Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IBM Security Secret Server vs One Identity Safeguard comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 6, 2024

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

IBM Security Secret Server
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
18th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
One Identity Safeguard
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (7th), Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category, the mindshare of IBM Security Secret Server is 1.0%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of One Identity Safeguard is 4.0%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

Featured Reviews

AsifIqbal - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to set up and manage and has good scalability and stability, but its technical support team needs to be more aggressive in solving issues
What needs improvement in IBM Security Secret Server is support. The local partner provides good support, but IBM itself doesn't. Most of the time, the IBM support team does not aggressively resolve issues reported through chat or the IBM website. In the next version of IBM Security Secret Server, I want to see more lightweight recording, architecture, or infrastructure requirements. Currently, it's heavy, so I want it reduced to make adapting IBM Security Secret Server much more effortless.
Tor Nordhagen - PeerSpot reviewer
Transparent mode for privileged sessions will greatly simplify our client's administrative situation
We're introducing the solution's transparent mode for privileged sessions. This is part of what the client hasn't used before. It will simplify their administrative situation greatly. So far, the rollout of this feature has been a seamless process, but we're still in the midst of rolling it out. The benefits will be on the risk side. Right now, the way accounts are managed, you don't necessarily know who is using an account. There's a shared admin account, and that's not a good thing. And those accounts are shared in wallets by several people. One of the real benefits of safeguarding here is that the client will have an absolute audit of who is using an administrative interface, whether it's server or network.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the most valuable features is scalability, and how it allows you to scale it without affecting the underlying core components."
"The live recording is a very useful feature."
"As a PAM solution, Secret Server performs all the use cases in our environment."
"Stability-wise, I think it is a very good solution."
"What I like best about IBM Security Secret Server is its single-access console. It's also easy to manage and fulfills the requirements with the least resistance."
"There is ease of implementation. Compared to other PAM solutions, it is easy to implement and use from an administrator's point of view."
"From my experience, the features are best for monitoring and the usage of LDAP and SSH."
"The most valuable feature of One Identity Safeguard is the user-friendly interface."
"It offers high availability and enables end users to deploy the solution with 99.999 percent uptime, which is crucial in an enterprise environment with a large number of endpoints."
"We deployed it into our company for controlling a client's behavior in our data center. It is very useful to control their connections, such as RDP."
"It has greatly helped improve our security posture. Safeguard has an option where it will reset passwords on service accounts, then go out to those servers where that service account is running as a service and update the password on it. That makes password changes very easy. We can regularly change passwords now and are planning on making it an annual activity, where all the people who own service accounts will go in and make sure all their passwords get changed, updated, and reset."
"We use the solution’s Approval Anywhere feature which enables us to add an extra layer of security for critical passwords without adding time-consuming approval processes. By using this platform, if someone goes on a vacation, out of office, or needs urgent/planned leave, then our setup will select the functions tied to that person and automatically delegate them to the next person. That person can start performing that duty based on their access. No sharing of passwords is required."
"All sessions are audited and they are indexed/searchable through the GUI."
 

Cons

"It would be preferable if the full proxy was included in the IBM Security Secret Server."
"The nonclustered index is working in an area with a problem that needs improvement."
"The newer interface is more difficult to use than the previous one, and consequently, new users might need more training."
"What needs improvement in IBM Security Secret Server is support. The local partner provides good support, but IBM itself doesn't. Most of the time, the IBM support team does not aggressively resolve issues reported through chat or the IBM website."
"Secret Server should have the ability to discover privileged accounts in the servers, like the administrator or users, from SQL and Oracle without having to import a script."
"From a management point of view, it would be beneficial if One Identity Safeguard Privilege Password and One Identity Safeguard Privilege Session had a more similar interface."
"I would like to see support for RDP over HTTPS so this product can be used in conjunction with the Microsoft terminal."
"The Transparent Mode could be somewhat easier to use."
"It needs more marketing."
"The interface is better now, but it still could be improved a lot. It needs more organization, menus, automatic refresh of information, and Web 2.0."
"Something for One Identity to look at is having integration guidelines for how to logically group accounts."
"We have issues using Safeguard to connect to and record from the cloud. Currently, they don't have a mechanism to record this type of connection."
"I just received a question from a customer in regards to a connection with Oracle OID. I tried to integrate Safeguard with the Oracle YAML as well as something else to manage the groups and users from a different system, like AD or LDAP. This one feature could be better. At this moment, the platform system can only use the integration with LDAP or AD. The software for research and development to create a connector to a YAML platform can be very complicated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I believe that we paid 35,000 or 40,000 US dollars for it."
"The price could be better. I think it's a good price for the on-premises environment and the high availability for enterprises the solution provides."
"My rating for the IBM Security Secret Server pricing is seven out of ten. It could be cheaper."
"They offer a fair price for a robust solution."
"The license is around $3,000 per month."
"The license is very expensive for us, partly due to inflation and partly because of the exchange rate between the Dollar and the Iranian Rial. We purchased a perpetual license that we've been using up until now, but I believe that we are not going to update it in the future. Instead, we plan to find another third-party to support us with the license, in the sense that we would have access to their license as a shared agreement."
"They have comparable pricing. All identity products are essentially priced in a similar way. It's a per-user base."
"We have a yearly license. The cost depends on how much a company wants to invest in technology. In our organization, we believe in modern digitization and automation processes so we found it affordable. One Identity was not that much less than other solutions and it is not a cheap solution. There were number of cheaper solutions. However, it's the most effective, according to our evaluation."
"It is cheaper than CyberArk. Its price is fair."
"One Identity Safeguard is expensive and the cost goes up as we scale."
"Safeguard is cheaper than CyberArk."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions are best for your needs.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Retailer
7%
Computer Software Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Security Secret Server?
Stability-wise, I think it is a very good solution.
What needs improvement with IBM Security Secret Server?
The nonclustered index is working in an area with a problem that needs improvement. In some cases, when they create some index in the tool, you may face some problems with the parallelism and some ...
What is your primary use case for IBM Security Secret Server?
I use the tool for dynamic services, integration services, and reporting services. I have years of working experience with the tool. I am a DBA and a support administrator for SQL Server, and also ...
What do you like most about One Identity Safeguard?
The identity discovery is good, and the performance is pretty good value.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for One Identity Safeguard?
The pricing of One Identity Safeguard is fairly priced and cheaper than other solutions of the same enterprise level. It provides a good cost-benefit ratio.
What needs improvement with One Identity Safeguard?
There is room for improvement in integration between modules. The native integration between SPP and SPS, which is currently based on a plugin, could be enhanced. Customization for lookup passwords...
 

Also Known As

IBM Secret Server, Secret Server, IBM Security Privileged Identity Manager
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Cavium
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security Secret Server vs. One Identity Safeguard and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.