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Fortra's Powertech Identity & Access Manager vs Idira Privileged Access Manager comparison

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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

Fortra's Powertech Identity...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
33rd
Average Rating
5.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Idira Privileged Access Man...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
230
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Enterprise Password Managers (2nd), Mainframe Security (1st), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category, the mindshare of Fortra's Powertech Identity & Access Manager is 1.0%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Idira Privileged Access Manager is 8.6%, down from 16.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Idira Privileged Access Manager8.6%
Fortra's Powertech Identity & Access Manager1.0%
Other90.4%
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer910470 - PeerSpot reviewer
Practice Lead at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Inexperienced support for old product, but good flexibility for use case customization
HelpSystems Powertech is scalable if you throw more servers at it. Then you can distribute the load, which is a Microsoft SQL Server backend, and as long as you allocate enough resources to those things, then it is scalable. That's good enough. It would be an entire organization that uses it. So at a hospital for example, a healthcare system, a bank, and it would be the entire workforce on it. I haven't see a lot of customer's specific use cases, but it is for the whole workforce, everyone. The CEO of the company to the janitor. In terms of maintaining it, that requires application administrators or system administrators. There is a manual process to update the product, at least with the on-premise version.
Singaravelu C - PeerSpot reviewer
CyberArk Engineer at Tata Consultancy
Provides full visibility into user activity and ensures secure end-to-end access across critical systems
In CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, I see room for improvement as I am working in the on-premises networks, and now we are also having the cloud-based PAM. So there, everything is maintained by the CyberArk Privileged Access Manager team, and we are only maintaining the PSM servers. So it is already upgraded from the on-premises network to the cloud network. If you ask me what we can implement beyond that, I just need a few minutes to think about what new things, because it is already an end-to-end security on-premises itself. Now, when it comes to PCloud, Privileged Cloud, it is more secure than the on-premises networks because most of the things are handled using the cloud itself. So it is an already upgraded version; we do not need to implement something new. But if you think in that way, we can have a chance to implement our things. If anything could be improved in CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, I think we could build a small agent AI in my team, we could give access to these logs—the Vault logs, PSM logs, and CPM logs. Whenever the system is going down, the AI will automatically check. If we actually implement agent AI in CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, it will check the logs, and if any errors are coming, it automatically triggers alerts and gives the solution. That is the best improvement I can think of because these days, most things are done by agent AI. So if we also implement this agent AI in CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, we can add more features.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"HelpSystems Powertech's feature that I have found most valuable is its flexibility."
"HelpSystems Powertech's feature that I have found most valuable is its flexibility. It is able to be extended. A lot of the products these days, especially the ones on the cloud, are limited and can't handle all the use cases. Often there is not even a way to customize the application to meet uncommon use cases and HelpSystems provides an infrastructure that lends itself to the ability to be customized."
"The DNA scan is very helpful and provides a security baseline for your environment."
"Security is the solution's most valuable feature. As far as I know, this solution is the most secure system of this class on the market today, even considering another management system like Fudo Security, which we also use. The integration capabilities are very good; it helps strengthen our overall security."
"Customer support has been very helpful and responsive."
"For me, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager's most valuable features are password and session management."
"With this product and the protection it offers, you can witness ROI immediately."
"We are able to rotate privileged user passwords to eliminate fraudulent use."
"Every aspect of the solution is very well integrated, and that gives comfort because it is a fail-safe kind of environment."
"The support is always very responsive, accurate, and complete in their solutions."
 

Cons

"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the support of the product. It's hard to get support for it. I think this is emblematic of the fact that they don't have a lot of employees who have long-term experience with it."
"I would not necessarily recommend customers use it."
"The usual workload on the system is sometimes delayed by CyberArk, so any major work is getting delayed and may take twice the amount of time that it usually does."
"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."
"I think that this product can be improved in all the areas."
"I would like to see better usability for non-technical people."
"The interface on version 9 looks old."
"Integration with the ticketing system should allow any number of fields to be used for validation before allowing a user to be evaluated and able to access a server."
"Privileged Threat Analytics (PTA) that can function in more that one AD domain at a time."
"I would like to see an easier way to define delegated roles within the administration of the core product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"If you are looking at implementing this solution, buy the training and go to it."
"Although CyberArk Privileged Access Management is expensive, its protection capabilities outweigh the cost."
"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."
"The price of CyberArk support could be a little bit less. Otherwise, pricing is fine."
"Cost efficiency is the number one thing that can be improved in my mind. This would change lots of companies minds on purchasing the product."
"I have heard from my leaders that CyberArk is costlier in terms of licensing. The support and maintenance are also costly. We use their premium support, but for the price we pay, we do not get the value."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise175
 

Questions from the Community

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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

HelpSystems Powertech Identity & Access Manager, Powertech Identity & Access Manager, BoKS, BoKS ServerControl, Fox Technologies ApplicationControl, ApplicationControl
CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Integris Health
Rockwell Automation
Find out what your peers are saying about Idira by Palo Alto Networks, One Identity, Okta and others in Privileged Access Management (PAM). Updated: August 2026.
913,076 professionals have used our research since 2012.