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Proofpoint Insider Threat Management vs Symantec Privileged Access Manager 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

Proofpoint Insider Threat M...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (3rd), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (7th), Insider Risk Management (4th)
Symantec Privileged Access ...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
Privileged Access Management (PAM) (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Proofpoint Insider Threat Management and Symantec Privileged Access Manager aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Proofpoint Insider Threat Management is designed for Insider Risk Management and holds a mindshare of 12.8%, down 12.9% compared to last year.
Symantec Privileged Access Manager, on the other hand, focuses on Privileged Access Management (PAM), holds 1.6% mindshare, up 1.5% since last year.
Insider Risk Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Insider Threat Management12.8%
Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management15.6%
Dtex Systems10.9%
Other60.7%
Insider Risk Management
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Symantec Privileged Access Manager1.6%
CyberArk Privileged Access Manager11.4%
Delinea Secret Server4.9%
Other82.1%
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1271289 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Leader at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Good value, easy to use, and easy to deploy
In terms of what can be improved, that is a question I think the end users can tell you better. I'm not the end-user for this system. However, I can say that it needs to be more scalable. I think they already have a good value proposition in terms of being a hybrid model, and the reporting is okay, as well. It could have better integration with other SIEMs, but this integration has to come from the SIEM side, not ObserveIT.
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior technical Consultant at CA Africa
Secure management of sensitive servers and seamless applications with direct linking
The credential injection feature is highly valued, particularly for RDP sessions. A majority of customers use it for RDP, and a couple for Linux servers. The broader capabilities, including access to multiple systems, web-based applications, and clustering, have never posed an issue. The threat analytics aspect is also a robust feature that analyzes all pertinent information.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"ObserveIT is small, easy to use, easy to deploy, and is not complicated, so it's more generally suited for only SMBs. It's a good value with a cheaper price."
"You can do A2A integration. You can have your own script, which can then run outside of PA to retrieve the password and perform other tasks."
"The system is very stable."
"The interface is very friendly, colorful, and bold."
"The agent-based credential management solution allows clients to programmatically use the agent to collect passwords during runtime from Symantec Privileged Access Manager."
"It is simple to implement and is suitable for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"It gives you list of servers, so you can see which users have access to which servers. This is really useful, so we can make sure nobody is getting extra access than what is needed."
"Symantec PAM is easier to deploy compared to its competitors, such as BeyondTrust."
"CA PAM is working well for us."
 

Cons

"ObserveIT is not scalable and it's not for the medium to large corporations. It's for the smaller environments. For the larger corporations, we have other scalable solutions."
"The service account management functionality needs to be extended to application pools, SQL database, PowerShell scripts, service account discovery, etc."
"We experience stability issues after every patch upgrade. This is a place where CA needs to improve drastically."
"Recent releases need improvement in webpage management."
"Technical support was good when CA handled it. After Broadcom took over, it's not as good."
"It'd be great if you just stuck in your PIV card and Windows popped up, asked you for your password. You typed it in, then it remembered your credentials."
"I would like this solution to be simpler. It should have a one-click access that works together with AWS."
"An improvement for this solution is that it should not be constantly based on user name and password. There should be a condition to edit and update your username."
"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

Information not available
"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."
"It is reasonably priced."
"The licensing is simple and scalable."
"The prices are not low, but one can ask for a discount. It’s not the cheapest PAM solution."
"I would prefer better licensing options for the 20-100 users we have at a given time."
"It is more expensive than other solutions on the market."
"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."
"Appliances are relatively cheap, don’t skimp. Make sure you have redundancy, high availability, and enough appliances to manage the concurrent workload."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Performing Arts
9%
Media Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise30
 

Questions from the Community

Looking for recommendations and a pros/cons template for software to detect insider threats
In addition to responsesfrom Xavier Suriol and reviewer1324719, also consider ObserveIT from Proofpoint.
Looking for recommendations and a pros/cons template for software to detect insider threats
Hello All,I hope you had a merry Christmas.In this case it is as simple as it is.Just take Proofpoint ObserveIT - many companies in the public and financial sector have been using it for years.By ...
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...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
With the customers that I have so far, I help them broker RDP sessions to sensitive servers, particularly those that manage aspects like physical access. I have also done it for backend databases, ...
 

Also Known As

ObserveIT
CA PAM, Xceedium Xsuite, CA Privileged Access Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Coca Cola, Allianz, Premiere League, Xerox, AIG, Cigna, Starbucks, Revlon, Toshiba, Nissan and more.
NEOVERA, Telesis, eSoft
Find out what your peers are saying about Varonis, Microsoft, Dtex Systems and others in Insider Risk Management. Updated: March 2026.
884,732 professionals have used our research since 2012.