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Symantec Siteminder vs Thales SafeNet Trusted Access comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 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

Symantec Siteminder
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
13th
Ranking in Access Management
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Web Access Management (1st)
Thales SafeNet Trusted Access
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
20th
Ranking in Access Management
21st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (27th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 2.6%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Thales SafeNet Trusted Access is 0.9%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

Featured Reviews

Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
GauravMathur - PeerSpot reviewer
Simple to use, easy to set up, and performs well
I'm not saying that we want to switch the product, however, since the requirement has increased, we are looking at other options that may be better suited. The scalability may not there. We have a few specific use cases where we have to avoid the cloud. Especially in Europe, we're not allowed to carry their phone in factories. We need some sort of secure access solution. There's a dependency on Microsoft Azure. I am paying to SafeNet and in parallel, I also need to pay Microsoft to use the same service. That makes no sense, to pay double. If they could do something about it, that would be very good.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"A valuable feature of Siteminder is the way it handles bulk traffic. The features it has, in terms of routing the traffic and load balancing, are good."
"The Directory is secure. It's our user store, and it's important to keep our members safe. The product does well with that."
"You can quickly deploy the entire product with a basic config within couple of hours."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with the Active Directory."
"It's quite scalable."
"It has considerably reduced the amount of time that new users would take to join into the organization. Previously, it was a lengthy, manual process because it's a very secure environment, where they need to verify the user before they can actually grant him a user-ID and password. Integrating with the built-in custom application, and exposing CA Single Sign On to the internet, we were able to get the employees onboard. The time that we gained was: previously it would generally take from four to eight weeks for each employee, we brought it to one to two days."
"Authentication & Authorization are important because all the sites need authentication for security purposes. That has been handled pretty well all these years with SSO."
"Symantec Siteminder Is both scalable and stable."
"The interface is easy to use."
"The validation and integrity features of the endpoint are great."
"The solution is simple to use."
 

Cons

"Symantec SiteMinder is not easy to set up and maintain at an infrastructure level."
"We're currently unable to find information about if the solution can do a full implementation with SQL. Some better and more accessible documentation for new users or those curious about the product would be helpful."
"To add more value to this solution it needs to be more user-friendly."
"While I have some integration with a few major providers, support for more would be advantageous."
"I would like to see a move towards the newer technologies, which is what we are doing right now. I think that's in the roadmap that's coming, in the 12.8 and 14 releases, but we would like to have it sooner than later."
"We are finding some compatibility issues. We're still working with CA on them."
"The initial setup was complex, painful. But that is to be expected of any new setup. When you're a big bank like us, any kind of migration to a new product is hard. I expect it to be painful, and it was painful. But it's not something that you can avoid."
"We would like to the OAuth be more stable, more issues being fixed rather than not."
"SafeNet's reporting and monitoring features could be improved."
"Lacks the ability to integrate network monitoring solutions and authenticate the app users."
"There's a dependency on Microsoft Azure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"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."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Insurance Company
12%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Symantec Siteminder?
It's agent-based. It's convenient to deploy and integrate.
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 ...
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Also Known As

SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
SafeNet Trusted Access, Gemalto SafeNet Trusted Access
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
IBM, Western Union, Vanderbilt University Medical Centre, Novartis, and AT&T.
Find out what your peers are saying about Symantec Siteminder vs. Thales SafeNet Trusted Access and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.