Idira Privileged Access Manager vs Top Secret comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Idira by Palo Alto Networks and Broadcom are both solutions in the Mainframe Security category. Idira by Palo Alto Networks is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.6, while Broadcom is ranked #4. Idira by Palo Alto Networks holds a 5.8% mindshare in MS, compared to Broadcom’s 11.2% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Idira by Palo Alto Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Idira Privileged Access Man...

Read 231 Idira Privileged Access Manager reviews

30,034 Views
300 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Top Secret

Read 8 Top Secret reviews

1,128 Views
1,094 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Idira Privileged Access Man...

Top Secret

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 2, 2026

Idira Privileged Access Manager and Top Secret are competing products in the realm of access management. Based on data comparisons, Top Secret seems to have the upper hand due to its robust features, which justify its higher pricing. However, Idira Privileged Access Manager is preferred for its cost and support services.

Features: Idira Privileged Access Manager offers comprehensive access tracking, integration capabilities, and compatibility with various IT environments. Top Secret provides advanced security protocols, highly customizable access controls, and a focus on strong security measures.

Room for Improvement: Idira could enhance its security protocols and offer more customizable access controls. Top Secret might benefit from improving its deployment process, reducing complexity, and lowering its pricing to make it more accessible to budget-conscious buyers.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Idira Privileged Access Manager provides a streamlined deployment process with excellent customer service, ensuring rapid implementation and continuous support. Top Secret has a complex deployment model but compensates with a dedicated support team for personalized integration.

Pricing and ROI: Idira Privileged Access Manager presents a competitive setup cost with a promising ROI, making it attractive for budget-conscious buyers. In contrast, Top Secret demands a higher initial investment but delivers a high ROI due to its advanced feature set.

To learn more, read our detailed Idira Privileged Access Manager vs. Top Secret Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Idira Privileged Access Manager vs. Top Secret

September 2026

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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 Mainframe Security

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

231

Ranking in other categories

User Activity Monitoring (2nd), Enterprise Password Managers (3rd), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (1st), Operational Technology (OT) Security (4th)

Top Secret

Ranking in Mainframe Security

4th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

8.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Mainframe Security category, the mindshare of Idira Privileged Access Manager is 5.8%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Top Secret is 11.2%, down from 14.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Mainframe Security Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Idira Privileged Access Manager	5.8%
Top Secret	11.2%
Other	83.0%

Mainframe Security

Featured Reviews

Mahmudul Hoque Khan

Lead Engineer at intelQong Technology

Centralized access has improved privileged control and visibility yet still needs better integrations

While the access control capabilities are useful, streamlining some configuration and policy management workflows could enhance the user experience for administrators. A simpler interface for creating access policies and quickly identifying unusual activities would make day-to-day administration more efficient. Stronger integration with existing identity data and secret management could be a significant improvement for Idira Privileged Access Manager. Deeper integration with cloud solutions would make it easier to correlate privileged access activity with other security events. I would also appreciate more flexible reporting and dashboards so administrators can swiftly see access patterns and unusual privileged access from a single view.

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it_user814482

Information Security Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

All the features help ensure we are compliant with banking regulations

Top Secret is our external security manager for our mainframe systems It's an integral part of all of our mainframe security functions. It's the core of our mainframe security functions. It helps ensure that we are compliant with all of the various banking regulations, security regulations and…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"We have the identity provider for all the authentication processes. However, sometimes, we need access to different applications for customers or clients that are not integrated into the identity provider. For these, we need to store a password to gain access. For example, we use the CyberArk Password Vault for third-party services. This vault needs to be shared with many people in our company."

"CyberArk is a more secure product - much better than Thycotic."

"Allows secure, logged access to highly sensitive servers and services."

"It has improved the way our company functions on the basis that they're expanding, and the SDDC management solution and the decision to bring on security licenses under the system umbrella, then has passwords and the system management be a requirement in the coming quarters."

"I find the discovery feature, which includes credential management, session management, monitoring, and remediation within a session, to be very valuable."

"Previously, we used to share passwords for service and normal admin accounts among team members. However, since we started managing it through the product, we've transitioned to individual admin accounts or implemented dual control for shared accounts. With dual control, exclusive checking and checkout options are available, and passwords are not stored in clear text anywhere in the credentials."

"Password rotation is the most valuable feature"

More Idira Privileged Access Manager pros

"We have implemented two-factor authentication, which is a new piece of CA Top Secret."

"It centralizes all the user security on a single tool, which has truly been the best part for us."

"When selecting a vendor, the most important thing is support."

"The stability of the product is wonderful."

"We have an ongoing relationship with technical support; they are excellent."

"In banking, security is a priority, and we constantly get updates that meet our needs."

"Customer service is excellent, as any issue that we have had in working with the product received the best response that we could have hoped for, with technicians who have great knowledge of how the product works and who promptly responded with solutions to any problems that we have had over the years."

"It's an integral part of all of our mainframe security functions and helps ensure that we are compliant with all of the various banking regulations, security regulations and requirements."

More Top Secret pros

Cons

"The product is very vaulting-focused. I'd love to see it expanding its capabilities a bit further into areas like just-in-time elevation, and access with non-vaulted credentials."

"However, there is still room for improvement."

"As a customer, I might need a plugin for a specific product, or an application, and CyberArk might have already worked with some other client on it. There has to be some platform where it is available for everybody else to go and grab it, instead of my having to reinvent the wheel."

"CyberArk is not friendly in terms of having a Community Edition. It's a very, very costly app."

"There are some options in the web portal where they can improve the user experience. For example, in remote, there is a parameter called 'access to remote machine.' When we put host names in that field, we are not able to search it. It"

"There is a learning curve when it comes to planning out the deployment strategy, but once it is defined, it runs itself."

"The initial setup can get complex."

"It is very expensive. They charge for every single thing they offer."

More Idira Privileged Access Manager cons

"I would like to see better reporting, more emphasis on audit reporting, and better scrubbing of the canned reports."

"It would be helpful if they removed limitations on user record sizes."

"In new releases, installation is not easy and can take about four months to roll out."

"The user interface could be improved. Sometimes, it is not simple to understand where a certain definition should be defined, and I go through a number of screens until I find where to do some of them."

"As an IT auditor, the UI is the tough part. From the IT auditing standpoint, it needs to be more simple to use."

"I'd like to see integration with LDAP's services, because today we have the mainframe and Windows AD separated."

"I'd like to see that more granular, see where you could get the passwords that are being enforced, but you can enforce it at different hierarchical layers between the product."

"Make sure that there is a post-sale department in your country. We have experienced some post-sale problems to do with integration of CA products into our systems."

More Top Secret cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is quite high and it could be improved."

"I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."

"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."

"The SaaS version of CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault is very expensive, but the on-premises version is relative, e.g. depending on the size of the environment, it can be a bit pricey, but it's relatively okay compared to the others."

"It's an affordable platform."

"This solution is considered to be more expensive than others out there on the market today."

"It's not a cheap application. It's very expensive."

"The main problem for the tool is its licensing. I work for a really big company. When you try to develop this as a service, usually you work with leverage teams who are formed with dozens of members. You might dedicate one FTE, or less, for something, e.g., an antivirus administrator. You might have half an FTE's effort dedicated to administering the antivirus, but then you have a team of about 30 users who might access that ticket. The problem is that CyberArk eliminated the possibility of concurrent users years ago. This is a big problem for companies who work with leverage teams. You need to pay for everyone. 40 licenses are used by 20 or 30 people. This is a big problem because licenses are not precisely cheap."

More Idira Privileged Access Manager pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Outsourcing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

Outsourcing Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	59
Midsize Enterprise	43
Large Enterprise	175

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	1
Large Enterprise	8

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...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?

The pricing is reasonable compared to other software options we evaluated, and it is straightforward. However, overall costs depend on deployment size and licensing requirements.

See all answers

What needs improvement with CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?

See all answers

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Comparisons

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Teleport vs Idira Privileged Access Manager

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F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) vs Idira Privileged Access Manager

Compared 2% of the time

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Compared 29% of the time

IBM Resource Access Control Facility vs Top Secret

Compared 21% of the time

IBM Security zSecure vs Top Secret

Compared 16% of the time

BMC AMI Security vs Top Secret

Compared 10% of the time

CA TPX Session Manager vs Top Secret

Compared 9% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Idira Privileged Access Manager

October 2026

Download Idira Privileged Access Manager product report

Buyer's Guide

Mainframe Security

October 2026

Download Top Secret product report

Also Known As

CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault

CA Top Secret

Overview

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager safeguards privileged accounts through password management, credential rotation, and session recording. With seamless integration and real-time monitoring, it ensures robust security across platforms.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is recognized for its extensive capabilities in managing and securing privileged accounts. It offers vital functionalities such as automatic password rotation, real-time session monitoring, and cross-platform integration through APIs and custom connectors. Users find the flexibility in workflows and granular access controls beneficial, particularly in protecting access across cloud and on-prem infrastructures. However, improvements in its interface, installation process, plugin support, and integration with third-party tools are often suggested. Pricing is a concern for many, along with the need for better dashboard reporting, user provisioning, and enhanced documentation. Organizations leverage this tool for encrypting and monitoring critical account activities and automating password management to bolster security.

What are the key features of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?

Enterprise Password Vault: Provides secure storage and management of enterprise credentials.
Privilege Session Manager: Offers comprehensive session recording and monitoring.
Privileged Threat Analytics: Detects and alerts on potential credential threats.
Integration Capabilities: Easily integrates with multiple systems using APIs and custom connectors.

What benefits or ROI should users expect?

Enhanced Security: Automates and centralizes password management, reducing risk of account misuse.
Compliance Support: Ensures alignment with compliance policies through automated processes.
Operational Efficiency: Streamlines security operations with real-time monitoring and integration.
Adaptability: Protects privileged access across diverse infrastructure setups including cloud and on-prem.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager finds substantial use in industries such as finance, healthcare, and technology, where the protection of privileged accounts is critical. These sectors rely on its capabilities to manage application credentials securely and provide safe access for developers, administrators, and vendors across various infrastructures.

Idira by Palo Alto Networks

Top Secret offers a secure, innovative solution tailored for industries needing high confidentiality. Used widely, it delivers reliable performance and advanced data protection, establishing its role as a trusted name in cutting-edge technology.

Designed for those requiring top-level security, Top Secret provides a reliable infrastructure that ensures data remains confidential and protected. Its sophisticated features are geared to handle demanding tasks while being intuitive to use. Targeting sectors like finance, healthcare, and government, Top Secret continues to meet the complex requirements of enterprises aiming for data security and ease of management.

What are the most important features of Top Secret?

Advanced Encryption: Ensures all data is secured with high-level encryption protocols.
Real-time Monitoring: Provides continuous monitoring for suspicious activities.
Access Controls: Offers customizable user permissions to manage data accessibility.
Scalability: Easily adapts to expanding enterprise needs without compromising performance.

What benefits or ROI should users consider in Top Secret reviews?

Cost Efficiency: Promises reduced overhead costs with its streamlined processes.
Enhanced Security: Delivers unparalleled security measures that safeguard sensitive information.
Increased Productivity: Facilitates seamless operations, boosting overall organizational productivity.
Trust and Compliance: Ensures adherence to industry regulations, fostering trust among stakeholders.

Top Secret is implemented across diverse industries, each leveraging its capabilities for confidentiality and security. In financial services, it manages sensitive transactions with precision. Healthcare facilities trust its rigorous protection and management of patient records. Governmental bodies appreciate its robust infrastructure supporting data integrity and secure communications, demonstrating versatile solutions suitable for demanding environments.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Rockwell Automation

First Tennessee Bank

Buyer's Guide

Idira Privileged Access Manager vs. Top Secret

September 2026

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