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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 (4th)
Symantec Privileged Access ...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
Privileged Access Management (PAM) (15th)
 

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 10.8%, down 17.8% compared to last year.
Symantec Privileged Access Manager, on the other hand, focuses on Privileged Access Management (PAM), holds 1.8% mindshare, up 1.5% since last year.
Insider Risk Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Insider Threat Management10.8%
Varonis Platform11.9%
Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management11.0%
Other66.3%
Insider Risk Management
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Symantec Privileged Access Manager1.8%
Idira Privileged Access Manager9.2%
Safeguard by One Identity4.4%
Other84.6%
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

"Overall, it gives a consistent and really good return on investment."
"Meta data search Alert generation."
"Customer Service: The ObserveIT professional services team has been excellent, extremely engaged and genuinely concerned with our success."
"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."
"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."
"Record videos that have a very small file size Management interface is very convenient and intuitive"
"It resolved security issues of the organization by providing audit reports and records to our customers."
"The interface is very friendly, colorful, and bold."
"Xceedium/CA PAM support has been excellent and that is one of the main reasons we have stuck with this solution."
"Whoever built it from the ground up, they understand how an organization is laid out."
"The solution has the capability to address hybrid eco-systems, both on-premises and cloud services, and integration with the AD RBAC model is also a great feature, as we can tie it to the central repository."
"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."
"We do not have to authenticate users due to automatic authentication, so this allows us to be much more secure."
"The agent-based credential management solution allows clients to programmatically use the agent to collect passwords during runtime from Symantec Privileged Access Manager."
"It's easy to use and easy to configure."
 

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."
"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."
"Ticketing and issue management. Based on the new system, one needs to go through the sales people."
"Recent releases need improvement in webpage management."
"They need to do a little bit more on the mainframe side.​"
"Reporting. It's difficult to locate the reports, there are limits on what reports can be run from the GUI, and the report formats are lacking."
"It was a challenge for our newer staff members to install."
"Broadcom has neglected product development since acquiring Symantec, and nothing major has been added to PAM."
"Yeah, it still does not support HA in Multi AZ subnets."
"A better discovery interface of accounts. It does do discovery of accounts for Windows servers, and you could do UNIX servers as well, but it's kind of clunky how it does it."
"The cons are that you are rarely (if ever) able to talk to a technician when calling support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"They offer per-device, per-user, or monthly and yearly licensing models."
"Appliances are relatively cheap, don’t skimp. Make sure you have redundancy, high availability, and enough appliances to manage the concurrent workload."
"It is more expensive than other solutions on the market."
"Cost-wise, CA was better compared to others in the market. ​"
"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."
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
10%
Media Company
8%
Performing Arts
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Outsourcing Company
18%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
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: July 2026.
911,039 professionals have used our research since 2012.