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IBM Security Verify Access vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Security Verify Access
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
14th
Ranking in Access Management
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Identity Management (IM) (24th), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (17th)
Symantec Siteminder
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
12th
Ranking in Access Management
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
73
Ranking in other categories
Web Access Management (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Jared Ochieng - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers multiple authentication methods like tokens and one-time passwords
The authentication process with IBM Security Verify Access is good and is considered one of the best identity and access management solutions. It helps with multi-factor authentication. It offers multiple authentication methods like tokens and one-time passwords, enhancing security. It also includes features like password vaults and single sign-on, streamlining the access process for remote and local users across different solutions. The tool provides a password vault, single sign-on, and multifactor authentication. It offers various authentication methods like fingerprint integration, one-time passwords, or tokens sent via email or SMS. This ensures secure access to your accounts by providing multiple authentication options. The policy control feature allows you to set authentication measures and policies for your organization's identity governance. This feature helps create standardized policies and organize them into groups based on departments or specific needs. It simplifies access management for both administrators and users. IBM Security Verify Access can be integrated with almost any solution using APIs. The time required for integration depends on whether the solution is out of the box or custom. Out-of-the-box solutions can be integrated quickly, typically within a few days or hours, while custom solutions may require additional steps and take longer to integrate.
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 solution has powerful authentification and authorization. It offers a good way to increase security."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Security Access Manager, at least for my company, is multi-factor authentication. That's the only feature my company is using. The solution works well and has no glitches. IBM Security Access Manager is a very good solution, so my company is still using it."
"It's a good solution for identification and access management."
"I have found this solution to be really practical and when a user wants to log in, it is effortless and runs smooth."
"From the integration point of view, it supports SAML, OIDC, and OAuth. For legacy applications that don't have support for SAML and other new protocols, it provides single sign-on access to end-users. From the integration compatibility point of view, it is highly capable."
"Its stability and UI are most valuable."
"The tool provides a password vault, single sign-on, and multifactor authentication. It offers various authentication methods like fingerprint integration, one-time passwords, or tokens sent via email or SMS. This ensures secure access to your accounts by providing multiple authentication options."
"Ease of use is very good, for administrating it. It's very well known."
"The solution has features that allow you to easily distinguish between protected and unprotected resources."
"Symantec Siteminder Is both scalable and stable."
"It is reliable."
"We almost never have outages nor see slowdowns."
"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 is pretty easy to learn."
"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."
 

Cons

"There are a lot of areas that can be improved, but the main area is the lack of customization. You cannot easily customize anything in the product. It is not easy to tweak the functionality. It is challenging to change the out-of-the-box functionality."
"What we'd like improved in IBM Security Access Manager is its onboarding process as it's complex, particularly when onboarding new applications. We need to be very, very careful during the onboarding. We have no issues with IBM Security Access Manager because the solution works fine, apart from the onboarding process and IBM's involvement in onboarding issues. If we need support related to the onboarding, we've noticed a pattern where support isn't available, or they don't have much experience, or we're not getting a response from them. We're facing the same issue with IBM Guardium. As we're just focusing on the multi-factor authentication feature of IBM Security Access Manager and we didn't explore any other features, we don't have additional features to suggest for the next release of the solution, but we're in discussion about exploring ID management and access management features, but those are just possibilities because right now, we're focused on exploring our domain."
"They can improve the single sign-on configuration for OIDC and OAuth. That is not very mature in this product, and they can improve it in this particular area. OIDC is a third-party integration that we do with the cloud platforms, and OAuth is an authorization mechanism for allowing a user having an account with Google or any other provider to access an application. Organizations these days are looking for just-in-time provisioning use cases, but IBM Security Access Manager is not very mature for such use cases. There are only a few applications that can be integrated, and this is where this product is lagging. However, in terms of configuration and single sign-on mechanisms, it is a great product."
"The user interface for users and administrators could be improved to make it easier. Automating some functions could also be beneficial."
"The user interface needs to be simplified, it's complex and not user-friendly."
"Configuration could be simplified for the end-user."
"The solution could be classified as a hilt system. There are a lot of resources being used and it is suitable for very large enterprises or the public sector."
"If the reporting feature can be integrated into SSO itself that will be an icing on the cake."
"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 support could be faster."
"CA has reporting at the moment. With the reporting, every particular segmented product has a reporting engine. I would like to see centralized reporting for all of them together."
"The support team could work on their response time and overall competence."
"We are finding some compatibility issues. We're still working with CA on them."
"The GUIs are not very clear, especially when integrating with other products from CA."
"The tech support has not been very good for us so we don't use them anymore. We have had some issues. Nobody is perfect."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is not expensive. It depends on the number of users."
"It costs about 300K AED for a year. Its pricing is a bit on the higher end, but in comparison to other products in the market, its price is still better. There are lots of other products that are very costly."
"The license and costs depend on the amount range of users you have. For just approximately 2,000 users, the price is practical and fair. However, when you have 20,000 users, it starts to become really expensive, and the discount per user is not attractive enough to go ahead and purchase."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"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 licensing is fair for this solution."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Insurance Company
18%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
34%
Insurance Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Security Access Manager?
The tool provides a password vault, single sign-on, and multifactor authentication. It offers various authentication methods like fingerprint integration, one-time passwords, or tokens sent via ema...
What needs improvement with IBM Security Access Manager?
The user interface for users and administrators could be improved to make it easier. Automating some functions could also be beneficial.
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

IBM Security Verify Access (SVA), IBM Security Access Manager, ISAM
Single Sign-On, SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
 

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

POST Luxembourg
British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security Verify Access vs. Symantec Siteminder and other solutions. Updated: November 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.