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One Identity Safeguard vs Symantec Privileged Access Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 6, 2024

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

One Identity Safeguard
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
85
Ranking in other categories
User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (2nd), Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) (2nd)
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 June 2026, in the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category, the mindshare of One Identity Safeguard is 4.3%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Privileged Access Manager is 1.7%, 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 (%)
One Identity Safeguard4.3%
Symantec Privileged Access Manager1.7%
Other94.0%
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

Featured Reviews

Mahesh Malve - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Business Development Associate at DigitalTrack Solutions ind pvt ltd
Centralized control has strengthened privileged security and simplified audit investigations
While One Identity Safeguard is a strong and reliable PAM solution, there are a few areas where it can be further improved to enhance user experience and scalability. Regarding the user interface and experience, the UI, while functional, can be a bit complex for new users. A more intuitive and modern dashboard with simplified navigation would improve adoption, especially for non-technical stakeholders. Regarding integration flexibility, although it supports major integrations, expanding out-of-the-box connectors for more cloud-native apps, DevOps tools, and SaaS platforms would be beneficial. Faster and simpler API-based integrations could reduce deployment efforts. Regarding scalability and performance in large enterprise environments, performance tuning and scaling can require additional efforts. Enhancing seamless scalability and high availability configuration would improve enterprise readiness.
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

"One Identity Safeguard has positively impacted our organization by giving us complete visibility over all privileged access, making compliance audits much easier than before, and ensuring that access is not time-bound, allowing admins access only for the duration they need it."
"I give it an eight because of its robust security features, its splendid automated password management, and real-time activity monitoring that stood out to me."
"The system is easy to manage, as it is not a system that you will change everything all of a sudden. It evolves most of the time with customer requests."
"Overall, it has helped us save time, improve security, and reduce manual effort across the team."
"The integration of One Identity Safeguard has had a clear positive impact on both security and operational efficiency, with earlier estimates showing thirty to forty percent fewer password-related tickets and fifty percent faster audit preparation, along with reducing risk and eliminating shared credentials."
"One Identity Safeguard has positively impacted our organization by providing strong security, compliance, and the data required for audits, making it really helpful."
"But otherwise, I think it is a good product and a good buy."
"One of the most important aspects is that it is very easy to use and install. It is also agentless, so all of the operations happen more smoothly than any other product."
"Used for securing privileged accounts."
"We can check the activities in the server for fragile files and documents in case of any issues."
"The CA PAM’s ability to seamlessly integrate and provide a demarcation between users and systems is the most attractive aspect."
"We know we can scale up with what we have, and we probably will not need to buy any further appliances down the road."
"CA PAM has session recording, which is a very valuable feature."
"We do not have to authenticate users due to automatic authentication, so this allows us to be much more secure."
"The most important feature is that we do not need to know the passwords any more; just having access to the end point; and that it’s easy to manage users and the account."
"The technical support has be an essential part of our deployment."
 

Cons

"They should provide a faster user interface, as we have noticed that the user interface acts slow when there are a large number of accounts or concurrent sessions going on."
"It takes some time to understand the features of One Identity Safeguard, and it would be more useful if it was easier to set up."
"The integration part seems a bit challenging because some tools cannot be integrated properly with it."
"We should be able to create customized connectors in a better way. For ad hoc or special use cases, I sometimes find we have limitations. Improving the way we develop new connectors for non-typical systems would be beneficial."
"If I had to point out something that could be improved or is sometimes seen as missing, it would be user experience or UI."
"It is a good solution, but it needs more marketing."
"There is room for improvement in the launch module. They built in a launch button but they don't have effective instructions for configuring it to allow it to launch an RDP session. They're working on that, but the button is in the live product. If they were going to install something that wasn't useful, they should have just disabled it and not rolled it out with the product."
"There is room for improvement in the launch module."
"I wouldn't recommend this solution because the support isn't good, and the response time isn't good."
"A better discovery interface of accounts. It does do discovery of accounts for Windows servers, and you could do UNIX servers as well, but it's kind of clunky how it does it."
"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."
"The basic reporting that comes with it is basic."
"Yeah, it still does not support HA in Multi AZ subnets."
"We have encountered stability issues at various software and hardware versions, but we worked with the support team to quickly stabilize our environment."
"I would like this solution to be simpler. It should have a one-click access that works together with AWS."
"We have to do a lot of manual work to automate features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The full license is expensive but if you plan to use it in a big organization then it is the best option because it is more flexible."
"It is a bit on the pricey side, but you get what you pay for. You don't want to get anything too cheap because then you get cheap stuff and cheap support. That really never helps anybody."
"The license is very expensive for us, partly due to inflation and partly because of the exchange rate between the Dollar and the Iranian Rial. We purchased a perpetual license that we've been using up until now, but I believe that we are not going to update it in the future. Instead, we plan to find another third-party to support us with the license, in the sense that we would have access to their license as a shared agreement."
"We bought their other products, so it was not that expensive. It is one of those where the more you buy, the cheaper it is."
"It is more expensive than Secret Server but way less expensive than CyberArk. As a customer, I would like the pricing to be lower, but it has a good price point."
"They offer a fair price for a robust solution."
"It was definitely cheaper than the other two products that we evaluated."
"Its subscription cost is too much, and sometimes, it is very difficult to pitch the solution to the management for cost approval. If the cost is reduced a little bit, it would be easier. If its cost was less, many other organizations that currently cannot afford it would be able to use this technology. I'm sure many organizations around the globe are having issues with identity management, and it is a very difficult task for IT to manage privileged accounts."
"Pricing is fair compared to other top vendors."
"The licensing is simple and scalable."
"They offer per-device, per-user, or monthly and yearly licensing models."
"Appliances are relatively cheap, don’t skimp. Make sure you have redundancy, high availability, and enough appliances to manage the concurrent workload."
"It is more expensive than other solutions on the market."
"It is reasonably priced."
"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."
"Cost-wise, CA was better compared to others in the market. ​"
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Retailer
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
University
9%
Construction Company
14%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business84
Midsize Enterprise27
Large Enterprise35
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise30
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for One Identity Safeguard?
Pricing, setup cost, and licensing are managed by the management team.
What needs improvement with One Identity Safeguard?
One Identity Safeguard is a very strong privileged access management solution, and the only thing that needs to be enhanced is its dashboard customization; apart from this, everything is perfect.
What is your primary use case for One Identity Safeguard?
One Identity Safeguard is used primarily to secure privileged credentials, enforce control over administrative access, and provide visibility into privileged activities. Whenever a network or serve...
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

No data available
CA PAM, Xceedium Xsuite, CA Privileged Access Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cavium
NEOVERA, Telesis, eSoft
Find out what your peers are saying about One Identity Safeguard vs. Symantec Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.