be improved."
"Yes, at first the cluster desynchronizes often."
"I would like this solution to be simpler. It should have a one-click access that works together with AWS."
"They need to improve how it scales."
"We have to do a lot of manual work to automate features."
"The service account management functionality needs to be extended to application pools, SQL database, PowerShell scripts, service account discovery, etc."
"Now, the reporting feature on CA PAM only shows the basic information in white-black table format."
"It was a challenge for our newer staff members to install."
"We have encountered stability issues at various software and hardware versions, but we worked with the support team to quickly stabilize our environment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Pricing is fair compared to other top vendors."
"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."
"It is reasonably priced."
"The licensing is simple and scalable."
"It is more expensive than other solutions on the market."
"The prices are not low, but one can ask for a discount. It’s not the cheapest PAM solution."
"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
No data available
Construction Company
14%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise30
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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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...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
With the customers that I have so far, I help them broker RDP sessions to sensitive servers, particularly those that manage aspects like physical access. I have also done it for backend databases, ...
 

Also Known As

CA Access Control, CA Privileged Identity Manager
CA PAM, Xceedium Xsuite, CA Privileged Access Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Colruyt Group, Logicalis, TIS Inc.
NEOVERA, Telesis, eSoft
Find out what your peers are saying about CyberArk, One Identity, Okta and others in Privileged Access Management (PAM). Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.