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AWS CloudTrail vs CyberArk Privileged Access Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

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

AWS CloudTrail
Ranking in User Activity Monitoring
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
CyberArk Privileged Access ...
Ranking in User Activity Monitoring
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
219
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Password Managers (2nd), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (1st), Mainframe Security (2nd), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the User Activity Monitoring category, the mindshare of AWS CloudTrail is 6.9%, down from 13.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is 18.1%, down from 24.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
User Activity Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

NabeelHassan - PeerSpot reviewer
Exploring management events and insights for enhanced compliance
More controls should be introduced in CloudTrail, especially to see the logs in CloudTrail itself without saving them in S3, as S3 starts to incur charges. Real-time log submission could be improved, as sometimes there is a lag of around two to three minutes, which should be under a minute.
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

"What I found most valuable in AWS CloudTrail is that it provides a good context of what's happening in the environment, so it's an excellent way to baseline what's occurring. I also like that AWS CloudTrail helps with audits."
"I have not encountered any stability issues, glitches, or performance problems with AWS CloudTrail."
"It is a stable solution. AWS handles it well."
"The solution is good as a central logging platform for showing all cloud events."
"AWS CloudTrail provides significant efficiency gains as it allows thorough monitoring of the environment, contributing substantially to security improvements."
"In one specific scenario, we encountered a situation where a terminated employee still had access to our environment without our knowledge. With AWS CloudTrail, we could track and monitor the employees' activities, revealing that they were downloading specific files from our customer's environment. Without it enabled, we wouldn't have been aware of this."
"From a scalability point of view, the tool has no issue, and it is completely fine."
"The product’s most valuable feature is monitoring. It helps us audit the changes in AWS account at the application and resource level."
"The technical support is good."
"CyberArk has been easy for us to implement and the adoption has been good. We've been able to standardize a bunch of things. We've been able to standardize relatively easily with the use of the platforms and managing the policies."
"You can write different types of policies for custom business needs or any developer needs. If they need certain functions allocated, they can be customized easily."
"This solution is quite stable."
"The tool has safe vaults. We keep our passwords in the Vault. The tool’s recording feature is also valuable for us."
"Increased our insight into how privileged accounts are being used and distributed within our footprint."
"The most valuable features of the solution are control and analytics."
"Lessens the risk with privileged access."
 

Cons

"The product's initial setup phase is not pretty straightforward."
"Filtering multiple values within the console is a feature that has yet to exist in AWS CloudTrail. You can look up a user identity, service, or action, but you can't search for multiple dimensions."
"AWS CloudTrail should be redesigned to capture non-API calls. It would be more effective to have one tool that can perform multiple tasks instead of relying on multiple services for non-API activities."
"Once the organization defines its policies, it must immediately enable AWS CloudTrail and integrate it with auto-remediation procedures using Lambda functions. This ensures that the main administrator can receive information quickly and on time without delay."
"I have not experienced any challenges while using it."
"The platform’s reporting log sheet feature could be more user-friendly."
"More controls should be introduced in CloudTrail, especially to see the logs in CloudTrail itself without saving them in S3, as S3 starts to incur charges."
"Maybe if we could do direct queries on CloudTrail without needing to export it to Athena, that'd be great."
"One of the main things that could be improved would be filtering accounts on the main page and increasing the functionality of the filters. There are some filters on the side which are very specific, but I feel there could be more."
"The solution needs better features for end users to manage their own whitelisting for API retrieval."
"Pricing is a concern for me because it is not very user-friendly for startups, new users, or very small organizations."
"In CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, the UI has room for improvement, as does the dashboard reporting, which could be made better or easier to use."
"We should be able to join small components."
"We found a lot of errors during the initial setup. They should work to improve the implementation experience and to remove errors from the process."
"Over the past seven years, I have seen a lot of ups and downs with the product."
"There is a lot of room for improvement in the report section. I also work on other tools, such as Thycotic, which allows you to create customized reports for your organization's needs. In CyberArk, there are limited reports, whereas in Thycotic or some of the other PAM tools, because the database is different, you can customize the report based on your needs through SQL queries."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a very cheap service because management is a SaaS offering from AWS."
"AWS CloudTrail is free."
"AWS CloudTrail is a cheap solution."
"AWS CloudTrail is pretty affordable, and I have to double-check, but the service is free to use. I can add logs on the console, but if I want to store logs long-term, then I have to pay a storage fee, but it's relatively inexpensive."
"CloudTrail itself is free of cost."
"The solution is free if you don't need customizations but is not expensive otherwise."
"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."
"They have two types of licensing: purchase and subscription. You have to pay for each admin user, such as Microsoft admin, mail admin, database admin, etc."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is more expensive than its competitors, such as BeyondTrust, Delinea, and ManageEngine PAM360."
"The product's licensing is yearly. I would rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"Pricing is a problem. CyberArk is expensive compared to other products I know. It is similar to buying a German car. It comes with all the bells and whistles, but some companies may find it too 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."
"Compared to other solutions, it is costly."
"Its cost is fair."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Educational Organization
34%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS CloudTrail?
In one specific scenario, we encountered a situation where a terminated employee still had access to our environment without our knowledge. With AWS CloudTrail, we could track and monitor the emplo...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS CloudTrail?
AWS CloudTrail is categorized into management events, data events, and CloudTrail Insights. For one hundred thousand events, management costs are approximately two dollars, data events ten cents, a...
What needs improvement with AWS CloudTrail?
AWS CloudTrail should be redesigned to capture non-API calls. It would be more effective to have one tool that can perform multiple tasks instead of relying on multiple services for non-API activit...
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.
 

Also Known As

CloudTrail
CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

HTC, British Gas, Solinor, 2C2P
Rockwell Automation
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS CloudTrail vs. CyberArk Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,989 professionals have used our research since 2012.