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Idira Privileged Access Manager vs Symantec Siteminder 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

Idira Privileged Access Man...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
230
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Enterprise Password Managers (3rd), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (1st), Mainframe Security (1st), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
Symantec Siteminder
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (13th), Web Access Management (1st), Access Management (12th)
 

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
Improved user experience with seamless integration and easy installation
The feature that I mostly valued is the ease of installation on different systems, especially on Windows. Additionally, it is very beneficial for deploying single sign-on sessions between different windows on a web browser, provided I am connected to the right identity provider. That seamless integration significantly improves user experience and efficiency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support is very helpful whenever we have any questions."
"I would recommend implementing CyberArk Privileged Access Manager as it is the best so far."
"The combination of CPM and PSM resolves a lot of use cases."
"Compared to other products, CyberArk is extremely easy to install and configure."
"The features that are most effective, like every PAM solution, include monitoring and password rotations."
"CyberArk is the best out there."
"Performance-wise, it is excellent."
"If your business/organization has crown-jewel data, this is the tool to use."
"This solution is meeting our requirements for all of our applications."
"The valuable features are security in general and ease of use, more specifically ease of use for the developers, and security where the developer doesn't have to know about authentication or security."
"We're able to have one single centralized way of logging in when you have shared sessions across all applications."
"For us, it’s the best-of-breed pick on the market today."
"It really improved the speed to market from account creation through provisioning and onboarding, and as users move from system to system, their account access follows them so you don't need to create new credentials every time."
"It is a pretty complete product."
"Security to protect digital assets is most valuable to us."
"This is one of the robust and stable product I have seen in my sixteen years of IT experience."
 

Cons

"Additionally, I think the user experience needs to improve."
"If there is an area that has room for improvement, it's probably working with their support and getting people on the phone. That is hard to do with most products in general, but that seems to be the difficult area. The product is fantastic, but sometimes we want somebody on the phone."
"The pricing is too expensive and should be reduced."
"The current interface is not very intuitive."
"What could be improved in CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is the licensing model. It should be more flexible in terms of the users. Currently, it's based on the number of users, but many users only log in once in four months or once in five months. It would be great if the licensing model could be modified based on user needs. We even have users who have not logged in even once."
"It's not a cheap application. It's very expensive."
"Password Vault is much pricier than other solutions. A vendor team might struggle to explain why that price is justified. There are good alternatives that cost less."
"CyberArk has a lot on the privileged access side but they have to concentrate more on the application side as well."
"The OpenID Connect piece, we would like to see the new technologies baked into the product, as opposed to going out and using a different product to accomplish the same thing."
"The GUIs are not very clear, especially when integrating with other products from CA."
"For us, getting to that person or to the second level of support is time consuming."
"We would like to the OAuth be more stable, more issues being fixed rather than not."
"The main thing is we do not have the traceability and good monitoring that CA can provide us to capture problems when they occur."
"Sometimes technical support is slow to respond, and that’s typical."
"The support team could work on their response time and overall competence."
"While I have some integration with a few major providers, support for more would be advantageous."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With the current model of licensing, for my use cases, sometimes it's hard to convince the management and get budget approvals for it. It's expensive and you're not getting anything new. It's just a control, but in terms of risk, you are covering a big impact on the company. Improvement in the licensing prices is something I would want to have."
"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."
"It costs us around $200 per user."
"The price of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager could be less expensive."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is on the expensive side. It is very expensive."
"I focus more on the technical side, but I hear customers say that if CyberArk was more affordable, they might have acquired more licenses. Some clients consider alternative solutions due to pricing concerns."
"The product’s pricing is feasible for enterprise customers. The pricing is expensive for smaller businesses. You need to pay additional costs for service implementation and local support."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"Siteminder is a little costly. You pay for licensing, and they offer packages, so if you have less users, then you have to buy different products at different prices. If you have more of a user base, then the package is different. They also include other features—for example, if you have a database and you're using Siteminder, then it's good to use a Semantic-specific database, but if you are using less, then you have to purchase the database separately. Whereas if you are going for a bigger license, then it comes within the package. It depends on which plan you are using."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Construction Company
12%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise175
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise69
 

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 needs improvement with Symantec Siteminder?
Symantec Siteminder needs to have adaptive authentication and multi-factor authentication as integrated features. Currently, multi-factor authentication is available as a separate solution, and it ...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Siteminder?
I deploy and support Symantec Siteminder ( /products/symantec-siteminder-reviews ). I have been a partner and reseller.
 

Also Known As

CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rockwell Automation
British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Find out what your peers are saying about Idira Privileged Access Manager vs. Symantec Siteminder and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.