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CA Privileged Access Manager Server Control [EOL] vs Symantec Privileged Access Manager comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

CA Privileged Access Manage...
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Symantec Privileged Access ...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
Privileged Access Management (PAM) (15th)
 

Featured Reviews

it_user558603 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
I like that the access control on the agent. Installation is difficult.
I would like to see some improvements, specifically in terms of some set-up items. We have spoken to CA quite a bit about the ability to have 'always-on', or 'active/active' status options, so if the infrastructure goes down, we don't lose transactions. This is very important for the environment and for the users so we cannot really afford any downtime with the solution. We have had problems with deployment, and we are concerned with the possibility for outages and how they can have a negative impact on the environment.
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior technical Consultant at CA Africa
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

"We have been able to exceed our audit requirements for security."
"We're happy to see it working so well with our IBM solution, saving us time and costs."
"Access Control enhances the security of business systems through a secured authentication and validation of users credentials before accessing organizations resources."
"It efficiently controls the access to the resources from the privileged user thus implementing the security aspects and this provides fine granular access."
"Access Control has greatly prevented the misuse of administrator rights which is very rampant."
"No, the product been stable and robust, and boasts with new additional features."
"It gives us the ability to track who is using what ID and for what purpose."
"It depends on the client's requirements, but for me the most valuable one is the security access management with distributed architecture and centralized management."
"The CA PAM product can help companies or organizations who are looking for Privilege Access Management, and CA PAM is an industry leader; a powerful, easy to use solution."
"This application is very easy, fast, and trustworthy!"
"I like the fact that passwords are checked-in automatically."
"The system is very stable."
"The RDP-gateway: For limiting which server an operator can access."
"Comprehensive coverage of the required features for the PAM solution."
"I’m very satisfied with the product."
"We know we can scale up with what we have, and we probably will not need to buy any further appliances down the road."
 

Cons

"Yes, I encountered lots of issues."
"User Interface needs to be improved."
"Automated deployment did not work as expected, had to go to a manual deployment."
"I found the installation process of Access Control challenging due to the much networking work involved in order to grant access to authorized users."
"The manuals for this product used to be good. We could find in one place answers to pretty much every question or situation we had. However, it's now in piece-meal fashion."
"Sometimes we encounter issues whilst generating the reports."
"I have faced a few challenges due to the system complexity, as it involves two integrated authentication systems that have to be purchased."
"We have had problems with deployment, and we are concerned with the possibility for outages and how they can have a negative impact on the environment."
"I would like it to support more types of integration."
"Yes, at first the cluster desynchronizes often."
"The product has not improved our organization."
"There are currently other tools on the market which are much cheaper than PAM. They can do almost all of what PAM does, and even do it better."
"We have to do a lot of manual work to automate features."
"We experience stability issues after every patch upgrade. This is a place where CA needs to improve drastically."
"Technical support was good when CA handled it. After Broadcom took over, it's not as good."
"I wouldn't recommend this solution because the support isn't good, and the response time isn't good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Appliances are relatively cheap, don’t skimp. Make sure you have redundancy, high availability, and enough appliances to manage the concurrent workload."
"The licensing is simple and scalable."
"I would prefer better licensing options for the 20-100 users we have at a given time."
"It is more expensive than other solutions on the market."
"Don’t go with an agent model. Don’t go with a model that has you buying a thousand different parts. Go with PAM that gives you everything, or you’ll just be paying costs of implementing another tool that PAM would have just given you up front."
"They offer per-device, per-user, or monthly and yearly licensing models."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Outsourcing Company
19%
Construction Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise30
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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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...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
With the customers that I have so far, I help them broker RDP sessions to sensitive servers, particularly those that manage aspects like physical access. I have also done it for backend databases, ...
 

Also Known As

CA Access Control, CA Privileged Identity Manager
CA PAM, Xceedium Xsuite, CA Privileged Access Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Colruyt Group, Logicalis, TIS Inc.
NEOVERA, Telesis, eSoft
Find out what your peers are saying about Idira by Palo Alto Networks, One Identity, Okta and others in Privileged Access Management (PAM). Updated: August 2026.
912,517 professionals have used our research since 2012.