CyberArk Privileged Access Manager Reviews

We primarily use the product as part of the growing security posture of the company.

The solution provided password management and API password retrieval functionality. 

The most valuable aspects of the solution include password management and Rest API retrieval of vaulted credentials. 

The solution needs better features for end users to manage their own whitelisting for API retrieval. 

I've used the solution for over a decade. 

CyberArk is for Privileged Access Management, so we secure our privileged accounts using CyberArk.

The main, most valuable aspect is its capability to secure our environment. That's the main reason why we are using it.

It can be made user-friendly, in the sense of the console is pretty outdated. They could add more enhancements, et cetera.

They could add more built-in connection components to support various other application platforms. The built-in connection components available are mostly not fit for our purpose. We need to do additional customization to make it work.

I’ve used the solution for almost two years.

Stability is fine so far, other than a couple of phishes every once in a while.

25 people are using the solution.

The solution is scalable. It’s on the cloud, which makes it simple.

We have enterprise support from the vendors.

The response time could be a bit better. Some people don’t have the access to be able to jump in right away. Sometimes we need someone from the development team who has access to help.

Neutral

I’ve never had experience with any other vendors.

The initial setup was not that straightforward. However, we had vendor support, and we were able to fix all the issues.

It took us almost a month to deploy the solution.

I’d rate the solution a three out of five in terms of ease of setup.

In terms of maintenance, some of the components are not in the cloud, so we handle these aspects ourselves. We have a dedicated team for it.

We initiated the setup with the help of the vendor.

I don’t deal with the licensing. That said, my understanding is that it is on the higher side.

When we need enhancements, we do have to pay more.

We are CyberArk partners. I’m a consultant.

We’re always using the most up-to-date solution version, as we are utilizing the cloud.

We use it mostly to secure our privileged accounts. We don't actively use any other products of CyberArk.

I’d recommend the solution. It’s ideal for smaller organizations.

I would rate it seven out of ten.

Used to allow the removal of local administrators from 12,000 endpoints and yet still allows users to have the applications they need with the proper permissions required.

Users were removed from local administrators group on all desktop endpoints providing a more secure computing environment, allowing only those programs approved to run securely.

• The visibility of what is being run and control of those applications.
• Limiting the unnecessary application users think they need, and producing security vulnerabilities.

Better search functionality in the EPM console. It becomes difficult to search lengthy policies for specific items. Additionally, some of the windows sizes cannot be manipulated to allow a better user experience.

The product is relatively stable, but as with most software, it has room for improvement.

This solution is very scalable from what we have seen.

Our experience with tech support has been positive with slight delays due to the location of some of the deep-level resources.

No, we used no other services/software previous to EPM.

Straightforward setup with a substantial learning curve to implement.

We implemented in-house with the direction of a third-party.

Our ROI is currently being looked at.

Setup, costs, and licensing are fairly straightforward and easy to navigate. Questions to the account manager typically resulted in the answers needed.

We looked at several different vendors and conducted detailed POCs on each to ensure we were getting what we needed.

Our primary use case is to secure privileged access. 

Right now, it is performing fairly well. We have had instances where we have had to work with the customer support to integrate a custom plugin and struggled a bit there. It took a bit longer than we expected, but it ended up working out. Most of our focus now is getting our systems into CyberArk, which has nothing to do with the CyberArk software. It is just being able to communicate with our internal team to get them in there. So far, we haven't had a problem with CyberArk.

The product is for hardening access and making the organization more secure, therefore reducing chances of a breach. That is the most beneficial to any company, avoiding any type of data loss which will reflect negatively on your company. Once that happens, you are frowned upon, and nobody wants that.

It plays a huge role in enhancing our organization's privileged access and security hygiene. We are using it for most of our open systems, like Windows and Unix. Our plan is to integrate it with our entire internal network. 

The central password manager is the most valuable feature because the password is constantly changing. If an outsider threat came in and gained access to one of those passwords, they would not have access for long. That is critical and very important for the stability of our company.

One of the main things that could be improved would be filtering accounts on the main page and increasing the functionality of the filters. There are some filters on the side which are very specific, but I feel there could be more. For example, I want to look at accounts which are not working within a specific safe all at the same time.

So far, so good with stability. We have done a couple disaster recovery exercises with CyberArk, and they have gone according to plan.

We have not gotten to scalability yet, because we are still working on integrating our systems. We have a very minute portion of it. 

So, scalability will come afterwards, once we have everything there and we understand how much capacity we have used. As of now, scalability has not been an issue.

The product should meet our needs in the future.

The technical support is good at communicating. I learned a lot yesterday about how to figure out a support case quicker by helping them help you, and by giving them as much information as you can. In the past, I have not done that as well as I could have.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

Not applicable.

I do not have much experience with other solutions, so I don't think I can adequately compare and contrast it with others.

CyberArk is on top of its game. The product has worked well for our company.

If you are looking at implementing this solution, buy the training and go to it. If you do not train, it is hard to understand it. It is hard to pick it up by cross-training with other people. You really want to start off strong.

Most important criteria when evaluating a technical solution:

Be brutally honest about all the factors that go into the solution that you are looking for (buyer) and what the solution can offer (seller).

The primary use case and the most used functionality of CyberArk PAM is managing privileged access (an easy way to pass permissions to specific servers to specific users granularly) and password management (an automated solution that manages password validity, expiration, etc.). PSM gives a possibility to set all connections secure and it is possible to re-trace actions made by users during such sessions. It is a good tool for extending usage to new end targets sometimes even out of the box.

CyberArk PAM ended a scenario where several dozens or even hundreds of privileged accounts had the same password or administrators had passwords written down on sticky notes. 

I have experience with onboarding thousands of accounts - mostly Windows, Unix, and network devices. I have developed (customized based on defaults) password management plugins for Unix systems and network devices.

I like the integrations for external applications. There are actually infinite possibilities of systems to integrate with - you would just need to have more time to do that. It is not an easy job, yet really valuable. I am not an expert on that, however, I try every day to be better and better. I have the support of other experienced engineers I work with so there is always someone to ask if I face any problems. End-customers sometimes have really customized needs and ideas for PSM-related usage.

The Vault's disaster recovery features need improvement. There is no possibility to automatically manage Vault's roles and for some customers, it is not an easy topic to understand.

I noticed that CyberArk changed a little in terms of the documentation about disaster recovery failover and failback scenarios. Still, it is a big field for CyberArk developers. Logically it is an easy scenario to understand - yet not for everyone, surely.

I've used the solution for around five years. I have been using CyberArk PAM as an end customer for three years. For another two, I work as a CyberArk support specialist.

Stability is overall good. However, there are many error messages that are like false-positive - they do not produce any issue yet logs are full of information.

The scaling has been mostly positive. It seems not hard to scale it up.

Sometimes it is hard to understand the capabilities, limitations, etc. They try to help with that.

Positive

I've never used another solution that would have the same or similar capabilities.

The initial setup can be complex. It is important to go really carefully step-by-step with instructions. When you do that, you can be 100% sure everything will work well.

When I was an end-customer I recall using a vendor for the implementation and support. Now, I am a vender and therefore I do it by myself.

Licensing may sometimes seem a little complicated. A good partner from CyberArk can work it out.

Unfortunately, I have not participated in evaluating other options.

Overall, I am really glad I worked with CyberArk for five years.

It is a PAM solution, in which we provide privileged access to CyberArk and the users who are using to try to access their devices. They onboard on the CyberArk and then, whenever they need to access the devices, they get access to CyberArk which means they have to log in on CyberArk.

The models as a whole are great. I'm not sure if I can pull out specific features. I like that if we execute the user can't access their devices. If you remove the session manager, the user can't access their devices. It helps ensure we can protect our organization and data. The session manager is the most critical part of CyberArk's PAM solution. 

It works perfectly well. 

The solution is pretty easy to set up. 

The solution is stable.

It's scalable. 

The support services could act faster when people reach out to resolve issues. 

I've been using the solution for the last two years. 

It's a stable product. 

We have deployed CyberArk for two years, and so far, we haven't received any issues regarding any bugs or anything like that. We haven't faced any issues. There are some challenges regarding user access. We have to explain to users who are not familiar with the PAM solution what to do, however, regarding stability, or regarding bugs we haven't faced any issues.

It's a scalable product. For example, in my scenario, the deployment that I have done, if I want to scale it up or if I want to extend it, I can easily add the next module in that. There are no challenges regarding scalability.

I have only one deployment in Pakistan. It is at one of the largest banks in Pakistan here which has thousands of users on CyberArk.

Technical support is good. I haven't faced any issues. If you're looking at the response time, I will say that it's quite a long wait. 

The setup process of CyberArk is quite typical. Once you understand the process, it is very easy for you. That said, for a newbie, it may be a bit difficult. For example, for the PSM module, we have to make changes in the registry of the devices. You have to collaborate with your system team to make a configuration. I can get complex. That said, once you know, it's very easy.

I have been through the process of implementing the solution for clients. 

The licensing can be yearly or over a couple of years. Support needs to be renewed every year. 

We have four models which we are using. 

The first one has a wall that which we have deployed on the particular server. The next one is the CPM which is the Central Policy Manager through which we enforce the password policy and password rotation policies. 

I'd recommend the solution to others. 

We have conducted a POC in Pakistan on multiple sites with different customers. CyberArk is a quite typical product and can be a bit expensive, so it's a good idea to try it out first and make sure it is what you need.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. 

Our primary use case of this solution is for elevated access.

The primary improvement to my organization is the fact that now the users are aware that: one, the work that they do will be recorded and so there will be an audit trail of what has happened; and then, two, we don't have to worry about people sharing passwords because they are given out on a case by case basis.

• Session recording 
• Password rotation

Some folks would like to have keystroke tracking and some would not. I guess if they could make that an option that might be interesting for certain organizations.

Scalability and stability are both excellent. We have around 250 users. All individuals with privilege to elevated access will be required to use this after a certain amount of time.

Thus far technical support is excellent. We haven't had any issues or difficulties.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. Deployment took approximately six months. For the deployment, there was a group of about five to six individuals. For sustainment, we just have gotten into a training mode and we will have our support team giving them assistance.

I would rate this solution a 9.5 out of ten. To get it to a ten it should give other possibilities to select if you could follow the keystrokes. It should have a flexibility with things in which people can use it a lot faster.

The main usage of our implementation is to limit the credentials exposure to our third-party teams. They are able to connect to the end-points in a secure and isolated manner without needing to know any end-point credentials.

Our third-party teams are able to connect to the end-points in a secure and isolated manner without needing to know any end-point credentials. Besides this, end-points themselves are back in control when the passwords are managed by the CPM.

The two main features are the CPM and the PSM. This is to make sure that the credentials are managed in a controlled manner and the sessions that are launched are set up in an isolated way.

We are aware that in 10.6, the "just in time" access has been created. I would like to see this developed further.

The vault is almost a set-and-forget solution. Once the vault has been installed and configured, not much needs to be done in there apart from the occasional upgrade.

The environment is very easy to scale out. Especially running the CPM and PSM components in a load balanced virtual environment gives you the flexibility to quickly expand the environment.

This has been excellent for me. They always replied quickly, and most of the time the issue was resolved. The only downside — as soon as a ticket goes to the R&D engineers, you will have to wait a bit.

We did not use a PAM product before this.

The initial setup (for a UAT environment) was straightforward. During the planning of the PROD environment, it became a little more tricky with different network segments and method for accessing the environment itself.

We had a combination of in-house (with training), vendor (CyberArk) and third-party vendor. The third-party vendor Computacenter helped us with creating some design and documentation. I would not recommend this third-party to other people as they did not fully work with us and listen to our requirements.

We are still rolling out in our environment which makes the ROI difficult to calculate.

Make sure to use the latest licensing model as that will give you most of the "cool" features to work with.

One of the most important aspects is to ensure that the business is behind the solution. CyberArk suite will only work well if all users adopt the system.