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Idira Privileged Access Manager vs Top Secret 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 Mainframe Security
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
230
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Enterprise Password Managers (3rd), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (1st), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
Top Secret
Ranking in Mainframe Security
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.4
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Mainframe Security category, the mindshare of Idira Privileged Access Manager is 5.3%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Top Secret is 12.3%, down from 15.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mainframe Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CyberArk Privileged Access Manager5.3%
Top Secret12.3%
Other82.4%
Mainframe Security
 

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_user814482 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Security Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
All the features help ensure we are compliant with banking regulations
Top Secret is our external security manager for our mainframe systems It's an integral part of all of our mainframe security functions. It's the core of our mainframe security functions. It helps ensure that we are compliant with all of the various banking regulations, security regulations and…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The threat analytics is an important feature."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager has helped our organization remain compliant in the privileged access management space."
"The most valuable features of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager include its search capabilities."
"BeyondTrust and ARCOS were introduced in market at that time; these tools are good but do not seem to be as user friendly as CyberArk PAM, which is more convenient in installing and deployment and easier to customize as per client requirement."
"Central Password Manager is useful for agentless automated password management through AD integration as well as endpoints for different devices."
"I haven't really thought about anything that I want to use it for, that I couldn't use it for."
"It enables us to secure accounts and make sure they are compliant."
"The main, most valuable aspect is its capability to secure our environment."
"We have implemented two-factor authentication, which is a new piece of CA Top Secret."
"We have an ongoing relationship with technical support; they are excellent."
"In banking, security is a priority, and we constantly get updates that meet our needs."
"It's an integral part of all of our mainframe security functions and helps ensure that we are compliant with all of the various banking regulations, security regulations and requirements."
"The stability of the product is wonderful."
"Customer service is excellent, as any issue that we have had in working with the product received the best response that we could have hoped for, with technicians who have great knowledge of how the product works and who promptly responded with solutions to any problems that we have had over the years."
"It protects our enterprise by providing an access monitor authentication protocol."
"It centralizes all the user security on a single tool, which has truly been the best part for us."
 

Cons

"Perhaps improve the user registry integration. It is already fine, but a bit atypical."
"The usual workload on the system is sometimes delayed by CyberArk, so any major work is getting delayed and may take twice the amount of time that it usually does."
"I would like easier integrations for creating an online dashboard that executives would look at or are able to run reports from the tool."
"The usual workload is sometimes delayed by the solution."
"CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault's deployment is complex for resources with little experience. Tech support needs to be improved as well based on quality and knowledge."
"This is probably a common thing, but they do ask for a lot of log files, a lot of information. They ask you to provide a lot of information to them before they're willing to give you anything at all upfront. It would be better if they were a little more give-and-take upfront: "Why don't you try these couple of things while we take your log files and stuff and go research them?" A little bit of that might be more helpful."
"The reporting should be improved. There should be more customization."
"It should be easy to use for non-technical people. Its interface can be a bit difficult. Some parts of its interface are not very intuitive. Some of the controls are hidden, and instead of having a screen with all the controls for that account on it, you have to use menus and other similar things."
"Make sure that there is a post-sale department in your country. We have experienced some post-sale problems to do with integration of CA products into our systems."
"It would be helpful if they removed limitations on user record sizes."
"That is an area where I have a concern, because I don't see them keeping pace with what we're doing."
"As an IT auditor, the UI is the tough part. From the IT auditing standpoint, it needs to be more simple to use."
"The user interface could be improved. Sometimes, it is not simple to understand where a certain definition should be defined, and I go through a number of screens until I find where to do some of them."
"In new releases, installation is not easy and can take about four months to roll out."
"I'd like to see that more granular, see where you could get the passwords that are being enforced, but you can enforce it at different hierarchical layers between the product."
"It would be helpful if they removed limitations on user record sizes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Payments have to be made on a yearly basis toward the licensing costs of the solution."
"I would rate the tool’s pricing a six out of ten."
"I'm a technician so I don't handle the licensing for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, but I know that the price for the core license is about €140 per year. There's another type of license, the external vendor license, and that's about €600 and you can manage twenty devices. From what I know, the price for one device in a subscription is about €65 per year. You can buy the CyberArk Endpoint Privilege Manager too, or you can buy some other application or application license with CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, but all other features, such as the Analytics Server is included in the basic CyberArk license. With WALLIX, you need to buy separate licenses for the features."
"CyberArk provides all the features bundled. This is compared to other vendors who provide them as a different license for each functionality."
"CyberArk has been Gartner's number-one pick for the past ten years, so you can infer that their pricing is higher than everyone else. When you are the best, you will charge appropriately for it."
"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."
"The solution is cost-effective for the features."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is more expensive than its competitors, such as BeyondTrust, Delinea, and ManageEngine PAM360."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise174
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Large Enterprise8
 

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 Top Secret
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rockwell Automation
First Tennessee Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about Idira Privileged Access Manager vs. Top Secret and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
896,692 professionals have used our research since 2012.