CyberArk Privileged Access Manager Reviews

Currently, we use PAS and EPM. Mainly, we did EPM last year to get rid of local admins on about 300 PCs.

We are looking into utilizing CyberArk to secure infrastructure in the cloud.

I have been in admin for two years. The company has probably had it for more than seven years.

• Lessens the risk with privileged access.
• As far as EPM, mitigating the risk of local admins on PCs.

We are able to rotate credentials and have privileged account access.

It is very stable. We have had no downtime.

It is meeting our needs now, and will still meet our needs in the future.

For the most part, technical support is very knowledgeable. Sometimes, you get the one person whom you might have to push back on a little more. With PAS, they escalate our problems in due time, not so much with EPM.

We did not previously use another solution.

I was part of the initial setup with EPM. It was straightforward during the PoC. Once we rolled it out to users, it got a little more complex.

CyberArk helped with the implementation. 

We did not get the EPM training, so we were just flying by the seat of our pants and going with it. For the most part, we were able to figure stuff out, but some stuff gave us a little run for our money.

With reducing the privileged account access, there has been a huge improvement. They are now bringing more accounts on a little at a time.

Do it now. Don't wait.

Any other issues that we may have come up with, they have always been there to help assist and get us back on the right track. They don't just give you the product, then wipe their hands.

We just got an upgrade to version 10.4, as we went from 9.2 to 9.9.5 last year. This was a major improvement for us, going to 10.4 with the different dashboards and PTA built-in and PTA on the credential rotation. They are starting to integrate all the different components.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Ease of access.
• They are with you going through any problems that may arise. 
• Good support.

The major use case for us is to securely release and manage passwords for non-personal accounts.

CyberArk provides an automated and unified approach for securing access across environments. It's a work in progress but that is the goal, for us, of implementing CyberArk. We want to provide a unified way to access all environments. We are in transition, like most big companies, into cloud solutions. So this is also something that is being discussed and analyzed. But that, overall, is the mission of CyberArk in our organization.

CyberArk has made it possible to work with non-personal accounts. Before, there was a much more focus on having privileges associated with personal accounts, and non-personal accounts were scarcely used because doing so required a lot of manual work. That work has been replaced with automated password management and the controls that come with CyberArk. It allows our organization to control the risks associated with high privileges. Previously, anyone could do whatever they wanted, on their own, but now we can enforce dual control. That is very important from a risk perspective. And the fact that we have it automated means it doesn't require that much effort to maintain things.

Also, when we onboard new employees, the solution saves us time, to a certain extent, when it comes to providing them with secure access to the applications and IT systems they will be working with. Those savings are not directly thanks to CyberArk, but it can be considered part of the bigger solution to make sure that employees have the correct access to the resources they need as soon as possible. That is true after they have been onboarded or when their position has changed and they need to be granted new access.

The automatic password management is the most important feature. The second most important feature is the ability to enforce dual control on the release of those passwords. The combination of these two features is the most important thing for us because we can show that we're in control of who uses any non-personal account, and when they do so.

I have been using CyberArk Privileged Access Manager for five years.

My impression of the solution's stability, in general, is very positive. It's quite robust. There are mechanisms in place that allow you to have high availability and that allow you to have proper disaster recovery. Those mechanisms are very solid, as we have tested them extensively within our processes to assess the risk associated with the use of CyberArk. They have performed very well.

The only thing that is lacking with respect to the stability is the scalability issue. The amount of data we need processed is too big for CyberArk to manage properly. That mostly impacts performance, not the stability, but to some extent the stability has suffered due to that. 

But overall, I would rate it very good in terms of stability. We had a minor issue once and, other than that, we have been online the whole time that I have been here. We have tested it thoroughly and have not found any situation where it would become too unstable to perform our tasks.

The major pain point that we have is the capacity of CyberArk due to the sheer volume of NPAs that we are managing. We are a large organization and we have hundreds of thousands of non-personal accounts to manage. We have already found out that there are certain capacity limitations within CyberArk that might introduce performance issues. From my perspective, something that would be valuable would be if the Vault could hold more passwords and be more scalable.

We have used their tech support extensively and there has been a lot of improvement in the way that CyberArk support operates over the last few years, but it still leaves somewhat to be desired. That is particularly true given the pricing. You would expect, for the amount of money that they charge for their support, and for their product in general, that it would be better. 

But I've seen major improvements in the last couple of years. I think they are aware of this issue and that it is an area that they are lacking in and they're working towards improving it.

They need to better recognize who they are dealing with. CyberArk has an extensive training program, the CyberArk University. You put in a lot of effort, resources, and money, to attend the training and become a professional in terms of your knowledge and ability to manage the Vault, and the solution in general. But then, when you require support, you are asked very simple questions, which you have already answered based on the knowledge that you've obtained from CyberArk. It takes a lot of time and effort to convince their support that you indeed have a more complex case to resolve, rather than a very simple fire-and-forget solution. It's generally not the kind of thing where they can give you a link to their knowledge base and look through it to find a solution yourself.

I have been working with CyberArk for five years and have all the possible certificates, and have extensive knowledge about it. Any time that I report a case to support, it seems the general gist of how such services operate is that they're trying to get rid of you. They give you a solution that, maybe, vaguely resembles the issue, or a solution that you specifically stated that you tried already and it does not work, just to get rid of you. They probably have customers who would be happy with that, but because of the importance of that software within our organization and the level of maturity that we have within my team as administrators of CyberArk, we expect, and we've communicated this to them, that they will approach our requests in a more advanced way. 

They should recognize that we have probably already done what the first line of support would suggest be done, and that we require some more involved support, but it seems very difficult to communicate this to them. Even if we get through to further lines of support, we often have the feeling that we still know more than they do about their own tools. I think there has been some sort of knowledge drain from CyberArk. We often have the feeling that they are learning on the job. They don't inspire a lot of confidence when it comes to their support.

Neutral

There is a lot of return on investment in CyberArk. Being a financial institution, we are responsible for managing risks, and CyberArk really helps us to be in control with the usage of NPAs. That, in turn, translates into a proper risk score for the organization, and that directly translates into actual money being saved.

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. 

It's not a tool for small companies. You need to be a large company with a lot of resources to implement it. But the price tag can be justified, even though it's always hard to quantify these things. It really brings value, regardless of the level at which you implement it. If you use it at a very basic level, as just a password manager, or you go further with all the other elements of the tool, it's expensive, but it's worth the price.

We only use it on-prem, but for someone who only wants to solve cloud security challenges with a born-in-the-cloud security solution, I would still tell them CyberArk is one of the potential solutions. I would also tell them to do their assessment because it costs a lot. So it depends on the scale of use and the use cases. It certainly has the most capabilities that could be of use, but it depends on whether you only have some small deployments in the cloud and on the size of the risks involved. For certain scenarios, I would say they should immediately go with CyberArk, and that they shouldn't bother with others' solutions. In other scenarios, I would say they should do a very thorough assessment of the market before they decide because there might be cheaper options that will be sufficient for them.

Its performance is excellent. We have had multiple use cases: 

• It is PSM, so as a jump box to our servers.
• We use it as a primary mechanism for all our consultants and auditors to access our systems. So, they come in through a Citrix app, then it is used by PVWA to access all the servers.

We are currently using CyberArk to secure applications with credentials and endpoints.

We plan on utilizing CyberArk to secure infrastructure and applications running in the cloud going forward. We are looking into possibly AWS or Azure.

• It has helped from an auditing perspective identify who has access to privileged accounts.
• We are able to now track who is accessing systems. 
• It provides an accountability to the individuals who are using it, knowing that it is audited and tracked.

It has become one of the primary components that we have. We also utilize PTA, and we are now integrating that into our risk management program so we can identify the uses of the vault which are outside of the norm, e.g., people accessing after hours. It has reduced the amount of time that we are looking through logs and audit logs.

The auditing and recording are incredible. Also, we have started using the AIM product to get rid of embedded passwords.

Our DevOps team is looking in the direction of cloud, because we are not in it today. We are hoping to build it with Conjur from the ground up.

It is very stable. We have never had any downtime; no issues. We worked with support on several upgrades, and are looking forward to the 10.x upgrade.

We have no issues with scalability. We are using it in a pretty wide environment. We also use it in our business continuity environment with no issues.

I evaluate the technical support very highly. Although, the individuals who we worked with were very technical. If they did not know something, they pulled in somebody right away. 

Also, one of the best attributes is the customer success team. We found great value in working with customer success and their team.

If there are defects or issues, over the years, CyberArk management has listened to them and resolved those issues. Not many organizations respond to their customer feedback as well as CyberArk has.

We did not have a previous solution. We have always used CyberArk. 

From a risk landscape, we knew that privilege accounts were where attackers were going, doing lateral movements. These are keys of the kingdom which protect those, and that is why we focused in this area.

The initial setup was very complex. There were a lot of manual process. Over the years, we have seen a significant transition in the installation scripts, the setup, and the custom capabilities. So, CyberArk has come a long way since the beginning.

The upgrade processes have also improved.

We now know where our privileged accounts are and how to manage them. So, it is more from an exposure standpoint.

No.

Take your time. It is not a quick hit, where I am going to put it in today and be done. It is a process. The cyber hygiene program is a crucial aspect of how to implement this successfully.

I do have experience with the new plugin generator utility. We have been using it for a short period of time. It is not fully in production yet, but it seems to be quite good.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Technical ability, not only in the product, but in the industry as a whole. This helps set CyberArk apart. They are not only experts in their product, but they are experts in the industry, including Red Team capabilities. They are gearing their product towards the defending of what the active exploits are, not something that has been done in the past.

The primary use case is for privileged account management. It is performing well.

We are currently using CyberArk for applications running in the cloud. We are also using them for DevOps. We have some new things that we are implementing, and are working non-stop to leverage these features.

In addition, we are using CyberArk to secure applications and endpoints. 

We know when passwords will be expiring so we can force users to change their passwords, as well as requiring specific password requirements for length, complexity, etc.

Our security goal would be to keep people from putting the passwords in text files, do online shares, etc. This gives us more granular control.

The most valuable feature is the ability to manage many accounts and broker connections between devices without needing to know passwords.

It is a customizable product.

I like that they have continued with the RESTful API and the ability to leverage automation. I would like to see that continue. 

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 stability has been very good.

The scalability has been good, and will meet our needs in five year's time.

Technical support has been very responsive in navigating challenges. It is very easy to open a ticket.

We were previously using HPM.

It was complex. Because at that point. I had only recently joined the security team. I was told, "Here's a share with the files. Go install this."

I don't know that we are able to measure that at this point, other than no data breaches.

Make sure you have a development or QA environment.

I did training today on the new plugin generator utility.

I would rate it about a nine for ease of use and deployment. They are continuously improving the product. It works great, and there is a lot of documentation available.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Longevity and length of time in the business. Not that there is anything wrong with startups, but these folks have been out there with a proven track record. We talk to other people, look at the reports, etc.

Implementing CyberArk is not only "rolling out" a tool. It also will force the company to have a good look at the access management strategy, improve security processes and clean data. Implementation of CyberArk will increase the insight the company has in their access management implementation.

The password management component (CPM) is the most valuable. This enables companies to automate password management on target systems gaining a more secure access management approach.

Another major component is the PSM, which enables session recording and provides additional possibilities to securely connect to target devices.

Allthough it's highly configurable, the user interface could use a do-over. The current interface doesn't scale that well, has some screens still in the old layout, while others are in the new ones and consistency in layout between pages sometimes is an issue. As I understand, this is scheduled for version 10.

If there are stability issues, most of the time this relates to the companies infrastructure.

CyberArk is highly scalable. Depending on the companies infrastructure, the size of the CyberArk implementation can become quite large.

I rate support 7/10. Technical knowledge of the support staff is good. Sometimes it is a lengthy process to get to the actual answer you require. One the one hand, that is because lots of information is required (logs, settings, reports, etc.). On the other hand, the support crew sometimes answers on questions that we did not ask.

We did not have a previous solution.

The installation manual is quite straightforward and extensive. There also is an implementation manual to support the function implementation. The installation requires specific hardware which sometimes might not fit the standards within an organisation. Over the last few years the documentation has improved hugely. Of course, there is always room for improvement, but I guess this is one of the better ones in the IT field.

I do not have anything to do with pricing.

I was not involved in the acquisition process, but I know that sometimes a Hitachi solution is considered.

Do a detailed assessment of your requirements before you invest. Map the requirements to the functionality and go just that step deeper in the assessment of whether the tool fits your needs. Keep in mind that, although CyberArk is highly configurable and provides lots of functionality, it still is an out-of-the-box solution and customization is limited in some ways.

• Password management and accountability for Privileged accounts
• Identify, protect and monitor the usage of Privileged accounts
• Record and control privileged sessions on critical systems i.e. Windows, Unix, DBs
• Application credentials including SSH keys and hard-coded embedded passwords can be managed
• Control and monitor the commands super-users can run based on their role
• PTA is a security intelligence system that allows organizations to detect, alert, and respond to cyberattacks on privileged accounts.

Privileged accounts represent the largest security vulnerability an organization faces today. Most organisations are not aware of the total number of privilege accounts.

Compromising privilege accounts leads to various breaches. With this growing threat, organisations need controls put in place to proactively protect, detect and respond to in-progress cyberattacks before they strike vital systems and compromise sensitive data.

On implementing the CyberArk PIM solution, we are able to achieve this goal. Now, we are aware of the total privileged accounts in our enterprise. These are securely stored and managed by the Vault. The end users need not remember passwords for these accounts to use them.

E.g.: A Unix Admin who has to login to a Unix server using the "root" account needs to log in to CyberArk and search for the root account, click Connect and he can perform all of his activities. We can enforce a command list on this account, monitor his activities and also get to know who has used this root account. The access to this account can also be restricted. The user does not have to remember any credentials.

Integration of this tool with SAML is a problem, as there is a bug. We’d like to be able to integrate AWS accounts in CyberArk.

I have been using this solution for the past three years. I have implemented this solution for various clients from banking and pharmaceutical companies.

I have not really encountered any issues with stability.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

I rate technical support 9/10, very good.

Straightforward, easy-to-install setup.

It is expensive.

Before we chose CyberArk, we evaluated ARCOS.

Go ahead and use CyberArk. Request a demo.

CyberArk is a good, profitable, and most valuable solution.

While testing the functionality of PAM, we weren't merely conducting a standard PAM evaluation. We aimed to establish a connection and successfully received a response from the target PAM component.

The product’s pricing could be improved.

I have been using CyberArk Privileged Access Manager as a partner and implementor.

The product is stable. If you make some changes or something, it's stable.

The solution is scalable. We cater it to enterprise businesses.

Customer support takes too much time to provide some response. When you open some cases, sometimes it takes one or two weeks to get some people to know the problem and how they will help us.

Neutral

The initial setup takes a few days to complete.

I rate the initial setup a six out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

The product is expensive.

I rate the product’s pricing a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is used for identity and privilege access management.

The integrations are the most valuable aspect of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager. The software offers pre-built integrations, and our team can also create custom connectors. This flexibility allows us to integrate with systems that we previously didn't consider integrating with, making it a significant advantage for us.

There is room for improvement in the availability of custom connectors on the marketplace for this solution. Additionally, their services for the CICD pipeline and ease of integration could be improved.

I have been using CyberArk Privileged Access Manager for approximately three years.

Once the implementation is completed and the solution is hardened, I consider it to be stable. 

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is scalable on-premise but not on the cloud.

I rate the scalability of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager a seven out of ten.

The time it took for the deployment was approximately two years. It was not a simple process for the vendor. It should have been completed in one year, it took too long.

Our process steps for deployment involve specific stages, starting with onboarding Windows and Linux devices, and concluding with the onboarding of application service accounts and related components.

I rate the initial setup of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager an eight out of ten. 

The solution's deployment was completed by the vendor. 

A team of two to three people was required for the deployment of our solution. One of them had a high level of expertise in architecture and a thorough understanding of the solution. The remaining team members were junior-level personnel in charge of activities including connection development, data collection, and deployment. The vendor was also used by the team to help with data collection, planning, and execution.

The license CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is on an annual basis.

A team of five to six people would be sufficient to maintain 24/7 operations.

I would recommend reducing the fee for cancellations, but when it comes to cloud services, there are superior options available in the market.

I rate CyberArk Privileged Access Manager a seven out of ten.