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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
210
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Enterprise Password Managers (3rd), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (1st), Mainframe Security (2nd), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
Symantec Siteminder
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
73
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.
Siva Chalamarla - PeerSpot reviewer
Good access control and SSO but needs modernization
The access control and the SSO are the two most valuable features. Siteminder allows users to authenticate once and gain access to multiple applications without needing to reauthenticate for each application separately. For example, if you access one application in one tab, you do not need to provide it again if you are trying to access the same application. The portal has different applications built into it. It's similar to Google. If you open Google and try to access the maps in that Google, you do not need to authenticate in maps. You just need to authenticate in the starting phase. Only a particular group of people have access. Our guys will give an error called access denied or unauthorized access. It depends on the application. It is pretty easy to learn.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The voice technology is very good."
"CyberArk's support is excellent, providing personalized assistance through a dedicated local account manager and sales engineer."
"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."
"I would recommend CyberArk Privileged Access Manager because it is a leading solution for privileged access management."
"Every aspect of the solution is very well integrated, and even that gives comfort. It is a fail-safe kind of environment."
"All access to our servers by both staff and vendors is monitored and recorded."
"Super stable and easy to scale"
"The biggest feature is the security of the overall solution. It's very secure. The vaulting technology and the number of security layers involved in the vault, where privileged accounts are actually stored, is the heart of the solution."
"It is very scalable. We have a very large customer base: 75 million customers."
"It has the ability to authenticate and authorize users. It is the main feature for our security."
"IWA is an out-of-the-box feature. The SAML-based federation is standard for all tools. However, CA Single Sign-On has made the federation configuration way too simple and handy to set up and use."
"Federation is valuable, for sure, because we have a lot of third-party vendors that we need to integrate with, and this is a turnkey solution in some ways."
"Symantec Siteminder has simplified user access for our customers from user login to their web applications."
"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's agent-based. It's convenient to deploy and integrate."
"As our identity model continues to mature, probably the Federation is most valueable."
 

Cons

"I sometimes require learning resources when there is a new solution for CyberArk."
"There is room for improvement, particularly with Vendor PAM."
"The product documentation has to be more precise in certain aspects with explanations for functionality limitations along with reference material or screenshots."
"CyberArk has two disadvantages; the first is that it's insanely expensive and the other is it's very complex."
"Transitioning from a traditional on-premises deployment to the privileged cloud has resulted in losing access to many logs and administrative tools typically available on the back end."
"The Vault's disaster recovery features need improvement."
"Our DevOps team is looking in the direction of cloud, because we are not in it today. We are hoping to build it with Conjur from the ground up."
"Response time is not ideal, and reaching someone knowledgeable can take time."
"To add more value to this solution it needs to be more user-friendly."
"Symantec SiteMinder is not easy to set up and maintain at an infrastructure level."
"We would like to the OAuth be more stable, more issues being fixed rather than not."
"Some of the new protocols, like OAuth 2.0, could be improved."
"All the problems that we reported actually have never been resolved. We could not capture enough information for CA to be able to debug the problem."
"The main thing is we do not have the traceability and good monitoring that CA can provide us to capture problems when they occur."
"I would like to see a move towards the newer technologies, which is what we are doing right now. I think that's in the roadmap that's coming, in the 12.8 and 14 releases, but we would like to have it sooner than later."
"In future releases, I would like to see maybe more capabilities with some more modern authentication."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's an affordable platform."
"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."
"Pricing and licensing depend on the environment."
"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."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is more expensive than its competitors, such as BeyondTrust, Delinea, and ManageEngine PAM360."
"It's per-company, license-based."
"The price of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager could be less expensive."
"Compared to other solutions, it is costly."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"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 pricing is reasonable."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
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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
35%
Insurance Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
I focus more on the technical side, but I hear customers say that if CyberArk was more affordable, they might have acquired more licenses. Some clients consider alternative solutions due to pricing...
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?
The maintenance fee has increased, raising concerns about the overall cost to customers.
What needs improvement with Symantec Siteminder?
The maintenance cost has increased significantly, and we are concerned about this. We also need to consider the customization or development required for web authentication when using Active Direct...
 

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: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.