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Proofpoint Insider Threat Management vs Symantec Privileged Access Manager comparison

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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 (5th)
Symantec Privileged Access ...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
Privileged Access Management (PAM) (12th)
 

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 10.2%, down 18.2% compared to last year.
Symantec Privileged Access Manager, on the other hand, focuses on Privileged Access Management (PAM), holds 2.0% mindshare, up 1.5% since last year.
Insider Risk Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Insider Threat Management10.2%
Varonis Platform12.2%
Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management9.9%
Other67.7%
Insider Risk Management
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Symantec Privileged Access Manager2.0%
Idira Privileged Access Manager8.6%
Safeguard by One Identity4.4%
Other85.0%
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."
"Record videos that have a very small file size Management interface is very convenient and intuitive"
"Overall, it gives a consistent and really good return on investment."
"Customer Service: The ObserveIT professional services team has been excellent, extremely engaged and genuinely concerned with our success."
"It resolved security issues of the organization by providing audit reports and records to our customers."
"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."
"Meta data search Alert generation."
"It reduces the viral attacks on my website. It also allows certain users access to see what happens daily."
"The possibility to control the remote activity and establish different policies, because it depends on the position of workers, how much access they needed, and in what platforms they connect, and the possibility to separate this in an easy way is very useful."
"The access control component is solid, adding another layer of security beyond the basic OS security of Linux and Windows while keeping administration costs the same across different operating systems."
"The reason we chose CA PAM is it worked in the scenarios that we wanted it to, and it just worked without problems."
"If I remember correctly, it was the two factor authentication, and the single most important capability was it supported PIV and CAC as one of the two factors."
"We know we can scale up with what we have, and we probably will not need to buy any further appliances down the road."
"CA PAM is working well for us."
"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."
 

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 tool is still not providing records of tunnels established - we would like to see it in future versions."
"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."
"Ticketing and issue management. Based on the new system, one needs to go through the sales people."
"OCR capability, support for Mainframe, Ticketing and Incident workflow."
"They should include some assignments in the test environment to explore the product's features."
"The service account management functionality needs to be extended to application pools, SQL database, PowerShell scripts, service account discovery, etc."
"What I hope happens with the new product CA PAM is to keep all the useful features that exist in PA, but what I’ve noticed with many new products is the UI gets polished but systems lags stability and performance or it adds additional complexity instead of simplifying the user experience."
"When there are new patches or upgrades, they need to test the new release well so it will not break the functional parts."
"I wish it could create local accounts on desktops."
"The rule management portion and reporting is very weak on its own."
"The cons are that you are rarely (if ever) able to talk to a technician when calling support."
"The OOTB reporting functionality is lacking."
 

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

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Performing Arts
8%
Media Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
20%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

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: October 2026.
915,533 professionals have used our research since 2012.