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.

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.

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.

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 the privileged credentials of our environment.

When I arrived at my company, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager was already deployed, so I didn't set it up myself. However, I've increasingly taken over its management during the past five and a half years. I saw its benefits almost immediately. Much of the value is tied to user adoption; as the end-user base becomes more familiar with CyberArk and embraces it, the benefits increase. Conversely, when we have users who know CyberArk exists but don't trust it, prefer their own methods, and avoid using it, its effectiveness is reduced. Ultimately, the more users embrace CyberArk, the greater the benefits I observe.

The best feature of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is its core function: automatically managing and securing credentials. The ability to ensure compliance with both our internal and industry standards is invaluable, particularly in the current environment. While managing a couple of thousand accounts may not be a large number within the CyberArk community, it significantly simplifies our work in ensuring compliance and maintaining standards. The PSM feature is also excellent, as I've found it increasingly helpful in establishing connections without exposing passwords. Although a bit clunky when I used it a few years ago, it runs much smoother now. Overall, it's a great product, and I appreciate most of its features.

We use the privileged cloud model. However, transitioning from a traditional on-premises deployment to the privileged cloud has resulted in losing access to many logs and administrative tools typically available on the back end. For instance, we can no longer examine safes directly, delve into the vault to set permissions more granularly, diagnose port issues, or manage license allocation. These functionalities were readily accessible with our on-premises setup, but the cloud environment significantly restricts them. One highly desirable feature, for which I've seen an enhancement request already submitted, would be the implementation of more comprehensive logging around platform and policy changes, including details on the nature of the change when it occurred, and who made it. I recently encountered an instance where one of our platforms was altered without knowing when or by whom. This lack of auditability makes it impossible to understand the rationale behind the change, even though it appears relatively intuitive. Therefore, enhanced logging would be a valuable addition to our current system.

I have been using Privileged Access Manager for five and a half years.

Generally, the performance of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is quite good, and we've experienced very few issues. Specifically regarding the PSM, the response time is typically excellent. However, some users have reported occasional timeout issues where the PSM session terminates unexpectedly. The source of this problem is unclear, as it could originate from the target server or the PSM server itself. While I encountered more issues with the PSM a couple of years ago, the response time has significantly improved recently. There are inherent challenges due to the multiple network connections involved, mainly when mapping network drives to transfer files within a PSM session. This connection can be slow, especially when enumerating folders during file system traversal, but it's likely an unavoidable consequence of the process.

Scalability is straightforward. While the initial deployment presents some challenges, deploying additional servers afterward is quite simple. The servers are robust in terms of their handling capacity. In discussions with CyberArk engineers, I learned that the expected load for the CPM and PSM was discussed. The CPM, in particular, can reportedly handle up to 50,000 accounts independently without issue. Given that we only have a couple of thousand accounts rotating, deploying an additional CPM would be a relatively easy task, achievable in less than a day. Therefore, scaling up appears to be quite feasible if necessary.

We subscribe to premium support, and it's been excellent, providing us with relatively rapid responses and overall good experiences. Previously, with regular support, the quality was inconsistent and heavily dependent on the technician assigned to our ticket. Some technicians were excellent, diving right in, carefully reading my notes, and offering helpful solutions. Others seemed to overlook the details I provided. For instance, I'd explain that I'd already consulted a specific knowledge base article and implemented the recommended solution without success, only to have the technician suggest I review that very same KB article, which I had just referenced.

I rate CyberArk Privileged Access Manager eight out of ten.

The connector servers require minimal maintenance. The only constraint is keeping the browser drivers up-to-date for web application connections, which can be more of an annoyance than a hindrance. Overall, there is not much maintenance involved for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager.

My advice for new users is to read the documentation. There's a lot of good information in there. I know it can be a bit of a drag to go through it all, but as you work, especially on the administrative side, you'll find that it contains a lot of information that can save you headaches. It would help you avoid opening tickets just by reading and following the guidelines. The documentation is pretty good, though not perfect; there are actually several errors. However, for most day-to-day activities, it's quite helpful.

The primary use case for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is within the IT security industry. It manages privileged access and generates reports, particularly for clients in sectors like finance. The system facilitates account management, enables the generation of on-demand reports, and helps maintain security protocols for these clients.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager has enhanced my organizational capabilities by providing important security reporting features.

The most valuable features of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager include its search capabilities. Searching was previously a challenge, especially with Windows servers. When searching, we could only search based on the account name itself, as the system couldn't identify which accounts had access to which systems. This functionality caught my attention. Another standout feature is CyberArk Compass, which is planned for an upcoming release or has potentially already been released for Prisma Cloud. Finally, managing user accounts through the PWA is quite helpful. When a user is suspended, we can activate the account using the PWA instead of the private client.

The ability to manage user accounts and suspend them with ease through Password Vault Web Access rather than a client is a significant feature.

I like the integration with tools like Compass and the ability to search based on account names and systems.

My concern and area for improvement revolves around reporting. I even submitted an enhancement request to CyberArk Software, suggesting that they include a dedicated dashboard page within either Privileged Cloud or their self-hosted PAM solution. This dashboard could feature visual elements like pie charts to display metrics such as account compliance percentages. For example, it could show PTA alerts to visualize security events occurring within a month, quarter, or year. Having such a feature would allow for on-the-spot report generation. Currently, we rely on the REST API to invoke and pull the necessary information. We then have to manually copy the data, convert it from JSON to Excel, and generate the desired report and dashboard. This process is time-consuming and sometimes leads to inconsistencies in the information provided.

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

The stability of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is generally good. Minor issues may arise, but they are typically manageable and not major. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the stability an eight out of ten.

My deployment of CyberArk is scalable, although the scalability differs depending on whether it's on-premises or cloud.

Customer support is somewhat lacking. They are often unavailable on Fridays, and the support process, such as raising a call or case, can take too long. On a scale of zero to ten, I would rate their support as six out of ten.

Before using CyberArk, I interacted with BeyondTrust. BeyondTrust features, such as their reporting simplicity, made it easier for me to generate reports. The switch was primarily motivated by cost considerations.

The initial setup was detailed and required steps to ensure security measures were aligned with standards. Efficient sequencing, working with redundancy, and cooperation with load-balancing teams were crucial parts of the process.

The deployment took one week to complete because of the redundancy.

The solution is expensive but not excessively so. Discussions with clients have revealed that costs, especially for Privileged Cloud, are a concern. Improved support could enhance the solution's overall value.

I would rate the cost of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager seven out of ten with ten being the most expensive.

I would recommend CyberArk Privileged Access Manager because it is a leading solution for privileged access management. Although it has room for improvement, particularly in areas like reporting and support, it remains a solid option. I rate it an eight out of ten.

We have deployed CyberArk Privileged Access Manager using various configurations. For instance, active components are located in one location, while passive components reside in another. This is determined by the route to the virtual machine, as the components operate as virtual machines. The primary vault is situated in a separate location, and the disaster recovery vault is placed in another distinct location. Currently, we have a PAM license for 800 users, but we are utilizing it for 650 users.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager maintenance addresses security bulletins and involves several key steps. We ensure the admin utilizes the security bulletin during maintenance, which begins with raising a change request. Before the change is approved and implemented in production, it is thoroughly tested in a test environment to verify its functionality. Deployment to production follows successful testing. Application-specific maintenance for CyberArk follows the product roadmap, ensuring we remain at most one version behind the latest release. We also promptly apply necessary security patches from security bulletins. Furthermore, from an OS perspective, we maintain alignment with the latest Microsoft patches, ensuring all systems are up-to-date and secure.

I am a senior manager, and we have multiple clients for whom we deploy CyberArk Privileged Access Manager. We also manage or upgrade their instances. We handle migrations and new implementations. We take care of anything related to CyberArk.

The feature that I like the most is the Privileged Session Manager. It offers session recordings, logging, and tracking of user workstreams. It keeps a record of activities, allowing me to easily fetch screen recordings to detect any misuse and see who did what and what happened. Its benefits can be seen immediately after the deployment.

Based on the user experience that I see on a day-to-day basis, some changes could be made to the Privileged Session Manager tool to make it more user-friendly. The user interface of that tool could be more advanced and understandable to laymen, rather than being more of a developer tool. I would recommend more user-friendliness there.

CyberArk is more focused on the cloud solution. They are not going towards on-prem, but a lot of clients still like the on-prem solution. With the cloud implementation, you have a lot of dependencies on expert services. When you get into some issues, you have to wait for expert services. They usually reply in two to three days. That is something CyberArk needs to make better. If they want clients to move to the cloud, they need to support them in real-time. The client should not be waiting for two days to get a response for the issue. If CyberArk wants people to pay for cloud services, they need to make the cloud services much more real-time.

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

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is a stable solution. I have never faced any issues with stability.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is a scalable solution.

I have contacted their support a lot of times. The quality of support is okay, but the time frame for replies should be much faster than it is currently.

I have not used any similar solution for PAM. However, for managing the accounts, we have used some password management solutions such as 1Password, but they do not give you the accessibility and different components that PAM provides. They are just for password storage and keeping the passwords safe. A PAM solution from CyberArk or BeyondTrust solution provides a lot more than that, so we cannot compare them. There is no comparison.

I have deployed it both on the cloud and on-prem. My one client is on-prem, and another one is on the cloud.

The initial deployment depends on how extensive it is. For one client, it was quite easy, but after the deployment, it was tricky to deploy the components for AEM, EP, and CCP. On-prem implementation is much easier than the cloud. Cloud solutions require better and more immediate support. Cloud deployment is challenging due to dependencies on expert services.

It requires a bit of maintenance but not that much. Once you deploy the solution, it works, but there are always new upgrades. For example, if you deploy a web connector for web applications and Chrome releases an upgrade, you have to see whether CyberArk is supporting that upgrade or not. Accordingly, you have to update the drivers and other things for the web applications. The same goes with PSMP and SMP. If there are any version upgrades or any vulnerability patch fixes, you have to perform maintenance.

We help customers deploy it.

The duration depends on how big the instance is. To deploy all the components, the duration can range from three to six months.

It can be deployed by one person, but it also depends on how many instances of servers you are deploying, what is the concurrent usage, how many users are being onboarded, and what components you have. There is PSM. There is EPM and PSMP. It depends on what exactly the client requires. These are some factors that determine the time frame and number of people required.

From a client perspective, CyberArk's pricing is fair but there is a significant increase each year. They should limit the price increase because this could potentially drive customers to other partners. Price changes should be at defined intervals. There should not be sudden jumps.

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

We have traditional use cases for Windows, Unix, and Linux-based systems. Additionally, we have use cases involving AWS, Oracle, SQL, and Postgres databases.

We also plan to bring in more use cases for VMware vCenter, VMware VxRail, and iDRAC. We aim for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager to be an integral part of all our infrastructures in accessing and securing credentials, particularly in restricted environments. It is a life science project. There are certain places restricted for the users.

We are still trying to get everything driven through CyberArk. We are trying to restrict direct RDPs to a particular target or doing an SSH outside of CyberArk. The adaptability is about 60% at this time, but we want to make it 100%.

Authentication is the key to protecting sensitive data. Integration with SAML or Okta prevents intrusions to a great extent.

We were able to realize its benefits immediately after the deployment, and we are happy with it.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager has not helped reduce the number of privileged accounts, but they all are being vaulted now. We do not have any privileged accounts that are not vaulted in CyberArk.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager’s ability to safeguard credentials is very important. The paradigms are changing. The data is at threat when it is online. Anything digital needs to be secured. CyberArk has been the leader in the PAM product market. Our client made a good decision by taking CyberArk as their PAM tool.

The features that CyberArk Privileged Access Manager provides are good. It helps to meet the compliance and regulatory requirements to a large extent.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager has helped to improve the incident response mean times. We have notifications configured from CyberArk. We have integrated CyberArk with ServiceNow and Splunk SIEM. We get notified pretty easily. The notification part works very well with CyberArk. There is about 85% improvement.

One of the best features of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is the capability of Privileged Session Manager (PSM) because it provides visibility into user activities, audit ability, and traceability.

The integration with most other technologies is also excellent. We expect more plug-ins, but it already includes plug-ins for password management with other technologies, offering a robust mechanism for credential safety and management.

One area for improvement is the plug-in development challenge. Although CyberArk provides a plug-in generator utility, it does not fully meet our needs, particularly for web-based applications. The plug-in generator currently works only for Telnet and SSH connections. We cannot generate a plug-in for web-based applications.

Moreover, integration with ServiceNow ticketing supports change requests or incidents but lacks support for service requests. Introducing service request support could prevent the overhead of raising unnecessary incidents or changes. There have been a lot of votes for this feature, but I am not sure why CyberArk has not yet introduced it. This is one of the features that we have been waiting for.

I have used CyberArk for over six years, and the client I am working with has been using it for over four years.

I would rate its stability an eight out of ten. There are occasional bugs where while installing the product, it behaves differently on different servers, especially during patch upgrades. Such issues have been more noticeable since we moved from version 12.6 to higher versions. This could be because they have done a lot of UI changes and enhancements in these versions.

Scalability is good, and I would rate it around an eight out of ten.

They are fast. In some cases, they typically respond within one to two days. However, the response time can vary depending on the priority and volume of cases they receive.

We previously used BeyondTrust but are transitioning everything to CyberArk, as it offers better integration and enhancements.

The initial setup is easy. I was not part of the organization during the initial setup phase. It probably took around six months.

There are other vendors that handle the maintenance for us. CyberArk comes into the picture if issues are not resolved by our vendors.

The pricing for CyberArk is on the higher side compared to other Privileged Access Management products. Something should be done regarding enterprise licensing for long-standing customers.

I would advise trying CyberArk as it offers a wide range of integrations, plug-ins, and enhancements compared to other solutions. However, it is expensive.

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

My primary use case for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is managing privileged access across the organization. I focus on auditing compliance and ensuring compliance with financial systems like SAP.

The benefits of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager are typically realized over time, often facing initial resistance from various teams within an organization. While security, audit, and governance teams readily recognize the value of CyberArk, platform teams, and other stakeholders may resist its implementation. This necessitates a concerted effort to sell CyberArk internally, emphasizing its benefits and addressing concerns. Convincing internal stakeholders can be more challenging than securing buy-in from security or IT teams, often requiring three to six months after deployment for the benefits to become evident and widely accepted.

For me, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager's most valuable features are password and session management. It also includes technologies like Zero Standing Privileges and EPM, which I deploy for customers to demonstrate the return on investment.

CyberArk could enhance its usability by simplifying its architecture and design. Additionally, incorporating automated onboarding and offboarding features directly into the product would reduce the maintenance burden on administrators.

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

I find CyberArk to be quite stable. Exceptions occur mostly due to user errors. It has a large customer base and positive feedback within my network.

On-premises scalability is challenging for me due to deploying various components on different servers, but I find SaaS to be more promising in scalability.

In my experience, the quality of support has been inconsistent. Response times seem to correlate with the strength of the relationship with the CyberArk account manager, with quicker responses when rapport is strong.

I worked briefly with BeyondTrust but returned to CyberArk, which has been my primary focus.

In SaaS, most tasks are abstracted, reducing the workload compared to on-premise solutions where tasks like network configuration, connectivity, SSL certificates, and management fall on the user. However, SaaS solution eliminate the overhead of building VMs and similar infrastructure. Overall effort for both approaches is comparable, but SaaS offers the significant advantage of CyberArk managing the underlying infrastructure, including the vault and web interface, a feature most customers prefer today.

Initial setups were challenging for me at first, but with experience, they became more manageable. It generally requires reviewing documentation and seeking initial support from CyberArk. The deployments take between three and six months.

Implementation involves a project team with a project manager and Windows engineers for tasks like VM provisioning. Typically, I have executed projects primarily by myself, sometimes with minimal assistance from junior resources.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is more expensive than its competitors, such as BeyondTrust, Delinea, and ManageEngine PAM360. While ManageEngine PAM360 offers similar flexibility and support at a lower cost, CyberArk's SaaS solution is particularly expensive. This high price point has discouraged many customers from migrating from on-premise solutions to the CyberArk SaaS platform.

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

CyberArk manages the maintenance for the Privileged Access Manager.

Organizations must ensure users understand the importance of PAM and how it secures infrastructure. Training sessions, workshops, and demos are crucial for building user engagement and overcoming initial resistance.

I use CyberArk Privileged Access Manager to prevent exposing credentials for super-critical accounts, such as admin accounts and root accounts. I use it to protect these credentials and to avoid exposing them.

The module called PTA, Privileged Threat Analytics, is very useful. When you give access to a user, it monitors and detects if the user's behavior is unusual. After giving access, it continually checks if the user is the same user. It detects unusual behavior if someone else accesses the application.

The solution's architecture could be improved. It requires installation on four to five different servers. Each server has a purpose, but when you need to troubleshoot, it can be difficult because you need to access each of them. Reducing the number of servers would be helpful.

In the SaaS version, the number of required servers is reduced from five to three, but it is not completely cloud-based because servers still need to be deployed on-premises. Some clients are migrating from on-premises to the cloud. They do not want to use more servers or increase their on-premises data centers. They want everything to be on the cloud, but even in the SaaS version of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, they need to deploy some servers on-premises. That is not very helpful.

I started using CyberArk Privileged Access Manager in 2022, which was two years ago.

I have not experienced much instability. Sometimes, the issue lies with the server I deployed, but this is not very often.

In the on-premises version, scalability is difficult because server limitations can require buying new hardware. The SaaS version is more flexible, allowing easier scaling with increased users.

I contacted them more when I started to work with this solution. I still contact them but not so much.

I would rate their technical support a six out of ten. They are helpful, but complex issues can take a long time to resolve, which can delay solutions for urgent customer issues.

I have used other solutions like Password Manager, but they were not very helpful because you use and store the same credentials, so there is a risk of exposing real credentials. CyberArk Privileged Access Manager allows me to create a random password and share it with a person, preventing the exposure of real credentials.

While some of the Password Manager solutions are free, they are too dangerous because they expose credentials.

I have worked with both on-premises and cloud versions. I prefer the cloud version because with on-prem, I need to install my own servers and maintain those servers. I do not have to do that with the cloud model. The responsibility belongs to CyberArk. I have fewer responsibilities as an administrator.

Initially, the setup was difficult to understand, but after three to four deployments, it became easier. It also depends on the kind of applications or servers needing integration.

In terms of maintenance, when the customer starts to use a new application, it needs to be integrated with CyberArk Privileged Access Manager. Sometimes the new application is not 100% compatible. In such a case, the developer needs to create the integration.

In the first deployment, there was a team of two people.

Its price is high. I have also worked with Delinea. CyberArk is comparatively expensive compared to other PAM solutions, such as Delinea, especially during renewal.

It takes some time to realize the benefits of this solution. Customers take time to understand this solution. It also happened to me when I first started to learn how this solution works. I was looking for a solution to protect identities, and when I came across this solution, I found it hard to deploy as the architecture is complex. Still, in one month, I was able to understand the purpose of this solution.

Before deployment, I advise being clear about the applications to integrate and the users who will use them. Mapping this information beforehand will save time during production. You will not have to add them one by one.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The use case of privileged access management is self-explanatory. A large telecommunication company like ours needs to protect our privileged access because every attack cycle has privilege escalation, and we have to stop attackers at this point.

We have a lot of vendors or third parties working with us. They need to access our resources. The trust level of external third parties is lower than direct employees, so we do not want to share our critical credentials with them. That is our primary use case.

Another use case is managing internal employees, especially highly privileged administrators. Furthermore, the critical business applications and areas throughout our IT infrastructure involve privileged access, and we aim to protect those. We want the ability to audit and have real-time control.

I appreciate CyberArk's real-time capabilities. I can secure critical sessions, such as SSH or database sessions. As a security professional, I have real-time visibility into ongoing sessions. If anything suspicious occurs, I can terminate or freeze the session, which is part of user behavior analytics.

We can monitor and have real-time control over our environment with sessions coming from around the world, ensuring security. We have visibility and control through real-time user behavior analytics. That is my favorite feature.

It has a learning curve and is a complex product that requires dedicated training and people.

Maintaining the product is challenging. Upgrades require a lot of resources, as it impacts the entire organization. For example, upgrading components like the Privileged Session Manager (PSM) and the vault is time-consuming and difficult. In the long term, I would like to see these processes simplified, especially for on-premise installations.

I have been using this solution since 2018, which is a little over six years for me.

The product is solid and works as designed. The product itself is not yet very mature. That is one side. Another side is not putting enough resources into it as a customer. Most of the time, any stability issues are mostly with the customer, not the vendor. Proper fine-tuning and expertise ensure the product performs well.

It is highly scalable. We started small and expanded it to an enterprise level, and are now moving to the cloud for further growth. Its architecture offers scalability. It can grow much bigger than our company. It provides all the flexibility and modules if you have the required expertise.

CyberArk's customer service has improved recently and is now very responsive. However, four to five years ago, they were average. They are now at acceptable levels.

We are fully on-prem for the PAM, but we are moving to the cloud.

Its deployment is not easy due to CyberArk's complexity. We started from a small footprint and then moved to a larger deployment. It was a lot of work. This could not be managed without CyberArk-certified engineers. It is very complex.

We can never deploy and manage it fully by ourselves. No company has that expertise, so you always need CyberArk-certified engineers from a third party when it comes to critical things. We have over 30 servers running for the CyberArk solution. All 30 servers have different pieces of this complete solution. We can never upgrade it by ourselves without professional services. We can do some of the things ourselves, such as day-to-day management, troubleshooting, and operations, but for upgrades, installations, migrations, and disaster recovery, we need professional services. We have a separate budget every year for professional services.

We have a team including myself from governance, a project manager, senior leadership, and hands-on team members, among others. It requires four to five people from security and two CyberArk-certified engineers. I need two engineers because if one gets sick in the middle, the other person can take over because there is no going back when we start the upgrades and critical changes. We have four to seven knowledgeable and dedicated people in a critical scenario.

Pricing is a problem. CyberArk is expensive compared to other products I know. It is similar to buying a German car. It comes with all the bells and whistles, but some companies may find it too expensive.

I compared CyberArk with a product called Delinea. I preferred CyberArk because Delinea required additional agents installed on each target for session recording, whereas CyberArk does not. There was a difference between the two products in how they did the session recording. Because Delinea needs an extra agent installed on each target to do the session recording, you have a huge amount of work managing those target agents on probably thousands of servers. You need another team to do that. An extra workforce is needed to manage that. That was the first turn-off for me. CyberArk does not need an agent. It is in real-time. It drops DLLs to the target host during the session so that you do not need to manage the agent.

The most important aspect for us was that Delinea did not have real-time controls. They said they were developing that piece. They could only analyze recordings after the event had already happened, but then you are too late. All the artificial intelligence and machine learning were applied for the post-event activities. That was a big differentiator. CyberArk's real-time controls set it apart as Delinea only analyzed recordings after events.

These were the two main reasons for going with CyberArk. Everything else was fine. For an average-sized company, Delinea is fine, but for a large-scale company, CyberArk is a better choice.

It took us some time to realize its benefits because there was a learning curve for us. It took us about a year to get our heads around this product and start effectively using it. It is a journey. It takes at least five years for any company to make this product very useful and reach maturity. It is not only the product's fault. The company needs to have a vision, and the company culture needs to go with it. Senior leadership needs to support the vision. You need to have lots of ingredients for success. If everything is in place, you will see success after one year. In the first year, it is a struggle for everybody.

My company was bought by a bigger company, and they were very new to privileged access management. Everybody was struggling. The advice I would give is to have a good vision for privileged access management. You need dedicated teams, senior management support, and proper company policies and standards before implementing the solution. Start building knowledge slowly and avoid jumping into the deep end without preparation.

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