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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

"We're happy to see it working so well with our IBM solution, saving us time and costs."
"Access Control enhances the security of business systems through a secured authentication and validation of users credentials before accessing organizations resources."
"Access Control has greatly prevented the misuse of administrator rights which is very rampant."
"It efficiently controls the access to the resources from the privileged user thus implementing the security aspects and this provides fine granular access."
"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."
"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."
"The possibility to control the remote activity and establish different policies, because it depends on the position of workers, how much access they needed, and in what platforms they connect, and the possibility to separate this in an easy way is very useful."
"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."
"One of the valuable features is the randomly generated password."
"I think it's a good solution for anybody who is looking for a single sign-on implementation for administration of the servers."
"The interface is very friendly, colorful, and bold."
"Transparent login and cluster synchronization are quite stable compared with other products, and it is easy to manage for the administrator."
"Transparent login for users of privileged IDs (Linux, Windows). This prevents sharing of the password because it is never seen."
"Technical support is very good."
 

Cons

"Automated deployment did not work as expected, had to go to a manual deployment."
"I found the installation process of Access Control challenging due to the much networking work involved in order to grant access to authorized users."
"Sometimes we encounter issues whilst generating the reports."
"User Interface needs to be improved."
"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."
"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 have faced a few challenges due to the system complexity, as it involves two integrated authentication systems that have to be purchased."
"Yes, I encountered lots of issues."
"A better discovery interface of accounts. It does do discovery of accounts for Windows servers, and you could do UNIX servers as well, but it's kind of clunky how it does it."
"The OOTB reporting functionality is lacking."
"Technical support is average. They took a long time to provide good answers, only recommended to upgrade SW version which in some environments is not an option and they don’t even know if that will fix the problem."
"When there are new patches or upgrades, they need to test the new release well so it will not break the functional parts."
"Technical support was good when CA handled it. After Broadcom took over, it's not as good."
"They need to have zero tier and active-active setup ​with zero minimum downtime, which they are working on it. ​"
"The service account management functionality needs to be extended to application pools, SQL database, PowerShell scripts, service account discovery, etc."
"I would like it to support more types of integration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Appliances are relatively cheap, don’t skimp. Make sure you have redundancy, high availability, and enough appliances to manage the concurrent workload."
"I would prefer better licensing options for the 20-100 users we have at a given time."
"The licensing is simple and scalable."
"They offer per-device, per-user, or monthly and yearly licensing models."
"It is more expensive than other solutions on the market."
"Pricing is fair compared to other top vendors."
"The prices are not low, but one can ask for a discount. It’s not the cheapest PAM solution."
"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."
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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

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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.