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Akamai Enterprise Application Access vs Cato SASE Cloud Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
7th
Ranking in ZTNA as a Service
8th
Ranking in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (5th), Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st)
Akamai Enterprise Applicati...
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
13th
Ranking in ZTNA as a Service
14th
Ranking in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
17th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Access Management (17th)
Cato SASE Cloud Platform
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
6th
Ranking in ZTNA as a Service
3rd
Ranking in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
WAN Optimization (1st), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (13th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (6th), WAN Edge (7th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) category, the mindshare of iboss is 2.1%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai Enterprise Application Access is 2.0%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cato SASE Cloud Platform is 11.7%, up from 9.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cato SASE Cloud Platform11.7%
iboss2.1%
Akamai Enterprise Application Access2.0%
Other84.2%
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
 

Featured Reviews

Matt Crockford - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless
One aspect we value about iboss is its simplicity. Their customer service is brilliant, and they are super responsive and knowledgeable. It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless. We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times. The user interface is highly intuitive. Our IT team picked it up with minimal training. It's arranged so that it's easy to find where things are. Another advantage is the single pane of glass console, which gives you visibility into what's happening. We're not fully there yet because we haven't implemented zero trust, but we're excited about the possibilities from the demos we've seen. We launched a POC of iboss' ChatGPT Risk Protection feature two weeks ago. AI is a great tool, but you need to be careful what you put into it. My biggest fear is employees inputting sensitive corporate information or customer PII data into one of these chatbots. I was impressed by our trial of the feature. It's exactly what we wanted. Now, when a user goes to ChatGPT, there's a banner warning them not to share information, and we can block conversations containing customer data like bank details and email addresses. I don't want to stop people from using it, but we need visibility. We've only tried it on a test group of 15 people. You can configure it to look for specific keywords or integrate it with your DLP policy if you have that configured
Bill Lee - PeerSpot reviewer
Very scalable, convenient, and stable protection against attacks
Our company uses the solution as a cloud perimeter and VPN. We don't need to use on-premises devices to open firewalls to inbound or outbound traffic.  The solution is very convenient and stable because you don't have to worry about attacks to public IPs or public networks.  The solution has two…
YOGESHSINGH - PeerSpot reviewer
Have streamlined policy configuration and improved network adaptability with some need for better reporting and observability
I may not be that equipped now, but there are certainly growth areas for them, especially around how they provide reporting and monitoring and then flexibility of combining it with an observability part attached to it. This would remove the need to integrate another specialist tool for observability or monitoring part. They would certainly employ AI, especially agentic AI. I think that should be already part of their roadmap as a transversal. But certainly, the kind of integrations they offer today, in the future, I would think they would add more and more feature sets, especially around where they remove the dependency of having specialist solutions on a typical monitoring side. I think it's a fair price. It's positioned very well in the market. It's not low or very high. In the future, I hope that with more services being bundled as part of the solution on the cloud side, they should reduce the price being, provide bundle service. I think in the future they will come up with reduced pricing, more competitive pricing. But today it's fair. It's not very low or very high.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"iboss is among the few products providing inline filtering where no application is needed on the device. It operates on the network side and is not device-based. This feature was one of the main reasons why we stayed with them for so long."
"Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss."
"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"From a use-case scenario, what I like the most is the plug-in. I like the fact that we can do the filtering of these devices offsite independent of the network they are connected to, and we do not have to have traffic coming back inside our network."
"First of all, the security policies are essential. I do not have to rely solely on Active Directory for our users."
"The security aspect of the solution, particularly the malware behind it, is excellent. That's something that really helped us out. It's not just a simple proxy that just blocks the insights of potential threats that come on behind it. They do malware detection and that helps us a lot."
"Our primary use case for this product is DLP,"
"It was a very easy product to install. It can be deployed very fast."
"My favorite part of the Akamai Enterprise Application Access service is its SSO and auto-scaling capabilities."
"Application Access's most valuable feature is the accessibility of enterprise tech protection."
"The capability of Akamai Enterprise Application Access is what you're looking for, it's giving you the service that you're looking for. It's simple and doesn't use an agent. It uses LCSD responders, and they have a lot of services around the globe. That's the reason that we were very interested in using it because it has a lot of coverage. This is because it's under the GDS umbrella."
"The solution is very convenient and stable because you don't have to worry about attacks to public IPs or public networks."
"The WAN aggregation feature is the most valuable."
"It is a stable solution...it is a scalable solution."
"The most valuable feature of Cato Networks is the CASB and the documentation is useful."
"The scalability is quite good."
"Cato offers all the functionality found in other solution. The life cycle management is always very stable."
"The platform offers more than 400 different types of interfaces, allowing you to bring this solution as part of a bigger solution if you need various different components on your network."
"Cato SASE Cloud Platform's self-healing model is the most valuable feature."
"It is quite simple and easy to use."
 

Cons

"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."
"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"I am currently doing a PoC of the zero trust aspect of it. Compared to other similar solutions, it is hard to get around each feature. It takes a while to get used to it."
"The area I would like to see improvement in is the ability with in the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing. It is kind of there, but it's not perfect. Quite frequently, I receive links that lead me to pages with error messages."
"One thing I would like to see differently with their Zero Trust platform is that some of the AI aspects related to high-risk activities have more false positives."
"For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company ExxonMobil."
"Their on-premise hardware's network interface is capped at one gigabit, which is sort of a problem. If you stand a filter up where all traffic flows through that, according to them, in order to go above a gigabit, you have to have multiple devices, which in today's IT seems a little bit silly. They could easily put in an SFP port into their device that could accommodate 10 gigs or at least offer a box."
"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"The solution has two agents so should combine its enterprise application and security access into one agent."
"We need another approach to bring the solution to the cloud. In addition to Access Management, we would like to see if we can jump into Directories. I think ADs are going to go away and everything is going to be cloud-based and minimize the use of ADs because of the cost and some other dependencies to the cloud. Every time you buy AD it is more hardware, and everything's changing to software. The network's changing, the applications are changing, and for IT it is hard to keep up with it."
"The pricing could be lower for Akamai Enterprise Application Access."
"The technical enablement sessions are quite limited, and Akamai could help by providing more of them."
"Its functionality is a bit limited in some areas as compared to a Cisco solution. It is not as granular. It doesn't have the manageability, feature set, and capabilities of a larger or an enterprise-level solution. It just needs a more robust feature set and granularity."
"A little tweaking or improvement of the UI in terms of logging when troubleshooting would be an improvement because it's very detailed."
"It could expand its reach into other sectors like professional services and finance, requiringmore specialized tools beyond Cato's current offerings. This includes better integration with third-party providers for more sophisticated tools such as intrusion prevention systems, anti-malware, and data loss prevention. Additionally, enhancing network speed and optimizing last-mile connectivity for managed service providers like us would be beneficial."
"The price could be better."
"However, Cato's solution is modular. You don't have to buy the whole package; instead, you can start with some of the functionality and then expand it as you see fit, based on its value and as your other contracts expire."
"They provide very good technical support, but their professional services are very expensive."
"The platform lacks strong security features on the edge. All security features are on the cloud."
"The solution is not cheap."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"Licensing is based on user count."
"The price is great it is all-inclusive, they use an enterprise cost model. That's what we like compared to other users. This is one of the main attractions of Akamai Enterprise Application Access. It's already an enterprise cost model established with us for services."
"The license can be shared based on the number of active users."
"The pricing of this solution depends on what you need. It is based on bandwidth."
"The price is not an issue for us, as it is priced more competitively than some other vendors."
"The solution is reasonably priced since Cato Networks provides features like SASE and monitoring, which I am very happy with currently."
"The price of Cato Networks is in the middle range compared to other solutions. NetFoundry is a less expensive solution than Cato Networks."
"The product is very competitively priced, and that's compelling. They don't charge the customer based on the operational cost like other brands such as Palo Alto. Cato has its own fully-fledged cloud, with their own data centers, equipment, and so on, which is an advantage. I rate the solution five out of five for affordability."
"You pay yearly based on the speed of your network. If you increase the speed of your network, you increase the cost for your throughput. It is by bandwidth for the most part and then licenses for VPN. There is some per-seat licensing for VPN access, but the majority of it is minimal. It is like $30 a year per client. The rest is based on how much bandwidth you'll use. You pay for that upfront for the year, and if you have to increase it, you increase it, and then they let you send more data through. There are no additional costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The pricing of the solution depends upon the bandwidth required for different branches"
"The solution's pricing is flexible."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
5%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise5
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company Exxon...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
Previously when I used iboss, we did the POC for iboss for ExxonMobil. Four or five people wanted to move from our ol...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern. There are cheaper alte...
What needs improvement with Akamai Enterprise Application Access?
The pricing is a bit expensive for our market. Although it is cheaper compared to alternatives, Akamai Enterprise App...
What is your primary use case for Akamai Enterprise Application Access?
We use Akamai Enterprise Application Access ( /products/akamai-enterprise-application-access-reviews ) for centralize...
What do you like most about Cato Networks?
The solution is a simple WAN solution. We've onboarded the socket on the Cato platform, and it provides connectivity....
What is your primary use case for Cato Networks?
In construction, we have a company in the steel industries, where we are doing the POCs currently, and we have one ex...
What advice do you have for others considering Cato Networks?
I am also a partner with Cato SASE Cloud Platform. Mentioning the bypassing feature and traffic engineering would be ...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
Soha
Cato Networks
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
Bugcrowd, InPowered, Spirent Communications
Paysafe, AdRoll, Pet Lovers Centre, Arlington Orthopedics, Humphreys & Partners Architects
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Enterprise Application Access vs. Cato SASE Cloud Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.