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Idira Privileged Access Manager vs Symantec Directory 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

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 9.9%, down 17.3% compared to last year.
Symantec Directory, on the other hand, focuses on Directory Servers, holds 26.9% mindshare, up 8.0% since last year.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Idira Privileged Access Manager9.9%
One Identity Safeguard4.4%
Delinea Secret Server4.0%
Other81.7%
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
Directory Servers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Symantec Directory26.9%
Ping Identity Platform33.3%
Oracle OUD16.7%
Other23.10000000000001%
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

"We are maintaining compliance in PCI, SOX and HIPPA, which is a big thing. Auditors really like it, and it has made us stay compliant."
"The support is always very responsive, accurate, and complete in their solutions."
"Its' quite stable."
"CyberArk's GUI is user friendly."
"Initial setup was very easy; we started integrating systems and providing access to systems within a few days."
"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."
"CyberArk probably has probably the best vault on the market because of the multiple layered security and each password getting its own encryption."
"Our privileged accounts are now stored in a more secure location and lateral movement within the network have been lessened."
"The most valuable feature of this product is the enterprise-based security and the reliability that it comes with."
"Technical support has been excellent."
 

Cons

"I would prefer that this is a fully-managed service, rather than have to manage the software ourselves and keep it up to date."
"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."
"What could be improved in CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is the licensing model. It should be more flexible in terms of the users. Currently, it's based on the number of users, but many users only log in once in four months or once in five months. It would be great if the licensing model could be modified based on user needs. We even have users who have not logged in even once."
"The admin interface of the Password Vault Web Access (PVWA) is moving from an old style (the classic interface) to a new style (the v10 interface) and unfortunately, this process is quite slow."
"If there is an area that has room for improvement, it's probably working with their support and getting people on the phone. That is hard to do with most products in general, but that seems to be the difficult area. The product is fantastic, but sometimes we want somebody on the phone."
"They are taking two to three days for resolution are too slow. Customers, including myself, do not want to wait this long for solutions."
"It's expensive and you're not getting anything new. It's just a control, but in terms of risk, you are covering a big impact on the company."
"Customers also want CyberArk's pricing to be better so that they can implement it further and have more licenses."
"The configuration management could be better. It’s not very straightforward and is awkward to work with."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is very expensive and requires a license. We pay for an enterprise license."
"I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"Quite expensive"
"The main problem for the tool is its licensing. I work for a really big company. When you try to develop this as a service, usually you work with leverage teams who are formed with dozens of members. You might dedicate one FTE, or less, for something, e.g., an antivirus administrator. You might have half an FTE's effort dedicated to administering the antivirus, but then you have a team of about 30 users who might access that ticket. The problem is that CyberArk eliminated the possibility of concurrent users years ago. This is a big problem for companies who work with leverage teams. You need to pay for everyone. 40 licenses are used by 20 or 30 people. This is a big problem because licenses are not precisely cheap."
"CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault's pricing is reasonable."
"CyberArk is very expensive and there are additional fees for add-ons."
"Compared to other solutions, it is costly."
"The pricing is slightly higher compared to other solutions, but it is reasonable because there are better security features."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
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...
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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: June 2026.
903,182 professionals have used our research since 2012.