CyberArk Privileged Access Manager Reviews

Auditing and control are the most valuable. You can control password management almost to the max, giving you, your users and your auditors great flexibility without compromising security.

The auditing and control is more valuable to the enterprise than to myself. Apparently one of the overseas offices was able to track and identify misuse of a privileged account. In addition, it is heavily used during the periodic user/account recertification process.

Recertification of accounts and users, whereas previously 100s of accounts reside on devices, targets, applications, etc., now, due to using the vault and recertification, owners are in total control of their accounts and usage. Dual control forces owners to approve access to their safes and usage of passwords. The number of audit points regarding rogue accounts is falling dramatically.

Small things such as resizing pop-ups but mainly the reporting possibilities: These are quite poor in my honest opinion. If you really want custom reports you actually need to export data to an Access database and create your own queries and reports. The default reports are just that.

The reporting functionality is currently limited to default reports, listings and overviews. For more detailed and in-depth reports, you need to export the data to an external app such as Access or MS SQL. For example, if you need a report listing all safes, owners, members and accounts (like we do), you need to create a bespoke report. Ideally, in 2016, perhaps a graphic drag & drop reporting interface would be ideal.

I have been using the product now for a little over four years from the support side.

No stability issues at all; we have a 24/7 standby and have yet to be called out on issues other than locked accounts. These are almost always user-related. We have had no downtime other than planned DR tests.

I have not encountered any scalability issues; we have actually scaled down since the new releases. Where previously we had CPMs & PVWAs throughout the world, we now have load-balanced CPMs and PVWAs in just two locations.

It can take time before you get a solution. Frequently, we have already solved it ourselves. CyberArk is re-arranging its support teams to improve communication with clients and to resolve cases quicker. As there is a release every six months, this might prove to be a challenge.

I did not previously use a different solution.

The vaults are installed on dedicated servers and subsequently hardened in their own dedicated workgroup. In our organization, there was a heavy battle with Server Support, who refused the workgroup setup and demanded that the servers join a/the domain. Do not agree! The servers have to be separate from the general server population and have nothing installed except the vault. Nothing has access, so no MS updates, AV software, etc. It took a while to convince them.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

Do not take it lightly. It takes a lot of hard work to analyse and implement. Involve the entire organization from the start. As you will be working with security teams, you might encounter a certain level of distrust (you are in their domain right?). Involve them, liaise frequently and get everyone onboard.

Our primary use case for his solution is privileged identity and application identity management, and we deploy the solution on-premises.

We have found the core features of the product most valuable, such as password management, session recording and vaulting.

The architecture needs to be improved. For example, the whole solution can come within a single software bundle instead of the distributed components we have for the on-premise deployments. I think there's room for improvements in that area because the competitors within that space have appliances and software that are just a single software. You don't have to split functionality across several servers like the current deployment.

We have been using this solution for approximately five years.

The solution is scalable. At the point of implementation, 300 users in our organization were using it, but that number may have increased.

The initial setup is not very complex because of my experience and skills. Still, the end users are only in charge of the administrative aspects, but I think the set up is a bit complex for those who are not very savvy with the solution. Implementation took approximately two weeks.

I rate the solution nine out of ten. The solution is good, but the main feature to be improved is having the product in a consolidated software bundle. So the moment we have PSM, it's a dedicated server. We can also have a PVWA in another server, so having a singular bundle is just like the cloud offering. The infrastructure is abstracted from the end user. So if we can have something like that for on-premises, that would simplify implementation. Regardless it's a good solution, it works, and the bank is happy with it. My recommendation to people considering implementing this product is to get the scoping appropriately done. It comes down to scoping the initial deployment, so it doesn't take forever. Still, if you're not scoping correctly, you could have a situation where people keep adding new accounts continuously, and your project never ends. Hence, scoping is kind of important.

The major use case for us is to securely release and manage passwords for non-personal accounts.

CyberArk provides an automated and unified approach for securing access across environments. It's a work in progress but that is the goal, for us, of implementing CyberArk. We want to provide a unified way to access all environments. We are in transition, like most big companies, into cloud solutions. So this is also something that is being discussed and analyzed. But that, overall, is the mission of CyberArk in our organization.

CyberArk has made it possible to work with non-personal accounts. Before, there was a much more focus on having privileges associated with personal accounts, and non-personal accounts were scarcely used because doing so required a lot of manual work. That work has been replaced with automated password management and the controls that come with CyberArk. It allows our organization to control the risks associated with high privileges. Previously, anyone could do whatever they wanted, on their own, but now we can enforce dual control. That is very important from a risk perspective. And the fact that we have it automated means it doesn't require that much effort to maintain things.

Also, when we onboard new employees, the solution saves us time, to a certain extent, when it comes to providing them with secure access to the applications and IT systems they will be working with. Those savings are not directly thanks to CyberArk, but it can be considered part of the bigger solution to make sure that employees have the correct access to the resources they need as soon as possible. That is true after they have been onboarded or when their position has changed and they need to be granted new access.

The automatic password management is the most important feature. The second most important feature is the ability to enforce dual control on the release of those passwords. The combination of these two features is the most important thing for us because we can show that we're in control of who uses any non-personal account, and when they do so.

I have been using CyberArk Privileged Access Manager for five years.

My impression of the solution's stability, in general, is very positive. It's quite robust. There are mechanisms in place that allow you to have high availability and that allow you to have proper disaster recovery. Those mechanisms are very solid, as we have tested them extensively within our processes to assess the risk associated with the use of CyberArk. They have performed very well.

The only thing that is lacking with respect to the stability is the scalability issue. The amount of data we need processed is too big for CyberArk to manage properly. That mostly impacts performance, not the stability, but to some extent the stability has suffered due to that. 

But overall, I would rate it very good in terms of stability. We had a minor issue once and, other than that, we have been online the whole time that I have been here. We have tested it thoroughly and have not found any situation where it would become too unstable to perform our tasks.

The major pain point that we have is the capacity of CyberArk due to the sheer volume of NPAs that we are managing. We are a large organization and we have hundreds of thousands of non-personal accounts to manage. We have already found out that there are certain capacity limitations within CyberArk that might introduce performance issues. From my perspective, something that would be valuable would be if the Vault could hold more passwords and be more scalable.

We have used their tech support extensively and there has been a lot of improvement in the way that CyberArk support operates over the last few years, but it still leaves somewhat to be desired. That is particularly true given the pricing. You would expect, for the amount of money that they charge for their support, and for their product in general, that it would be better. 

But I've seen major improvements in the last couple of years. I think they are aware of this issue and that it is an area that they are lacking in and they're working towards improving it.

They need to better recognize who they are dealing with. CyberArk has an extensive training program, the CyberArk University. You put in a lot of effort, resources, and money, to attend the training and become a professional in terms of your knowledge and ability to manage the Vault, and the solution in general. But then, when you require support, you are asked very simple questions, which you have already answered based on the knowledge that you've obtained from CyberArk. It takes a lot of time and effort to convince their support that you indeed have a more complex case to resolve, rather than a very simple fire-and-forget solution. It's generally not the kind of thing where they can give you a link to their knowledge base and look through it to find a solution yourself.

I have been working with CyberArk for five years and have all the possible certificates, and have extensive knowledge about it. Any time that I report a case to support, it seems the general gist of how such services operate is that they're trying to get rid of you. They give you a solution that, maybe, vaguely resembles the issue, or a solution that you specifically stated that you tried already and it does not work, just to get rid of you. They probably have customers who would be happy with that, but because of the importance of that software within our organization and the level of maturity that we have within my team as administrators of CyberArk, we expect, and we've communicated this to them, that they will approach our requests in a more advanced way. 

They should recognize that we have probably already done what the first line of support would suggest be done, and that we require some more involved support, but it seems very difficult to communicate this to them. Even if we get through to further lines of support, we often have the feeling that we still know more than they do about their own tools. I think there has been some sort of knowledge drain from CyberArk. We often have the feeling that they are learning on the job. They don't inspire a lot of confidence when it comes to their support.

Neutral

There is a lot of return on investment in CyberArk. Being a financial institution, we are responsible for managing risks, and CyberArk really helps us to be in control with the usage of NPAs. That, in turn, translates into a proper risk score for the organization, and that directly translates into actual money being saved.

It's expensive, certainly. But CyberArk is the leader in the market with regards to privileged access management. You pay a lot, but you are paying for the value that is being delivered. 

It's not a tool for small companies. You need to be a large company with a lot of resources to implement it. But the price tag can be justified, even though it's always hard to quantify these things. It really brings value, regardless of the level at which you implement it. If you use it at a very basic level, as just a password manager, or you go further with all the other elements of the tool, it's expensive, but it's worth the price.

We only use it on-prem, but for someone who only wants to solve cloud security challenges with a born-in-the-cloud security solution, I would still tell them CyberArk is one of the potential solutions. I would also tell them to do their assessment because it costs a lot. So it depends on the scale of use and the use cases. It certainly has the most capabilities that could be of use, but it depends on whether you only have some small deployments in the cloud and on the size of the risks involved. For certain scenarios, I would say they should immediately go with CyberArk, and that they shouldn't bother with others' solutions. In other scenarios, I would say they should do a very thorough assessment of the market before they decide because there might be cheaper options that will be sufficient for them.

Our primary use of this solution is as a password manager.

The interface is very simple to use.

Security-wise, CyberyberArk is better than the other products.

The pricing is too expensive and should be reduced. This is our only concern. When a small industry wants to invest in these kinds of tools, they don't have the budget to spend a lot of money on security. If the price were more reasonable then many other small businesses would consider using it.

The installation process should be easier and more user-friendly so that you don't need to hire a third party to deploy it. Instead, an in-house administrator could do it.

I have been using this product for the last two years.

Over the past two years, I hardly remember us facing any large problems. We have experienced small bugs, but they release patches to fix those.

This is a scalable product. In our company, we have about 100 users, most of which are part of our DevOps team or are administrators.

We are satisfied with the technical support.

Prior to CyberArk, we were using a Microsoft product, but it didn't fulfill our entire requirement. We adopted this new solution because it met all of our needs.

The initial setup is complex. It took two or three days to complete the deployment.

We implemented this solution with the help of consultants who had experience with it.

This product is very expensive.

I have seen demonstrations of similar products by other vendors and what I found was that the security on this solution is better.

Overall, I feel that this is a good product and I recommend it. The only thing that people have to consider is pricing.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Primary use case is storing and rotating local domain admin credentials for Windows and Unix network devices.

We're using CyberArk secure application credentials and endpoints on a small scale and we're planning, for the future, to use CyberArk to secure infrastructure applications running in the cloud. We don't have experience using the Plugin Generator Utility.

It is performing pretty well for the most part. We have some issues with RADIUS authentication, some bugs with that. But, generally speaking, it works really well.

The benefit is knowing where your accesses are, who has access to what. Additionally, obviously, it provides improved security around having your credentials locked down and rotated regularly.

Credential rotation. It's tops.

I'd like to see a more expansive SSH tunneling situation through PSMP. Right now you have an account that exists in the vault and you say, "I want to create a tunnel using this account." I'd like to see something that is not account-based where I could say, "I want to create a tunnel to this machine over here," and then authenticate through the PSMP and then your tunnel is set up. You wouldn't need to then authenticate to a machine. Then you could go back in through your native clients and connect to that machine. Also, to have that built out to include not just Unix targets but anything you'd want to connect to.

The stability, overall, is really good, outside of some of the RADIUS problems that we're having. Generally, it is very good.

The scalability, sometimes, is lacking. It works really well for more static environments. I've been at places that had a really static environment and it works really well. You've got X number of CPMs and X number of PVWAs in your vault and everything gets up and going and it's smooth sailing. But for an environment where you're constantly spinning up new infrastructure or new endpoints, sometimes it has a hard time keeping up.

Technical support actually works really well. From time to time there can be some issues as far as SLAs go. Sometimes results will be on the back end of an SLA, which is still fair. It seems like you're complaining that it's "one to three days" and it's three as opposed to one, which is an unfair criticism. 

Generally, everybody is pretty knowledgeable. They're pretty upfront when it needs to be passed off to somebody else. That usually happens in a pretty timely manner.

I have been involved in the initial setup elsewhere. It's actually really straightforward, depending on what you're trying to do. If you have a simpler environment, to set up a PVWA and to set up a vault, is straightforward. It's all pretty much there in the guide. Sometimes the documentation gets a little bit out of sync, where things aren't exactly as they should be but it's always really close. Generally, the documentation is good and straightforward.

I'm not the right person to answer questions about ROI for our organization.

Engage with Professional Services, not just for help with, "Here are the buttons to click," because they've been really helpful as far as how we would want to implement things.

Our most important criteria when selecting or working with a vendor, outside of the product being good, are reliability and timeliness of response. Those are the two big things. I think CyberArk does a pretty good job on these.

I rate CyberArk at eight out of 10. I think the solution, as released, is usually very good. When something comes out, it's generally airtight and works as advertised. However, sometimes they are a little bit slow to keep up with what's coming out. In 2017, for example, they released support for Windows Server 2016, which had been out for a year or so. There is probably some tradeoff that is required to keep things so airtight, by holding back a little bit. But that would be my one criticism: It's slow to keep up, sometimes, with updates.

All the high privileged accounts are managed by CyberArk at a regular frequency. This mitigates the big risk that we had for passwords not changing forever.

The combination of CPM and PSM resolves a lot of use cases.

They can do a better job in the PSM space.

It has been pretty stable. No ongoing issues; only one-off, and CyberArk support has been pretty good for support.

I can foresee some issues if we suddenly have to put thousands of passwords into CyberArk Vault. I know they have the password upload utility, but it has its limitations.

Customer Service:

Their support is pretty good and responsive.

Technical Support:

Their support is pretty good and responsive. Their L3 is in Israel, so sometimes it takes more time getting responses for complicated use cases.

I did not previously use a different solution. I have always used CyberArk.

I would rate initial setup as a medium complexity. They have good documentation, as well.

I am from a vendor team that does the implementation.

I was not involved in the pricing and licensing. I have an idea that it's on the higher side of the price scale.

Before choosing this product, we also evaluated Dell and NetIQ.

Our primary use case for the solution is to support privileged identities.

The password management feature is valuable.

The solution can be improved by including more connectors to other third-party systems for integration.

We have been using the solution for approximately five years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. Approximately 150,000 people are using the solution.

We previously used One Identity.

The initial setup was a bit complex.

We deployed the solution in-house.

We have seen a return on investment. The solution makes our procedures better, making the environment more secure and changing the mindset of people. 

I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Our clients primarily use the CyberArk Password Vault for password rotation and password management.

The feature I find most valuable is the password credential rotation.

With regards to potential improvements for the CyberArk product, I find the product quite expensive and I would like to see the cost reduced. 

I have been using CyberArk Password Vault for 8 years. 

CyberArk Password Vault is super stable once you are on a tried and true platform version. 

The product is also easy to scale. 

I have utilized CyberArk technical support for issues and this was very straightforward to work with. The response time was a little slow. 

I have previously deployed and installed Thycotic as an alternate password vault solution, but I find CyberArk to be much better.

With installation of CyberArk Password Vault, there are some complexities to setting it up, I would say it is not straight forward to setup.