Our main use cases are to monitor all privileged accesses. It can be HTTPS, LDAP, SSH, or SQL management, so anywhere we have privileged access, we want to monitor it and place it under CyberArk.

Its monitoring capabilities are good. Whenever the end users start their session, it quickly allows you to monitor. However, if there are no firewall rules, it creates a video, but it does not take all the audit logs. For audit logs, you need firewall rules. It is very well described in their documentation. At the start, they communicate this to clients. The documentation is well-defined.

The features that are most effective, like every PAM solution, include monitoring and password rotations. 

The best thing about this solution, especially on-premises, is that we can interact with it directly. If we need to develop something, we are allowed or can do it by ourselves, which is most effective for us as administrators. It is not a black box. We have the ability to customize, especially the connection components.

There are some options in the web portal where they can improve the user experience. For example, in remote, there is a parameter called 'access to remote machine.' When we put host names in that field, we are not able to search it. It would be useful if a search feature was there to check if a machine is already onboarded. When we onboard a few machines in the same domain using just one account, we put the domain name in the address field and host machine names in the remote access parameter. However, we are not able to search within that field, which makes it difficult for us as admins to know if a machine has already been onboarded.

Other than that, I do not have any areas for improvement. Whenever we find any bugs or have a need for a feature, we open a ticket with them. They usually work on that if the same request has also come from other people. They are already good at doing that.

I have been working with CyberArk for almost six to seven years.

The solution is very stable. If you install the solution with CyberArk's guidelines, it remains stable. I also offer 24/7 services, and in three years, I have received two or three calls from clients indicating the solution was not working. It means the solution is very stable.

It is scalable. If a client has 100 users and wants to add 100 more users, it is possible. They can make it bigger and smaller, depending on their needs.

Our clients are medium enterprises.

Their technical support is good. They provide solutions and also the documentation if you ask. If you cannot find something, they point you to the right documentation. With support, I have never found any problems.

Positive

There is a lot of complexity if we are installing the solution on-premises. On the cloud, there is no such complexity, but on-premises, it is complex because there are different components like Vault, PVWA, PSM, and CPM. There are many components, and we need to follow a sequence to install these products. One needs a good knowledge of these components to install because we cannot just follow the documentation and install it. The documentation is vast. First, we need to read all of it. For first-time users, it is a bit difficult, but with experience, it is not a big deal. In terms of ease of use, I would rate it a six out of ten for on-premises and a nine out of ten for the cloud.

The deployment model depends on the clients. Our clients from banks usually use it on-premises. Clients in other fields do not want to install the machines on-premises because that is resource-consuming, so they go for the cloud deployment.

With the cloud deployment model, the clients need to deploy fewer components in their infrastructure. Vault and PVWA are already in the cloud, but other components like PSM, CPM, and PSMP are on-premises. It is not that all the infrastructure is on the cloud. There are a few components that are on-premises. However, in the case of on-premises, all the components are on-premises inside the infrastructure of the client, and they are responsible for maintaining that.

Our clients have seen an ROI.

If you want a Ferrari, it will cost you. The solution is really nice, so it costs the client, but in the long run, it is very good. If you buy a solution that costs a lot to maintain because it is not stable, and you are frequently asking for consultant support, it costs more. It is better if the client spends a little more money initially. In the long run, it is very good.

My recommendation depends on your needs and what you want to achieve. If you just want SSH, LDAP, and basic monitoring, you can consider other solutions like Wallix or One Identity, which cost less. If you need a lot of customization, such as you want to put in a lot of HTTPS ports and change the passwords of internal applications, this solution is much better than others. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten.

The use cases include end-to-end privileged access and session management and complete password rotations. All the privileged accounts are secured within the vault, monitored, and rotated from there.

It helps manage non-human or application accounts used in scripting or containers. All can be managed in CyberArk. They have Secrets Manager as well.

Session monitoring includes recordings of all activities performed. For instance, if I connect to a server, whether it is Windows or Linux, and perform some activities, all actions are recorded. It is a video recording.

It can integrate with Splunk, SNMP, and other solutions and technologies. We have integrated it with Splunk for the audit logs.

Its price might be high for some people, but the quality is top-notch.

Their support can be better. Their SLA timings are higher than others. If Delinea has an SLA time of three days, CyberArk is going to have an SLA time of five days. They do not breach the SLA. 

I have been working with this solution for around eight years.

Support is available through different models, depending on the license agreement. Dedicated customer support personnel can be assigned to specific clients. Additionally, professional service hours are available for purchase.

Typical case resolution can take between a week and two weeks, although priority cases may be resolved in a day. There are different levels of support. Initially, a case goes to a level one engineer. If unresolved, it escalates to level two and then to R&D if needed.

CyberArk has a large number of customers. If you compare it to other vendors, they are doing better than CyberArk because their numbers are less, so they are able to support in a better way. With CyberArk, we have a longer waiting time.

Neutral

There are two models: on-premises and cloud. For on-premises, we have virtual machines hosted on Hyper-V, but physical servers are recommended by CyberArk. Installation requires technical expertise.

SaaS deployment is faster than on-premises because most of the components are handled by CyberArk. The deployment is faster in SaaS, but the cost of SaaS is a bit high. They have different licensing costs.

From my perspective, the capabilities the tool provides match the investment. For small businesses, the price is fair compared to other tools. While the cost may be higher, I believe it is a top-tier solution.

It is a leading solution and one of the best SaaS solutions in the market. CyberArk is good at what they do, and the price reflects that. You have to pay the price for the same.

The price can vary based on the capabilities you need. We are paying a fair price for our environment. Compared to other solutions, its price can be high, but you are getting the best solution available in the market.

For 1,000 SaaS licenses, 100K euros might be required.

I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

My first use case is seamless recording and seamless connection to the area target, as well as the recording of ten sessions with command restriction. This is the first use case. 

Secondly, I can perform password rotation without needing to know or use the password of the privileged account. I can connect and rotate my password as needed. Various customers have password rotation for each day. 

These are the two main use cases currently employed: password rotation and a seamless connection to end targets with the recording feature.

It's a one-stop solution. Whatever I need, whether securing identity, web applications, privileged accounts, RDP, Windows, Linux, or other devices like switches or firewalls, CyberArk supports it fully. It eliminates the need for me to search for other solutions.

Its identity compatibility with CyberArk Identity Solution provides extra security, including free MFA with the licensing cost. Premium accounts can increase security using the EnCon Privileged Manager. CyberArk's integration with PaaS solutions makes it the most comprehensive solution, eliminating the need for me to explore other Gartner solutions.

The best feature is vaulting. CyberArk has a separate vault, which is their proprietary vault, which provides multiple encryptions for every password object, as well as tamper-proof recording. Recordings are sent to the vault. This is the best feature since all data and security we have are situated in the vault. 

CyberArk provides me with a single account page to access all endpoints or privileged accounts, simplifying connection without the hassle of password maintenance.

I sometimes require learning resources when there is a new solution for CyberArk. I need to mark favourite accounts or group accounts which point to needed improvements. Some users wish to bypass providing a reason when logging into some target servers. 

Additionally, some users could be excluded from certain requirements, but this is not currently possible. A gradual setting could be added to exclude users from regular routing, allowing direct access without entering a reason. 

Also, improving the support process is necessary. They are focusing on cloud solutions instead of on-prem. They are taking two to three days for resolution are too slow. Customers, including myself, do not want to wait this long for solutions. It is vital for CyberArk to focus more on enhancing support, though CyberArk is committed to monitoring customer reviews and is making progress in its solutions.

I have deployed and implemented CyberArk for various customers. I have been installing and deploying CyberArk to different clients and regions for more than four years.

In my four years of experience, I did not encounter any glitches or big problems in CyberArk. I have only encountered minor issues, such as a learning curve, which cannot be changed. There are also a few items that are mandatory and not optional in terms of being able to change things. Even if the customer does not want it, it is a one-stop solution.

Apart from these minor issues, CyberArk is perfect for daily operations when compared to other solutions. It secures my organization despite some mandatory features that clients do not want. 

I'd rate stability nine out of ten.

I'd rate scalability ten out of ten.

I'd rate the technical support seven out of ten.

I have experience with CyberArk support, where I had some unresolved issues. The support provided me with a different solution, which was unrelated to my request. The support staff appeared lacking in technical knowledge, which resulted in dissatisfaction for both myself and the customer. Consequently, they hired partners and services to manage their CyberArk application.

Neutral

The initial setup depends entirely on the investment. CyberArk consists of several components, such as four to five for a standard setup or eight to ten for distributed or high-availability configurations. 

This increases investment costs. SaaS, which requires fewer components, might be chosen yet comes with disadvantages, as Vault and PVWX come with the application. Compared to on-prem solutions, it's a bit more expensive, however it gives more rights to the customer. 

The initial setup is straightforward. The customer can use it almost right away.

The process might take 20 minutes with troubleshooting all the way up to three months for a full project. 

Most of our clients are bigger enterprises.

CyberArk does not need any maintenance. It deploys custom management, so you don't require anything beyond an administrator that can handle any downtime. It automatically upgrades.

Our team currently consists of up to ten members working, depending on the project's requirements.

The ROI is a big concern. It's a total solution, and most customers are totally satisfied with their solution right now. Most customers are satisfied with having this single solution, having initially wanted different solutions. After experiencing CyberArk and its demo, customers are fully satisfied. CyberArk's capabilities and functionality outperform other solutions.

CyberArk is not inexpensive. It offers a two-way model: access is a licensing cost based on the number of users, and the implementation cost is handled by partners. Although it is somewhat expensive, paying only for licenses instead of the number of devices can be considered fair. Yet, it is not labeled as cheap, it is somewhat falling on the expensive side.

CyberArk is a bit expensive and enterprise clients are the ones that are using it right now. It works well in big organizations with big architecture. 

I have experience with CyberArk as well as other on-prem solutions. CyberArk offers numerous solutions. Compared to others, CyberArk's identity system is bundled with access solutions and securing privileged access. The admin gateway first checks user legitimacy before granting access to the PaaS solution or privileged accounts. CyberArk integrates various cybersecurity solutions, such as identity, endpoint privilege manager, and PAM solution, apart from VPN-less access and dynamic privilege access. 

Other solutions only offer traditional features. CyberArk is progressing in AI and ML. It's allowing web applications and scripts onboarded without credential hassle. Hence, CyberArk is a leader in time solutions.

Overall, I would rate the product a nine out of ten. 

It's a one-stop solution. CyberArk has total support for everything, saving you from finding any other solution. You get strong security for your license costs.

I'm a partner of CyberArk.

I am an admin, and I use this solution for all our users. We have 80 users in our environment.

By implementing CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, we wanted to secure our environment and track everything.

We were able to realize its benefits within four to five months of its deployment after we had onboarded everything.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is cool. It has a lot of good tools, including everything we need. 

It could be more user-friendly. Sometimes I encounter issues, and I do not know what the issue is. It takes a lot of time to find the error and fix it. Sometimes it gives an error, but I do not know what the error is. I have to find the documents, but it does not provide all the details needed to fix the error. This is one of the day-to-day issues with CyberArk. 

When I contact support, it takes a long time to get help. They request all these logs, but they are not always relevant to my case. It is not always a definite help because I sometimes need help with issues that do not require any logs or device details. I am not sure if they read the case or not.

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

It is good. We had a ten-minute outage last month. That is all. We do not know the reason. 

It is reliable.

CyberArk's support quality has to improve because we are totally dependent on them. I would rate their support a five out of ten.

Neutral

I used to use Okta. CyberArk Privileged Access Manager has more features.

We had a third-party professional service that helped us to install it. It took about four or five months. To deploy, we worked with three people.

It does not require any maintenance. We just have to do the day-to-day operations work.

New users should have training before they sign up for CyberArk. CyberArk should provide mandatory training so that everyone implements it properly. Sometimes, new users do not know what is going on, and they open a ticket, which might be an issue from their end. CyberArk should have a new user training service so that everyone is familiar with it.

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

We are a consulting company, and we provide consulting for solutions like CyberArk, HashiCorp, and similar offerings. I provide consultancy for various industries such as finance and hospitality.

Our clients use this solution for their critical assets and crown jewels. They want good identity and access management or privileged access management for their critical assets. A lot of mid-tier clients would have also implemented CyberArk on their servers if its pricing was better. Usually, they deploy it for their critical assets. They have implemented policies, just-in-time access, etc.

Having an efficient Privileged Access Management solution like CyberArk helps you stop bad actors early in the cyber attack chain process. You have an additional layer of security for your assets.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager provides a good amount of granularity in giving access.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager has a policy for blocking out everything as per the Zero Trust model, which can be helpful in a breach situation.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager ensures data privacy by locking down your assets and recording each and every instance. That helps with the data information protection piece.

Privileged access management solutions like CyberArk Privileged Access Manager make it difficult for malicious entities to gain information or expose sensitive assets. Even if a specific asset not part of the PAM group gets breached, your critical information remains safe as access to specific resources or ports is not allowed. Implementing privileged access management in a way that blocks necessary threats makes it difficult for bad actors to access sensitive information.

The whole concept of Zero Trust and implementing it with CyberArk, which somewhat adheres to the 'never trust, always verify' principle, is very valuable. I really appreciate this aspect. Moreover, the just-in-time access is impressive, allowing access for a specific time.

Apart from CyberArk's PAM solution, I like CyberArk Conjur for secrets rotation. The constant rotation of secrets makes it hard for bad actors to gain access to environments. 

CyberArk provides a good amount of control over access types. However, as a future enhancement, having additional features for cross-platform integration would be beneficial. It would be good to have integrations with other tools and firewalls, such as Zscaler and CrowdStrike. Although I am not fully aware of recent updates, more cross-platform integration would be valuable. A SOC analyst would like to have centralized access in terms of information flowing in even for privileged access management. They would like to have control over everything instead of opening four to five tabs for different sorts of information. Cross-platform integration would help with that.

Customers also want CyberArk's pricing to be better so that they can implement it further and have more licenses.

Implementing a privileged access management solution can be challenging. It would be great if CyberArk could provide recommendations based on the compliance standards of an organization. It would help system admins ensure that all the required ports are closed and the systems are being managed properly. If any system is not being used anymore, any ports opened for that system need to be closed. Having such recommendations would be helpful.

I have been associated with CyberArk since it became popular two to three years ago. I have been working with CyberArk tools on the client side and the consultant or vendor side.

I cannot think of any stability issues.

I cannot think of any scalability issues.

In terms of tech support, I have had a positive experience with ManageEngine support, and I wish that a similar experience was there with other vendors and products. With ManageEngine, I appreciated the chat option. When I was stuck, I did not need to go through a dedicated portal or wait hours for a solution. A chat system providing quick access to a technical engineer, within four to five minutes, is very helpful.

I would rate CyberArk's technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

I worked with HashiCorp, specifically HashiCorp Vault, and had collaborations representing CyberArk's perspective. 

CyberArk focuses on privileged access management for enterprise security. They offer CyberArk Conjur, but if customers need secrets management or infrastructure automation, HashiCorp has a better solution with HashiCorp Vault. In terms of PAM, CyberArk excels. For Conjur-type products, HashiCorp is better. CyberArk caters to traditional infrastructures and security or IT admins, while HashiCorp has good cloud-native, DevSecOps, or DevOps services.

About two years ago, people focused on the on-prem side of things, but now the cloud version is gaining popularity.

The solution has so much to offer that it becomes a little bit complex. Every infrastructure is different, and you need a customized solution as per the infrastructure design. CyberArk has a lot to offer. It has a lot of buttons to push in terms of security, so it becomes a little bit complex when you are deploying it for a big organization.

During on-prem deployments, we followed specific steps for the right deployment process. The order of deployment is crucial, such as deploying necessary components first and then setting up CPM policies. This order is essential whenever deploying CyberArk.

Two to three years ago, its integration was difficult. We had to take different routes to integrate those solutions, but now, we see a lot of plug-ins. For example, Microsoft Sentinel does have a CyberArk plug-in.

For deploying a CyberArk solution, you would need at least two security analysts, two to three system admins, and one network administrator. The security admin provides the right infrastructure and access. The network administrator helps with all VLANs or separate segmentation for specific sites or resources. The security admin works on the CPM policies and more.

In terms of maintenance, like any other solution, it requires keeping an eye on it and any updates. You would need someone to support it.

A strong identity and access management solution aids in navigating significant incident responses or breach situations. Omitting important solutions can be highly costly. Implementing a privileged access management solution can help avoid such expenses.

Its value can be seen after one or two months of proper implementation. It makes the life of a security admin easier. 

I focus more on the technical side, but I hear customers say that if CyberArk was more affordable, they might have acquired more licenses. Some clients consider alternative solutions due to pricing concerns. If CyberArk could address this, it would help in offering their solution to additional customers.

With a PAM product, most customers want to block access to critical assets and have a strong policy set. They also look for cost-effectiveness.

For a financial organization, even a compromised password can trigger a domino effect in terms of exposure of sensitive information, leading to a failure to meet specific compliances being followed in a specific region. They might have to let consumers know. Having an effective PAM solution can save a company from such a situation. Generally, it is not that the solution is not efficient. It is usually that the implementation is not done correctly. Every infrastructure is different, so you need to have a proper plan and make sure it is implemented as per your industry requirements.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager helps with compliance to a certain extent, but it is not a compliance solution. For compliance, we still rely on other solutions.

I tell my clients that having an additional piece of PAM helps protect against threats and provides an extra layer of security. Identity and access management are fundamental in cybersecurity. Done right, it offers peace of mind and safeguards against unauthorized access to sensitive information. In the financial sector, where data is highly sensitive, exposure to bad actors can lead to significant breaches and potential damages. A breach can cost a million of dollars.

I would rate CyberArk Privileged Access Manager an eight out of ten.

I started as a CyberArk administrator for a fairly large bank in the US. They are a large global company. They formed a US branch, and I was the sole CyberArk administrator there. They had a basic CyberArk setup, and that is where I gained my initial experience before moving on to consulting.

My first consulting gig was for two and a half years with a defense contractor. They had a very complex environment. The complexity is typically gauged, especially for PAM products, by the number of passwords being managed. Many organizations have 10,000 or 20,000, whereas this organization had 750,000. This included the number of machines required to rotate all these passwords and integrations with their API and SailPoint to provision and de-provision users. We initially helped them change from a standalone vault architecture to a clustered vault architecture for high availability failover. Once we completed that, our work expanded, similar to being the IT person for the family—each task leading to another. This extended our engagement.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager provides granularity. You can break things down into individual safes. You have specific access to safes by individual or group. The interface is with AD, with LDAP, or with local CyberArk passwords. You also have the ability to establish policies for your individual credentials. If you want them rotated at a certain time of day or you want the password complexity to forbid certain characters, you can create a new policy and fine-tune those elements. It provides excellent granularity because you can control all the factors related to password complexity requirements, password rotations, allowed connections, etc.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager’s ability to safeguard the infrastructure is extremely important. Otherwise, clients would be keeping passwords in Excel spreadsheets. Consider having an isolated, non-domain joined vault that cannot be accessed from DNS. The vault itself takes over control of the local Windows Firewall and even things as simple as emails. It keeps the ports closed. If it is time to send out a notification to someone, it opens the port, sends the email, and closes the port. It cannot get any more secure than the vault system of CyberArk. People who land on a user credential and try moving laterally throughout your network, scraping RDP connections or hashes, will never find any information about how to get to the vault because it is non-domain joined.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is excellent for meeting compliance and regulatory requirements. The need for compliance is the main reason why organizations implement a PAM solution in the first place. They have to be SOX compliant in terms of log retention, audits, and even video recordings of people's actions. They all have varying retention periods depending on the organization.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager provides operational efficiency with automation. It saves a lot of time for password rotations, managing SSH key rotations, and doing automated discovery at periodic intervals to reach out to your servers and check which credentials are there on those servers. If they are not managed in CyberArk, they are added to your CyberArk queue to be onboarded and automatically managed. These things save a lot of time throughout the organization.

Many people underestimate the value of these tools because they treat them as simple automated password management. Once you realize the volume of passwords in your organization and factor in nonhuman passwords, you realize its value. Last year, CyberArk Impact cited 45 nonhuman passwords for every human password. If you have 10,000 employees, you can imagine the number of passwords. There are also many other operations. For example, you have a Qualys scanner that needs to reach out and touch all your endpoints and scan them for vulnerabilities. They use an API call to CyberArk to pull out a Privileged credential that allows them to log in to that target. This is an automated machine call. It is tapping into CyberArk to get that credential. There can be hundreds of thousands of those operations a day. You do not want to manage those passwords by hand. Some people marginalize the significance of such a solution by saying that it is just a fancy password changer. It goes well beyond that, especially with API calls and automation. Its importance extends beyond merely changing passwords; it involves automation, API calls, and process integration, crucial in agile environments for standing up new Amazon servers or other processes needing privileged credentials. CyberArk can automate these tasks into their build processes.

Another critical feature is the proxy service via Privileged Session Manager (PSM), providing not only a proxy between your user and the target servers, protecting against malware but also offering session recording. Many companies I have worked with implemented a PAM product as a knee-jerk reaction to SOX audit requirements. They discovered they needed session recording and retention for regulatory compliance. This has become a major factor for clients instituting CyberArk, so PSM is a big deal in addition to regular password rotation.

CyberArk reporting is notoriously poor, offering about 5 reports out of the box. I am certified in Delinea, which includes 60 reports plus a custom report generator out of the box. Improved reporting would be beneficial.

I have used CyberArk Privileged Access Manager for seven years.

I encountered some unique challenges while working with a client managing 750,000 credentials because the underlying MySQL database is not exactly enterprise-level, unlike Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server. MySQL is free, and CyberArk's updates are infrequent. They went through many iterations starting with version 7 but did not update the underlying database version until version 12. We experienced database response and connectivity issues due to having too many credentials. That was a very unique case and a very large implementation, but they did have to do some tweaks to the database.

They also had an issue where they had too many passwords in a single safe. It is like the old Windows limitation where you can only have 512 entries in a particular folder. I had never seen that before, and that was because CyberArk retains the previous x number of password revisions for any given password. If you have 20,000 passwords in a safe, it also saves the last ten iterations of that password for each one, so you technically have 200,000 passwords in that safe. CyberArk literally issues a warning if you exceed 300,000. I have never seen that in my life, and it happened with one client. It caused the replication to the DR server to fail. We saw that in the logs, and then we had to do the math. They had 40,000 passwords in this one safe, and it was saving the last ten iterations of each password object. That means they had 400,000 password objects in this safe. They exceeded the limit. I do not expect to see this kind of issue again, but it happened.

When your client base grows from a few hundred to over three thousand, the number of tech support calls increases drastically, which is understandable. The support structure is tiered: L1, L2, and L3. L1 personnel follow a set procedure to gather information and logs. If they cannot solve the issue, it escalates to L2, possibly involving live sessions. Only complex problems reach the L3 experts in Israel. This normal tiered support approach can delay resolution, resulting in frustration. Response time is not ideal, and reaching someone knowledgeable can take time. It could be forever until you talk to someone who knows what they are doing.

Neutral

Its primary competitor is BeyondTrust, which is not very highly rated based on the feature set. There is senhasegura, a company from Brazil. They are new to America. They are barely making their way in now. ForgeRock has been around for a while, but CyberArk's closest competitor in terms of feature set and Gartner ratings would be Delinea. I am currently assigned to Delinea at my client. I have been working with that for the past year. I do see some benefits. There are certain things I like better about CyberArk, and there are certain things that are better about Delinea, but both of them are pretty competent.

It is quick because CyberArk follows the 80:20 rule. If you can get domain admins and local administrators into CyberArk, that is 80% of your exposure. That is a very quick turnaround. That can be a matter of a couple of months.

There is a specific order required to implement components: the vault is installed first, followed by CPMs, PVWA, and then PSMs. It is a fairly straightforward process, with some necessary preparation for the servers. CyberArk has incorporated scripts over the years, particularly for complex PSM setups because you have to utilize AppLocker scripts to enforce or specifically allow executables. Customization requires file reconfiguration and rerunning server hardening scripts. PowerShell scripts are now available to aid automation. Understanding the configuration and exceptions in scripts remains important for effective customization.

In terms of integration, out of the box, it has integration with Windows and Linux. They have a Telnet connector. It is a matter of CPM connectors being able to talk to the various systems and rotate their credentials because each operating system is different. AIX is different from HP. UNIX is different from Linux which is different from Windows. Windows is different from the mainframe. They have a lot of connectors out of the box, and they also have a plethora of additional connectors on their marketplace, which is their common website. Some of them are verified by CyberArk and some are not. They periodically review the ones that are uploaded based on the amount of time they have. Eventually, a connector could be certified by CyberArk. The big difference is whether a connector is officially supported by CyberArk or not. CyberArk does not address your support ticket if it is not a vetted connector.

Connectivity from SailPoint to CyberArk is done through SCIM servers. CyberArk has its own SCIM server set up, complete with documentation, for establishing that. I have done that before. When people are onboarded, most people in a lot of organizations get assigned an administrative credential so that they are not reaching out to target servers with the same credentials they use to log into their computers. As soon as they are onboarded, SailPoint sends over REST API calls through this SCIM server to create a safe for this person based on agreed-upon nomenclature. The account creation and assignment of permissions are done through calls and are automated.

Last year's Impact estimated the cost of an average breach to be nine million dollars. Once you have a breach, customers are hesitant to use your goods and services because you have had a major issue. It is difficult to put a price on your name going downhill.

The time savings primarily come from shifting from manual to automated management for all your passwords. With other tools such as Okta where you have self-service for resetting your own passwords and things like that, the average savings is 12 minutes, which is six dollars for a password reset, and you can extrapolate that over your organization. You do not really do that with CyberArk because it is managing the credentials. The manual work of managing all these credentials as opposed to the automation is where your time savings come in, but savings are difficult to calculate.

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. It does get fairly granular because they have separate licensing based on the number of users, the number of API call accounts that you can have, and the number of disaster recovery servers you can have in the system. A license is broken down into so many subcomponents.

They have a core product covered in the license. It includes the vault, the CPM that rotates the passwords, the PSM that does the proxying and the session management, and the PVWA, which is the web interface. Other things like Privileged Threat Analytics, Endpoint Privilege Manager, and other tools are bolt-ons with their own licensing. It gets a little hectic. At one point, they were offering a flat fee that was exorbitant at the time, like a million dollars, and you got everything, but they do not do that anymore. It is piecemeal now, and you have to pay for all different areas of licensing, which is problematic.

CyberArk recently introduced an identity bolt-on product. PAM tools and IAM tools are broadening their horizons to become a one-stop shop. Okta has a PAM solution which is not very effective but it is an attempt to be an all-in-one shop. CyberArk Cloud has gained traction, particularly among small to mid-size companies not needing the full customization and feature set of the tool. As with most cloud offerings, CyberArk's Cloud service expects out-of-the-box usage, with vendors maintaining and upgrading the system, limiting customization. This offers a viable solution for companies without significant on-premises needs, saving costs on servers and full-time employees.

I would advise evaluating whether you can manage with the cloud version's feature set, as it is simplified and requires minimal on-premises resources. An on-premises connector minimizes firewall rules and facilitates cloud communication, allowing the on-premises connector to interact with other targets. Delinea's cloud offering similarly requires an on-prem component called a site connector. If a simplified cloud feature set suffices without extensive customization needs, choose the cloud version to potentially save money, eliminating the need for assets on-premises and full-time employees for upkeep.

If someone thinks that they do not need a privileged access management tool because they are already using other security tools, I would wonder what features their tool is providing. Does it have account discovery and onboarding? Does it have proxying, web recording, and retention for videos of people accessing their assets? Does it support automatic pass or remote rotation? I would like to compare feature sets.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager has not helped reduce the number of privileged accounts. In most organizations I have joined, users have their own account for logging in, and in the interest of security, a separate administrative account is created that gets vaulted in CyberArk. So, they have doubled credentials because people have a normal login plus an administrative login for doing privileged activities. You also have to factor in roughly 45 nonhuman privileged accounts or identities for every human identity because of your scanners, robotic process automation, and automatic agile builds from your CI/CD tools. All of these nonhuman factors are also reaching out and getting credentials from CyberArk. The point of a PAM system is not to reduce the number of privileged accounts. The point is to find accounts that are already in your system with account discovery and make sure they are managed by the tool. That extends to things like SSH keys. Most organizations have no clue how many SSH keys they have in their environment. CyberArk offers SSH key management as well. So, it does not reduce the number of privileged accounts. If anything, it encourages people to have more because they now have a tool to do all this work for them, and they do not have to do it manually.

I would rate CyberArk Privileged Access Manager an eight out of ten.

I work in the cybersecurity team. We typically provide access to other end users or IT administrators through this solution. We monitor their activity on servers, provision access, and review all logs.

By implementing this solution, we wanted identity management and access management.

Over these three years, there have been a lot of improvements. User management is more efficient. The interface is user-friendly, and I can create comprehensive reports.

Session recordings and timestamps are valuable features. They allow me to specifically select the time a particular command was executed, so I do not have to review the entire recording. I can click on events to determine where and when they happened. 

We are looking for improvements in user provisioning, such as access provisioning and revoking access. We still have to test these improvements in the latest version. 

Updates have been somewhat difficult, resulting in challenges when moving from one version to another. The current version includes automatic updates for minor patches, which should be easy.

I have been using the solution for more than three years.

It has been stable so far, so I would rate it a nine out of ten.

Its scalability is very good. It is in the cloud, so we can just expand it. I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.

We haven't used customer support so far apart from implementation.

Neutral

I have not used any PAM solutions apart from this one.

Its implementation was very complex. It needs different servers and setup parameters involving load balancers, certification, encryption keys. The implementation took more than a month.

It requires maintenance once in six months and has been hard previously.

It was implemented by inhouse staff with oversight from vendor.

When it comes to compliance and audits the ROI on this is very good.

Licensing is little hard as they are perpetual and can't be used from a pool of resources.

I would recommend implementing CyberArk Privileged Access Manager as it is the best so far.

I would rate CyberArk Privileged Access Manager an eight out of ten.

I use CyberArk Privileged Access Manager to manage privileged access within the organization.

By implementing CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, we wanted the management of periodic password rotation, management of privileged access, and discovery of privileged access.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager’s ability to safeguard credentials for our organization is very important because it helps in managing the keys to the kingdom, especially the privileged access for various platforms. It is quite important for the organization, and it is one of the must-have applications. It plays a key role in managing privileged access for the organization.

We are able to manage close to 20,000 accounts without many cases by using out-of-the-box features available in CyberArk Privileged Access Manager.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager helps in meeting certain compliance and regulatory requirements and closing any gaps.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager has not helped reduce MTTR. When we have an incident with CyberArk, it takes time for us to recover. There is always an increase in MTTR because of the complexity of the CyberArk infrastructure itself.

From an operational efficiency perspective, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager has reduced a lot of manual work, such as changing passwords and managing privileged access accounts manually. By automatically rotating passwords within a set period of time, it streamlines many processes. It has improved operational efficiency for privileged access, but managing the infrastructure is one of the things that we are working on. It is a complex product. 

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager has not helped reduce the number of privileged accounts in our organization. Privileged accounts are the key entities within CyberArk. There has not been any decrease in the number of privileged accounts, but there are areas that we, as an organization, have not touched, such as cloud infrastructure, etc. We are working closely with CyberArk engineers to have them onboarded and manage those privileged accounts through CyberArk. That is in our road map.

The most valuable feature is platform management. It is quite easy to manage privileged access for certain target platforms with CyberArk Privileged Access Manager as compared to other products I have worked with.

It is very out-of-the-box and straightforward to configure periodic password rotations and access management for the platforms my organization is working with. That makes things easier in terms of what needs to be done. We do not have to spend time troubleshooting and working with support to figure out why something is not working, which is what I have personally done with other competitors.

One area for improvement is the user interface. It needs significant enhancements. It is outdated and does not align with the stress and challenges happening across the IT products landscape regarding user experience. CyberArk definitely needs to improve user experience and reduce complexity.

It is quite complex. CyberArk needs to reduce complexity. The product is currently very complex and challenging to understand without training. The product should be user-friendly and easy to use. CyberArk should understand that a product should not require training after a customer subscribes. Hence, user experience should be given the utmost priority.

Maintaining the infrastructure is not easy. Patching CyberArk Privileged Access Manager when there is an update or patch release requires professional services due to the complexity of the product. It takes us three months to six months to do an upgrade. For managing or monitoring the infrastructure, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager does not have any inbuilt tools. We have to rely on other tools which CyberArk does not recommend. There is no other way to monitor those infrastructure components. It is quite taxing and resource-intensive. For an organization of our size, at least five people are required to work full-time with CyberArk and monitor and maintain the infrastructure.

I have been using CyberArk Privileged Access Manager for more than two years.

Regarding the stability, it is pretty stable. We do not need continuous management. The performance is also very good for the size of our organization and the user base we are working with. We have not had any performance issues so far.

It is not easily scalable due to the on-premises infrastructure we use. It is not elastic like cloud-based solutions.

We have approximately 6,500 users. We have sized the environment accordingly. As an organization, we have done our own risk assessment to understand how CyberArk will grow in the next three years. We sized the environment accordingly so that there are no performance issues if it grows vertically or horizontally.

We use their premium support, but we do not get the value for the price we pay for the support.

For some questions, CyberArk support recommends professional services, which takes us on a financial route. From a customer perspective, it is unclear why I need to reach out to professional services for certain issues. If I have straightforward questions, I get answers from technical support easily. However, there have been instances where we were redirected to services requiring additional payments to get certain questions answered or receive suggestions.

Positive

In my previous organizations, I have used multiple products. I have also worked in a company competing with CyberArk. I worked on the development of a competitive product for CyberArk. 

I also implemented a competitor product in another organization which is listed as a leader alongside CyberArk. It was much easier to work with in terms of user experience compared to CyberArk. It was pretty easy to use and could be self-learned.

Its implementation is complex. If a new customer is onboarding CyberArk as a product to manage privileged access, it is quite complex.

Its integration is pretty straightforward. There are many out-of-the-box connectors. There are also a lot of connectors available in the marketplace to have CyberArk integrated with various systems. For a particular connector, testing to production took close to six weeks.

As CyberArk always recommends, we went with one of their partners to implement it within the organization.

We have three key engineers within the team responsible for managing the entire CyberArk architecture. They handle monitoring and management. They also work with other business units to have the privileged access vaulted and determine the road map for privileged access management. They also help in performing certain day-to-day business activities or tasks.

It took us close to three years to see its value and understand why it was chosen over other solutions.

I have heard from my leaders that CyberArk is costlier in terms of licensing. The support and maintenance are also costly. We use their premium support, but for the price we pay, we do not get the value.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is pretty costly, and it takes a lot of time to implement it. It is quite complex to implement CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, but once it is properly implemented, with the user community that is available with CyberArk, it is pretty straightforward and easy to use. Once implemented, it does provide value for the organization.

I would advise sizing it appropriately and building the infrastructure accordingly so that it is scalable. When it is sized properly in terms of CPU, RAM, memory, and disk size, it works smoothly without requiring specific maintenance, such as clearing logs. That is what I would recommend to any of my peers or colleagues working in other companies.

I would rate CyberArk Privileged Access Manager a six out of ten. Four points are deducted because of its complexity.

The main use of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is to manage identities and access for our clients. We mainly focus on use cases like managing shared accounts, automatic password rotation, and recording sessions.

Its quite difficult to track for client who has access and at what time, which activity was done with that account, especially for built-in administrator accounts and Shared accounts. 

Automatic password rotation is another use case. CyberArk Privileged Access Manager has the capability to rotate automatic passwords in the defined period of time. CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is also used for recording and session monitoring .

With CyberArk DNA, we can discover the accounts and their associated dependencies and usage.

Data is secure. The passwords are stored in an encrypted format. The data privacy is very high, and it is quite challenging for someone to retrieve credentials from CyberArk Privileged Access Manager.

With Privileged Threat Analytics (PTA), which is a different component in CyberArk, you can put some additional control. For example, you have an account onboarded on CyberArk. If someone wants to access the system without using CyberArk and copying a password, which they might have stored in the notepad or their system, an alert gets triggered. There is also an additional control for ad hoc admin access if someone wants to access an admin privilege or and want to access some critical application after business hours. PTA provides more control.

It improves the overall security posture and provides more control. We have better governance. Credentials are stored in the safe vault.

It reduces the need for IT and help desk resources. There is a streamlined change process without relying on the L1 team to reset the admin account credentials. There is also better compliance and segregation of duties. We can meet the compliance requirement for retention of logs, password rotations, etc. It helps client to meet different compliance requirement / standards, such as HIPAA, SOX, ISO 27001, etc.

With no manual intervention, there is also a reduction in human errors. Based on the number of available accounts for the organization and the user entitlement, that is 300 to 400 hours.

It improves operational efficiency. With the control that we have with CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, there is a reduction in the manual effort for validation of the admin accounts. Without it, a person has to extract the accounts from the servers and revalidate them with the owners or approvers. That is quite tricky.

It can help to reduce the number of privileged accounts. For example, if the Windows team has 10 or 15 members with individual accounts. It is better to create one shared account based on their role such as L1, L2, or L3, reducing it to 2 accounts. It will reduce the number of privileged accounts in the organization as well as threats.

The main feature of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is the ability to manage who has access to what and when, especially with shared accounts. With individual accounts, that is easy, but with shared accounts, it is quite challenging for clients.

The sessions are being monitored based on the Safe design and the ownership of a respective Safe. And its maintain individual accountability, Also check-in and check-out the passwords.

The reporting should be improved.  There should be more customization. The report should show how we are going to mitigate the risk because we cannot show the system environment to each and every auditor. Some kind of custom report should be there so that we can give a clear output about the risk.

There should be improvements in the dashboard visibility within CyberArk Privileged Access Manager. It should give more visibility in a single go rather than having to compare different reports.

Furthermore, having out-of-the-box dependency discovery for accounts, such as scheduled tasks , services and application pools, would be beneficial to improve overall functionality.

I have a total of 16 years of experience, and I have been working with CyberArk for about twelve to thirteen years. 

There have been no stability or performance issues as long as the design meets the requirements. It is essential to adhere to the recommendations for concurrent session capacities.

The solution is quite stable and scalable. It does not seem to have any gaps.

The technical support from CyberArk is quite impressive. They are responsive and provide detailed information when needed. I would rate them a nine out of ten because sometimes there are delays due to different reasons or misunderstandings.

Positive

I have worked in CyberArk, Delinea, CA PAM, ARCON, and BeyondTrust. I am parallelly working on other PAM tools along with CyberArk. I started to work in CyberArk PAM since version 7.1.

For on-premises, there is complexity due to the need for physical servers and cluster configuration, which might require going to data centers. However, after several deployments, it becomes less challenging. A cloud deployment would be easier.

Its integration capabilities are quite good. We are using CyberArk identity as a multifactor authentication with RADIUS. That is quite impressive because, with one dashboard, we can manage the users' identities.

In terms of the deployment strategy, we first identify the scale and then design the solution. If the number of admins is high, there will be more concurrent sessions and recordings.

It is not tough to maintain. We once had an issue because of human error, but overall, it is easy. For 8X5 support, five members should be there.

For a large-scale deployment, two to three people are sufficient.

The cost savings vary based on the organization. A larger organization will definitely have more cost savings with the reduction in the manual effort in managing the accounts in the system.

The pricing is slightly higher compared to other solutions, but it is reasonable because there are better security features. Initially, it was based on endpoints, now it is based on the number of users, which offers cost savings based on administrative accounts.

I would recommend CyberArk Privileged Access Manager. My recommendation would be to ensure that the benefits of the solution are highlighted by presales, such as risk mitigation and meeting compliance posture.

The overall rating for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is ten out of ten.

The primary use case for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager in our organization is to ensure we move away from named identity admin access, which lacks protection such as MFA and other features offered by cloud privileged identity management solutions. Our goal was to protect anything on-prem related to Active Directory privileged access, so we chose to go with CyberArk Privileged Access Manager.

I am the cybersecurity lead in my organization. Every single year when we do the audit, one of the things that consistently comes up is how there are hashes floating around the environment. Since switching over from named admin-privileged identities to CyberArk PAM identities, like PAM accounts, there have been almost no breadcrumbs left behind. There are no hashes and that sort of thing. We hardly see any hashes floating around the environment. We have not done the audit yet, which is due next month, but I have been keeping an eye on the hashes and it is looking promising.

The session recording and monitoring capabilities are valuable. We have real-time session management ability to record, audit, and monitor any privileged user activities. That is a big deal.

Automatic credential rotation and granular access control for target resources accessed by admins add to the value. 

Seamless integration with the SIEM, especially Microsoft Sentinel, is valuable.

Lastly, the platform's versatility allows for the use of different types of platforms beyond just RDP and SSH, including SQL and web applications.

There is room for improvement, particularly with Vendor PAM. We were previously using a competitor product that allowed vendors to manage their own teams. CyberArk has brought a feature called Vendor Team Manager, but it does not provide full access. It requires the vendor team leader to be onboarded as a local account instead of using their email address. Improvements could be made to onboard the vendor team leaders using their email, allowing them to manage their own team. That would greatly reduce the overhead in managing vendor team members. We have 50 to 100 vendors. Each vendor has at least 10 to 20 accounts., so we are talking about 500 to 1,000 accounts. It would be easier if we could just manage those 50 vendor team leaders rather than hundreds.

We have been using CyberArk Privileged Access Manager for six months, having started on the first of July.

Stability has been impressive. We have not experienced downtime for any reason. We did encounter one bug, but it was resolved once a patch was applied. The system is very stable and seamless. It requires minimal intervention to maintain high functionality.

When we took over as system owners of CyberArk, I thought every single time there was an update, we would have to stay up the night to do the patches and make sure it worked, but it has been very smooth and seamless. There is no friction. Everything has been taken care of at the back end, and we have not had to do anything out of hours. It has been very good.

I would rate it a ten out of ten for stability.

So far, scalability has been excellent. Initially, we deployed the architecture for 10 to 20 users, but we have onboarded 30 users while still on that mid-tier configuration. We have had no issues.

Being a mining company, we do have operations at various sites. That includes multiple sites in Australia as well as a couple of sites in Northern America. We do have multiple sites with critical infrastructure on every single site. 

At the moment, we have 50 user licenses, and so far, we have onboarded 30 users. We have 20 more users and some more coming on board in the new year.

I would rate it a ten out of ten for scalability.

CyberArk's support is excellent, providing personalized assistance through a dedicated local account manager and sales engineer. Their responsiveness is impressive, even though our location is quite isolated. We receive prompt support, which often exceeds expectations.

The dedicated local account manager has been providing us with personalized assistance tailored to the unique challenges that we have as a mining organization. The sales engineer supported us with his expert technical guidance during the deployment as well. It has been amazing. Both of these guys ensured smooth implementation.

For any issues that are not important, we raise tickets for customer support, and they have been very responsive. They get us back promptly. That is something unheard of because we are a very isolated city in Australia. Ours is the most isolated city in the world. The nearest city to us is 2,400 kilometers away. For someone like us, the support has been amazing. Sometimes, with other vendors, we have to wait a couple of days to hear back from them, but CyberArk has been exceptional in coming back to us with immediate responses. Their support has been perfect. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

Previously, we used BeyondTrust. We decided to switch to CyberArk due to its superior support, scalability, adaptability, and the local presence of account managers and sales engineers, which facilitated a smooth and effective experience. 

While other products in the market may offer certain features at a competitive price, they often compromise on support, scalability, and adaptability. The main thing for us was the support. CyberArk combines top-notch technical capabilities with the local human touch of the local account managers and sales engineers. That was a big thing for us because that ensured a smooth and effective experience throughout the journey, which other products lacked. 

We are in the West of Australia, and all the competitors are in the East. The only way to communicate is over the phone, and we would only see them once or twice a year. Having local account managers and a sales community was a game changer. Also, considering the reputation and the gold standard for Privileged Access Manager, others cannot compete with CyberArk.

It is a fully SaaS model, but because of the way CyberArk is architected, we do have our jump servers, PSM connector servers, and Secure Infrastructure Access servers in Azure, but it is not self-hosted. It is a cloud solution.

The jump start that was offered as a part of the product licensing was a game changer. When it comes to CyberArk, the complexity is quite high. That comes with security. Security and usability do not go hand in hand, but we have had help throughout our journey. The initial setup was detailed and supported actively by CyberArk's jump-start engineer. Every question was addressed, and the deployment was well-structured.

To realize its benefits, we had to wait until the users were happy using the PAM accounts. The individual privileged identities were still being used, so it took almost three months. That was the time it took for us to onboard the PAM accounts, hand over those accounts to the users, and confirm that it was working as expected.

In terms of maintenance, I thought there was going to be a lot of maintenance because we are the system owners, but so far, it has not skipped a beat. All the updates were very smooth. We did not have to do any work installing the patches, apart from underlying Windows patches, which is the sysadmin's job. If sysadmins are able to patch them, the product is resilient enough to come back up and do its function. Any updates related to the product itself are installed in the background, and it is very transparent for the user. It has been very seamless.

CyberArk's jump-start engineer played a crucial role in our successful deployment. He helped us all the way. Even now, about six months into the journey, he is helping us out with a few bits and pieces. Having that jump-start there was a game changer.

During our quantitative analysis, we estimated potential savings of one to ten million dollars a year by using a PAM solution. A cyber breach relating to admin-privileged access could lead to a financial loss of ten million dollars. If a standard user account is breached or compromised using their credentials, they cannot escalate to our higher privilege ones or cannot move laterally within the network. That was a game-changer.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is perceived to be somewhat overpriced compared to similar market products. It is a little bit overvalued. It could come down a little bit for my liking. However, the industry-leading reputation and the quality of service justify the high price point to some extent.

I would highly recommend CyberArk Privileged Access Manager. It is a leader in the privileged access management space, offering robust tools to secure credentials across IT and OT environments. We are very heavy on OT environments. It has been nothing but the best.

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