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CyberArk Privileged Access Manager vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 ...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
217
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Enterprise Password Managers (2nd), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (1st), Mainframe Security (2nd), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
Symantec Siteminder
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (12th), Web Access Management (1st), Access Management (11th)
 

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.
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
Improved user experience with seamless integration and easy installation
The feature that I mostly valued is the ease of installation on different systems, especially on Windows. Additionally, it is very beneficial for deploying single sign-on sessions between different windows on a web browser, provided I am connected to the right identity provider. That seamless integration significantly improves user experience and efficiency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I love the ability to customize the passwords: the forbidden characters, the length of the password, the number of capital, lowercase, and special characters. You can customize the password so that it tailor fits, for example, mainframes that can't have more than eight characters. You can say, "I want a random password that doesn't have these special characters, but it is exactly eight characters," so that it doesn't throw errors."
"If any intruder gets inside, they would not be able to move around nor do lateral movements. It minimize any attack problems within our network."
"The best feature of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is its core function: automatically managing and securing credentials."
"It enables companies to automate password management on target systems gaining a more secure access management approach."
"The credentials management capability is key to ensuring that the credentials are kept secure and that access to them is done on a temporary and event-driven basis."
"It has helped us with our adoption with other teams, and it has also helped us to integrate it at the ground level."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager has saved us 60% to 70% of our cost."
"When we started with RPA, there was a requirement that every credential and the bots themselves be protected through the PAM system. From the get-go, we've had CyberArk in the middle... We've got a pretty robust RPA implementation with our PAM platform. Users, bots, the credentials — everything is managed via our PAM solution."
"Siteminder allows us to manage identity and portability control efficiently."
"A valuable feature of Siteminder is the way it handles bulk traffic. The features it has, in terms of routing the traffic and load balancing, are good."
"It has considerably reduced the amount of time that new users would take to join into the organization. Previously, it was a lengthy, manual process because it's a very secure environment, where they need to verify the user before they can actually grant him a user-ID and password. Integrating with the built-in custom application, and exposing CA Single Sign On to the internet, we were able to get the employees onboard. The time that we gained was: previously it would generally take from four to eight weeks for each employee, we brought it to one to two days."
"I liked the debugging part. There are only two files (trace file and log file) that you need to look into while performing debugging, and the logs give you the exact info on where and what needs to be fixed."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with the Active Directory."
"It's quite scalable."
"The solution is easy to use for our managers."
"The solution has features that allow you to easily distinguish between protected and unprotected resources."
 

Cons

"The initial setup was a bit complex."
"Tech support staff can be more proactive."
"There is room for improvement, particularly with Vendor PAM."
"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."
"There is a little bit of confusion in the implementation part, especially when one tries to understand the actual working of the product."
"We would like to expand the usage of the auto discovery accounts feed, then on our end, tie in the REST API for automation."
"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."
"Response time is not ideal, and reaching someone knowledgeable can take time."
"The support team could work on their response time and overall competence."
"Better documentation. I went through some sessions on single sign-on for version 12.7."
"I think they need to integrate some of the newer types of authentication into the product. I'm not seeing the innovation when it comes to biometrics in the product."
"I'd like to see a rework of the user directory configuration."
"The Federation part of CA Single Sign On, it's a bit complex to implement because it involves the SSL certificates, exchange of certificates, and lot of technical details. The documentation misses some important parts of this, so that's the reason it took some time for us to go live."
"Symantec SiteMinder is not easy to set up and maintain at an infrastructure level."
"The initial setup was complex, painful. But that is to be expected of any new setup. When you're a big bank like us, any kind of migration to a new product is hard. I expect it to be painful, and it was painful. But it's not something that you can avoid."
"We would like to the OAuth be more stable, more issues being fixed rather than not."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Quite expensive"
"The price of CyberArk support could be a little bit less. Otherwise, pricing is fine."
"This solution is considered to be more expensive than others out there on the market today."
"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."
"The product’s pricing is feasible for enterprise customers. The pricing is expensive for smaller businesses. You need to pay additional costs for service implementation and local support."
"From a client perspective, CyberArk's pricing is fair but there is a significant increase each year. They should limit the price increase because this could potentially drive customers to other partners. Price changes should be at defined intervals. There should not be sudden jumps."
"The price of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is expensive. There are no other fees other than the standard licensing fees."
"Compared to other solutions, it is costly."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"Siteminder is a little costly. You pay for licensing, and they offer packages, so if you have less users, then you have to buy different products at different prices. If you have more of a user base, then the package is different. They also include other features—for example, if you have a database and you're using Siteminder, then it's good to use a Semantic-specific database, but if you are using less, then you have to purchase the database separately. Whereas if you are going for a bigger license, then it comes within the package. It depends on which plan you are using."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
34%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
36%
Insurance Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

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 Siteminder?
It's agent-based. It's convenient to deploy and integrate.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Siteminder?
When considering pricing, I have usually advised on the Microsoft solution, but compared to that, Symantec SiteMinder’s pricing is moderately priced. I would rate it a four on a scale where one is ...
What needs improvement with Symantec Siteminder?
I need to check the latest documentation, however, being able to expand or at least communicate with other identity providers to perform handshakes would be great. While I have some integration wit...
 

Also Known As

CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rockwell Automation
British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Find out what your peers are saying about CyberArk Privileged Access Manager vs. Symantec Siteminder and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.