Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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) (10th), 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) (17th)
 

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 12.2%, up 9.8% compared to last year.
Symantec Privileged Access Manager, on the other hand, focuses on Privileged Access Management (PAM), holds 1.7% mindshare, up 1.4% since last year.
Insider Risk Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Proofpoint Insider Threat Management12.2%
Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management11.2%
Varonis Platform10.6%
Other66.0%
Insider Risk Management
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Symantec Privileged Access Manager1.7%
CyberArk Privileged Access Manager11.6%
WALLIX Bastion5.1%
Other81.6%
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."
"The two factor authentication, and the single most important capability was it supported PIV and CAC as one of the two factors. That was pretty huge for us."
"It reduces the viral attacks on my website. It also allows certain users access to see what happens daily."
"The DB clustering is a really good benefit of using CA PAM."
"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."
"It is simple to implement and is suitable for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"We found that the architecture is scalable and very resilient."
"The RDP-gateway: For limiting which server an operator can access."
"The system is very stable."
 

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."
"We experience stability issues after every patch upgrade. This is a place where CA needs to improve drastically."
"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."
"I wish it could create local accounts on desktops."
"The setup is complex."
"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."
"Bring more technology into the portfolio and being able to collapse those products into a much more integrated way."
"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
"They offer per-device, per-user, or monthly and yearly licensing models."
"It is more expensive than other solutions on the market."
"Pricing is fair compared to other top vendors."
"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."
"Appliances are relatively cheap, don’t skimp. Make sure you have redundancy, high availability, and enough appliances to manage the concurrent workload."
"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."
"It is reasonably priced."
"The licensing is simple and scalable."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Insider Risk Management solutions are best for your needs.
881,036 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Media Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Performing Arts
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Government
8%
Performing Arts
7%
 

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: December 2025.
881,036 professionals have used our research since 2012.