AWS CloudTrail vs Idira Privileged Access Manager comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Idira by Palo Alto Networks are both solutions in the User Activity Monitoring category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.7, while Idira by Palo Alto Networks is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.6. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 12.0% mindshare in UAM, compared to Idira by Palo Alto Networks’s 13.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Idira by Palo Alto Networks users who would recommend it.

AWS CloudTrail

Read 17 AWS CloudTrail reviews

1,663 Views
1,663 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Idira Privileged Access Man...

Read 230 Idira Privileged Access Manager reviews

22,329 Views
447 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

AWS CloudTrail

Idira Privileged Access Man...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 2, 2026

Idira Privileged Access Manager and AWS CloudTrail both operate in the realm of security management. Idira offers a more comprehensive suite of privileged session monitoring features, which gives it an edge in feature set.

Features: Idira Privileged Access Manager provides robust monitoring of privileged sessions, session recordings, password management, and integration with platforms such as Unix and databases. It also supports SSH keys and includes real-time monitoring and session termination. AWS CloudTrail excels at logging API calls within AWS environments, integrates with AWS applications like Lambda and Amazon S3, and enhances security audits and troubleshooting capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Idira Privileged Access Manager requires an improved user interface for broader platform compatibility, better integration of SAML, and a streamlined user experience. AWS CloudTrail would benefit from support for non-API activities, quicker event capture, and more comprehensive filtering options across various parameters.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Idira Privileged Access Manager is predominantly deployed on-premises and in hybrid cloud environments, involving a more complex setup process, with variable customer support experiences. AWS CloudTrail is easier to deploy as a cloud-native service within AWS environments, receiving positive feedback for its timely and effective customer support.

Pricing and ROI: Idira Privileged Access Manager has a higher price point, which may be prohibitive for smaller organizations despite its extensive features. It often requires significant investment but delivers ROI through enhanced security and compliance. AWS CloudTrail is more affordable, often seen as low-cost due to its integration with existing AWS subscriptions, with additional value through customizable log storage options via S3 at minimal expense.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS CloudTrail vs. Idira Privileged Access Manager Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

AWS CloudTrail vs. Idira Privileged Access Manager

June 2026

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Helped 904,836 peers since 2012

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

AWS CloudTrail

Ranking in User Activity Monitoring

2nd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

5.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Idira Privileged Access Man...

Ranking in User Activity Monitoring

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

230

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Password Managers (2nd), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (1st), Mainframe Security (1st), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the User Activity Monitoring category, the mindshare of AWS CloudTrail is 12.0%, up from 7.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Idira Privileged Access Manager is 13.1%, down from 16.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

User Activity Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Idira Privileged Access Manager	13.1%
AWS CloudTrail	12.0%
Other	74.9%

User Activity Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Mahadev Metre

DevOps Engineer at Paydoh

CloudTrail usage enables detailed tracking of AWS console activities and integration with other services enhances operational efficiency

AWS CloudTrail can be scaled to monitor all services and provide notifications for any changes. Beyond simple CloudWatch logs, it can send targeted notifications via email or Teams integration when CRUD operations affect specific services by IAM users. The service maintains a comprehensive trail of all AWS activities. If an account is seven years old, it potentially contains all historical data from that period. This proves invaluable during audits requiring data from several years back. AWS CloudTrail is currently underutilized and has potential for many more use cases.

Read full review

Atul-Gujar

CyberArk manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Secures critical infrastructures with essential user session audit records

A potential area for improvement is enhancing support for cluster environments and distributed Vaults. Clients in multiple countries that need central access have different challenges that require better solutions from CyberArk. For financial services, CyberArk can improve incident response by ensuring fast support for critical priority tickets to meet compliance requirements. Providing more documentation on CyberArk is recommended for new team members to enhance their troubleshooting capabilities. I understand it's up to the client, but 99% fail to change the demo key, so it's crucial for CyberArk to emphasize changing the key and documenting it as part of the installation process.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product’s most valuable feature is monitoring. It helps us audit the changes in AWS account at the application and resource level."

"AWS CloudTrail is currently underutilized and has potential for many more use cases."

"One of the most valuable features of AWS CloudTrail is its ability to track and monitor API calls detailedly."

"AWS CloudTrail has positively impacted my organization by significantly improving my security posture, audit readiness, governance, and control capabilities."

"I have not encountered any stability issues, glitches, or performance problems with AWS CloudTrail."

"AWS CloudTrail features a totally cloud-based deployment."

"In one specific scenario, we encountered a situation where a terminated employee still had access to our environment without our knowledge. With AWS CloudTrail, we could track and monitor the employees' activities, revealing that they were downloading specific files from our customer's environment. Without it enabled, we wouldn't have been aware of this."

"It is a stable solution. AWS handles it well."

More AWS CloudTrail pros

"We have been able to manage application credentials in CyberArk, whether they come as a custom plugin or straight out-of-the-box."

"It is scalable."

"DVR like video recording and text-based recording for easier audits."

"If you compare this product with anything else as far as an endpoint solution, there is nothing which even compares."

"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager has positively impacted my organization, showing significant improvement since all sessions are monitored and isolated using isolated RDP sessions, which are created temporarily and expire if not used."

"It's user-friendly and very configurable. We can do many things with it, especially with password management."

"For a while, there were individual IDs having privileged access. We wanted to restrict that. We implemented the solution so that it can be more of internal control. We can have session recordings happening and reduce our attacks."

"The integrations are the most valuable aspect of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager. The software offers pre-built integrations, and our team can also create custom connectors. This flexibility allows us to integrate with systems that we previously didn't consider integrating with, making it a significant advantage for us."

More Idira Privileged Access Manager pros

Cons

"I have not experienced any challenges while using it."

"The solution's operation visibility could be improved."

"AWS CloudTrail can sometimes generate too much information, which might lead to a lot of unnecessary data, particularly false positives."

"AWS CloudTrail does not fit directly into our architecture as it functions more as a helper service, which limited our utilization of its capabilities."

"The product's initial setup phase is not pretty straightforward."

"More controls should be introduced in CloudTrail, especially to see the logs in CloudTrail itself without saving them in S3, as S3 starts to incur charges."

"AWS CloudTrail could benefit from more comprehensive documentation and broader service integration."

"Searching the logs is not very easy; it requires a lot of patience and hard work to find the right information in the log."

More AWS CloudTrail cons

"Better search functionality in the EPM console. It becomes difficult to search lengthy policies for specific items."

"My company always complains about the cost of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager because it's too high."

"Initially, there was a lot of hiccups, because there were a lot of transitions due to manual installations."

"They need to provide better training for the System Integrator."

"I would say there are scalability issues. After the solution is deployed, resizing it is difficult."

"The one place where we found that this product really needs to improve is the cloud. Simple integrations don't exist, even today. We don't have anything specific on CyberArk for managing, SaaS products, SaaS vendors, SaaS credentials. I understand it's a vendor-based thing and that they have to coordinate with the other vendors to be able to do that, and there are integrations coming. But these are the major places where CyberArk definitely needs to invest some more time."

"The initial setup has room for improvement to be more straightforward."

"The usual workload is sometimes delayed by the solution."

More Idira Privileged Access Manager cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a very cheap service because management is a SaaS offering from AWS."

"AWS CloudTrail is pretty affordable, and I have to double-check, but the service is free to use. I can add logs on the console, but if I want to store logs long-term, then I have to pay a storage fee, but it's relatively inexpensive."

"AWS CloudTrail is a cheap solution."

"CloudTrail itself is free of cost."

"The solution is free if you don't need customizations but is not expensive otherwise."

"AWS CloudTrail is free."

"Quite expensive"

"This solution is considered to be more expensive than others out there on the market today."

"The price of CyberArk support could be a little bit less. Otherwise, pricing is fine."

"The pricing for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is quite expensive, and the pricing varies from region to region. In APAC, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager can be obtained for less than in North America, according to my understanding."

"There are additional features added to our CyberArk Privileged Access Manager license. For example, features that allow us to integrate into various kinds of platforms."

"This product is very expensive."

"The cost is high compared to other products."

"The main problem for the tool is its licensing. I work for a really big company. When you try to develop this as a service, usually you work with leverage teams who are formed with dozens of members. You might dedicate one FTE, or less, for something, e.g., an antivirus administrator. You might have half an FTE's effort dedicated to administering the antivirus, but then you have a team of about 30 users who might access that ticket. The problem is that CyberArk eliminated the possibility of concurrent users years ago. This is a big problem for companies who work with leverage teams. You need to pay for everyone. 40 licenses are used by 20 or 30 people. This is a big problem because licenses are not precisely cheap."

More Idira Privileged Access Manager pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Outsourcing Company

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	59
Midsize Enterprise	42
Large Enterprise	175

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS CloudTrail?

AWS CloudTrail is categorized into management events, data events, and CloudTrail Insights. For one hundred thousand events, management costs are approximately two dollars, data events ten cents, a...

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS CloudTrail?

AWS CloudTrail could be improved by adding more intelligent anomaly detection capabilities, stronger AI-assisted investigation workflows, easier root cause analysis for complex event chains, and im...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for AWS CloudTrail?

The primary use case for AWS CloudTrail is auditing and security monitoring. AWS CloudTrail allows me to track all API activity across my AWS organization, investigate security events, support comp...

See all answers

How does Sailpoint IdentityIQ compare with CyberArk PAM?

We evaluated Sailpoint IdentityIQ before ultimately choosing CyberArk. Sailpoint Identity Platform is a solution to manage risks in cloud enterprise environments. It automates and streamlines the m...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?

My thoughts on the pricing of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager depend entirely on the vendors' requirements. If they want their things to be secure, they have to spend accordingly. We have four t...

See all answers

What needs improvement with CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?

I believe account discovery and rolling support need to be improved. Account discovery is important when integrating with other systems, as other PAM solutions can perform account discovery and onb...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 36% of the time

Proofpoint Insider Threat Management vs AWS CloudTrail

Compared 25% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

Teleport vs Idira Privileged Access Manager

Compared 3% of the time

Keeper Enterprise Password Manager vs Idira Privileged Access Manager

Compared 3% of the time

Saviynt Identity Cloud vs Idira Privileged Access Manager

Compared 3% of the time

Delinea Secret Server vs Idira Privileged Access Manager

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS CloudTrail

July 2026

Download AWS CloudTrail product report

Buyer's Guide

Idira Privileged Access Manager

July 2026

Download Idira Privileged Access Manager product report

Also Known As

CloudTrail

CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault

Overview

AWS CloudTrail offers comprehensive monitoring of AWS environments, enabling detailed tracking and auditing of API calls, changes, and account activities, promoting enhanced security and compliance.

AWS CloudTrail integrates seamlessly with other AWS services to monitor API calls and provide robust logging functionality. It enhances security by logging unauthorized access and scales for comprehensive monitoring across services. CloudTrail also aids compliance by retaining logs, supports troubleshooting with detailed logs, and improves workflow efficiency through integration with tools like Dynatrace. There are opportunities for advancements such as improved filtering, real-time visibility, and better documentation.

What are AWS CloudTrail's important features?

Contextual Activity Tracking: Provides detailed insights into environment activities.
Audit Assistance: Facilitates audits with extensive logs and activity histories.
Change Notifications: Sends notifications for changes in your AWS environment.
Automatic Alerts: Alerts automatically on specific metrics and potential security issues.
Seamless Integration: Integrates with AWS services to enhance monitoring capabilities.
Comprehensive Security: Tracks unauthorized access to enhance security.
Scalable Monitoring: Scales to monitor AWS services comprehensively.
Troubleshooting Support: Detailed logs aid in identifying and solving issues.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Enhanced Security: Provides visibility into unauthorized access attempts.
Improved Compliance: Aids in meeting compliance requirements through log retention.
Efficient Integration: Boosts workflow efficiency when integrated with tools like Dynatrace.
Cost-Effective Storage: Facilitates long-term storage by integrating with Amazon S3.
Proactive Monitoring: Enables proactive monitoring and incident investigation.

Organizations across industries leverage AWS CloudTrail for auditing AWS environments, analyzing access and activities for compliance, and accelerating incident investigations. It is employed to monitor API calls, track AWS account operations, and enhance security visibility. Industries use it for proactive monitoring, historical tracking, and streamlining troubleshooting processes. CloudTrail aids in governance and risk management, ensuring transparency in cloud service operations and supporting long-term storage strategies.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager safeguards privileged accounts through password management, credential rotation, and session recording. With seamless integration and real-time monitoring, it ensures robust security across platforms.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is recognized for its extensive capabilities in managing and securing privileged accounts. It offers vital functionalities such as automatic password rotation, real-time session monitoring, and cross-platform integration through APIs and custom connectors. Users find the flexibility in workflows and granular access controls beneficial, particularly in protecting access across cloud and on-prem infrastructures. However, improvements in its interface, installation process, plugin support, and integration with third-party tools are often suggested. Pricing is a concern for many, along with the need for better dashboard reporting, user provisioning, and enhanced documentation. Organizations leverage this tool for encrypting and monitoring critical account activities and automating password management to bolster security.

What are the key features of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?

Enterprise Password Vault: Provides secure storage and management of enterprise credentials.
Privilege Session Manager: Offers comprehensive session recording and monitoring.
Privileged Threat Analytics: Detects and alerts on potential credential threats.
Integration Capabilities: Easily integrates with multiple systems using APIs and custom connectors.

What benefits or ROI should users expect?

Enhanced Security: Automates and centralizes password management, reducing risk of account misuse.
Compliance Support: Ensures alignment with compliance policies through automated processes.
Operational Efficiency: Streamlines security operations with real-time monitoring and integration.
Adaptability: Protects privileged access across diverse infrastructure setups including cloud and on-prem.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager finds substantial use in industries such as finance, healthcare, and technology, where the protection of privileged accounts is critical. These sectors rely on its capabilities to manage application credentials securely and provide safe access for developers, administrators, and vendors across various infrastructures.

Idira by Palo Alto Networks

Sample Customers

HTC, British Gas, Solinor, 2C2P

Rockwell Automation

Buyer's Guide

AWS CloudTrail vs. Idira Privileged Access Manager

June 2026

Free Report: AWS CloudTrail vs. Idira Privileged Access Manager

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