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CyberArk Privileged Access Manager vs Symantec Privileged Access Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 6, 2024

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

CyberArk Privileged Access ...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
217
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Enterprise Password Managers (2nd), Mainframe Security (2nd), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
Symantec Privileged Access ...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
21st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category, the mindshare of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is 19.0%, down from 23.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Privileged Access Manager is 1.5%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

Featured Reviews

Lasantha Wijesinghe - PeerSpot reviewer
We have visibility and control through real-time user behavior analytics
It took us some time to realize its benefits because there was a learning curve for us. It took us about a year to get our heads around this product and start effectively using it. It is a journey. It takes at least five years for any company to make this product very useful and reach maturity. It is not only the product's fault. The company needs to have a vision, and the company culture needs to go with it. Senior leadership needs to support the vision. You need to have lots of ingredients for success. If everything is in place, you will see success after one year. In the first year, it is a struggle for everybody. My company was bought by a bigger company, and they were very new to privileged access management. Everybody was struggling. The advice I would give is to have a good vision for privileged access management. You need dedicated teams, senior management support, and proper company policies and standards before implementing the solution. Start building knowledge slowly and avoid jumping into the deep end without preparation. I would rate CyberArk Privileged Access Manager a nine out of ten.
Krishnan Srinivasan - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhances credential management and relatively inexpensive but needs feature improvements
I work for a service provider company, and we implement Symantec Privileged Access Manager solutions for our clients, which include various banking and mining clients We have implemented both the remote access and credential management features. The agent-based credential management solution…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We also use CyberArk’s Secrets Manager. Because AWS is the biggest area for us, we have accounts in AWS that are being rotated by CyberArk. We also have a manual process for the most sensitive of our AWS accounts, like root accounts. We've used Secrets Manager on those and that has resulted in a significant risk reduction, as well."
"The password rotation and cyber gateway have been quite useful."
"For a while, there were individual IDs having privileged access. We wanted to restrict that. We implemented the solution so that it can be more of internal control. We can have session recordings happening and reduce our attacks."
"The automatic password management is the most important feature. The second most important feature is the ability to enforce dual control on the release of those passwords. The combination of these two features is the most important thing for us because we can show that we're in control of who uses any non-personal account, and when they do so."
"The most valuable feature is Special Monitoring."
"I found it valuable that CyberArk Privileged Access Manager can be integrated with PTA (privileged threat analytics), and this means that it will tell you if there's a risk to the logins and signs of risk and if risky behavior is observed. It's a good feature. Another good feature is the CPM (central password manager) because it helps you rotate the passwords automatically without involving the admins. It can go and update the scheduled tasks and the services. At the same time, if there's an application where it cannot do all of these, CPM will trigger an automatic email to the application owners, telling them that they should go ahead and change the password. This allows you to manage the account password that CyberArk cannot manage, which helps mitigate the risk of old passwords, where the password gets compromised, and also allows you to manage the security of the domain."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is excellent for meeting compliance and regulatory requirements."
"The access control feature and privilege and role-based assignment are outstanding."
"We know we can scale up with what we have, and we probably will not need to buy any further appliances down the road."
"We found that the architecture is scalable and very resilient."
"It is great for identity governance."
"The interface is very friendly, colorful, and bold."
"CA PAM is working well for us."
"You can do A2A integration. You can have your own script, which can then run outside of PA to retrieve the password and perform other tasks."
"We can check the activities in the server for fragile files and documents in case of any issues."
"The product is very scalable in terms of concurrent sessions that it can handle at a time, number of device it can support, accounts that it can manage, or number of nodes that you can deploy in a cluster."
 

Cons

"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."
"Areas the product could be improved are in some of the reporting capabilities and how the reports are configured."
"The price is high compared to Azure Key Vault. It's the most expensive solution."
"Its GUI is very confusing."
"I would like to see better automation in granting access, better tools, more efficient tools, to be able to customize the solution that CyberArk provides."
"As a customer, I might need a plugin for a specific product, or an application, and CyberArk might have already worked with some other client on it. There has to be some platform where it is available for everybody else to go and grab it, instead of my having to reinvent the wheel."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager could improve the integration with other solutions and ease of use. Additionally, there should be a feature to have remote connections without a VPN."
"There is room for improvement in the availability of custom connectors on the marketplace for this solution. Additionally, their services for the CICD pipeline and ease of integration could be improved."
"Instead of just giving passwords to the user based on job function, from auditing perspective, turn that cycle around. That would really help from an auditing standpoint."
"I wish it could create local accounts on desktops."
"It's difficult to locate the reports, there are limits on what reports can be run from the GUI, and the report formats are lacking."
"The support for other remote assistance tools would be excellent. Free included tools in Windows (Remote Assist) and Microsoft SCCM Configuration Manager (ConMgr Remote Control) allow companies to reduce the amount of RDP connections and expand the usage of the tools are frequently used by companies to provide technical support for remote assistance."
"They should include some assignments in the test environment to explore the product's features."
"It'd be great if you just stuck in your PIV card and Windows popped up, asked you for your password. You typed it in, then it remembered your credentials."
"They need to have zero tier and active-active setup ​with zero minimum downtime, which they are working on it. ​"
"They need to do a little bit more on the mainframe side.​"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This product is very expensive."
"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."
"The solution is available at a high price"
"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."
"Its price can be reduced."
"I'm a technician so I don't handle the licensing for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, but I know that the price for the core license is about €140 per year. There's another type of license, the external vendor license, and that's about €600 and you can manage twenty devices. From what I know, the price for one device in a subscription is about €65 per year. You can buy the CyberArk Endpoint Privilege Manager too, or you can buy some other application or application license with CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, but all other features, such as the Analytics Server is included in the basic CyberArk license. With WALLIX, you need to buy separate licenses for the features."
"Payments have to be made on a yearly basis toward the licensing costs of the solution."
"The version we are using is affordable compared to BeyondTrust, which is maybe three to four times as expensive, but it depends on the features."
"Appliances are relatively cheap, don’t skimp. Make sure you have redundancy, high availability, and enough appliances to manage the concurrent workload."
"It is more expensive than other solutions on the market."
"Pricing is fair compared to other top vendors."
"They offer per-device, per-user, or monthly and yearly licensing models."
"It is reasonably priced."
"Cost-wise, CA was better compared to others in the market. ​"
"Don’t go with an agent model. Don’t go with a model that has you buying a thousand different parts. Go with PAM that gives you everything, or you’ll just be paying costs of implementing another tool that PAM would have just given you up front."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
34%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
12%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 do you like most about CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
The most valuable features of the solution are control and analytics.
What do you like most about Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
We can check the activities in the server for fragile files and documents in case of any issues.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
Symantec Privileged Access Manager is potentially cheaper than other solutions. I am not involved in the business side, so I do not have specific cost details.
What needs improvement with Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
Comparing Symantec Privileged Access Manager with market leaders like CyberArk and Delinea, CyberArk is the market leader. Delinea is better than Symantec Privileged Access Manager in terms of secu...
 

Also Known As

CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
CA PAM, Xceedium Xsuite, CA Privileged Access Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rockwell Automation
NEOVERA, Telesis, eSoft
Find out what your peers are saying about CyberArk Privileged Access Manager vs. Symantec Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.