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ARCON Privileged Access Management vs IBM Security Secret Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 6, 2024

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

ARCON Privileged Access Man...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Security Secret Server
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
18th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category, the mindshare of ARCON Privileged Access Management is 4.0%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Security Secret Server is 1.0%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

Featured Reviews

PRAVINKHISMATRAO - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced compliance and security through detailed action recordings
We have used ARCON Privileged Access Management for recording videos of user actions taken after logging into systems. Around thirty people, including network engineers, server engineers, and application engineers, use it in the company There hasn't been a notable financial benefit for our…
AsifIqbal - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to set up and manage and has good scalability and stability, but its technical support team needs to be more aggressive in solving issues
What needs improvement in IBM Security Secret Server is support. The local partner provides good support, but IBM itself doesn't. Most of the time, the IBM support team does not aggressively resolve issues reported through chat or the IBM website. In the next version of IBM Security Secret Server, I want to see more lightweight recording, architecture, or infrastructure requirements. Currently, it's heavy, so I want it reduced to make adapting IBM Security Secret Server much more effortless.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The video logs help us to identify any misuse of privileged accounts."
"For compliance, each change I do, in each of the servers, is clearly recorded. We recently faced an audit and this was an awesome feature. Even our auditor had praise for it saying, "This is really a good feature.""
"With this log available, we can drill down to the activities performed by the people within our kiosk. There is a great feature where in the case of Unix servers, we have our own text-based logs. In the case of Window's server, we cannot create a text-based log, so our kiosk takes the screenshot or picture of the screen when I am working. It does this every three seconds."
"They don't just stick to a base version; instead, they actively enhance and improve it based on client feedback and industry trends."
"The technical support is excellent."
"The user interface, overall, is really good. If I have some 20 servers in my ID, I can easily see for which servers I have read-only access, for which servers I have prompt-access, and for which servers I have server admin access."
"One important feature is the administrator access, mainly for Windows machines as well as Linux machines. It is important for us because there is accountability associated with each user ID. And the recordings are also helpful."
"It gives us a lot of comfort in terms of security level. Our infrastructure devices and servers are secured and nobody can have unauthorized access to them."
"One of the most valuable features is scalability, and how it allows you to scale it without affecting the underlying core components."
"Stability-wise, I think it is a very good solution."
"The live recording is a very useful feature."
"What I like best about IBM Security Secret Server is its single-access console. It's also easy to manage and fulfills the requirements with the least resistance."
"As a PAM solution, Secret Server performs all the use cases in our environment."
 

Cons

"The product is browser dependent. As of now, it only works on Internet Explorer from the client side. Admins cannot use any other browsers (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, etc.) to access the client manager online."
"This product is lacking in terms of dashboarding analytics and should have user behavior analytics. It should also have better dashboarding for executive management and security managers, which this product is missing."
"ARCON Privileged Access Management is not a user-friendly solution, and the application flow from one screen to another is very complex."
"It should be browser-agnostic and, frankly, it is working well on Internet Explorer. It should work on popular browsers like Mozilla and Firefox."
"For the in-house built applications, they need to provide good, solid access through their portal."
"A few areas for improvement in ARCON would be performance optimization, ensuring smoother management."
"If you take Microsoft hypervisor - which comes with its own interface, its own web layer, etc. - something like that also requires privileged IDs. As per our institution policy now, everything has to come through ARCON. We have demanded that these kind of advanced features also should be there."
"They they should focus on support. The support needs to be very strong. Since the product is becoming stronger, their support team also should be equally strong. They should respond to open queries within the time limit they have set. Their support team should be more technical, to understand the issue or the set up."
"What needs improvement in IBM Security Secret Server is support. The local partner provides good support, but IBM itself doesn't. Most of the time, the IBM support team does not aggressively resolve issues reported through chat or the IBM website."
"The nonclustered index is working in an area with a problem that needs improvement."
"Secret Server should have the ability to discover privileged accounts in the servers, like the administrator or users, from SQL and Oracle without having to import a script."
"It would be preferable if the full proxy was included in the IBM Security Secret Server."
"The newer interface is more difficult to use than the previous one, and consequently, new users might need more training."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is available with competitive pricing. Licensing is not complex. We calculated the license requirements by counting the number of admins and the number of devices which were going to integrate with it."
"ARCON is a will give you all the features in a very cost-effective solution. Pricing and licensing is very good compared to other players in the market."
"They do have some licenses, which are required for things like Linux servers. However, in my environment, we do not have Linux servers."
"I am not in a position to give any financials, but whatever we have paid, it is value for money. Their licensing model is good. They have been flexible for us."
"ARCON Privileged Access Management's pricing is reasonable."
"Their licensing model is very simple, as it is based on the number of endpoints which you want to manage along with the number of users and administrators which you want to use."
"We have a subscription to use this solution."
"There are no major concerns with licensing because we can handle multiple servers in our kiosk system."
"The price could be better. I think it's a good price for the on-premises environment and the high availability for enterprises the solution provides."
"I believe that we paid 35,000 or 40,000 US dollars for it."
"My rating for the IBM Security Secret Server pricing is seven out of ten. It could be cheaper."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
57%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Retailer
3%
Computer Software Company
22%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with ARCON Privileged Access Management?
In terms of improvements, I suggest implementing password rotation for service-based accounts, as that should be included.
What do you like most about IBM Security Secret Server?
Stability-wise, I think it is a very good solution.
What needs improvement with IBM Security Secret Server?
The nonclustered index is working in an area with a problem that needs improvement. In some cases, when they create some index in the tool, you may face some problems with the parallelism and some ...
What is your primary use case for IBM Security Secret Server?
I use the tool for dynamic services, integration services, and reporting services. I have years of working experience with the tool. I am a DBA and a support administrator for SQL Server, and also ...
 

Also Known As

ARCON ARCOS, ARCON PAM
IBM Secret Server, Secret Server, IBM Security Privileged Identity Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RAK Bank, AXIS Bank, Reliance Capital, Kotak Life Insurance, MTS
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about ARCON Privileged Access Management vs. IBM Security Secret Server and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.