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AWS CloudTrail vs CyberArk Privileged Access Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

AWS CloudTrail
Ranking in User Activity Monitoring
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
CyberArk Privileged Access ...
Ranking in User Activity Monitoring
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
193
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Password Managers (2nd), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (1st), Mainframe Security (3rd), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the User Activity Monitoring category, the mindshare of AWS CloudTrail is 10.3%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is 23.6%, up from 20.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
User Activity Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Bireshwar Adhikary - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 20, 2023
Very comprehensive logs with good points of view for auditing and compliance
Our company uses the solution to monitor cloud services. All cloud activities are stored in the solution.  We check the solution's logs and compare them to CloudWatch.  The solution is good as a central logging platform for showing all cloud events. For example, it records new users and their…
SatishIyer - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 21, 2022
Lets you ensure relevant, compliant access in good time and with an audit trail, yet lacks clarity on MITRE ATT&CK
When I was a component owner for PAM's Privileged Threat Analytics (PTA) component, what I wanted was a clear mapping to the MITRE ATT&CK framework, a framework which has a comprehensive list of use cases. We reached out to the vendor and asked them how much coverage they have of the uses cases found on MITRE, which would have given us a better view of things while I was the product owner. Unfortunately they did not have the capability of mapping onto MITRE's framework at that time. PTA is essentially the monitoring interface of the broker (e.g. Privileged Access Management, the Vault, CPM, PSM, etc.), and it's where you can capture your broker bypass and perform related actions. For this reason, we thought that this kind of mapping would be required, but CyberArk informed us that they did not have the capability we had in mind with regard to MITRE ATT&CK. I am not sure what the situation is now, but it would definitely help to have that kind of alignment with one of the more well-known frameworks like MITRE. For CyberArk as a vendor, it would also help them to clearly spell out in which areas they have full functionality and in which ares they have partial or none. Of course, it also greatly benefits the customers when they're evaluating the product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product’s most valuable feature is monitoring. It helps us audit the changes in AWS account at the application and resource level."
"AWS CloudTrail integrates with AWS Config and provides custom event, security, and compliance auditing."
"AWS CloudTrail helps in accelerating incident investigation and response. It increases it because I pull out the logs to CloudTrail, and from CloudTrail watch, I'll send it to the Security Hub and do a visualization with Prometheus and Grafana."
"It is a stable solution. AWS handles it well."
"The management events and CloudTrail Insights are valuable."
"The solution is good as a central logging platform for showing all cloud events."
"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."
"From a scalability point of view, the tool has no issue, and it is completely fine."
"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."
"The automatic password management is the most important feature. The second most important feature is the ability to enforce dual control on the release of those passwords. The combination of these two features is the most important thing for us because we can show that we're in control of who uses any non-personal account, and when they do so."
"For a while, there were individual IDs having privileged access. We wanted to restrict that. We implemented the solution so that it can be more of internal control. We can have session recordings happening and reduce our attacks."
"It is a robust product."
"It is a single tool that isolates possible kinds of malware. You get lateral movement blocking and auditing information, e.g., you know who is doing what. You are getting protections from the service as well as a useful environment. All your admins can easily go in and out of your company while accessing your servers in a secure way, even if they are working abroad."
"CyberArk has a lot of modules."
"Increased our insight into how privileged accounts are being used and distributed within our footprint."
"CPM helps keep the password policy up to date."
 

Cons

"The product's initial setup phase is not pretty straightforward."
"Maybe if we could do direct queries on CloudTrail without needing to export it to Athena, that'd be great."
"The platform’s reporting log sheet feature could be more user-friendly."
"The solution should incorporate visibility for CloudWatch events."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The solution's operation visibility could be improved."
"The license is expensive."
"The Vault's disaster recovery features need improvement."
"Having a centralized place to manage the solution has been something that I have always wanted, and they are starting to understand that and bring things back together."
"Upgrading the product is very difficult, so this could be an area for improvement."
"It is web-based, but other competitors have apps. We need to get there. It is just smoother to have an app. You don't have all the bugs from having a browser, and people like them better, since you can get to them via mobile."
"The tool needs to improve its usage and interface. They need to have a modern and useful interface. I want the product to improve its integration capabilities as well since some of the integration features do not work always."
"The product documentation has to be more precise in certain aspects with explanations for functionality limitations along with reference material or screenshots."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"AWS CloudTrail is a cheap solution."
"The solution is free if you don't need customizations but is not expensive otherwise."
"It is a very cheap service because management is a SaaS offering from AWS."
"CloudTrail itself is free of cost."
"AWS CloudTrail is free."
"With reducing the privileged account access, there has been a huge improvement. They are now bringing more accounts on a little at a time."
"Overall, its pricing is really good. The main difference from all the other vendors is that they have one package that covers all the functionality and modules of the basic PAM, except the add-on modules like adware and server protection. It also doesn't include the licenses for domain controller protection or maybe an API call-related feature. For the basic privileged access management, the bundle pricing is really good, but when it comes to an agent-based solution for advanced cyber protection or application identity managers, it is expensive. Services are also very expensive if you hire the services team from CyberArk, but these guys are really good. For a couple of large banking projects, we had an experience with them. The banks wanted to have things quickly and efficiently, so we had to hire them. If we take four weeks, these guys can do everything on a weekend. They charge quite a big sum of money, but they know the system well."
"This solution is considered to be more expensive than others out there on the market today."
"Compared to other solutions, it is costly."
"No, I do not have any advice on the price of the product."
"The solution is very expensive and requires a license. We pay for an enterprise license."
"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's an affordable platform."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Educational Organization
30%
Financial Services Firm
13%
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?
CloudTrail is a very cost-effective solution. It can be rated three or four on a scale where ten is the most expensive price.
What needs improvement with AWS CloudTrail?
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 improve...
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?
CyberArk Privileged Access Manager comes at a high cost. But the solution is worth its price.
 

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: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.