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CyberArk Privileged Access Manager vs Symantec Identity Governance and Administration 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.9
Organizations saw improved security, efficiency, and reduced costs using CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, enhancing control over privileged accounts.
Sentiment score
7.6
Symantec Identity Governance boosts ROI by streamlining onboarding, enabling self-service, and automating user management, enhancing IT efficiency.
The return on investment lies in improved security infrastructure, addressing over-privileged access, and reducing the risk of credential compromise, which is a major source of data breaches.
The end users have the authority to reconcile the password or verify it before using session isolation, which is one of the unique features that can be enabled through Privileged Session Manager, preventing any attacks from happening within the organization when connected with sessions through CyberArk Privileged Access Manager.
CyberArk Privileged Access Manager has helped customers save on costs primarily by reducing the number of engineering and information security personnel.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
CyberArk's customer service shows improved efficiency, though users face delays and desire better bug tracking and resource allocation.
Sentiment score
6.2
Symantec's customer service is praised for responsiveness but needs improvement in geographical support and complex issue expertise.
CyberArk has been exceptional in coming back to us with immediate responses.
It could be forever until you talk to someone who knows what they are doing.
They are helpful, but complex issues can take a long time to resolve, which can delay solutions for urgent customer issues.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is scalable and integrates with cloud services, effective for diverse accounts with proper initial planning.
Sentiment score
7.3
Symantec Identity Governance scales well and adapts to organizational needs, though some face customization and resource challenges.
The CPM can reportedly handle up to 50,000 accounts independently without issue.
I would rate it a ten out of ten for scalability.
They had 40,000 passwords in this one safe, and it was saving the last ten iterations of each password object. That means they had 400,000 password objects in this safe. They exceeded the limit.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is highly stable, with user issues typically arising from configuration or infrastructure, not software flaws.
Sentiment score
6.6
Symantec Identity Governance's stability is generally satisfactory, with performance issues arising under heavy loads or improper tuning.
Proper fine-tuning and expertise ensure the product performs well.
Overall, the stability of the solution is high.
It has a large customer base and positive feedback within my network.
 

Room For Improvement

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager needs UI improvements, better integration, flexible licensing, enhanced support, and comprehensive documentation for improved user experience.
Symantec Identity Governance needs improvements in UI, integration, documentation, security, cloud performance, scalability, and user-friendliness.
They want everything to be on the cloud, but even in the SaaS version of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, they need to deploy some servers on-premises.
We cannot generate a plug-in for web-based applications.
If they want clients to move to the cloud, they need to support them in real-time.
 

Setup Cost

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager offers comprehensive features but is costly, suiting mid to large enterprises with complex licensing needs.
Symantec Identity Governance pricing is mid-range, seen as expensive, with flexible licensing but time-consuming implementation.
CyberArk is expensive compared to other products I know.
CyberArk is comparatively expensive compared to other PAM solutions, such as Delinea, especially during renewal.
CyberArk's SaaS solution is particularly expensive.
 

Valuable Features

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager enhances security through integration, scalability, and comprehensive access controls, vital for modern cybersecurity.
Symantec Identity Governance streamlines provisioning, access control, and policy compliance with flexible integration and user-friendly self-service features.
CyberArk Privileged Access Manager helps ensure data privacy because we now know who is using which credentials and at what time.
It keeps a record of activities, allowing me to easily fetch screen recordings to detect any misuse and see who did what and what happened.
It can integrate with Splunk, SNMP, and other solutions and technologies.
 

Categories and Ranking

CyberArk Privileged Access ...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
224
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Enterprise Password Managers (2nd), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (1st), Mainframe Security (2nd), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
Symantec Identity Governanc...
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
User Provisioning Software (10th), Identity Management (IM) (27th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Identity and Access Management solutions, they serve different purposes. CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is designed for Privileged Access Management (PAM) and holds a mindshare of 17.1%, down 22.3% compared to last year.
Symantec Identity Governance and Administration, on the other hand, focuses on Identity Management (IM), holds 1.5% mindshare, up 1.3% since last year.
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
Identity Management (IM)
 

Featured Reviews

Abdul Durrani - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables granular and secure access with just-in-time access and Zero Trust model
CyberArk provides a good amount of control over access types. However, as a future enhancement, having additional features for cross-platform integration would be beneficial. It would be good to have integrations with other tools and firewalls, such as Zscaler and CrowdStrike. Although I am not fully aware of recent updates, more cross-platform integration would be valuable. A SOC analyst would like to have centralized access in terms of information flowing in even for privileged access management. They would like to have control over everything instead of opening four to five tabs for different sorts of information. Cross-platform integration would help with that. Customers also want CyberArk's pricing to be better so that they can implement it further and have more licenses. Implementing a privileged access management solution can be challenging. It would be great if CyberArk could provide recommendations based on the compliance standards of an organization. It would help system admins ensure that all the required ports are closed and the systems are being managed properly. If any system is not being used anymore, any ports opened for that system need to be closed. Having such recommendations would be helpful.
Sudip Karmacharya - PeerSpot reviewer
Has a simple GUI and is easy to deploy, but has no proper documentation on how to do backups, and has lengthy configurations and workflows
There are several areas for improvement in Symantec Identity Governance and Administration. They have no proper documentation on how to do backups. They also have a lengthy workflow process where we have to make some configurations to manage automation in the rules and in our tasks which takes time. We have to manually configure all the configuration files, and we cannot export users because there's no export system in Symantec Identity Governance and Administration. What we'd like to see in the next release of the solution is for them to make configuration and integration with other systems their top priorities. We have many API systems to manage, so hopefully, if they make these enhancements shortly, we can directly connect with our API systems when using Symantec Identity Governance and Administration.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Educational Organization
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
25%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 do you like most about CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
The most valuable features of the solution are control and analytics.
What do you like most about Symantec Identity Governance and Administration?
The product’s most valuable feature is flexibility. It can be customized as per the customer’s requirements.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Identity Governance and Administration?
The pricing has been very reasonable, but licensing costs vary based on the customer. It follows a user-based licensing model.
What needs improvement with Symantec Identity Governance and Administration?
Symantec should develop a SaaS solution for cloud environments to make the solution available in various marketplaces for easy deployment. It should also offer bundle installation instead of one by...
 

Also Known As

CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
CA Identity Suite, Symantec IGA, Layer7 Identity Suite, CA Identity Manager (CA IDM), CA Identity Minder, CA IAM, CA Identity Manager (CA IDM), CA Identity Governance
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rockwell Automation
Acciona, Core Blox, DBS
Find out what your peers are saying about CyberArk, Delinea, One Identity and others in Privileged Access Management (PAM). Updated: June 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.