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AWS Secrets Manager vs Idira Privileged Access Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 2, 2026

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 Secrets Manager
Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Secrets Management Tools (3rd)
Idira Privileged Access Man...
Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
230
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (1st), Mainframe Security (1st), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Enterprise Password Managers category, the mindshare of AWS Secrets Manager is 14.1%, down from 17.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Idira Privileged Access Manager is 6.6%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Password Managers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Idira Privileged Access Manager6.6%
AWS Secrets Manager14.1%
Other79.3%
Enterprise Password Managers
 

Featured Reviews

Mahadev Metre - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at Paydoh
Consistent security and efficiency improvements optimize IT infrastructure with effective management
When creating AWS Secrets Manager, it should be automated using tools such as Terraform, Puppet, or Ansible. With Terraform code, you specify the encryption key, secret name, rotation policy, and secret replication. Human error occurs when feeding secret values manually, especially with large amounts of secrets to input. Secrets should never be protected only by IAM. They should be protected by multiple layers, such as IAM and one or two KMS keys. Additional security measures could be beneficial if necessary. The rotation policy is crucial because some secrets may become obsolete, require updates, or get compromised. With a weekly rotation policy, if unauthorized access occurs, the exposure is limited to seven days. The rotation policy can be customized according to needs.
Atul-Gujar - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In summary, this is a good product and well suits our needs."
"Overall, this is a good product, we are satisfied with the support, and I recommend it."
"The most valuable feature is security."
"AWS Secrets Manager has impacted my organization positively through security improvements because on that basis, I can rotate my keys and passwords at a certain time."
"Integrating with other services was straightforward, especially within the AWS environment."
"AWS Secrets Manager plays a significant role in optimizing IT infrastructure security and efficiency."
"The product is easy to use and is inexpensive."
"I would recommend everyone to use AWS Secrets Manager for their security and for storing their passwords, because I see that passwords nowadays are easily compromised."
"The value is probably the best of all of the other products which are offering the same services."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager’s ability to safeguard credentials is very important."
"We can make a policy that affects everybody instantly."
"CyberArk has been easy for us to implement and the adoption has been good. We've been able to standardize a bunch of things. We've been able to standardize relatively easily with the use of the platforms and managing the policies."
"PSM enables after-hours monitoring."
"The most valuable feature is privileged session management."
"Automatic password management, which will automatically change passwords based on compliance requirements."
"The vault is almost a set-and-forget solution."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in terms of integrating with certain other platforms."
"We contacted AWS support and waited approximately an hour for assistance."
"There is a potential improvement in connecting AWS Secrets Manager to Jenkins CI/CD pipeline to automatically reflect changes in production."
"If you add one more layer of security to AWS Secrets Manager, even the programmer will not be able to see the secrets."
"AWS Secrets Manager could support hybrid infrastructure."
"The sidecar feature has room for improvement."
"The solution's initial setup process is complicated."
"We occasionally have problems with rate limits, although that is a problem more generally with AWS."
"A greater number of out-of-the-box integrations with other vendors: They are working on it, but more is better!"
"The solution's architecture could be improved. It requires installation on four to five different servers. Each server has a purpose, but when you need to troubleshoot, it can be difficult because you need to access each of them. Reducing the number of servers would be helpful."
"Based on the user experience that I see on a day-to-day basis, some changes could be made to the Privileged Session Manager tool to make it more user-friendly. The user interface of that tool could be more advanced and understandable to laymen, rather than being more of a developer tool."
"My concern and area for improvement revolves around reporting."
"There is a little bit of confusion in the implementation part, especially when one tries to understand the actual working of the product."
"We found a lot of errors during the initial setup. They should work to improve the implementation experience and to remove errors from the process."
"New functionalities or discovered bugs take a little longer to patch. We would greatly appreciate quicker development of security patches and bug corrections."
"Report creation could be improved. The policies could be more customized."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't believe there is a license cost for the solution."
"The solution is expensive."
"We purchase a monthly license for the product."
"We've observed that AWS Secrets Manager pricing is based on a per-secret-per-month model. As a result, we prefer to divide our secrets into individual pieces to increase security and grant specific access permissions to certain secrets, systems, or individuals. However, this approach results in higher costs. Therefore, we have been exploring ways to combine our secrets into groups to reduce expenses and simplify management. Nonetheless, we acknowledge that this issue may not be related to the secret manager's functionality."
"The cost is somewhat high."
"I would rate CyberArk's pricing a nine out of ten, with one being cheap and ten being expensive. It's one of the most expensive solutions in the market, but it's worth it."
"Generally, I don't get involved in the licensing or the purchasing side of it, but I do know that the licenses are expensive."
"Our risk is definitely significantly lower. Also, our resources are low."
"It's per-company, license-based."
"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."
"Network and security licenses are currently being managed by other outsource vendors, so they are facing some type of problems in the digital aspect."
"I would rate the tool’s pricing a six out of ten."
"CyberArk is very expensive and there are additional fees for add-ons."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise175
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Azure Key Vault or AWS Secrets Manager?
Azure Key Vault is a SaaS solution. You can easily store passwords and secrets securely and encrypt them. Azure Key Vault is a great solution to ensure you are compliant with security and governanc...
Which is better - HashiCorp Vault or AWS Secrets Manager?
HashiCorp Vault was designed with your needs in mind. One of the features that makes this evident is its ability to work as both a cloud-agnostic and a multi-cloud solution. As a cloud-agnostic sol...
What needs improvement with AWS Secrets Manager?
AWS Secrets Manager could not be better because there has been no frustration with the product.
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...
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...
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Autodesk, Clevy, Stackery
Rockwell Automation
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Secrets Manager vs. Idira Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
904,836 professionals have used our research since 2012.