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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
219
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
7.0
Number of Reviews
53
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

"This solution is quite stable."
"It is an extremely scalable solution."
"CyberArk PAM can be easily automated."
"It has helped from an auditing perspective identify who has access to privileged accounts."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager has saved us 60% to 70% of our cost."
"Password rotation, session recording & isolation and on-demand privileges."
"Helped us meet our standards and requirements to help us comply with industry standards and banking regulations."
"The Password Upload Utility tool makes it easier when setting up a Safe that contains multiple accounts and has cut down the amount of time that it takes to complete the task."
"The interface is very friendly, colorful, and bold."
"Symantec PAM is easier to deploy compared to its competitors, such as BeyondTrust."
"Transparent login for users of privileged IDs (Linux, Windows). This prevents sharing of the password because it is never seen."
"We found that the architecture is scalable and very resilient."
"The DB clustering is a really good benefit of using CA PAM."
"The RDP-gateway: For limiting which server an operator can access."
"The system is very stable."
"CA PAM is working well for us."
 

Cons

"The continuous scanning of the assets is limited to Windows and Unix. We like to have the solution scan any databases, network devices, and security devices for privileged accounts. That would be very helpful."
"Having a cloud version would be very helpful. You have to invest a lot of money for the infrastructure hardware so the cloud version would help."
"CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault's deployment is complex for resources with little experience. Tech support needs to be improved as well based on quality and knowledge."
"Many of the infrastructure folks who use the product dislike it because it complicates their workflow. They get a little less control, and they have to go through a specific solution. It proactively logs in for them, which obfuscates some of the issues that they may be troubleshooting."
"The only problem involves granting access to people who are authorized to view it."
"In the beginning, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager didn't have a multifactor authentication feature, so that was an area for improvement, but now it's part of the solution. Having just one console for two CyberArk products would be good, particularly for the CyberArk Privileged Access Manager and the CyberArk Endpoint Privilege Manager, with the latter being a product for endpoint management that supports the workstations and allows you to manage workstations. In the next update of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, it would be good to have a local agent where you can manage all users and processes, and have an agent on the servers such as Linux and Windows."
"​It's hard to find competent resellers/support."
"We don't often contact technical support, but when we do it, the response could be faster and better."
"Bring more technology into the portfolio and being able to collapse those products into a much more integrated way."
"The service account management functionality needs to be extended to application pools, SQL database, PowerShell scripts, service account discovery, etc."
"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."
"Technical support was good when CA handled it. After Broadcom took over, it's not as good."
"They need to do a little bit more on the mainframe side.​"
"Recent releases need improvement in webpage management. For instance, navigating through a webpage that acts like a wizard, where I proceed to the next page and enter more information, is not handled well by the system."
"The setup is complex."
"I’m no fan of Java as an application front-end, as it tends to have issues depending on what browser one’s using."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Quite expensive"
"CyberArk has been Gartner's number-one pick for the past ten years, so you can infer that their pricing is higher than everyone else. When you are the best, you will charge appropriately for it."
"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."
"The price of this solution is expensive."
"Its price is high. I have also worked with Delinea. CyberArk is comparatively expensive compared to other PAM solutions, such as Delinea, especially during renewal."
"Generally, I don't get involved in the licensing or the purchasing side of it, but I do know that the licenses are expensive."
"It's per-company, license-based."
"I would prefer better licensing options for the 20-100 users we have at a given time."
"They offer per-device, per-user, or monthly and yearly licensing models."
"The licensing is simple and scalable."
"It is reasonably priced."
"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."
"It is more expensive than other solutions on the market."
"Appliances are relatively cheap, don’t skimp. Make sure you have redundancy, high availability, and enough appliances to manage the concurrent workload."
"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%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
 

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?
Due to the nature of the solution, it is hard to gauge, but compared to competitors, the pricing is very good. I would rate it as an eight and a half out of ten.
What needs improvement with Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
Recent releases need improvement in webpage management. For instance, navigating through a webpage that acts like a wizard, where I proceed to the next page and enter more information, is not handl...
 

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: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.