No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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

 

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)
33rd
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
230
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Enterprise Password Managers (2nd), Mainframe Security (1st), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category, the mindshare of Fortra's Powertech Identity & Access Manager is 1.0%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Idira Privileged Access Manager is 9.9%, down from 17.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Idira Privileged Access Manager9.9%
Fortra's Powertech Identity & Access Manager1.0%
Other89.1%
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.
Atul-Gujar - PeerSpot reviewer
CyberArk manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Secures critical infrastructures with essential user session audit records
A potential area for improvement is enhancing support for cluster environments and distributed Vaults. Clients in multiple countries that need central access have different challenges that require better solutions from CyberArk. For financial services, CyberArk can improve incident response by ensuring fast support for critical priority tickets to meet compliance requirements. Providing more documentation on CyberArk is recommended for new team members to enhance their troubleshooting capabilities. I understand it's up to the client, but 99% fail to change the demo key, so it's crucial for CyberArk to emphasize changing the key and documenting it as part of the installation process.

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."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager provides granularity. You can break things down into individual safes. You have specific access to safes by individual or group. The interface is with AD, with LDAP, or with local CyberArk passwords. You also have the ability to establish policies for your individual credentials."
"We know when passwords will be expiring so we can force users to change their passwords, as well as requiring specific password requirements for length, complexity, etc."
"The most valuable feature is privileged session management."
"It provides the broadest point of view for privileged access management solutions in the market."
"I love the ability to customize the passwords: the forbidden characters, the length of the password, the number of capital, lowercase, and special characters. You can customize the password so that it tailor fits, for example, mainframes that can't have more than eight characters. You can say, "I want a random password that doesn't have these special characters, but it is exactly eight characters," so that it doesn't throw errors."
"It does what it promised, it secures our platforms, has the scalability, and it is just a solid product."
"It gives us the capability to rotate passwords."
"The impact of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager on customer operational efficiency is quite positive."
 

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 product is very vaulting-focused. I'd love to see it expanding its capabilities a bit further into areas like just-in-time elevation, and access with non-vaulted credentials."
"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."
"The installation process should be easier and more user-friendly so that you don't need to hire a third party to deploy it."
"I find it hard to mention a point of improvement because I'm happy with the platform. The only thing I would say is that they can improve their price."
"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."
"Regarding technical support from CyberArk, while L2 and L3 teams are effective, L1 support requires improvement due to longer response times in critical situations."
"The PTA could be improved. Currently, companies often have multiple domains and sometimes it's difficult to implement CyberArk in this kind of infrastructure. For example, you can add CPM (Central Policy Manager) and PSM (Privileged Session Manager and PVWA (Password Vault Web Access) for access, but if you want to add PTA (Privileged Threat Analysis) to scan Vault logs, it is difficult because this component may be adding multiple domain environments."
"I would like to see a simplification of the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"In comparison to other products on the market, CyberArk is a more costly product."
"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."
"The product's licensing is yearly. I would rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"CyberArk is very expensive and there are additional fees for add-ons."
"There are no additional costs other than the standard licensing fees."
"The solution is available at a high price"
"Quite expensive"
"With the current model of licensing, for my use cases, sometimes it's hard to convince the management and get budget approvals for it. It's expensive and you're not getting anything new. It's just a control, but in terms of risk, you are covering a big impact on the company. Improvement in the licensing prices is something I would want to have."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions are best for your needs.
904,054 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise175
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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?
My thoughts on the pricing of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager depend entirely on the vendors' requirements. If they want their things to be secure, they have to spend accordingly. We have four t...
What needs improvement with CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
I believe account discovery and rolling support need to be improved. Account discovery is important when integrating with other systems, as other PAM solutions can perform account discovery and onb...
 

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: June 2026.
904,054 professionals have used our research since 2012.