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One Identity Safeguard vs Symantec Privileged Access Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 6, 2024

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

One Identity Safeguard
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (6th), Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) (3rd)
Symantec Privileged Access ...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
17th
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 January 2026, in the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category, the mindshare of One Identity Safeguard is 3.7%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Privileged Access Manager is 1.7%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
One Identity Safeguard3.7%
Symantec Privileged Access Manager1.7%
Other94.6%
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

Featured Reviews

SachinShelar - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Account Services Delivery at Softcell Technologies Limited
Privileged access has become centralized and streamlines multi-client audits and compliance
The best features we can highlight are privileged password vaulting and automatic password rotation, just-in-time privileged access, and session monitoring and recording. These features together stand out because they significantly reduce credential exposure, enforce least privilege access, and provide full auditing visibility across multiple client environments, as we are a service delivery and IT service delivery company with multiple customer environments and access. We rely most on just-in-time privileged access with credential vaulting. It is easy for the team to use day-to-day because access requests and approvals are streamlined and automated. Credentials are never exposed and sessions are automatically logged. After initial setup, adoption was smooth and it fit well into our existing operational workflows without adding stress to our operational team to adapt to the new technology. One Identity Safeguard has strengthened privileged access security across our multiple client environments. We have seen a reduction in shared credentials and unauthorized access. We have also seen faster approval for admin tasks and improved audit readiness. It has streamlined compliance reporting and reduced the operational risk of managing multiple client environments manually. Implementing this solution, we have reduced privileged account-related incidents by thirty percent. We have also cut manual password management time by nearly fifty to sixty percent. Just-in-time access has sped up admin task completion and improved our overall compliance reporting, allowing audits to be completed nearly half the time compared to earlier.
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

"The most unique and valuable features are the upstream and downstream throughput capacities; the Safeguard platform provides agile integration. In actuality, all the features are valuable. They're good, user-friendly."
"We use the Approval Anywhere, or cloud assistant feature and it is great. It enables us to add an extra layer of security for critical passwords without adding time to the approval process."
"One Identity Safeguard has positively impacted my organization by improving our security posture, eliminating shared privileged credentials, increasing visibility into admin activity, and making compliance audits faster and more reliable."
"The customer service and technical support are very good."
"The solution's most valuable features are the efficiency and the quality of the recording."
"We are able to log and get reporting on all privileged activity that is being performed. We like the fact that we can leverage the session recording feature, which is especially valuable when we're dealing with third-party vendors that have to remote into our our boxes and servers to do any work on behalf of the bank. Now, we can record everything they are doing to ensure that they're only doing the changes that were needed. In addition, we use it to leverage knowledge transfer with our internal staff."
"It is generally easy-to-use and install."
"One of the most important aspects is that it is very easy to use and install. It is also agentless, so all of the operations happen more smoothly than any other product."
"The key benefits are we improve our governance. We ensure we can build more trust in the way we run and operate our environment, and most of all is the accountability."
"Comprehensive coverage of the required features for the PAM solution."
"The product is very scalable in terms of concurrent sessions that it can handle at a time, number of device it can support, accounts that it can manage, or number of nodes that you can deploy in a cluster."
"One of the key things for us about the product is around its simplicity. Being able to put in the technology that allows the business to remove complexity and also allow the security improvements."
"Transparent login for users of privileged IDs (Linux, Windows). This prevents sharing of the password because it is never seen."
"The credential injection feature is highly valued, particularly for RDP sessions."
"Symantec PAM is easier to deploy compared to its competitors, such as BeyondTrust."
"We can enforce complicated password policies and very important frequent password changes."
 

Cons

"The GUI has room for improvement because it is confusing and cumbersome."
"The SPS could be a lot easier to administrate and the parts should be unified, from a design perspective, so that I can recognize the systems as being part of the same package. They feel like they have been forced together."
"We should be able to create customized connectors in a better way. For ad hoc or special use cases, I sometimes find we have limitations. Improving the way we develop new connectors for non-typical systems would be beneficial."
"Reporting and dashboards can be made more customized, especially for client-specific views."
"We sometimes face issues with configuration and things like that, but we manage to solve them."
"The product uses a lot of resources in current sessions."
"Some of our users find the functionality a bit complex, and it could be made more user-friendly."
"The Transparent Mode could be somewhat easier to use."
"It'd be great if you just stuck in your PIV card and Windows popped up, asked you for your password. You typed it in, then it remembered your credentials."
"Technical support was good when CA handled it. After Broadcom took over, it's not as good."
"The management console could be improved."
"What I hope happens with the new product CA PAM is to keep all the useful features that exist in PA, but what I’ve noticed with many new products is the UI gets polished but systems lags stability and performance or it adds additional complexity instead of simplifying the user experience."
"Recent releases need improvement in webpage management."
"They need to have zero tier and active-active setup ​with zero minimum downtime, which they are working on it. ​"
"I’m no fan of Java as an application front-end, as it tends to have issues depending on what browser one’s using."
"Instead of just giving passwords to the user based on job function, from auditing perspective, turn that cycle around. That would really help from an auditing standpoint."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing depends on our perspective, our budget, and, of course, the competitors we are taking into account."
"It is cheaper than CyberArk. Its price is fair."
"The full license is expensive but if you plan to use it in a big organization then it is the best option because it is more flexible."
"Safeguard is cheaper than CyberArk."
"The license is around $3,000 per month."
"It is more expensive than Secret Server but way less expensive than CyberArk. As a customer, I would like the pricing to be lower, but it has a good price point."
"Setup cost, pricing and licensing are all very expensive."
"The pricing is about $80,000 per 100 servers. There are few elective costs."
"It is reasonably priced."
"It is more expensive than other solutions on the market."
"Pricing is fair compared to other top vendors."
"Cost-wise, CA was better compared to others in the market. ​"
"They offer per-device, per-user, or monthly and yearly licensing models."
"Appliances are relatively cheap, don’t skimp. Make sure you have redundancy, high availability, and enough appliances to manage the concurrent workload."
"The prices are not low, but one can ask for a discount. It’s not the cheapest PAM solution."
"The licensing is simple and scalable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Government
8%
Performing Arts
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise30
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for One Identity Safeguard?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been a good experience overall, as the back and forth with One Identity is something that is acceptable; other tools have options to do thi...
What needs improvement with One Identity Safeguard?
One Identity Safeguard could be improved with a password manager and an identity manager as one big access management system. I believe improvements could be made around integrating with other tools.
What is your primary use case for One Identity Safeguard?
My main use case for One Identity Safeguard is using only one module for privileged session, which we use for admins and contractors. A quick specific example of how my team uses One Identity Safeg...
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

No data available
CA PAM, Xceedium Xsuite, CA Privileged Access Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cavium
NEOVERA, Telesis, eSoft
Find out what your peers are saying about One Identity Safeguard vs. Symantec Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.