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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.
Singaravelu C - PeerSpot reviewer
CyberArk Engineer at Tata Consultancy
Provides full visibility into user activity and ensures secure end-to-end access across critical systems
In CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, I see room for improvement as I am working in the on-premises networks, and now we are also having the cloud-based PAM. So there, everything is maintained by the CyberArk Privileged Access Manager team, and we are only maintaining the PSM servers. So it is already upgraded from the on-premises network to the cloud network. If you ask me what we can implement beyond that, I just need a few minutes to think about what new things, because it is already an end-to-end security on-premises itself. Now, when it comes to PCloud, Privileged Cloud, it is more secure than the on-premises networks because most of the things are handled using the cloud itself. So it is an already upgraded version; we do not need to implement something new. But if you think in that way, we can have a chance to implement our things. If anything could be improved in CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, I think we could build a small agent AI in my team, we could give access to these logs—the Vault logs, PSM logs, and CPM logs. Whenever the system is going down, the AI will automatically check. If we actually implement agent AI in CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, it will check the logs, and if any errors are coming, it automatically triggers alerts and gives the solution. That is the best improvement I can think of because these days, most things are done by agent AI. So if we also implement this agent AI in CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, we can add more features.

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 is a central repository. Therefore, if someone needs to access a server, then they go through CyberArk PAM. It provides a secure way to do this and CyberArk PAM records everything. For example, if you are connecting to a Linux server, then once you get into the Linux server and if it is integrated with CyberArk, it will automatically start recording everything that is being done. In most banks, seeing the recordings is very useful. If there are any gaps or something has happened which shouldn't have happened, then we can check the logs and videos. So, it gives security, in a robust manner, to the organization."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager’s ability to safeguard credentials is very important."
"The central password manager is the most valuable feature because the password is constantly changing. If an outsider threat came in and gained access to one of those passwords, they would not have access for long."
"CyberArk has the most extensive hardening and encryption techniques I have seen in a product, with equal intentions."
"It is good, it fits our needs, and there is not anything else out in the market that can match it."
"Security has been improved."
"CyberArk is a more secure product - much better than Thycotic."
"Considering all those factors and being the best tool in the market for Privileged Access Management, it is recommended."
 

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."
"Their support can be better. Their SLA timings are higher than others."
"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."
"The initial setup was somewhat complex, but we received help from the product support team with the installation."
"Three-year support (unlimited case and call support) is free with license purchase but I would say sometimes it's not sufficient to resolve the issues with this model."
"Functionality to enable drive mappings to platforms and default connectors without the need to use AutoIt."
"Its pricing is a big challenge here. When it started, the product came in at a very low cost. Now, they are the leaders in the market, so the cost has grown and is quite huge."
"I would like easier integrations for creating an online dashboard that executives would look at or are able to run reports from the tool."
"I would like to see improvement in the custom connector for integration with different devices."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Generally, I don't get involved in the licensing or the purchasing side of it, but I do know that the licenses are expensive."
"If you are looking at implementing this solution, buy the training and go to it."
"I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"I'm aware that the organization had purchased licensing for almost all of CyberArk's solutions including licensing for PTA, EPM, and the Application Identity Manager. But when it comes to PSM, this is one of the components where there's an additional charge for any extra PSMs that you want to deploy. I believe that there's some rider where the vendor has a bit of leeway to, at times, charge a premium on whatever additional services you may require above the board."
"With reducing the privileged account access, there has been a huge improvement. They are now bringing more accounts on a little at a time."
"Although CyberArk Privileged Access Management is expensive, its protection capabilities outweigh the cost."
"I believe that this solution is priced well. It's the market leader and I think that it's the best solution."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
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?
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: October 2026.
916,197 professionals have used our research since 2012.