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Idira Privileged Access Manager vs Symantec Privileged Access Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 2, 2026

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...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
230
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Enterprise Password Managers (2nd), Mainframe Security (1st), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
Symantec Privileged Access ...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
16th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category, the mindshare of Idira Privileged Access Manager is 9.9%, down from 17.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Privileged Access Manager is 1.8%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Idira Privileged Access Manager9.9%
Symantec Privileged Access Manager1.8%
Other88.3%
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

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
Secure management of sensitive servers and seamless applications with direct linking
The credential injection feature is highly valued, particularly for RDP sessions. A majority of customers use it for RDP, and a couple for Linux servers. The broader capabilities, including access to multiple systems, web-based applications, and clustering, have never posed an issue. The threat analytics aspect is also a robust feature that analyzes all pertinent information.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its features like detailed audit and reporting, automated workflows, granulated privileged access controls, automated password rotation, and centralized and secure storage have helped us in developing a secure environment for customers, along with audit and compliance coverage."
"It is useful for protecting passwords. If you need to do access security management, you can first use the CyberArk console, and after that, you can connect the firewall interface or firewall command line. Similarly, if you need to do an RDP session, you need to first log in to CyberArk before connecting to the Windows RDP session. This way, the admin doesn't know the password, and that password is changed immediately. To change the password, you first discover the old password in the network, and after that, you can change the password."
"All access to our servers by both staff and vendors is monitored and recorded."
"Considering all those factors and being the best tool in the market for Privileged Access Management, it is recommended."
"It provides the broadest point of view for privileged access management solutions in the market."
"It takes people out of the machine work of ensuring credentials remain up-to-date, and handles connection brokering such that human usage and credential management remain independent."
"The value is probably the best of all of the other products which are offering the same services."
"CyberArk has allowed us to get the credentials and passwords out of hard-coded property files."
"The credential injection feature is highly valued, particularly for RDP sessions."
"One of the valuable features is the randomly generated password."
"We found that the architecture is scalable and very resilient."
"The most valuable feature is the general concept of securing privileged passwords."
"One of the key things for us about the product is around its simplicity. Being able to put in the technology that allows the business to remove complexity and also allow the security improvements."
"Manager user/admin’s password, so it’s more secure and password will be changed on time."
"Some of the valuable features are safe access to company resources, quick, comprehensible, and intuitive management interface, and good integration capabilities."
"Transparent login and cluster synchronization are quite stable compared with other products, and it is easy to manage for the administrator."
 

Cons

"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is more expensive than its competitors, such as BeyondTrust, Delinea, and ManageEngine PAM360."
"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."
"In terms of mean time to respond, I acknowledge variable response time. The L1 team is proactive, yet the vendor often pushes to close incidents swiftly, even when issues remain unresolved."
"If we could have some kind of out-of-the box feature that you can simply say "no" so they don't have to go into a development mode, that would a really helpful feature."
"The downside is that it's a big program. To scale excessively, locally, on an on-prem application, takes a lot of servers."
"On-prem CyberArk is pretty expensive."
"The solution is too big and complex for any businesses that are small or medium-sized. They should offer a more compact version or make a solution better suited to smaller businesses."
"Their post-sale support area requires a big improvement."
"Reporting. It's difficult to locate the reports, there are limits on what reports can be run from the GUI, and the report formats are lacking."
"Session limitation is a very critical feature that cannot be addressed by CA PAM."
"What I hope happens with the new product CA PAM is to keep all the useful features that exist in PA, but what I’ve noticed with many new products is the UI gets polished but systems lags stability and performance or it adds additional complexity instead of simplifying the user experience."
"We experience stability issues after every patch upgrade. This is a place where CA needs to improve drastically."
"Some rollover credentials often do not work or you need a more complex configuration."
"I wish it could create local accounts on desktops."
"The response time for support could be faster. Some features should be added: cloud-based, VPN-less, more secure, and it should be adjusted in a hybrid environment."
"I think the management console could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of this solution is expensive."
"Compared to other solutions, it is costly."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is on the expensive side. It is very expensive."
"Pricing is a problem. CyberArk is expensive compared to other products I know. It is similar to buying a German car. It comes with all the bells and whistles, but some companies may find it too expensive."
"This solution is expensive."
"Network and security licenses are currently being managed by other outsource vendors, so they are facing some type of problems in the digital aspect."
"I would rate the tool’s pricing a six out of ten."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"They offer per-device, per-user, or monthly and yearly licensing models."
"Cost-wise, CA was better compared to others in the market. ​"
"Don’t go with an agent model. Don’t go with a model that has you buying a thousand different parts. Go with PAM that gives you everything, or you’ll just be paying costs of implementing another tool that PAM would have just given you up front."
"I would prefer better licensing options for the 20-100 users we have at a given time."
"The licensing is simple and scalable."
"The version we are using is affordable compared to BeyondTrust, which is maybe three to four times as expensive, but it depends on the features."
"The prices are not low, but one can ask for a discount. It’s not the cheapest PAM solution."
"It is more expensive than other solutions on the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
Construction Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise175
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise30
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
Due to the nature of the solution, it is hard to gauge, but compared to competitors, the pricing is very good. I would rate it as an eight and a half out of ten.
What needs improvement with Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
Recent releases need improvement in webpage management. For instance, navigating through a webpage that acts like a wizard, where I proceed to the next page and enter more information, is not handl...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
With the customers that I have so far, I help them broker RDP sessions to sensitive servers, particularly those that manage aspects like physical access. I have also done it for backend databases, ...
 

Also Known As

CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
CA PAM, Xceedium Xsuite, CA Privileged Access Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rockwell Automation
NEOVERA, Telesis, eSoft
Find out what your peers are saying about Idira Privileged Access Manager vs. Symantec Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
904,836 professionals have used our research since 2012.