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Fortra's Powertech Identity & Access Manager vs Idira Privileged Access Manager comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 2, 2026

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

Fortra's Powertech Identity...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
32nd
Average Rating
5.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Idira Privileged Access Man...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Enterprise Password Managers (2nd), Mainframe Security (1st), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category, the mindshare of Fortra's Powertech Identity & Access Manager is 1.0%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Idira Privileged Access Manager is 8.6%, down from 16.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Idira Privileged Access Manager8.6%
Fortra's Powertech Identity & Access Manager1.0%
Other90.4%
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer910470 - PeerSpot reviewer
Practice Lead at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Inexperienced support for old product, but good flexibility for use case customization
HelpSystems Powertech is scalable if you throw more servers at it. Then you can distribute the load, which is a Microsoft SQL Server backend, and as long as you allocate enough resources to those things, then it is scalable. That's good enough. It would be an entire organization that uses it. So at a hospital for example, a healthcare system, a bank, and it would be the entire workforce on it. I haven't see a lot of customer's specific use cases, but it is for the whole workforce, everyone. The CEO of the company to the janitor. In terms of maintaining it, that requires application administrators or system administrators. There is a manual process to update the product, at least with the on-premise version.
Mahmudul Hoque Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Engineer at intelQong Technology
Centralized access has improved privileged control and visibility yet still needs better integrations
While the access control capabilities are useful, streamlining some configuration and policy management workflows could enhance the user experience for administrators. A simpler interface for creating access policies and quickly identifying unusual activities would make day-to-day administration more efficient. Stronger integration with existing identity data and secret management could be a significant improvement for Idira Privileged Access Manager. Deeper integration with cloud solutions would make it easier to correlate privileged access activity with other security events. I would also appreciate more flexible reporting and dashboards so administrators can swiftly see access patterns and unusual privileged access from a single view.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"HelpSystems Powertech's feature that I have found most valuable is its flexibility."
"HelpSystems Powertech's feature that I have found most valuable is its flexibility. It is able to be extended. A lot of the products these days, especially the ones on the cloud, are limited and can't handle all the use cases. Often there is not even a way to customize the application to meet uncommon use cases and HelpSystems provides an infrastructure that lends itself to the ability to be customized."
"The most valuable feature of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is privileged threat analytics."
"It improves security in our company. We have more than 10,000 accounts that we manage in CyberArk. We use these accounts for SQLs, Windows Server, and Unix. Therefore, keeping these passwords up-to-date in another solution or software would be impossible. Now, we have some sort of a platform to manage passwords, distribute the inflow, and manage IT teams as well as making regular changes to it according to the internal security policies in our bank."
"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."
"Overall, I would rate it a ten out of ten."
"CyberArk is a more secure product - much better than Thycotic."
"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 password protection itself is the most important feature. It's something we didn't have before."
"If you compare this product with anything else as far as an endpoint solution, there is nothing which even compares."
 

Cons

"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the support of the product. It's hard to get support for it. I think this is emblematic of the fact that they don't have a lot of employees who have long-term experience with it."
"I would not necessarily recommend customers use it."
"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."
"More than the product itself, there is room for improvement in the documentation."
"Tech support staff can be more proactive."
"Authentication to the PVWA utilises integration to IIS. Therefore, it is not as strong as desired."
"The solution is too big and complex for any businesses that are small or medium-sized. They should offer a more compact version or make a solution better suited to smaller businesses."
"CyberArk has to continue to evolve with that threat landscape to make sure that they're still protecting those credentials that are owned by those that have privileged accounts in the firms."
"The one place where we found that this product really needs to improve is the cloud."
"Functionality to enable drive mappings to platforms and default connectors without the need to use AutoIt."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The solution is very expensive and requires a license. We pay for an enterprise license."
"I would rate the tool’s pricing a six out of ten."
"If you are looking at implementing this solution, buy the training and go to it."
"Although CyberArk Privileged Access Management is expensive, its protection capabilities outweigh the cost."
"The solution is available at a high price"
"CyberArk is one of the best PAM solutions and one of the most expensive, but it works better than the others, so the pricing is fair."
"This solution is considered to be more expensive than others out there on the market today."
"It can be an expensive product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise43
Large Enterprise175
 

Questions from the Community

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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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
The pricing is reasonable compared to other software options we evaluated, and it is straightforward. However, overall costs depend on deployment size and licensing requirements.
What needs improvement with CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
While the access control capabilities are useful, streamlining some configuration and policy management workflows could enhance the user experience for administrators. A simpler interface for creat...
 

Also Known As

HelpSystems Powertech Identity & Access Manager, Powertech Identity & Access Manager, BoKS, BoKS ServerControl, Fox Technologies ApplicationControl, ApplicationControl
CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Integris Health
Rockwell Automation
Find out what your peers are saying about Idira by Palo Alto Networks, One Identity, Okta and others in Privileged Access Management (PAM). Updated: October 2026.
919,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.