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Akamai Enterprise Application Access vs Cisco Secure Access comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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 Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (5th), Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), ZTNA as a Service (8th)
Akamai Enterprise Applicati...
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
14th
Ranking in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
18th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Access Management (16th), ZTNA as a Service (18th)
Cisco Secure Access
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
3rd
Ranking in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
70
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (6th), Firewalls (12th), ZTNA (6th), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) category, the mindshare of iboss is 3.3%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai Enterprise Application Access is 1.8%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Access is 3.7%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Secure Access3.7%
iboss3.3%
Akamai Enterprise Application Access1.8%
Other91.2%
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
 

Featured Reviews

Ashok Ananthula - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Cloud gateway has strengthened remote web security and now needs better Mac and ISP support
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents. That is where in 2025, we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform. If your use case is for just Windows laptops,you can consider this platform as an option One issue is the data center resiliency part. In India especially, they are not tied up with the Tier 1 ISPs like Tata or Airtel; they were having Tier 2 ISPs and encountered many issues reaching few major sites that my organization depends on, and they were having problems that they could not fix quickly. They also lack a mechanism to route that traffic within their data center; rather, they ask customers to make a pac file change to route it to Singapore explicitly. It would be better if they route from their backend , i mean even if I send it to India DC, they should be able to route it internally to make that work; however, they fail to do that and ask the customer to route it in the pac file. Another suggestion is that in China, they do not have the proper setup; they used to have numerous problems with slowness and lack of premium circuits in China as well. That leads to multiple sites working slowly with latency-related issues. So the main issue is the ISP-related problems that need to be solved.
DE
Platform Manager at Globe Telecom
Centralized authentication streamlines global access with single sign-on and auto-scaling for seamless user experience
We use Akamai Enterprise Application Access for centralized authentication for our global customers. It provides a solution for consolidated authentication on our platform. We use the service to manage access for our global consumers, not for remote access for our employees My favorite part of…
reviewer2788500 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Operations Engineer at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Secure access has unified zero trust and web protection while AI assistance automates tasks
From a feature perspective, I have not experienced any issues, drawbacks, or shortcomings. However, the cost of Cisco's products and licensing is high. My clients usually prefer cheaper options if possible. Mid-size or smaller businesses typically cannot afford Cisco Secure Access. Additionally, there is a steep learning curve, as it is very intensive. Someone with significant knowledge can work on it, but a new professional would have to spend considerable time to get accustomed to it. It is hard to find engineers who can work on it. Overall, we get what we pay for, as it is a pretty good feature and service. The pricing of Cisco's products and licensing is higher than competitors. If they could be more reasonable, that would help. The support offered for two years also has higher costs. Overall, the client's IT budget gets affected. It was challenging to learn because, as mentioned, it has a significant learning curve and requires considerable training to become proficient.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Granular setup, which was able to set different levels of filters using the OUs in the AD."
"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."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"As I mentioned, the return on investment is significant, as it saved our office locations' bandwidth because when you are working remotely at home, your internet traffic routes directly to iboss and will not go to your office building, saving bandwidth bottlenecks and ensuring that issues with our building internet circuits will not impact your internet connectivity because you are directly going to the iboss data center."
"Iboss is a solution that prevents advanced persistent threats, and has a zero tolerance for attacks."
"Our primary use case for this product is DLP,"
"Valuable features: Within the filter: Controls (Web categories, applications, and Allow/Block list) and Network (local Subnets). Within the reporter: Logs (Event Log) and Reports."
"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."
"Application Access's most valuable feature is the accessibility of enterprise tech protection."
"We've had a good ROI from Application Access."
"My favorite part of the Akamai Enterprise Application Access service is its SSO and auto-scaling capabilities."
"The cost and the capability are great."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Access is the level of security it provides."
"I assess the stability and reliability of Cisco Secure Access as top-notch, and I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues because we built the solution and performed the tests step-by-step."
"What I like the most about Cisco Secure Access is that it is really easy to use and it is secure."
"Cisco Secure Access does help me protect my company from threats like phishing and ransomware."
"The primary benefit is being able to see exactly where a connection or person is getting blocked, and then if we can allow it to either that person by their credentials, MAC address, or using the agent on their laptop, it becomes easier to troubleshoot."
"The integrated capabilities of Cisco Secure Access deliver significant ROI through reduced mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR), with resource efficiency notably improved as fewer personnel are needed for triage and system management."
"I can provide more advanced security features for my customers because Cisco Secure Access is built in the cloud, I don't have to worry about managing the security enforcement or the behind-the-scenes operational aspect, and it has resiliency in multiple data centers so I get increased availability with multiple redundant tunnels across different data centers."
"The biggest return on investment when using this product is that I can be proud of my work."
 

Cons

"The reporting feature needs improvement."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"To scale up, a new iboss Node Blade Chassis must be purchased."
"I have heard they are doing DDoS filtering, but I am not certain if they are implementing it correctly."
"The dashboards for local use could be better."
"If they could implement an extra security layer preventing access to iboss from the open internet, it would be great."
"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."
"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."
"The technical enablement sessions are quite limited, and Akamai could help by providing more of them."
"The pricing could be lower for Akamai Enterprise Application Access."
"If you provide enterprise services we have to stop telling the customers it's going to be per users or the transactions. That's not good for the customers, it's good for the vendors."
"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 solution has two agents so should combine its enterprise application and security access into one agent."
"Improvement on the pricing will help in expanding the market for Cisco Secure Access and then it can be affordable to much more number of companies than what it is right now."
"However, the cost of Cisco's products and licensing is high, and mid-size or smaller businesses typically cannot afford Cisco Secure Access."
"Cisco Secure Access can be improved with more integration; the more integrations, the better. There are always third-party products that you might have, such as Carbon Black."
"The licensing is confusing."
"My experience with customer support for Cisco Secure Access has been okay, but it is not very fast."
"This is my first time in healthcare after being in commercial space for a long time. It's always a challenge because we can't just turn stuff off as we could in the commercial space, since it may interfere with patient care. It takes longer to understand what's going on, so anything that could help give us a faster understanding of what's happening, why it's there, and if it's a risk to us would be helpful."
"When speaking about improvements for Cisco Secure Access, the licensing structure is an area of concern, as many users struggle to understand how it works."
"It is confusing. When you look at the prices, you have different licensing and years of licensing that you have to purchase. Additionally, it's unclear what service you get from those licenses regarding end-user support. We have a representative who has to walk me through it every time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"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."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"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."
"It is confusing. When you look at the prices, you have different licensing and years of licensing that you have to purchase. Additionally, it's unclear what service you get from those licenses regarding end-user support. We have a representative who has to walk me through it every time."
"The pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Cisco Secure Access have been very competitive compared to other platforms. I believe that if Cisco continues to improve costs or offers something similar to a Cisco credit, it would attract more customers."
"For what you get, it's a fair price in comparison to other products."
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900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise8
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise34
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent ...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We used iBoss mainly for Internet Access by having an Agent on Windows laptops Primarily because when we try to use i...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
I am not involved in pricing, but as per the information I have, during that time, the Blue Coat proxies we were usin...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Access?
Pricing for Cisco Secure Access has been very reasonable in the context of the entire world of SASE solutions. Setup ...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Secure Access?
Our main use case for Cisco Secure Access is providing security for hybrid and mobile workforces. One of the big chal...
What advice do you have for others considering Cisco Secure Access?
One of the things about policy verification is with Cisco Secure Access and modern security products in general, poli...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
Soha
No data available
 

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
1. IBM 2. Microsoft 3. Amazon 4. Google 5. Apple 6. Cisco Systems 7. Oracle 8. Intel 9. HP Inc. 10. Dell Technologies 11. Verizon Communications 12. AT&T 13. Comcast 14. T-Mobile 15. Sprint 16. Vodafone 17. Orange 18. BT Group 19. Deutsche Telekom 20. Telefonica 21. Nokia 22. Ericsson 23. Samsung Electronics 24. Sony 25. Panasonic 26. LG Electronics 27. Siemens 28. General Electric 29. Ford Motor Company 30. General Motors 31. Toyota Motor Corporation 32. Volkswagen Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Enterprise Application Access vs. Cisco Secure Access and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.