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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 October 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."
"It takes people out of the machine work of ensuring credentials remain up-to-date, and handles connection brokering such that human usage and credential management remain independent."
"Previously, we didn't have any password rotation policy for application IDs, but once we implemented CyberArk, we created a policy and now every two weeks we are rotating the password without business impact, which gives us one place to store the keys to the kingdom so if there is any breach we know where it is and what to do."
"The password rotation and cyber gateway have been quite useful."
"The impact of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager on customer operational efficiency is quite positive."
"Session recordings and timestamps are valuable features. They allow me to specifically select the time a particular command was executed, so I do not have to review the entire recording. I can click on events to determine where and when they happened."
"Technical support is very helpful whenever we have any questions."
"With CyberArk, everything is a click away for us."
"This is a stable, reasonably priced product, and it has good security features as well."
 

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."
"CyberArk definitely needs to improve user experience and reduce complexity."
"Integration with the ticketing system should allow any number of fields to be used for validation before allowing a user to be evaluated and able to access a server."
"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."
"The initial setup was somewhat complex, but we received help from the product support team with the installation."
"In terms of mean time to respond, I acknowledge variable response time. The L1 team is proactive, yet the vendor often pushes to close incidents swiftly, even when issues remain unresolved."
"The authentication port is available in CyberArk Alero but not Fortinet products."
"CyberArk is not friendly in terms of having a Community Edition. It's a very, very costly app."
"The downside is that it's a big program. To scale excessively, locally, on an on-prem application, takes a lot of servers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It costs us around $200 per user."
"Although CyberArk Privileged Access Management is expensive, its protection capabilities outweigh the cost."
"I hope to learn how the pricing works so that I can understand it better, but I am certain it is not inexpensive."
"I haven't seen the numbers. I know it is not cheap, but I don't know what it is. I would rate it a six out of ten in terms of pricing. It is definitely more expensive than the other product, but it also provides more functionality, and it is modular too. So, we pay for the functionality we're actually going to use, and that's nice."
"I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The price of CyberArk support could be a little bit less. Otherwise, pricing is fine."
"I do not have any opinions to add about the pricing of the product."
"CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault is a very 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.
919,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.