No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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

"Allows secure, logged access to highly sensitive servers and services."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Management's most valuable features are primarily its password vault functionality, specifically CyberArk's Core Privileged Manager and Privileged Session Manager."
"The password management feature is valuable."
"The most valuable features of CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault are password rotations and password encryptions."
"If you can afford CyberArk Privileged Access Manager or you are looking 5 to 10 years in the future, it's a good investment."
"CyberArk is the best out there."
"The implementation of the PSM proxy has reduced the specific risk of "insider attacks" on our domain controllers and SLDAP servers by eliminating direct user login by an open secure connection on the user's behalf without ever revealing the privileged credentials."
"Session recordings and timestamps are valuable features. They allow me to specifically select the time a particular command was executed, so I do not have to review the entire recording. I can click on events to determine where and when they happened."
"We have received good support from the tech support team."
"For me, it is the robust API which is the most valuable feature."
"Technical support is very good."
"We know we can scale up with what we have, and we probably will not need to buy any further appliances down the road."
"The most valuable feature is the general concept of securing privileged passwords."
"It has simplified and unified the access of the users to a single point of access."
"We can check the activities in the server for fragile files and documents in case of any issues."
"The CA PAM product can help companies or organizations who are looking for Privilege Access Management, and CA PAM is an industry leader; a powerful, easy to use solution."
 

Cons

"The initial setup has room for improvement to be more straightforward."
"CyberArk has two disadvantages; the first is that it's insanely expensive and the other is it's very complex."
"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."
"More than the product itself, there is room for improvement in the documentation. The documentation should be very detailed and very structured. It has a lot of good information, on one level, but I feel that it could be more elaborate and more structured."
"They could improve CyberArk Privileged Access Manager by providing more reports. If I need to know the 10 most-used accounts for this week, that functionality can be made available in the reports."
"Maintaining the product is challenging. Upgrades require a lot of resources, as it impacts the entire organization. For example, upgrading components like the Privileged Session Manager (PSM) and the vault is time-consuming and difficult. In the long term, I would like to see these processes simplified, especially for on-premise installations."
"One of our current issues is a publishing issue. If we whitelist Google Chrome, all the events of Google Chrome should be gone. It is not happening."
"They can work on the pricing part. Its pricing is a big challenge here."
"I would like to see improvements in branding customization and multi-tenancy."
"The live session recording is still not in the features."
"Some rollover credentials often do not work or you need a more complex configuration."
"Stability is a problem that we fight every day."
"The accessibility and other issues were big blockers for our customer: The local accounts with AD integration multi-tenant deployment Java installation on the local machines; those three elements were the biggest blockers for our project when we used it, and we were always putting out fires to do that."
"We experience stability issues after every patch upgrade. This is a place where CA needs to improve drastically."
"There were some issues with stability. From what I remember, people would complain that every 30 minutes to an hour or so, their connection would drop and they'd have to reconnect, but it wasn't clear whether that was a problem with the network we were working on or whether that was a problem with Privileged Access Manager."
"Recent releases need improvement in webpage management."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our risk is definitely significantly lower. Also, our resources are low."
"This solution is considered to be more expensive than others out there on the market today."
"The price of CyberArk support could be a little bit less. Otherwise, pricing is fine."
"I would rate the cost of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager seven out of ten with ten being the most expensive."
"With reducing the privileged account access, there has been a huge improvement. They are now bringing more accounts on a little at a time."
"Previously, the pricing was very meager. They started publicizing and advertising the solution, growing CyberArk, as an organization. They also changed their pricing with that growth, e.g., the pricier the product, the more people who will purchase it."
"The solution is very expensive and requires a license. We pay for an enterprise license."
"Overall, its pricing is really good. The main difference from all the other vendors is that they have one package that covers all the functionality and modules of the basic PAM, except the add-on modules like adware and server protection. It also doesn't include the licenses for domain controller protection or maybe an API call-related feature. For the basic privileged access management, the bundle pricing is really good, but when it comes to an agent-based solution for advanced cyber protection or application identity managers, it is expensive. Services are also very expensive if you hire the services team from CyberArk, but these guys are really good. For a couple of large banking projects, we had an experience with them. The banks wanted to have things quickly and efficiently, so we had to hire them. If we take four weeks, these guys can do everything on a weekend. They charge quite a big sum of money, but they know the system well."
"The prices are not low, but one can ask for a discount. It’s not the cheapest PAM solution."
"Cost-wise, CA was better compared to others in the market. ​"
"It is more expensive than other solutions on the market."
"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."
"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."
"The licensing is simple and scalable."
"It is reasonably priced."
"Appliances are relatively cheap, don’t skimp. Make sure you have redundancy, high availability, and enough appliances to manage the concurrent workload."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions are best for your needs.
904,836 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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.