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Idira Privileged Access Manager vs Symantec 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

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 (3rd), Mainframe Security (1st), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
Symantec Privileged Access ...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
16th
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 June 2026, in the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category, the mindshare of Idira Privileged Access Manager is 9.8%, down from 18.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Privileged Access Manager is 1.7%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CyberArk Privileged Access Manager9.8%
Symantec Privileged Access Manager1.7%
Other88.5%
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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

"In terms of stability, there are no complaints."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager makes it easy for users to retrieve and manage their passwords."
"Because we now have the ability to grant access to management utilities like DNS Manager, Sequel Studio, and MMC, in a secure fashion, without system admins being required to continually reenter various passwords that are stored who knows where, it has really made the system admin's job much easier. It has made the PSM's job much easier. It has made the auditor's job and the security team's job and the access manager's job significantly easier, because we're able to move much more quickly toward a role-based access management system, and that is really streamlining the whole onboarding/offboarding management process."
"Password Vault's policy configuration is very good - when you receive an attack, you can segment the structure of the project in order to isolate parts or users."
"The key aspects of privileged access management are being able rotate passwords, make sure someone is accountable, and tie it back to a user (when the system is being used)."
"Regardless it's a good solution, it works, and the bank is happy with it."
"The features that are most effective, like every PAM solution, include monitoring and password rotations."
"The password management feature is valuable."
"The system is very stable."
"If I remember correctly, it was the two factor authentication, and the single most important capability was it supported PIV and CAC as one of the two factors."
"It is the best product for monitoring the recorded session of your IT admins and external consultants."
"Comprehensive coverage of the required features for the PAM solution."
"So all the different roles (such as database admin, Unix admin, network administrator), are now centralized into one system."
"Now, all the privileged access is tunneled through PAM."
"It is great for identity governance."
"The credential injection feature is highly valued, particularly for RDP sessions."
 

Cons

"There was a situation when one of our presidents had an issue, but I can't recall the specifics."
"When I was a component owner for PAM's Privileged Threat Analytics (PTA) component, what I wanted was a clear mapping to the MITRE ATT&CK framework, a framework which has a comprehensive list of use cases. We reached out to the vendor and asked them how much coverage they have of the uses cases found on MITRE, which would have given us a better view of things while I was the product owner. Unfortunately they did not have the capability of mapping onto MITRE's framework at that time."
"Some aspects of the administration need improvement, though they have recently made improvements to the API. However, the management with the interface and configuration are not so user-friendly. It has not changed much during all the years that CyberArk has been on the market. The management part, like platform management as well as PSM connectors definition and management, could be improved, even if it has already been done with the API."
"On-prem CyberArk is pretty expensive."
"Three-year support (unlimited case and call support) is free with license purchase but I would say sometimes it's not sufficient to resolve the issues with this model."
"It is very complex and difficult to set up the solution."
"We do see performance issues with PSM which gets very busy, and we just keep scaling the number of PSMs."
"The authentication port is available in CyberArk Alero but not Fortinet products."
"They need to do a little bit more on the mainframe side.​"
"I wish it could create local accounts on desktops."
"There were some issues with stability. From what I remember, people would complain that every 30 minutes to an hour or so, their connection would drop and they'd have to reconnect, but it wasn't clear whether that was a problem with the network we were working on or whether that was a problem with Privileged Access Manager."
"They need to improve how it scales."
"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."
"The response time for support could be faster. Some features should be added: cloud-based, VPN-less, more secure, and it should be adjusted in a hybrid environment."
"There is already a feature for that. It is not too great to use."
"The demonstration and consideration portion does not work the best. It's not that intuitive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"It's per-company, license-based."
"CyberArk is good at what they do, and the price reflects that. You have to pay the price for the same."
"Although CyberArk Privileged Access Management is expensive, its protection capabilities outweigh the cost."
"The price of CyberArk support could be a little bit less. Otherwise, pricing is fine."
"I believe that this solution is priced well. It's the market leader and I think that it's the best solution."
"I do not have any opinions to add about the pricing of the product."
"No, I do not have any advice on the price of the product."
"They offer per-device, per-user, or monthly and yearly licensing models."
"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."
"The licensing is simple and scalable."
"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."
"The prices are not low, but one can ask for a discount. It’s not the cheapest PAM solution."
"Appliances are relatively cheap, don’t skimp. Make sure you have redundancy, high availability, and enough appliances to manage the concurrent workload."
"Pricing is fair compared to other top vendors."
"It is reasonably priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise174
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise30
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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

CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
CA PAM, Xceedium Xsuite, CA Privileged Access Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rockwell Automation
NEOVERA, Telesis, eSoft
Find out what your peers are saying about Idira Privileged Access Manager vs. Symantec Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
896,942 professionals have used our research since 2012.