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CyberArk Privileged Access Manager vs Symantec Siteminder 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

CyberArk Privileged Access ...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
230
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Enterprise Password Managers (3rd), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (1st), Mainframe Security (1st), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
Symantec Siteminder
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (13th), Web Access Management (1st), Access Management (12th)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior technical Consultant at CA Africa
Improved user experience with seamless integration and easy installation
The feature that I mostly valued is the ease of installation on different systems, especially on Windows. Additionally, it is very beneficial for deploying single sign-on sessions between different windows on a web browser, provided I am connected to the right identity provider. That seamless integration significantly improves user experience and efficiency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Identity and access management are fundamental in cybersecurity."
"It's been a big win for us as we're now able to start managing service accounts with AIM."
"We have the identity provider for all the authentication processes. However, sometimes, we need access to different applications for customers or clients that are not integrated into the identity provider. For these, we need to store a password to gain access. For example, we use the CyberArk Password Vault for third-party services. This vault needs to be shared with many people in our company."
"Overall, as a partner in our digital transformation, CyberArk has been great."
"It allows users to self-provision access to the accounts that they need."
"It has become one of the primary components that we have."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager indeed helps meet compliance and regulatory requirements for customers, especially in the financial sector, by aligning with PCI DSS standards."
"Helped us meet our standards and requirements to help us comply with industry standards and banking regulations."
"It's agent-based. It's convenient to deploy and integrate."
"It helps protect our applications and provides identity management."
"The most valuable feature is the Federation part of Single Sign On, which is customizable and is easily integrated with any customer application or any third party application."
"The Directory is secure. It's our user store, and it's important to keep our members safe. The product does well with that."
"The most valuable feature for us is the configuration feature; it permits us to connect our company to the offices of our subsidiaries, so when we buy a company we can connect their IT infrastructure to ours."
"For the most part, SSO is very stable."
"Federation, for sure, because we have a lot of third-party vendors that we need to integrate with, and this is a turnkey solution in some ways."
"Security to protect digital assets is most valuable to us."
 

Cons

"The solution could improve by adding more connectors."
"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."
"Due to meaningless error messages, it is not possible to repair non-trivial errors without support."
"Their post-sale support area requires a big improvement. Customers cannot automate tickets directly with CyberArk. They have to come through the distributor or bring in partners who have access to the support portal. Basically, the support for post-sales implementation is there, but the role of CyberArk is very minimal. Customers have to rely on partners, which sometimes creates issues. Some of the vendors help you during the implementation process, but the CyberArk support team does not do that. They have 24/7 support for our region, but they help only if there is an emergency or there is a problem with their system. If the password vault is down or the system is down, they provide immediate attention. For almost everything else, they take more time to respond. They give low priority to service-related or migration-related questions."
"It is very expensive. They charge for every single thing they offer."
"I'd like it to be a little more granular. I want a little bit more control over exactly what we do."
"For users to access a system via CyberArk Privileged Session Manager, a universal connector needs to be coded in a language called AutoIT and its support for web browsers is so-so. Other products like Centrify have browser plugins that can help automate the process when using their products."
"Implementation documentation could use some improvement in a few areas."
"To add more value to this solution it needs to be more user-friendly."
"The documentation is not good enough, particularly the installation documentation could be improved."
"The technical support team is not very proactive."
"We would like the OAuth to be more stable, more issues being fixed rather than not."
"Some of the new protocols, like OAuth 2.0, could be improved."
"Once CA has finalized the cases that we have brought to them, it will be a better product to use."
"There are certain integration points that can be leveraged and made more easy to deploy, like the REST APIs and things like that."
"The setup was not straightforward. I would give it a 7/10 rating - 1 being simple and 10 being complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I believe that this solution is priced well. It's the market leader and I think that it's the best solution."
"Cost efficiency is the number one thing that can be improved in my mind. This would change lots of companies minds on purchasing the product."
"The license CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is on an annual basis."
"I hope to learn how the pricing works so that I can understand it better, but I am certain it is not inexpensive."
"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."
"I focus more on the technical side, but I hear customers say that if CyberArk was more affordable, they might have acquired more licenses. Some clients consider alternative solutions due to pricing concerns."
"This solution is expensive."
"I would rate the tool’s pricing a six out of ten."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Siteminder is a little costly. You pay for licensing, and they offer packages, so if you have less users, then you have to buy different products at different prices. If you have more of a user base, then the package is different. They also include other features—for example, if you have a database and you're using Siteminder, then it's good to use a Semantic-specific database, but if you are using less, then you have to purchase the database separately. Whereas if you are going for a bigger license, then it comes within the package. It depends on which plan you are using."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Performing Arts
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise174
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise69
 

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 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 Symantec Siteminder?
Symantec Siteminder needs to have adaptive authentication and multi-factor authentication as integrated features. Currently, multi-factor authentication is available as a separate solution, and it ...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Siteminder?
I deploy and support Symantec Siteminder ( /products/symantec-siteminder-reviews ). I have been a partner and reseller.
 

Also Known As

CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rockwell Automation
British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Find out what your peers are saying about CyberArk Privileged Access Manager vs. Symantec Siteminder and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.