CyberArk Privileged Access Manager Reviews

The primary use case is increasing security and our security posture at our company, helping to prevent any future breaches and secure as many privileged accounts as we can. We have a lot of use cases, so there is not really a primary one, other than just trying to increase our security and protect our most privileged accounts.

We do not have a large cloud presence as of yet, but like other organizations, we are starting to get into it. We have a fantastic adoption of CyberArk that extends all the way up through executive leadership. A lot of times, projects and proof of concepts that we want to go through are very well-received and well supported, even by our top leadership. Once we get to the point where we are ready to do that, I think we will have executive support, which is always incredibly important for these types of things. 

We are in healthcare, so we are a little bit behind everybody else in terms of adoption and going into these types of areas. We are a little bit behind others in terms of cloud, but we will definitely get there.

Right out of the gate, three years ago, we secured all of our Windows Servers and all of our local administrator accounts. We followed that with all of their root accounts for our Unix servers. We were able to greatly increase our posture with local accounts. Then, we went through domain admins and reduced the landscape and password age of those accounts. We have demoted a lot of domain admins and taken a lot of that away from people, giving it a shared account structure. This has worked well for us to be able to protect our most sensitive assets. We call them crown jewels. It has been important to be able to do that, and CyberArk has allowed us to do that, which has been great.

We have tightly integrated CyberArk into a lot of our different processes. Our security organization is massive. We have a lot of different teams and different things moving. Not only have we integrated this into our identity access management team, so onboarding and offboarding, but we also have integrated it in our threat management side where they do security configuration reviews before we have applications go live. We require these accounts that operate those particular solutions to be vaulted immediately. We have implemented them into a lot of our policies, standards, and processes. It has helped us with our adoption with other teams, and it has also helped us to integrate it at the ground level.

It has an automatic password rotation. We have so many accounts, and being such a large organization, it helps take a lot of maintenance off of our plates, as well as automating a lot of those features to help increase our security. Having this automation in place, it has really been beneficial for us.

We do use their AIM solution for application credentials.

One of the things that I have been wanting is that we use the Privileged Threat Analytics (PTA) solution, and it is a complete standalone solution, but they will be integrating it into the vault and into the PVWA. So, we will have that singular place to see everything, which for us is great because it's one less thing to log into and one less thing that you feel like you have to jump over to get a piece of information. Having a centralized place to manage the solution has been something that I have always wanted, and they are starting to understand that and bring things back together.

Three to five years.

It is phenomenal. We have three data centers across the United States. This was last year or the year before, we had one of our data centers altogether go out, and a very large amount of our critical applications went down. CyberArk stayed up the entire time. We had redundancy in another data center and we had disaster recovery plans already set up and ready to go. In that time, when everything was so hectic and everybody was scrambling, trying to get the data center back up and available, they were able to access the privileged credentials that they needed because our solution remained up and available.

This was a huge for us. To have the users of the system feel that it is stable, trustworthy, and dependable. We have had great success with the disaster recovery functionality that we have with CyberArk vault. We test it frequently, and it is stable for us. We have been very pleased with the stability of the solution.

So far, it has been fantastic. We are a very large organization. We have approximately 110,000 employees and almost 20,000 accounts vaulted, where there is a lot of room for us to continue to grow. Even at the scale that we are at now, it has never had any kind of issues. We have never had any issues with deploying additional things. We do have some room to grow in some of our components servers if we need those, but everything that we have stood up so far has been operating flawlessly. We have not had any issues with our scale. It has been great.

We have contacted them less frequently as we have become more familiar with the solution. A lot of times now engaging technical support is more for sanity checks, and saying, “Are we doing this right or are we missing anything?” We have utilized them and have had pretty good success with having them help us with particular issues.

When we have called them, it has been something which has been a challenge for us. We generally get to the right person. Sometimes it takes us a bit of time and some further explanation to say, “This isn't exactly what we're asking." Then, we need to pull in somebody more technical or a next level of escalation. 

The customer success team has been monumental in helping us get the right people involved. If we log a support ticket, for example, and we are at a point in our maturity and our understanding of the solution that Tier 1 support is usually not what we need. We have done a lot of our own checks and troubleshooting, and we are able to say, "Here is all the stuff that we've done. We need the next level of support."

The customer success team has been monumental in pulling in the right people and helping us get to the right people on that side rather than working with the support person and saying, “We pulled this person in.” Sometimes, it is pulling in the solution manager or the team lead for that solution and getting to the top of that team almost immediately. We have had great feedback. The customer success team has been at the center of helping us get to that point.

We did not use another solution before CyberArk.

The big thing that was a catalyst for us to look at CyberArk was the Anthem breach that happened back in 2014 or 2015. Being a healthcare organization, our executive leadership realized that we are a big company. We are not immune to these sorts of attacks either. We have got to get something in place. Being best of breed, we turned to CyberArk for that. Again, it has been a fantastic partnership, and has both ways; we've been able to help them. They have been able to help us quite a bit as well. 

The initial setup was straightforward. We did have an implementation engineer from CyberArk who walked through it with us. He guided us through the process. Even though the documentation is straightforward, there is a lot there to do with a lot of different components which make it up. In and of itself, there are a lot of moving parts, but having that implementation engineer onsite, helping us walk through it helped us be very successful quickly. We also had the same experience when we went through upgrades where we contracted with professional services to help us. They have always had someone out there who guided us through it, either onsite or remotely. We have had both instances and both have been very successful.

I was the primary engineer and lead engineer who stood up the entire solution. I was both solution architect at that time, as well as the solution engineer. I have since moved into the architect role and have backfilled my position. However, I was there at the very beginning and did all of the initial setup.

The first year that we were standing up CyberArk, our organization did an annual pen testing. In one of our organizations, where we didn't have CyberArk deployed yet, they were able to escalate privileges and get all the way to a domain controller, and go all the way that an attacker would be able to. The next year that they did their annual pen testing, after we had deployed in that same region, they basically got stopped almost immediately, and they were never able to escalate their privileges. We stopped the pen test in their tracks because of the solution being in place.

While that may not have a dollar amount because it was just a test, it gives us a lot of peace of mind. Of course, we can't always say that it is impossible for somebody to get in. Someone is going to eventually get in, that is bound to happen. Knowing that we have the solution in place and reducing that threat landscape as much as we have, has been phenomenal for us, at least from an intrinsic value standpoint.

We did not evaluate other solutions. We automatically went with CyberArk.

CyberArk is a fantastic solution. They understand what the industry is trending towards. They are able to meet that very quickly. Being in healthcare, we are a little bit behind the times and we follow people a little further behind (for example, the financial sector has been doing all this stuff for so long). However, healthcare, as an industry, is always a few steps behind because we are clinical and have to support a lot of different clinicians, physicians, and regulations, which sometimes makes us move more slowly. Just having this has been huge for us.

One of the things which has differentiated us from other customers from CyberArk is we have been tremendously successful in rolling out different implementations. There are a lot of clients whom I have talked to personally who have bought the solution, but have never implemented it, or they have been met with a lot of struggles or a lot of uphill battles with their staff and adoption. My best advice would be to start out and find the quick wins, the low-hanging fruit; these things you can provide to your organization to have them understand and see the same value that you are seeing as you are implementing.

I am familiar with the the new plugin generator utility. I have not used it because I think it is a newer version than what we have, but I am excited about it. I am looking forward to utilizing it. It is similar to what they have for their PSM solution. They have some new web services framework, so they do not have to use the AutoIt tool because it takes a long time to create plugins today. Like the plugin creation utility, it will allow us to take a whole lot of time off of our turnaround to be able to provide some of these connection components.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Because we have so many applications and solutions across our organization, interoperability is a big thing. I am in charge of CyberArk, as well as Duo, who we use for our two-factor, and having that integration point or the ability to integrate with these solutions is huge for us. As we try to standardize across all of our different organizations, which is very difficult in our industry, what we offer for a particular solution rather than having 30 different iterations of different applications, has been huge for us. Standardization and integration is a huge point for choosing a vendor.

Primary use case is storing and rotating local domain admin credentials for Windows and Unix network devices.

We're using CyberArk secure application credentials and endpoints on a small scale and we're planning, for the future, to use CyberArk to secure infrastructure applications running in the cloud. We don't have experience using the Plugin Generator Utility.

It is performing pretty well for the most part. We have some issues with RADIUS authentication, some bugs with that. But, generally speaking, it works really well.

The benefit is knowing where your accesses are, who has access to what. Additionally, obviously, it provides improved security around having your credentials locked down and rotated regularly.

Credential rotation. It's tops.

I'd like to see a more expansive SSH tunneling situation through PSMP. Right now you have an account that exists in the vault and you say, "I want to create a tunnel using this account." I'd like to see something that is not account-based where I could say, "I want to create a tunnel to this machine over here," and then authenticate through the PSMP and then your tunnel is set up. You wouldn't need to then authenticate to a machine. Then you could go back in through your native clients and connect to that machine. Also, to have that built out to include not just Unix targets but anything you'd want to connect to.

The stability, overall, is really good, outside of some of the RADIUS problems that we're having. Generally, it is very good.

The scalability, sometimes, is lacking. It works really well for more static environments. I've been at places that had a really static environment and it works really well. You've got X number of CPMs and X number of PVWAs in your vault and everything gets up and going and it's smooth sailing. But for an environment where you're constantly spinning up new infrastructure or new endpoints, sometimes it has a hard time keeping up.

Technical support actually works really well. From time to time there can be some issues as far as SLAs go. Sometimes results will be on the back end of an SLA, which is still fair. It seems like you're complaining that it's "one to three days" and it's three as opposed to one, which is an unfair criticism. 

Generally, everybody is pretty knowledgeable. They're pretty upfront when it needs to be passed off to somebody else. That usually happens in a pretty timely manner.

I have been involved in the initial setup elsewhere. It's actually really straightforward, depending on what you're trying to do. If you have a simpler environment, to set up a PVWA and to set up a vault, is straightforward. It's all pretty much there in the guide. Sometimes the documentation gets a little bit out of sync, where things aren't exactly as they should be but it's always really close. Generally, the documentation is good and straightforward.

I'm not the right person to answer questions about ROI for our organization.

Engage with Professional Services, not just for help with, "Here are the buttons to click," because they've been really helpful as far as how we would want to implement things.

Our most important criteria when selecting or working with a vendor, outside of the product being good, are reliability and timeliness of response. Those are the two big things. I think CyberArk does a pretty good job on these.

I rate CyberArk at eight out of 10. I think the solution, as released, is usually very good. When something comes out, it's generally airtight and works as advertised. However, sometimes they are a little bit slow to keep up with what's coming out. In 2017, for example, they released support for Windows Server 2016, which had been out for a year or so. There is probably some tradeoff that is required to keep things so airtight, by holding back a little bit. But that would be my one criticism: It's slow to keep up, sometimes, with updates.

Our primary case is for AIM. We are a huge AIM customer, and we also do the shared account management.

We are looking into utilizing CyberArk's secure infrastructure and running application in the cloud for future usage.

CyberArk has allowed us to get the credentials and passwords out of hard-coded property files. This is why we went with AIM in the beginning. Then, on the EBB user side, we were able to secure all the server root passwords and admin for Windows. This was a big win for us.

It helps us with our SOX's controls and meeting new client directives.

• AIM
• CPM

I would like to see is the policy export and import. When we expend, we do not want to just hand do a policy. Even with exporting and importing, this will help.

So far, so good. We have not had any downtime. We do not want to jinx it.

We think it is good. That is why we moved to it.

We open the cases. We have made phone calls. We have engaged the professional services and the consulting services to help us move on.

They are mostly up to par. Sometimes, they are a hindrance, when you know you have been through the issue again, and they want to gather the same log files, start from the basics, and we already know we are past that. 

Sometimes, we just need a Level 2 person instead of starting with a Level 1 person, or we need a higher level of support on an issue right away.

We are a long-time customers, so we know what we are doing. The turnover might be an issue, because the support people are not local, or something. Therefore, it takes overnight to receive an answer back. We are hoping we can get local support. Though, recently it is getting better.

We did have one serious case, where our support person and everybody needed a vacation, then took a vacation day, but our leadership needed us to stay on top of the case. It was a day or two where we didn't get any feedback. It would have been nice to know that they were going to be off. They had to hurry and quickly to get somebody assigned to the case. That was probably our only experience there.

Our solution architects, and some of the people on that side, did the PoC and the initially implementation. Then, they handed it off to us.

There is a lot of return of our investment related to SOX compliance.

I would recommend the product. 

We have done a lot of customer referrals for CyberArk. It is good. It fits our needs, and there is not anything else out in the market that can match it.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

• Good support.
  
• Meeting the each of the requirements.
• Usability of the product.
• Ease of implementation.
• Not a lot of customization; you can get it right out-of-the-box and run with it.

My primary use case for the product is essentially to secure our privileged accounts, and it's performing amazingly.

What it allows us to do is to rotate the credentials for privileged accounts. It ensures we understand where the accounts are being used and that they are staying compliant with our EISB Policy, which is a policy to change passwords. Thus, attackers find it harder to get in and steal an old password which is just sitting out on a system.

We utilize CyberArk secure infrastructure. We are moving towards applications in the cloud, but we do not currently have that. We are also utilizing CyberArk secure application credentials and endpoints.

The benefits are the way it allows us to secure accounts, but also be agile with providing privileged usage to our users. It is performing quite well, because it allows us to basically do what the user wants us to do, but in a secure manner. So, everyone is happy. Most of all, we don't have any breaches.

It enables us to secure accounts and make sure they are compliant. Then, when the accounts are not compliant, it gives us the data so we can reach out to account owners, and say, "Your accounts aren't within our ESP policy. We need you to become compliant." This allows us to not only secure them, but keep track of what accounts are moving out of that secure boundary.

The most valuable would be the REST API on top of PTA, which we do not have installed yet, but we are looking to install it moving forward in the future. What it enables us to do is if someone takes a privileged account and logs into a machine that we do not know about, it will alert us and log that they have logged in. It allows us to take that identify back and rotate the credentials, so we now own it instead of the intruder going out and using a rogue account.

More additional features as far as the REST is concerned, because we have something which was the predecessor to REST. A lot of the features which were in the predecessor have not necessarily been ported over to REST yet. I would like to see that to be more of a one-on-one transition, and be fully built.

It is very stable. We are going to upgrade by the end of this year, if not early next year, to the most recent version 10.12.

The scalability is incredible. They just released Marketplace, and they are constantly releasing updates to the components and adding new components, like Conjur. This is something that we ran into with Secret Server and DevOps, so it is already scalable, but becoming more so in the future.

The technical support is wonderful. We get the right person. They answer very quickly, giving us solutions which actually work. If we can't get a solution from them right away, we can tap into the community with the tools that they have given us, and work with people from other companies who have already solved the same issue.

I was involved in the upgrading processes, but not the initial setup. Upgrading is lengthy, because we have quite a few components, but it is definitely straightforward.

It has started new projects at our organization. So, we can see where our current landscape is for our privileged accounts, then we try to make them more secure.

Try a demo, if you can. Make it a hands-on with some of the components and see what they offer you.

I have used other privileged account management tools in the past. This, by far, outranks them as far as features and usability. The integrations on top of that as well. 

Each new product that our company buys, we turn to CyberArk, and they are say, "Yes, we integrate with that."

I have used the new generator utility plugin once, so not extensive experience, but I have used it. It does work.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: They integrate with CyberArk.

We use it to harden our passwords for privileged users. We also utilize CyberArk to secure application server credentials.

We plan to utilize CyberArk's secure infrastructure and applications running in the cloud. We have AWS now. That is our next avenue: To get in there and have that taken care of.

If any intruder gets inside, they would not be able to move around nor do lateral movements. It minimize any attack problems within our network.

It keeps us from having to fight with passwords or groups which are not getting onboard with the program.

We are able to rotate privileged user passwords to eliminate fraudulent use.

The web access piece needs improvement. We have version 9.5 or 9.9.5, and now we have to upgrade to version 10. 

Stability is rock solid.

Scalability should not be an issue with us. Our implementation team sized it real well when we received it. We are a younger installation, so we have a long way to go. We have not seen the top end yet.

The technical support is great. They are very responsive.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

CyberArk is the best out there. Their product makes our privileged access management so much easier.

For privilege access management, there is really no choice but to implement this or a similar solution. It is the last bastion that companies have. Firewalls used to be the perimeter and the place to be. Nowadays, intruders can walk through the perimeter (the firewall). So, we have to get on the inside and get it tied down. They are not very many people playing in this market. CyberArk is on the top, so there should not be any reason not to go with it.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Best of breed
• Top quality support organization.

Our primary use case is to secure privileged access. 

Right now, it is performing fairly well. We have had instances where we have had to work with the customer support to integrate a custom plugin and struggled a bit there. It took a bit longer than we expected, but it ended up working out. Most of our focus now is getting our systems into CyberArk, which has nothing to do with the CyberArk software. It is just being able to communicate with our internal team to get them in there. So far, we haven't had a problem with CyberArk.

The product is for hardening access and making the organization more secure, therefore reducing chances of a breach. That is the most beneficial to any company, avoiding any type of data loss which will reflect negatively on your company. Once that happens, you are frowned upon, and nobody wants that.

It plays a huge role in enhancing our organization's privileged access and security hygiene. We are using it for most of our open systems, like Windows and Unix. Our plan is to integrate it with our entire internal network. 

The central password manager is the most valuable feature because the password is constantly changing. If an outsider threat came in and gained access to one of those passwords, they would not have access for long. That is critical and very important for the stability of our company.

One of the main things that could be improved would be filtering accounts on the main page and increasing the functionality of the filters. There are some filters on the side which are very specific, but I feel there could be more. For example, I want to look at accounts which are not working within a specific safe all at the same time.

So far, so good with stability. We have done a couple disaster recovery exercises with CyberArk, and they have gone according to plan.

We have not gotten to scalability yet, because we are still working on integrating our systems. We have a very minute portion of it. 

So, scalability will come afterwards, once we have everything there and we understand how much capacity we have used. As of now, scalability has not been an issue.

The product should meet our needs in the future.

The technical support is good at communicating. I learned a lot yesterday about how to figure out a support case quicker by helping them help you, and by giving them as much information as you can. In the past, I have not done that as well as I could have.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

Not applicable.

I do not have much experience with other solutions, so I don't think I can adequately compare and contrast it with others.

CyberArk is on top of its game. The product has worked well for our company.

If you are looking at implementing this solution, buy the training and go to it. If you do not train, it is hard to understand it. It is hard to pick it up by cross-training with other people. You really want to start off strong.

Most important criteria when evaluating a technical solution:

Be brutally honest about all the factors that go into the solution that you are looking for (buyer) and what the solution can offer (seller).

We use it for all of our privileged accounts, local admin, domain admin, and application accounts. We use several of the product suites. We are using the EPV suite along with AIM, and we are looking into using Conjur right now. Overall, it has been a great product and helped out a lot with being able to manage privileged accounts.

We don't have a lot of stuff in the cloud right now, but as we move forward, this is why we are looking at Conjur. We would definitely use it for that and DevOps.

We have owned the product since version 6.5.

We are utilizing CyberArk to secure application credentials and endpoints using AIM. We have a big project this year to try to secure a lot of application accounts using AIM.

It is helping to centralize control over credentials. It gets a lot of privileged accounts off endpoints and rotates them, so they are not out in the open.

• Scalability
• Stability
• Usability

We are able to centrally manage credentials, touch applications, and rotate passwords.

I have some experience with the generator utility plugin. Although, we did plugins prior to the generator, manually installing them working with support. I do like the interface with the generator utility plugin, as it is very handy.

We would like to expand the usage of the auto discovery accounts feed, then on our end, tie in the REST API for automation.

It is very stable. We have not had any issues. There is a lot of redundancy that you can build into the product, so it's a very solid product.

It has the ability to scale out. We have scaled out quite a bit with our product and use of it to get to multiple locations and businesses, so it has the breadth to do that.

The technical support does a good job. Sometimes, it takes you a little bit to get to the right person. As they grow, they are having growing pains. One of the things is just being able to get somebody on the phone sometimes. Besides that, usually if you put in a ticket, you get a response back quickly. However, overall, they have a good, solid group. 

We were not using a different solution before CyberArk.

One of the biggest factors when dealing with this field/area in privileged accounts is you have to have executive support from the top down. Push for this, because trying to get different business units or groups to implement this product is very hard if you don't have upper level management support.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

• Stability of the product.
• The customer service interface: Someone who can work with you on the product and understand what your needs are.

• Credential faulting
• Credential management
• Privilege session management
• Secure file storage

We are utilizing CyberArk to secure applications, credentials, and endpoints.

The product is performing very well. It is a difficult product to implement into a large organization though. There is a lot of customization and a lot of hands on stuff, which is not just install and be done. This isn't bad, but it does require a lot of time. 

The value is probably the best of all of the other products which are offering the same services.

Having the keys securely locked helps drive policy. We can say what policy is, then we can point to the solution which provides it. Having that availability is strong in a large enterprise, especially in a global enterprise where there is a lot of different cultures and people do not want to hand off their privilege, rights, or workflows. Having that all set up and making it easier for them takes a lot of the stress off of our job.

We are implementing PSM right now. It is providing a secured workflow substitute where people would go in and check out their passwords. They want to use it instead of having passwords, similar to Guard Check. 

You go in because you need a key. You get the key, and you are accountable for that key while you have it. You open the door, do your work, close it, and return the key. People get that analogy, and it is awesome.

We are in the basics, like Windows, Unix, and databases. We do plan on getting everything eventually managed. It is just a lot of customization and time to get it fully matured.

The support is good and quick. This is what we are paying for. We can try to implement something on our own end. However, when we need immediate support, because something is down, we usually get it within acceptable time frames.

It is web-based, but other competitors have apps. We need to get there. It is just smoother to have an app. You don't have all the bugs from having a browser, and people like them better, since you can get to them via mobile. There are competitors that have mobile apps which do the same thing. Mobile browsing is just not there with CyberArk. 

This might be out of scope for CyberArk, but LastPass is an example of personal credential management. It would be cool if we could give personalized solutions to people, even if it is stored in the cloud. We have an enterprise solution, but we don't have a personalized one. It would be nice to have it all under one umbrella.

Stability is a huge concern right now. We are on a version which is very unstable. We have to upgrade to stabilize it. It is fine, but the problem is we have to hire CyberArk to do the upgrade. This costs money, and it is their bug. Our management is very upset about it.

CyberArk has been helping out, and it has been okay. However, the stability is definitely a concern, because with PSM, it becomes more critical to have it up. All of a sudden you have to have PSM up to be able to do your work.

The stability issues started when we upgraded from 9.7 to 9.95. Then, we were told during one of our cases that there was a bug in our new version and the only solution was to upgrade.

The scalability is big. We are a large company, and there are only a few companies that can scale so well.

We use their technical support all the time. It is a little slow to start a case. Then, once you get through that door (Level 1), it does escalate appropriately.

On the customer accounts side, our account managers are responsive. If you ask them, they will get you whomever you need.

Since I started, it has always been CyberArk.

I can't say we have an ROI. Our CIO is not about measuring profit from our security stuff. Our risk is definitely significantly lower. Also, our resources are low.

Start small and don't try to overwhelm your scope. Do small steps and get them completed. Take notes, document, then scale out. Go from high risk out instead of trying to get everything in, then fixing it.

One of my homework assignments at CyberArk Impact is to find out more about how to utilize CyberArk to secure infrastructure or applications running in the cloud.

We have a lot of the out-of-the-box plugins with one custom plugin, but we are still new to using them.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor

Age of the company, because we do not want to be first to market. We want to hear about it from other people. How is the sales rep is communicating. Whether it is more of a sales pitch or if it is a genuine concern for our security.

Then, make sure our vision is lined up with the product. We want to get our bang for the buck