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Idira Privileged Access Manager vs Symantec Siteminder 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 Siteminder
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (14th), Web Access Management (1st), Access Management (15th)
 

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
Improved user experience with seamless integration and easy installation
The feature that I mostly valued is the ease of installation on different systems, especially on Windows. Additionally, it is very beneficial for deploying single sign-on sessions between different windows on a web browser, provided I am connected to the right identity provider. That seamless integration significantly improves user experience and efficiency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"By implementing CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, we wanted to secure the password data and password accounts. We could see the benefits of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager immediately after we deployed it and started using it."
"The feature that I like the most is the Privileged Session Manager. It offers session recordings, logging, and tracking of user workstreams."
"It has helped from an auditing perspective identify who has access to privileged accounts."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager has been helpful in managing over 125,000 privileged accounts in a single environment for our client, and we have multiple CyberArk environments for different clients with different numbers of accounts."
"CyberArk is a pioneer for PAM; they've always been the leader in terms of research and development and bringing new capabilities to the PAM."
"You can gradually implement CyberArk, starting with more easily attainable goals."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager assists in meeting compliance and regulatory requirements such as HIPAA and SOX, ensuring I adhere to necessary standards in my operations."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager’s ability to safeguard credentials is very important."
"It provides a secure interface and single sign-on to a variety of different applications."
"It’s a secure product; we can make use of two factor authentication with the product and so from a security perspective, it gives us strong authentication."
"If you look at our organization, and really all financial institutions, we have a lot of legacy apps. So it really helps to get Single Sign-On."
"The Directory is secure. It's our user store, and it's important to keep our members safe. The product does well with that."
"Using this product makes it easier for enterprises to integrate a majority or even all their apps into one single solution for access."
"Right now, federation that comes out-of-the-box with single sign-on is the most valuable feature that we have, and also scalability."
"It has the ability to authenticate and authorize users. It is the main feature for our security."
"The solution has features that allow you to easily distinguish between protected and unprotected resources."
 

Cons

"One area for improvement is the plug-in development challenge. Although CyberArk provides a plug-in generator utility, it does not fully meet our needs, particularly for web-based applications. The plug-in generator currently works only for Telnet and SSH connections. We cannot generate a plug-in for web-based applications."
"Overall what I would really love to see is the third-party PAS reporter tool pulled more into the overall solution, ideally as its own deployable component service installation package."
"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."
"The performance of this product needs to be improved. When the number of privileged accounts increases, i.e., exceeds 2000, then the performance of the system reduces."
"Its GUI is very confusing."
"​It's hard to find competent resellers/support."
"I would like to see an easier way to define delegated roles within the administration of the core product."
"Initial setup is complex. Lots of architecture, lots of planning, and lots of education and training are needed."
"I think they need to integrate some of the newer types of authentication into the product. I'm not seeing the innovation when it comes to biometrics in the product."
"The installation process was complex. There are a lot of different moving pieces, and the main complaint is that it's hard to automate any of it."
"With the other ones, we’ve had problems, and they don’t really match our business needs."
"I'd like to see a rework of the user directory configuration."
"I would prefer to see their SAML integration be a more streamlined and easier interface, more like PingFederate's interface."
"We go by agents for authentication; anything relating to agent configuration could be improved, or even agentless security."
"Upgrade planning is extensive and costly and involves a lot of applications, so we’d like to see that improved."
"The technical support could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Since CyberArk is at the top of the Gartner list, the cost is indeed on the higher side, but customers must discern which entities are essential to purchase. They should weigh the cost against the quality received."
"Compared to other solutions, it is costly."
"I'm aware that the organization had purchased licensing for almost all of CyberArk's solutions including licensing for PTA, EPM, and the Application Identity Manager. But when it comes to PSM, this is one of the components where there's an additional charge for any extra PSMs that you want to deploy. I believe that there's some rider where the vendor has a bit of leeway to, at times, charge a premium on whatever additional services you may require above the board."
"It's expensive, certainly. But CyberArk is the leader in the market with regards to privileged access management. You pay a lot, but you are paying for the value that is being delivered."
"No, I do not have any advice on the price of the product."
"The price of this solution is quite reasonable."
"CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault is a very expensive product."
"Pricing is quite high and it could be improved."
"Siteminder is a little costly. You pay for licensing, and they offer packages, so if you have less users, then you have to buy different products at different prices. If you have more of a user base, then the package is different. They also include other features—for example, if you have a database and you're using Siteminder, then it's good to use a Semantic-specific database, but if you are using less, then you have to purchase the database separately. Whereas if you are going for a bigger license, then it comes within the package. It depends on which plan you are using."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Construction Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
 

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 Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise69
 

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 needs improvement with Symantec Siteminder?
Symantec Siteminder needs to have adaptive authentication and multi-factor authentication as integrated features. Currently, multi-factor authentication is available as a separate solution, and it ...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Siteminder?
I deploy and support Symantec Siteminder ( /products/symantec-siteminder-reviews ). I have been a partner and reseller.
 

Also Known As

CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rockwell Automation
British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Okta, Cisco and others in Access Management. Updated: August 2026.
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