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Amazon Cognito vs CyberArk Privileged Access Manager 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

Amazon Cognito
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Access Management (6th)
CyberArk Privileged Access ...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
210
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Enterprise Password Managers (2nd), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (1st), Mainframe Security (2nd), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
 

Featured Reviews

Erik Aceiro - PeerSpot reviewer
Good integration with AWS services but not feasible for B2C because MFAs are nonexistent
The developer experience for mobile apps is terrible. Documentation is very poor and it is difficult to read the documents available to put things into practice. Our team has issues finding information related to using the solution. SDK and libraries available for mobile apps are terrible. For example, if you use MFA to migrate one user from your database to the pool, you need to use Lambda functions or other methods in AWS to get the solution enabled. It is extremely difficult to put a very, very scalable project into practice. Our team doesn't think you can use the solution for B2C on a large scale. We thought the solution would provide an agile experience but it does not. The solution needs to keep a history of passwords. For example, you should be able to check if customers used the same password in the past when connecting to a company by username and password. This type of feature is a must for our project. The MFA related to the solution's side is nonexistent. MFA should occur on the Facebook or Google side and also on the solution's side. This is a big problem because we have wallets, credit cards, and sensitive data stored for each customer. One layer of security is totally missing.
Lasantha Wijesinghe - PeerSpot reviewer
We have visibility and control through real-time user behavior analytics
It took us some time to realize its benefits because there was a learning curve for us. It took us about a year to get our heads around this product and start effectively using it. It is a journey. It takes at least five years for any company to make this product very useful and reach maturity. It is not only the product's fault. The company needs to have a vision, and the company culture needs to go with it. Senior leadership needs to support the vision. You need to have lots of ingredients for success. If everything is in place, you will see success after one year. In the first year, it is a struggle for everybody. My company was bought by a bigger company, and they were very new to privileged access management. Everybody was struggling. The advice I would give is to have a good vision for privileged access management. You need dedicated teams, senior management support, and proper company policies and standards before implementing the solution. Start building knowledge slowly and avoid jumping into the deep end without preparation. I would rate CyberArk Privileged Access Manager a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The multi-factor authentication setup has room for improvement."
"One of the key benefits of this software is its ease of integration with a wide range of applications, including mobile apps and web applications. This simplifies the process of integration, and it can be seamlessly incorporated with Azure, Kubernetes, and other software systems."
"What I find most valuable about Amazon Cognito is the single sign-on feature that provides a token for accessing protected APIs."
"What I find most valuable about Amazon Cognito is the single sign-on feature that provides a token for accessing protected APIs."
"Cognito speeds up our development and saves us time."
"They offer a permission tool to help us manage multi-factor authentication."
"The federation is one of the most efficient features as the pricing is competitive."
"The features most valuable to us are the ability to integrate with various IDPs and the capability to sync with multiple applications."
"The session recording and monitoring capabilities are valuable. We have real-time session management ability to record, audit, and monitor any privileged user activities. That is a big deal."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution include password management and Rest API retrieval of vaulted credentials."
"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."
"Central Password Manager is useful for agentless automated password management through AD integration as well as endpoints for different devices."
"We are able to centrally manage credentials, touch applications, and rotate passwords."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is session recording."
"I'm no longer the product owner for PAM, but I can say that the most useful feature is the vault functionality, which keeps all your passwords secure in a digital vault."
"Thus far I can say technical support is excellent. We haven't had any issues or difficulties."
 

Cons

"In a future release, we would like to have different methods to validate the characteristic of a user. For example, we would like to use biometric data to analyze the behavior of users."
"I believe this product could improve by enriching user profiles."
"There is room for improvement in Amazon Cognito."
"Amazon Cognito could improve by simplifying the configuration."
"Cognito triggers can improve by providing more direct use cases rather than giving a white paper. A white paper is not at all interesting, it has too many details. It would be a benefit to provide a smaller document that is summarized. The smaller version would bring microdata, macro data is not helpful."
"Amazon Cognito could be improved by making it easier for us to add more data to the token, allowing customization of JWT."
"Amazon Cognito’s UI needs improvement while onboarding new users."
"What I found generally lacking in AWS is privileged access management (PAM)."
"My concern and area for improvement revolves around reporting."
"The scalability, sometimes, is lacking. It works really well for more static environments... But for an environment where you're constantly spinning up new infrastructure or new endpoints, sometimes it has a hard time keeping up."
"The architecture needs to be improved."
"I'd like it to be a little more granular. I want a little bit more control over exactly what we do. I know if you do that, you add more knobs and dials to deal with, but that's just my personal approach: granular access."
"The major pain point that we have is the capacity of CyberArk due to the sheer volume of NPAs that we are managing. We are a large organization and we have hundreds of thousands of non-personal accounts to manage. We have already found out that there are certain capacity limitations within CyberArk that might introduce performance issues. From my perspective, something that would be valuable would be if the vault could hold more passwords and be more scalable."
"Transitioning from a traditional on-premises deployment to the privileged cloud has resulted in losing access to many logs and administrative tools typically available on the back end."
"Based on the user experience that I see on a day-to-day basis, some changes could be made to the Privileged Session Manager tool to make it more user-friendly. The user interface of that tool could be more advanced and understandable to laymen, rather than being more of a developer tool."
"CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault must incorporate connectors for password and session managers in the marketplace."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of this solution is good compared to other solutions on the market."
"The product is relatively inexpensive compared to other tools."
"We pay $600 monthly per user for licences and there are no other additional costs."
"The price of the solution depends on the number of users using it."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten."
"The price of Amazon Cognito is expensive. We are on an annual subscription."
"The pricing is bad so I rate it a two out of ten."
"The price of Amazon Cognito is low. The pricing model is based on the users."
"Pricing and licensing depend on the environment."
"The cost is high compared to other products."
"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."
"This solution is considered to be more expensive than others out there on the market today."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"The price of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager could be less expensive."
"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."
"CyberArk provides all the features bundled. This is compared to other vendors who provide them as a different license for each functionality."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Educational Organization
34%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Cognito?
The most valuable feature of the solution is its swift authentication.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Cognito?
I have not reached the threshold to comment on the cost as we are still in the testing phase.
What needs improvement with Amazon Cognito?
Amazon Cognito could be improved by making it easier for us to add more data to the token, allowing customization of JWT. It requires a complex program to customize the token currently, however, th...
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 do you like most about CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
The most valuable features of the solution are control and analytics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Rockwell Automation
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Cognito vs. CyberArk Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
841,004 professionals have used our research since 2012.