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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 Nov 8, 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)
30th
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 (2nd), Enterprise Password Managers (3rd), Mainframe Security (2nd), Operational Technology (OT) Security (4th)
 

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 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Idira Privileged Access Manager is 8.5%, down from 14.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Idira Privileged Access Manager8.5%
Fortra's Powertech Identity & Access Manager1.0%
Other90.5%
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. 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."
"HelpSystems Powertech's feature that I have found most valuable is its flexibility."
"It's been a big win for us as we're now able to start managing service accounts with AIM."
"The most important feature is managing the credentials and implementing those policies which rotate the credentials. Session Manager is also key in not letting the users have access to those credentials. Instead, CyberArk actually manages everything by itself."
"As an end-user within the organization, I can't and I don't need to know the passwords of privileged accounts as CyberArk is taking care of the password/SSH Keys management on the target machines."
"I appreciate the ease of use for support analysts."
"Its features like detailed audit and reporting, automated workflows, granulated privileged access controls, automated password rotation, and centralized and secure storage have helped us in developing a secure environment for customers, along with audit and compliance coverage."
"You can see the benefits of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager immediately."
"CyberArk does its job very well, all the components are very useful and the benefits are all evident."
"The solution is stable."
 

Cons

"I would not necessarily recommend customers use it."
"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."
"It should be easier to install. It is a comprehensive product, which makes it difficult to install. You need to have their consulting services in order to get it all installed and set up correctly because there is so much going on. It would be nice if there were an easier way to do the installation without professional services. I suspect they get a fair amount of their money from professional services. So, there is not a huge incentive."
"Based on the user experience that I see on a day-to-day basis, some changes could be made to the Privileged Session Manager tool to make it more user-friendly. The user interface of that tool could be more advanced and understandable to laymen, rather than being more of a developer tool."
"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."
"It is easily customized, and that customization makes it very easy to start trying to shoehorn the solution into roles it was never intended to fill."
"The one place where we found that this product really needs to improve is the cloud. Simple integrations don't exist, even today. We don't have anything specific on CyberArk for managing, SaaS products, SaaS vendors, SaaS credentials. I understand it's a vendor-based thing and that they have to coordinate with the other vendors to be able to do that, and there are integrations coming. But these are the major places where CyberArk definitely needs to invest some more time."
"Privileged Threat Analytics (PTA) that can function in more that one AD domain at a time."
"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."
"Password Vault is much pricier than other solutions. A vendor team might struggle to explain why that price is justified. There are good alternatives that cost less."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The cost is high compared to other products."
"CyberArk is very expensive and there are additional fees for add-ons."
"This solution is expensive."
"Generally, I don't get involved in the licensing or the purchasing side of it, but I do know that the licenses are expensive."
"The solution is available at a high price"
"If you are looking at implementing this solution, buy the training and go to it."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Outsourcing Company
13%
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: November 2026.
921,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.