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Idira Privileged Access Manager vs Symantec Directory 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

Idira Privileged Access Man...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
230
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Enterprise Password Managers (2nd), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (1st), Mainframe Security (1st), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
Symantec Directory
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Directory Servers (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Idira Privileged Access Manager is designed for Privileged Access Management (PAM) and holds a mindshare of 8.6%, down 16.5% compared to last year.
Symantec Directory, on the other hand, focuses on Directory Servers, holds 26.2% mindshare, up 16.0% since last year.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Idira Privileged Access Manager8.6%
Safeguard by One Identity4.3%
Teleport3.7%
Other83.4%
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
Directory Servers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Symantec Directory26.2%
Ping Identity Platform33.8%
Oracle OUD18.3%
Other21.700000000000003%
Directory Servers
 

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.
it_user558261 - PeerSpot reviewer
Annalyst Programmer at a energy/utilities company with 5,001-10,000 employees
We use it for internal-facing and external-facing website security.
The most valuable feature of this product is the enterprise-based security and the reliability that it comes with. Most of the people in this industry are using this product, so you are a victim of it since you need to use what everybody else is using and adopt it to your basic criteria.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Password Vault is probably the top product in that space, and it's a monster to implement, but CyberArk is great at what they do."
"We've written over a hundred custom connectors ourselves that allow us to do all types of privileged session management for various applications. On top of that, the rest of the API-based central credential providers allow us to get away from credentials that may be hard-coded in the script or some application."
"It's user-friendly and very configurable. We can do many things with it, especially with password management."
"The feature that I like the most is the Privileged Session Manager. It offers session recordings, logging, and tracking of user workstreams."
"The support is always very responsive, accurate, and complete in their solutions."
"I find value in notifications from CyberArk when passwords fail verification and have other issues."
"It provides a one-stop shop for the majority of our administrators to get the privileged access they need."
"Their legacy of more than 20 years is very valuable. It brings a lot of stability to the product and a wide variety of integration with the ecosystem. Because of these factors, it has also been very successful in deployment. So, the legacy and integration with other technologies make the PAM platform very stable and strong. In terms of features, most of the other vendors are still focusing just on the privileged access management or session recording, but CyberArk has incorporated artificial intelligence to make PAM a more proactive system. They have implemented threat analytics into this, and there is also a lot of focus on domain controller production, Windows Server protection, and stuff like that. They have also further advanced it with the security on the cloud and DevOps systems. They have a bundle licensing model, which really helps. They don't have a complex licensing model. Even though in our market, people say CyberArk is expensive as compared to some of the other products, but in terms of overall value and as a bundling solution, it is an affordable and highly scalable product."
"Technical support has been excellent."
"The most valuable feature of this product is the enterprise-based security and the reliability that it comes with."
 

Cons

"It needs more plugin connectors for all devices."
"The support services could act faster when people reach out to resolve issues."
"It's not a cheap application. It's very expensive."
"It should be easier to install. It is a comprehensive product, which makes it difficult to install."
"They can do a better job in the PSM space."
"The current process for accessing RDP through the CyberArk or administrative portal involves downloading an RDP file. This is inconvenient for users and problematic due to security restrictions that prevent accessing servers via downloaded RDP files."
"Having a cloud version would be very helpful. You have to invest a lot of money for the infrastructure hardware so the cloud version would help."
"The web access piece needs improvement. We have version 9.5 or 9.9.5, and now we have to upgrade to version 10."
"Something that is contributing to global development like social media. I know there is something today but if they could make it easier; instead of trying to figure things out."
"The configuration management could be better. It’s not very straightforward and is awkward to work with."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing for CyberArk is on the higher side compared to other Privileged Access Management products. Something should be done regarding enterprise licensing for long-standing customers."
"No, I do not have any advice on the price of the product."
"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."
"Pricing is quite high and it could be improved."
"The product's licensing is yearly. I would rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"I haven't seen the numbers. I know it is not cheap, but I don't know what it is. I would rate it a six out of ten in terms of pricing. It is definitely more expensive than the other product, but it also provides more functionality, and it is modular too. So, we pay for the functionality we're actually going to use, and that's nice."
"CyberArk provides all the features bundled. This is compared to other vendors who provide them as a different license for each functionality."
"Before we bought it, they were licensing each function individually, which got complicated and very expensive. When we decided to buy it, it was much more straightforward and still quite expensive, but it brings a lot of value and risk reduction to the organization."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise175
No data available
 

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 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 CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
I believe account discovery and rolling support need to be improved. Account discovery is important when integrating with other systems, as other PAM solutions can perform account discovery and onb...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
CA Directory
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rockwell Automation
DBS
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.
911,994 professionals have used our research since 2012.