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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 (4th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (6th), 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) (16th)
 

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 10.6%, down 16.2% compared to last year.
Symantec Privileged Access Manager, on the other hand, focuses on Privileged Access Management (PAM), holds 1.7% mindshare, up 1.6% since last year.
Insider Risk Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Insider Threat Management10.6%
Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management12.5%
Varonis Platform11.0%
Other65.9%
Insider Risk Management
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Symantec Privileged Access Manager1.7%
CyberArk Privileged Access Manager9.8%
One Identity Safeguard4.3%
Other84.2%
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."
"Overall, it gives a consistent and really good return on investment."
"All my clients are very pleased with this product as it helps them to keep track of what partners and employees are doing on the servers."
"Customer Service: The ObserveIT professional services team has been excellent, extremely engaged and genuinely concerned with our success."
"Record videos that have a very small file size Management interface is very convenient and intuitive"
"Meta data search Alert generation."
"It resolved security issues of the organization by providing audit reports and records to our customers."
"I like the fact that passwords are checked-in automatically."
"The key benefits are we improve our governance. We ensure we can build more trust in the way we run and operate our environment, and most of all is the accountability."
"It will provide us with more security."
"It reduces the viral attacks on my website. It also allows certain users access to see what happens daily."
"If looking for a solution with privileged session management, great recording features with an integrated password vault and Single Sign-On that is pretty straightforward to implement out-of-the-box and does not overwhelm you with unnecessary features, it the best way to go."
"The interface is very friendly, colorful, and bold."
"Manager user/admin’s password, so it’s more secure and password will be changed on time."
"It is the best product for monitoring the recorded session of your IT admins and external consultants."
 

Cons

"I had some problems with an instance of ObserveIT in a Proof of Concept, when I installed ObserveIT with an SQL Express instance and the DB used all provisioned space."
"The tool is still not providing records of tunnels established - we would like to see it in future versions."
"OCR capability, support for Mainframe, Ticketing and Incident workflow."
"Ticketing and issue management. Based on the new system, one needs to go through the sales people."
"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 demonstration and consideration portion does not work the best. It's not that intuitive."
"It was a challenge for our newer staff members to install."
"The first setup was complex. The implementation, to me, was very bad."
"Technical support was good when CA handled it. After Broadcom took over, it's not as good."
"They need to improve how it scales."
"When there are new patches or upgrades, they need to test the new release well so it will not break the functional parts."
"Some rollover credentials often do not work or you need a more complex configuration."
"The response time for support could be faster. Some features should be added: cloud-based, VPN-less, more secure, and it should be adjusted in a hybrid environment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I would prefer better licensing options for the 20-100 users we have at a given time."
"Pricing is fair compared to other top vendors."
"The prices are not low, but one can ask for a discount. It’s not the cheapest PAM solution."
"The licensing is simple and scalable."
"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."
"Cost-wise, CA was better compared to others in the market. ​"
"Appliances are relatively cheap, don’t skimp. Make sure you have redundancy, high availability, and enough appliances to manage the concurrent workload."
"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."
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
9%
Performing Arts
8%
Media Company
8%
Construction Company
14%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
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: June 2026.
900,228 professionals have used our research since 2012.