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BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management vs Symantec Privileged Access Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 6, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

BeyondTrust Endpoint Privil...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (9th)
Symantec Privileged Access ...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
21st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category, the mindshare of BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management is 4.6%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Privileged Access Manager is 1.7%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

Featured Reviews

Marlin B Pohlman - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 24, 2022
Admin rights can be granted and revoked within minutes and that is what everything comes down to, for us
The most important factor is the ability to invoke least privilege, which is required under 27701 and GDPR. We have used the solution to remove users' administrative rights and instead provide on-demand, token-based administrative rights. The latter is an option for a single, temporary increase in privileges for a trusted user for a specific time. We use it in a medical environment for HIPAA compliance or medical compliance in a GDPR case. For example, if you have a clinician who needs access to a specific piece of medical information, or if there is an administrator who needs to have administrator rights to a particular database for a limited period of time, we can give it and then revoke it. That's another reason the tool is useful. Also, the fact that we are able to add events straight from event logs and/or the database is important for crisis management and rapid reaction. This ability helps us meet our SLA requirements. In addition, we can elevate approved applications and actions without broad administrative rights. We can temporarily increase privilege based on tasks. If someone puts in a ticket, we increase their privilege for that ticket. We then watch to see if that ticket has been resolved and then we decrease it. Another feature of the platform is instant risk reduction solutions. We can do a risk metric with it, and we do that as part of our risk evaluation. We can increase and decrease privilege and we can actually show that in the ISO 13485 risk metric. And it provides a single solution for managing endpoint security preferences. It does a good job of that.
Krishnan Srinivasan - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 12, 2024
Enhances credential management and relatively inexpensive but needs feature improvements
I work for a service provider company, and we implement Symantec Privileged Access Manager solutions for our clients, which include various banking and mining clients We have implemented both the remote access and credential management features. The agent-based credential management solution…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I find the solution’s features like section management, password management, and analytics valuable."
"The tool is easy to use and deploy. It has PAM capabilities like privilege access. The solution helps with the management of third parties and vendors. It is an effective solution compared to other alternatives."
"What I liked about this solution is that it can also integrate for tracking malicious use or sending analytics to a host that can process them. I don't know if CyberArk, Centrify, or Thycotic can do that. The analytics was something the client really wanted, and they already had BeyondTrust. It is very scalable. The agent on the workstation is very thin, and the processing power required on a server is nothing out of the ordinary. It is also very stable and easy to deploy."
"I would say session management on the go is the most valuable feature. When the session is going on, you can stop the session without terminating it for justification. You can cancel it. The recording takes very little space. Those are some things which the customers are worried about when they talk about session recording."
"Technical support is good."
"One of the valuable features is the absence of any local user in a unique system. All users are defined in the AD; communication is only between Unix and AD."
"The solution's least privilege enforcement has helped us ensure access is given to only the required people."
"The privileged access management into sensitive systems is very valuable. That includes control from the endpoint all the way through to the managing of passwords and credentials that are used by the person to access the sensitive information. It's very useful, because nobody ever really maintains passwords for those endpoint systems. It's maintained in the Dropbox password file."
"We can check the activities in the server for fragile files and documents in case of any issues."
"CA PAM is working well for us."
"We found that the architecture is scalable and very resilient."
"The agent-based credential management solution allows clients to programmatically use the agent to collect passwords during runtime from Symantec Privileged Access Manager."
"The interface is very friendly, colorful, and bold."
"It reduces the viral attacks on my website. It also allows certain users access to see what happens daily."
"We can enforce complicated password policies and very important frequent password changes."
"It will provide us with more security."
 

Cons

"The program updates are very rare and the frequency is too far apart to take care of bug fixes and adding the latest features."
"It only has limited support for Mac."
"What's bothering me, which is true of all of them, is that sometimes, the error codes that come up don't necessarily get reflected in the searches within their support sites or they're out of date. I would rather search by an error code than type in the text and search for it by text because the error code means that it is programmatic, and it is known. It might not be desired, but it at least is not unexpected. If you don't have an error code, you just get an anomalous error, and if it is lengthy, it can be difficult to search and find the specific instance you're looking for. This is something I would like all of them to improve. BeyondTrust, CyberArk, Centrify, and Thycotic could do some improvements in staying up to date and actually allowing you to search based on the product version. They are assuming that everybody is on their way to release. They put out a new release, but it is not reflected on the support site, which makes no sense to me, especially when they revamp all the error codes. They all have been guilty of this in some way."
"We use a program to automate all of this, but it's not a default feature of BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management."
"The initial setup was very difficult. Even if you are an expert in EPM, it is still very difficult."
"The product should improve its price."
"Its feature for establishing workflows needs improvement."
"It keeps on breaking every now and then. It is not yet mature. Every time something new comes up or we run into some new issues, the culprit is BeyondTrust because the agents and the adapter are not mature. The new development process goes on, and they're not able to handle things. It should be mature. It shouldn't break every now and then."
"They should include some assignments in the test environment to explore the product's features."
"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."
"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."
"The management console could be improved."
"Technical support was good when CA handled it. After Broadcom took over, it's not as good."
"We have to do a lot of manual work to automate features."
"The support for other remote assistance tools would be excellent. Free included tools in Windows (Remote Assist) and Microsoft SCCM Configuration Manager (ConMgr Remote Control) allow companies to reduce the amount of RDP connections and expand the usage of the tools are frequently used by companies to provide technical support for remote assistance."
"The service account management functionality needs to be extended to application pools, SQL database, PowerShell scripts, service account discovery, etc."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price-wise, it is very competitive. In our area, government entities and banks don't go for the monthly payment. It is a headache even for us in terms of finance and procurement to go for monthly payments. Quarterly might be more logical and reasonable, but the minimum that we go for is one year, and sometimes, we even try to compile and give one offering for three years."
"Its pricing and licensing are okay. We were in the perpetual model when it was on-prem, and now, with the SaaS service, we have a subscription model. As a customer, I would always like to see a lower price, but it seems to be priced at the right model currently, and we are trying to get the maximum benefits out of it."
"What BeyondTrust was providing was user-based licensing which was a great benefit from the client point of view. Recently, I don't know why, the licensing model has been changed, and that is the reason that they have lost a bit of their edge when it comes to the PAM, against our competition. The asset-based licensing, from the user's point of view, is not beneficial. The licensing should be based on the users. The greater the number of users, the greater will be the load and the greater the scalability problems. I presume that is why the licensing model has changed."
"It was very expensive."
"The solution's pricing is high."
"I'm sure everyone should have the cluster environment, which means more expensive, anyway, cheaper than the other solutions."
"This solution is expensive compared to its competitors."
"It is relatively more cost-effective compared to the competing product."
"They offer per-device, per-user, or monthly and yearly licensing models."
"Don’t go with an agent model. Don’t go with a model that has you buying a thousand different parts. Go with PAM that gives you everything, or you’ll just be paying costs of implementing another tool that PAM would have just given you up front."
"It is more expensive than other solutions on the market."
"I would prefer better licensing options for the 20-100 users we have at a given time."
"Cost-wise, CA was better compared to others in the market. ​"
"Pricing is fair compared to other top vendors."
"It is reasonably priced."
"Appliances are relatively cheap, don’t skimp. Make sure you have redundancy, high availability, and enough appliances to manage the concurrent workload."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Looking for recommendations and a pros/cons template for software to detect insider threats
This is an inside-out --- outside-in --- inside-in question, as an insider can be an outsider as well. There is no short answer other than a blend of a PAM tool with Behavioral Analytics and Endpo...
What do you like most about BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management?
The solution's least privilege enforcement has helped us ensure access is given to only the required people.
What do you like most about Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
We can check the activities in the server for fragile files and documents in case of any issues.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
Pricing is reasonable. It's neither as expensive as BeyondTrust nor as cheap as other solutions. One can negotiate corporate discounts through franchises, as Broadcom manages most customers through...
What needs improvement with Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
Broadcom has neglected product development since acquiring Symantec, and nothing major has been added to PAM. The product has not kept up with market demands or introduced new features to compete w...
 

Also Known As

BeyondTrust PowerBroker, BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management for Windows, BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management for Mac, BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management for Linux, BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management for Unix, Avecto Defendpoint
CA PAM, Xceedium Xsuite, CA Privileged Access Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aera Energy LLC, Care New England, James Madison University
NEOVERA, Telesis, eSoft
Find out what your peers are saying about BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management vs. Symantec Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
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