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

 

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) (16th)
 

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

"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."
"This product has improved the security of the corporate network and made compliance with the safety regulations of our country."
"Access Control enhances the security of business systems through a secured authentication and validation of users credentials before accessing organizations resources."
"Access Control has greatly prevented the misuse of administrator rights which is very rampant."
"We're happy to see it working so well with our IBM solution, saving us time and costs."
"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."
"We have been able to exceed our audit requirements for security."
"One of the most valuable items is the load balancing feature."
"I think it's a good solution for anybody who is looking for a single sign-on implementation for administration of the servers."
"Xceedium/CA PAM support has been excellent and that is one of the main reasons we have stuck with this solution."
"One of the valuable features is the randomly generated password."
"Technical support is very good."
"Used for securing privileged accounts."
"The agent-based credential management solution allows clients to programmatically use the agent to collect passwords during runtime from Symantec Privileged Access Manager."
"The possibility to control the remote activity and establish different policies, because it depends on the position of workers, how much access they needed, and in what platforms they connect, and the possibility to separate this in an easy way is very useful."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"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."
"Yes, I encountered lots of issues."
"User Interface needs to be improved."
"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."
"Bring more technology into the portfolio and being able to collapse those products into a much more integrated way."
"The support for other remote assistance tools would be excellent. Free included tools in Windows (Remote Assist) and Microsoft SCCM Configuration Manager (ConMgr Remote Control) allow companies to reduce the amount of RDP connections and expand the usage of the tools are frequently used by companies to provide technical support for remote assistance."
"The product has not improved our organization."
"The OOTB reporting functionality is lacking."
"They need to improve how it scales."
"They need to have zero tier and active-active setup ​with zero minimum downtime, which they are working on it. ​"
"There is already a feature for that. It is not too great to use."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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 reasonably priced."
"Pricing is fair compared to other top vendors."
"They offer per-device, per-user, or monthly and yearly licensing models."
"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."
"Appliances are relatively cheap, don’t skimp. Make sure you have redundancy, high availability, and enough appliances to manage the concurrent workload."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Construction Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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: June 2026.
904,836 professionals have used our research since 2012.