CyberArk Secure Cloud Access

As a distributor, I sell CyberArk Secure Cloud Access  to partners and then to customers. I don't have the products deployed in production. I maintain a lab that I use for presentations and demos. I have both on-premises and cloud infrastructure. I am in the channel chain for CyberArk Secure Cloud Access , purchasing it directly from the vendor.

Deploying CyberArk Secure Cloud Access is much better than the older CyberArk products. CyberArk has improved the user experience and admin experience significantly over the years. From my expertise, the lightweight nature of CyberArk Secure Cloud Access is the most important feature, as it does not consume as many resources as previous solutions and does not require extensive resources to deploy.

CyberArk Secure Cloud Access allows me to cover a number of scenarios in a very convenient way that was not convenient in traditional PAM vaulting. The use of dynamic role-based access controls enhances my customers' cloud security. This new approach is particularly effective for dynamic environments where traditional PAM requires significant effort to detect accounts, onboard accounts, and provide access rights. A dynamic version allows this process to happen in a smoother way with fewer administrative requirements. This approach is especially valuable for modern environments, particularly CI/CD environments.

The customization of CyberArk Secure Cloud Access could be improved because I found scenarios where I could not provide the correct configuration due to insufficient options available. I understand the approach that keeping it simple makes it easier to deploy in general, but additional customization capabilities would be beneficial.

Real-time monitoring with CyberArk Secure Cloud Access is missing some features that I believe are on the roadmap, such as AI-generated descriptions of events and summarization of events. These features would be particularly helpful for SOC analysis and are important for SOC members.

The audit trail in the past was not very informative and requires improvements. I believe this is the reason why AI enrichment was prioritized in development.

I have been using CyberArk solutions for ten years. CyberArk Secure Cloud Access has existed for approximately four or five years.

Technical support from CyberArk is quite good sometimes, but it depends on who I meet on the first line. I would rate it between six and seven out of ten. It is quite good, but there are some issues.

Implementation of CyberArk Secure Cloud Access is quite straightforward. The basic installation of CyberArk Secure Cloud Access takes mostly a couple of hours.

Cloud providers are chosen by my customers, but in my region, Microsoft is more popular. CyberArk's mindset is to be the best in the market, but being the best in the market requires a high price to maintain quality and attract customers. Sometimes if the price is too high, CyberArk loses deals, but I see that it is a success in the market. The price is high, and if it could be lower, I could generate better business.

CyberArk Secure Cloud Access is a good product that is well positioned in the market as an enhancement that provides new possibilities beyond the classical PAM solution, for which CyberArk is most recognizable with its classical on-premises PAM. This new approach is valuable for modern environments. I rate this review overall as eight out of ten.

My primary use case for CyberArk Secure Cloud Access  is secure remote access to cloud infrastructure, least privilege enforcement, and identity-centric Zero Trust architecture.

I use CyberArk Secure Cloud Access  to enforce Zero Trust access control for administrator access to Azure  management consoles and cloud applications.

Just-in-Time privileged access, federated identity with policy-based conditional access, session monitoring, and audit logging are additional aspects of my use case for CyberArk Secure Cloud Access.

The best feature of CyberArk Secure Cloud Access is Just-in-Time privileged access with policy-based conditional controls.

Just-in-Time privileged access and policy-based conditional controls have made my work easier and more secure by eliminating standing privilege instead of granting permanent administrative roles. This makes access time-bound, approval based on need, logged, and audited, which reduced our privileged account exposure window by more than 60%.

CyberArk Secure Cloud Access significantly improved compliance reporting. It has positively impacted my organization in several ways, including reducing the attack surface, improving regulatory audit outcomes, and enabling faster onboarding of cloud administrators.

I have reduced privileged access review cycles from quarterly manual reviews to automated policy enforcement, which has helped reduce the attack surface and improve audit outcomes.

Improvements to CyberArk Secure Cloud Access could include deeper native integration with additional cloud-native security platforms, more granular reporting dashboards, and an improved user experience for occasional administrative users.

The platform is powerful, but I note that initial policy tuning requires maturity in IAM  governance.

I have been using CyberArk Secure Cloud Access for two years.

CyberArk Secure Cloud Access is stable.

Regarding scalability, CyberArk Secure Cloud Access has a cloud-native architecture and maintains good performance.

I do not have problems with customer support; it is good.

I have seen a measurable return on investment with CyberArk Secure Cloud Access, evidenced by a 60% reduction in standing privileged accounts, 40% faster privileged access approvals, and reduced audit findings related to privileged access.

In my opinion, the pricing is enterprise-oriented in a subscription-based model, scaling per user workload, and the setup requires identity integration and a policy design workshop.

In my experience, for those looking into using CyberArk Secure Cloud Access, I advise starting with a privileged access baseline, aligning it to a Zero Trust strategy, involving cloud and DevOps teams early, defining clear governance KPIs, and planning for policy tuning and iteration. I would rate this solution an 8.

I worked on Fortinet before, and now I am working on an altogether different vendor ecosystem that focuses more on Cybersecurity Operations Center . I currently work with IBM QRadar , CyberArk Secure Cloud Access , and a few other cybersecurity vendors.

I use these tools for my own service operating model. I am currently building a managed security services provider where I use these tools for building my security operations center and helping enterprise customers fight against cyber threats and build resilience.

I use this solution for providing zero-trust network access and application security to cloud-based workloads.

Their presence in the European market and the cloud-based SaaS consumption model is the most exciting aspect for customers.

Their claims are quite promising, and their risk score rating for different cyber threats is particularly exciting so that customers can gauge the impact of cyber threats and prioritize their remediation efforts.

For integration with SIEM , they have a good telemetry ecosystem that can be forwarded using syslog and API-based integration. This unified telemetry ecosystem allows SIEM  to ingest logs and events seamlessly.

The efficacy of the solution is more or less specific to particular use cases rather than generic use cases. The solution is quite good, but it may not be applicable for all scenarios. For cloud workloads on a hyperscaler, this solution is sufficient. However, for specific use cases and how enterprises are using hybrid multicloud scenarios, the solution requires more flexibility in deployment and needs to have its efficacy tested in a hybrid multicloud scenario.

Role-based access control is not going to enhance cyber resilience, but it is more for the efficacy and optimization of resources that manage cyber resilience programs.

This product should be made available in various clouds in India because India now has the DPDP compliance requirement so that data from India-based deployments or India-based customers remains in India. This way, they can make these tools available widely on all hyperscaler cloud ecosystems in India so that enterprises can use them while keeping their compliance requirements in mind.

I have been using this solution for a few months.

I have conducted only theoretical and a little bit of practical evaluation. I have not deployed this in production, so I cannot comment on the stability of the platform because I have not used it for my production workload or in my lab workload. I conducted a theoretical evaluation and performed a few tests. I cannot comment on stability based on my experience.

I have not encountered any scalability issues. Usually, these cloud platforms are built with elastic scale in mind, so I do not think the platform will hit any scalability issues.

The setup is straightforward. Nowadays every SaaS solution is designed and architected with the understanding that deployment is intuitive, and even with moderate skills, an engineer can deploy it seamlessly.

Technically, the solution matches the offerings from different service providers. In that way, I think they are quite competitive. However, this is use case specific for workloads hosted on a public cloud. I think this is a promising platform.

CyberArk Secure Cloud Access  is a good and promising solution, but the efficacy of the solution is more or less specific to particular use cases rather than generic use cases.

Privileged access management, governance, and audit are the primary use cases for CyberArk Secure Cloud Access . For audit and governance purposes, you want visibility into who accesses what, at what time, and what they do. When deploying CyberArk Secure Cloud Access , you gain this visibility. If you need to audit something that has already happened, CyberArk Secure Cloud Access can help you understand who performed an action. For example, if a database administrator logged into a device or operating system via SSH, CyberArk Secure Cloud Access monitors the person so you know exactly what they did. If there is downtime caused by human error, perhaps a configurational error by a networking administrator, the PAM solution can help you understand that Isaac performed this action at this specific time and that action caused the downtime.

CyberArk Secure Cloud Access also prevents risks because you must go through the platform to access the environment, which limits your risk surface area and reduces risk overall. There are many reasons that organizations deploy CyberArk Secure Cloud Access. Some deploy it because it is part of their policy or standard, others deploy it for risk reduction, and others deploy it because they want to audit what their people are doing and manage their metrics.

Dynamic role-based access enhancement increases security based on user IDs and identification. You map users to applications by taking the application ID and user ID. Dynamic role-based access helps you identify which user is accessing what, with what device, at what time, and the level of access the person has for doing what they are doing.

Audit trails are the main functionality of CyberArk Secure Cloud Access. By monitoring the privileged activities that are occurring, CyberArk Secure Cloud Access gives you visibility and insight while mapping every log and providing meaning to the logs of whatever is happening. There is even live recording of whatever you are doing. When you log into a system, CyberArk Secure Cloud Access monitors the activities you are performing. If you log into a Windows operating system and access applications, it continuously records until you log out of the system and saves that recording.

CyberArk Secure Cloud Access involves substantial effort when performing on-premises deployments. The SaaS or cloud version is less time-consuming compared to the on-premises deployment. With on-premises deployment, you must do a great deal, including spinning up the infrastructure itself and adding it to the HSM before integrating or onboarding where you want to control through PAM. This requires significant human resources.

The deployment complexity may not be entirely accurate in my assessment because it has been a while since I left the engineering aspect and moved into more managerial roles. Before, when I was using it, too many components were involved in CyberArk Secure Cloud Access deployment. You need to understand every component because the least mistake results in being completely locked out of the system. Having too many components makes the deployment difficult and is not easy to understand. You have to be technically inclined to perform the deployment successfully.

I used the solution since 2019.

CyberArk Secure Cloud Access operates in real-time for monitoring purposes. You must go through CyberArk Secure Cloud Access to access what you want to access. If CyberArk Secure Cloud Access is down, you cannot access anything, which is a double-edged sword. It becomes more secure overall, but when that security measure is not in place, you cannot access your environment. This is especially problematic when using a trial version of the license. If the trial license expires before you activate your product, that becomes a significant problem.

The scalability of CyberArk Secure Cloud Access depends on the organization and how large the organization is for which you are onboarding or deploying the solution. If you have extensive infrastructure, then CyberArk Secure Cloud Access takes considerable effort to implement. However, if you have a small to medium-sized enterprise, you can typically complete your deployment in roughly a week.

We were partners and a Tier 1 partner with CyberArk Secure Cloud Access, so the support was very high. I even know the regional engineer for CyberArk Secure Cloud Access for both West Africa and East Africa. The support was really excellent. We could log cases and receive help. We could jump on a session with an engineer to assist us. As long as you have a license from them, the support is available during deployment. The level of support depends on the kind of support you have. Because we were a Tier 1 partner with CyberArk Secure Cloud Access, the support was excellent. They have even come down to Ghana to provide support.

CyberArk Secure Cloud Access has vast out-of-the-box integration interfaces. It integrates into almost everything within the enterprise infrastructure. I would rate this review an 8 overall.