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One Identity Active Roles vs Symantec Identity Governance and Administration comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 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

One Identity Active Roles
Ranking in User Provisioning Software
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Active Directory Management (4th)
Symantec Identity Governanc...
Ranking in User Provisioning Software
12th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Identity Management (IM) (28th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the User Provisioning Software category, the mindshare of One Identity Active Roles is 4.6%, up from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Identity Governance and Administration is 3.1%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
User Provisioning Software
 

Featured Reviews

JosephChandrasekaram - PeerSpot reviewer
Single interface and workflows simplify AD and Azure AD management efficiency and security
The most valuable features include * auditing * dynamic grouping * creating dynamic groups based on AD attributes. Also, as part of the cloud identity, meaning expanding identity to the cloud, it gives me a single workflow to expand on-prem. I can create a user in the cloud and give them access to resources through a single workflow. And for regulatory, auditing, and security requirements, it's critical that the solution enables Zero Trust security with hybrid AD fine delegation and role-based access control.
Efrén Yanez - PeerSpot reviewer
Identifies, debugs and models the privileges of your organization, adapting it to business strategies.
* Identifies, debugs and models the privileges of your organization, adapting it to business strategies. * Helps discover roles based on available patterns ("basic roles" / "Iterated Search" / "Characteristic Roles" / "Rule Hierarchies Roles" / "User Hierarchy Based Roles" / "Structured Search" / "Obvious Roles"). * Enables review campaigns to certify user privileges, roles and resources, activating the RACI model in the process. * Identity Governance comes with Connector Xpress but if you have Identity Manager you can use the integration between them and import the information that comes from CA Identity Manager and its connectors. * Allows the construction of segregation of rights (SoD) rules by definition of the client and enables “detective" and "corrective" levels for violations of business rules policies. * Provides a set of SoD rules for SAP in order to apply "best practices" to this type of "endpoint" (more than 3,000 rules / Consult CA Technologies if available in last version). * Helps to analyze privileges to find points of cleaning and improvement (Similar Roles / Roles Hierarchy / dual link / Suspect connections / Collectors, etc.). * Regulatory compliance is one of the objectives of the solution. * Covers the life cycle of enterprise privileges and maintains the role model "shallow" or "deep" / "functional" or "granular per application". * Helps you take advantage of the Identity Governance on the portal but better if you integrate with Identity Suite (best user experience). * You can enable LDAP authentication (AD/others) or integrate with CA Single Sign-On for portal access. * Real integration between CA Identity Manager and CA Identity Governance for better use of compliance approved roles, data exchange, and improved customer experience. * Data Transformation available using PDI (Pentaho Data Integration) * New functionality when integrating with Identity Portal.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The AD and AAD management features of this solution are really good... They offer added value by showing more fields such as password age and the statuses of some things that we normally wouldn't see."
"Active Roles improved the management of users, groups, and AD objects in the organization."
"Another good feature is the change history. It's centralized in a single place and allows us to manage people's Active Directory domains from a central location. We can also drill down into individual objects in a troubleshooting or even an auditing situation. We can show evidence to auditors by drilling down into the individual history. It gives you all the history of what happened around an individual object. That is something that would be almost impossible to do in Active Directory, or extremely complicated."
"Because of Active Roles, we're able to synchronize on an even more regular basis. It enables us to provide even more information to the Active Directory, which helped us to group our users in a more consistent manner."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable features include auditing, dynamic grouping, and creating dynamic groups based on AD attributes."
"With the use of the sync service we were able to import information from multiple external systems and populate them within our space and leverage them for downstream systems."
"Secure access is the most valuable feature."
"Provisioning engine (on the back-end, separate from front-end components, that's part of layered architecture)."
"Connector Xpress and Policy Xpress and the new interface."
"What I found most valuable in Symantec Identity Governance and Administration is its simple GUI. It's also easy to deploy compared to other products. With other products, you have to install the Windows version inside the Windows machine on all units, but with Symantec Identity Governance and Administration, it can work offline, so the solution is a little bit easier than other systems."
"It offers a nice price. It's mid-range."
"It is easy to use, and does not requires an extensive programming or development background."
"​It has improved our user management. It is definitely streamlined​."
"Out-of-the-box the product has a lot of opportunity for configuration and sophisticated identity management capability."
"The automated provisioning feature has been very key from an identity management point of view."
 

Cons

"I've had a difficult time getting it to cooperate with Azure in the cloud and, while the support staff are very good and very knowledgeable, what they assist with just on a call doesn't go deep enough to help with a number of issues. The answer that comes back is that we'd have to start an engagement with Professional Services, which is fine but that takes time to schedule and it takes budget."
"It's a fairly stable product but not perfectly reliable."
"The third area for improvement, which is the weakest portion of ARS, is the workflow engine, which was introduced a few years ago. It's slow and not very intuitive to use, so I would like to see improvement there."
"The initial setup was quite easy, but it was time-consuming. It took about three months."
"Most of the time it just works."
"When doing a workflow, we would like a bit better feedback on the screen, as we're trying to get it to work. For example, there is a "Find" function that you need set up in a workflow to do some of the automation. It is not the easiest to get a result from those finds when you're trying to do that. In the MMC, they have a couple different types of workflows. In this particular case, we use their workflow functionality to find all of X within the environment, then if you find it, do X, Y, and Z. You can have multiple steps. When you do that search function within that workflow, it's really hard to find out, "Is my search working?" It would be nice if there was some feedback on the screen so you could see if your search is working properly within the workflow."
"Another issue we have with the product is that we run a lot of custom tasks. You have to program them to run on one particular host and there's no automatic failover to a second host. If that host is down when a task is supposed to run, it has to wait until the next time it runs when that host is up."
"The solution needs an attestation process that includes certification and recertification attestation."
"The solution is not the best or the fastest available."
"They should easier and better integration with other software."
"We would like to see integration with analytics. Also, for them to be more efficient regarding discovering and implementing new rules."
"Integration capabilities with other solutions and formats, including JSON, could be improved."
"The product works slowly while accessing cloud-native solutions."
"The drawback with the CA Identity Manager is they don't have a connector to HR systems like SAP, or PeopleSoft, or Workday. That's a major drawback with the CA Identity Manager. For that we have to do lots of custom quoting to get data from HR systems. And if they could connect it to GRC systems, that's good to have in an identity product."
"It has a large footprint which you'd expect to be much, much smaller. Just to run basic services, we have 10 different servers. Also, if it were easier to manage, that'd be useful."
"A better information display for the approvals within the workflow would give them more information and the ability to comment back on a request as to why they're rejecting it. We've been telling them we'd like this improvement, and we hope to see it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is reasonable. It costs us about 1 million Danish kroner annually, and we also spend about half as much on consultants."
"It's fairly priced."
"It's expensive."
"The pricing for Active Roles is expensive but not as expensive as other solutions like Okta."
"The pricing is on the higher end."
"The licensing model is a simple user-based model, not that much complicated."
"Pricing and licensing models are adequate and reasonable."
"Symantec keeps increasing the price. I rate its pricing a seven on a scale of ten."
"The connector is free, and bundled with the product."
"The price is based on the number of users."
"Compared to other options, CA products are not that expensive."
"The product has a good price in competition with another product with the same solution."
"The price is flexible for our existing customers."
"I do not recall the approximate prices or licensing models, although I do so that it was priced per user number."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Healthcare Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
27%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for One Identity Active Roles?
The pricing for Active Roles is expensive but not as expensive as other solutions like Okta.
What needs improvement with One Identity Active Roles?
Active Roles can fix many little problems that have never been resolved and have lingered for years, continuing to annoy people. For example, you can't search by object GUIDs. The manual says you c...
What do you like most about Symantec Identity Governance and Administration?
The product’s most valuable feature is flexibility. It can be customized as per the customer’s requirements.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Identity Governance and Administration?
The pricing has been very reasonable, but licensing costs vary based on the customer. It follows a user-based licensing model.
What needs improvement with Symantec Identity Governance and Administration?
Symantec should develop a SaaS solution for cloud environments to make the solution available in various marketplaces for easy deployment. It should also offer bundle installation instead of one by...
 

Also Known As

Quest Active Roles
CA Identity Suite, Symantec IGA, Layer7 Identity Suite, CA Identity Manager (CA IDM), CA Identity Minder, CA IAM, CA Identity Manager (CA IDM), CA Identity Governance
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City of Frankfurt, Moore Public Schools, George Washington University, Transavia Airlines, Howard County, MD. See all stories at OneIdentity.com/casestudies
Acciona, Core Blox, DBS
Find out what your peers are saying about One Identity Active Roles vs. Symantec Identity Governance and Administration and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.