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ARCON Privileged Access Management vs Symantec Privileged Access Manager 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)
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Symantec Privileged Access ...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
16th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category, the mindshare of ARCON Privileged Access Management is 3.9%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Privileged Access Manager is 1.5%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ARCON Privileged Access Management3.9%
Symantec Privileged Access Manager1.5%
Other94.6%
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…
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"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.""
"The deployment process for the solution was easy...The solution's technical support team was good."
"They don't just stick to a base version; instead, they actively enhance and improve it based on client feedback and industry trends."
"Recording all videos of commands entered into devices is highly valuable."
"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 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."
"Technical support is good. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten."
"The entire conversation that is happening between the servers and the client is recorded. It is a good feature if you want to do some analysis, and for investigation."
"One of the key things for us about the product is around its simplicity. Being able to put in the technology that allows the business to remove complexity and also allow the security improvements."
"The two factor authentication, and the single most important capability was it supported PIV and CAC as one of the two factors. That was pretty huge for us."
"We can enforce complicated password policies and very important frequent password changes."
"We know we can scale up with what we have, and we probably will not need to buy any further appliances down the road."
"It gives you list of servers, so you can see which users have access to which servers. This is really useful, so we can make sure nobody is getting extra access than what is needed."
"CA PAM is working well for us."
"It reduces the viral attacks on my website. It also allows certain users access to see what happens daily."
"For me, it is the robust API which is the most valuable feature. This allows for low maintenance costs and allows applications to automatically connect. This is great to automate security of the DevOps pipeline for shared secrets across environments. Also, being on Linux and a virtual appliance is great."
 

Cons

"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."
"A few areas for improvement in ARCON would be performance optimization, ensuring smoother management."
"The deployment process is a bit complex because no document is available."
"It should be browser-agnostic and, frankly, it is working well on Internet Explorer. It should work on popular browsers like Mozilla and Firefox."
"The usability should be expanded to other browsers like Chrome and Firefox."
"For the in-house built applications, they need to provide good, solid access through their portal."
"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."
"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."
"The setup is complex."
"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."
"I would like this solution to be simpler. It should have a one-click access that works together with AWS."
"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."
"They need to do a little bit more on the mainframe side.​"
"Recent releases need improvement in webpage management."
"We experience stability issues after every patch upgrade. This is a place where CA needs to improve drastically."
"Bring more technology into the portfolio and being able to collapse those products into a much more integrated way."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"They do have some licenses, which are required for things like Linux servers. However, in my environment, we do not have Linux servers."
"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."
"I definitely feel the product's pricing is a good value. It is one of the best products we have. The licensing is server-based."
"The licensing is simple, and there are only two types licensing: device licensing and user-based licensing."
"The solution’s pricing is neither cheap nor expensive."
"Pricing is low and licensing is flexible."
"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."
"They offer per-device, per-user, or monthly and yearly licensing models."
"Pricing is fair compared to other top vendors."
"It is reasonably priced."
"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 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 prices are not low, but one can ask for a discount. It’s not the cheapest PAM solution."
"Cost-wise, CA was better compared to others in the market. ​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise30
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with ARCON Privileged Access Management?
From an end-user point of view, it would be beneficial if the system could provide information about the last login. This would help identify if the server was accessed by me or if someone has pote...
What do you like most about Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
We can check the activities in the server for fragile files and documents in case of any issues.
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...
 

Also Known As

ARCON ARCOS, ARCON PAM
CA PAM, Xceedium Xsuite, CA Privileged Access Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RAK Bank, AXIS Bank, Reliance Capital, Kotak Life Insurance, MTS
NEOVERA, Telesis, eSoft
Find out what your peers are saying about ARCON Privileged Access Management vs. Symantec Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
867,445 professionals have used our research since 2012.