Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Cisco Secure Workload comparison

Akamai and Cisco are both solutions in the Cloud and Data Center Security category. Akamai is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.0, while Cisco is ranked #8 with an average rating of 9.5. Akamai holds a 23.2% mindshare in CDCS, compared to Cisco’s 13.6% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of Akamai users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Cisco users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation and Cisco Secure Workload compete in the security segmentation space. While Cisco Secure Workload offers advanced features, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is attractive due to its competitive pricing and support benefits.

Features: Akamai Guardicore Segmentation provides micro-segmentation, robust threat detection, and excellent segmentation control. Cisco Secure Workload offers comprehensive visibility, policy automation, and workload protection for a holistic security approach.

Room for Improvement: Akamai Guardicore Segmentation could enhance its integration capabilities, scalability in larger environments, and analytics features. Cisco Secure Workload needs to improve its ease of use, deployment time, and user interface simplicity.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Akamai Guardicore Segmentation has a straightforward deployment process and strong customer service. Cisco Secure Workload, although feature-rich, may present a learning curve in deployment and customer interaction.

Pricing and ROI: Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is cost-effective with attractive ROI, ideal for budget-conscious businesses. Cisco Secure Workload, despite higher initial costs, offers solid ROI with extensive security features.

To learn more, read our detailed Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. Cisco Secure Workload Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. Cisco Secure Workload

July 2025

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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

SentinelOne Singularity Clo...

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is 2.1%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is 23.2%, down from 23.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 13.6%, up from 12.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud and Data Center Security

Featured Reviews

Andrew W

VP - Information Technology at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees

Tells us about vulnerabilities as well as their impact and helps to focus on real issues

Looking at all the different pieces, it has got everything we need. Some of the pieces we do not even use. For example, we do not have Kubernetes Security. We are not running any K8 clusters, so it is good for us. Overall, we find the solution to be fantastic. There can be additional education components. This may not be truly fair to them because of what the product is going for, but it would be great to see additional education for compliance. It is not a criticism of the tool per se, but anything to help non-development resources understand some of the complexities of the cloud is always appreciated. Any additional educational resources are always helpful for security teams, especially those without a development background.

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KlavsThaarup

Senior Security Consultant at Orange Cyberdefense

Offers micro segmentation capabilities and easy to setup

It's micro-segmentation The label-based segmentation is the most valuable feature. There are always areas for improvement. It doesn't support a PAAC solution (Platforma as a service) in the cloud. So that could be improved. In future releases, I would like to see more integration with other…

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Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

Discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map

We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration allows Cisco Secure Workload to learn about our networks and network tags, providing valuable insights into vulnerabilities related to the operating system and various applications installed on our servers. Recently, Cisco announced a new product called HyperShield, an AI-based autonomous micro-segmentation solution. While Cisco has not stated that HyperShield will replace Cisco Secure Workload, it represents a natural evolution for the company. HyperShield features dynamic policy discovery and enforcement; however, once policies are enforced, they do not change until a discovery occurs, requiring a re-enforcement process. This new platform operates autonomously, minimizing the need for user or security engineer intervention. I would have expected Cisco to incorporate more automatic discovery and enforcement features within the existing Cisco Secure Workload product. Instead of enhancing the current product, they have introduced a new solution. Cisco plans to honor existing Tetration licenses, allowing users to transition to HyperShield without additional costs, reflecting the investment enterprises have already made. From Cisco’s perspective, this represents a natural progression in their product line. While the product name changes, it seems more of a rebranding effort. The enhancements are greater autonomy, improved discovery, and automatic enforcement, which are now being introduced in HyperShield. Cisco Secure Workload offers automatic policy enforcement but cannot adjust policies dynamically as the application needs to change. Having used the platform for the past five years, the recent announcement has been reassuring. Cisco has confirmed that our investment in the platform will not go to waste. They will honor our existing licenses, providing a natural migration path to the new solution without any disruption

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is very straightforward. It is not complicated. For the information that it provides, it does a pretty good job."

"The Offensive Security Engine, powered by impressive AI/ML capabilities, seamlessly integrates with cloud infrastructure to analyze data and provide optimal security solutions."

"It is advantageous in terms of time-saving and cost reduction."

"The dashboard gives me an overview of all the things happening in the product, making it one of the tool's best features."

"Singularity Cloud Security's most valuable features are its ease of scalability and comprehensive security measures."

"Visibility is the most important aspect."

"We're monitoring several cloud accounts with Singularity. It is convenient to identify issues or security failures in any account. It's nice to have all the details we need to solve these issues."

"It's positively affected the communication between cloud security, application developers, and AppSec teams."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security pros

"The tool is a complete package that offers many features like visibility. You can get a graph with real-time workflows and visibility into server-to-server communication. We get visibility into many things happening within our environment."

"Its deception features are great, providing a rich telemetry of lured origins, and are a great resource for any active defense strategy."

"This tool greatly helps in understanding the footprint of the attacks."

"The tool's most valuable feature is its visibility."

"Guardicore Centra offers the best coverage specifically in backward compatibility with legacy operating systems."

"We like the centralized management of the firewalls. Until we installed Guardicore Centra, we managed all our firewalls individually, so making changes was complicated, difficult, and time-consuming."

"From day one, you get threat intelligence. It will immediately block active threats, which has been useful."

"The label-based segmentation is the most valuable feature."

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation pros

"Instead of proving that all the access control lists are in place and all the EPGs are correct, we can just point the auditor to a dashboard and point out that there aren't any escaped conversations. It saves an enormous, enormous amount of time."

"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution."

"By using Tetration insight, we are able to get the latency on our level accounts and we can determine whatever the issue is with the application latency itself."

"Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."

"The product provides multiple-device integration."

"The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage. The telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent. It's complete. You see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network."

"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."

"The product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."

More Cisco Secure Workload pros

Cons

"One potential drawback is the cost of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security, which may be prohibitive for smaller businesses or startups, particularly those in regions with lower average incomes, such as India."

"In version 2, a lot of rules have been deployed for Kubernetes security and CDR, which makes a lot of issues of critical severity, whereas they are not critical or of high severity. There is a mismatch of severities. They need to work on severity management."

"We can customize security policies but lack auditing capabilities."

"Implementing single sign-on requires a pre-class account feature, which is currently not available."

"The Automation tab is an add-on that doesn’t work properly. They provide a list of scripts that don’t work and I have asked support to assist but they won’t help. When running on various endpoints the script doesn’t work and if it does, it’s only a couple. There are a lot of useful scripts that would be beneficial to run forensics, event logs, and process lists running on the endpoint."

"I export CSV. I cannot export graphs. Restricting it to the CSV format has its own disadvantages. These are all machine IP addresses and information. I cannot change it to the JSON format. The export functionality can be improved."

"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is an excellent CSPM tool, but its CWPP features need improvement, and there is scope for more application security posture management features."

"They can add more widgets to its dashboard. A centralized dashboard with numerous metrics would improve user understanding."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security cons

"In our version, when using the terminal server, we cannot exclude user tasks for each session."

"Clients would like to see that the security policies of GuardiCore can continue to be comparable to all the major firewall players out there."

"Customers would want to see the cost improved."

"Kubernetes is not installed in the way we need it."

"It doesn't support a PAAC solution (Platforma as a service) in the cloud."

"Supports become difficult when it's for a big organization. For a small organization, medium organization, it still makes sense, however, for a big organization, it makes life difficult."

"Sometimes, the speed needs improvement, especially when it comes to the generation of maps, where it can be a bit slow."

"The dashboard needs improvement. It should be more flexible so that I can easily see what I want or need to see."

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation cons

"The emailed notifications are either hard to find or they are not available. Search capabilities can be improved."

"The integration could be better, especially with different types of solutions."

"There's room for improvement when it comes to Cisco Secure Workload. A couple of internal areas could be refined a little bit. They are trying to solve it, depending on where you suppose the agent is. Suppose you have the agent on both the server and the client, which could be the front-end server or web server connecting to the. In that case, if those two are communicating on RPC, the server can look into its configuration. It could go down and find the configuration file on the FTP server and then set the policies to it. But there are a lot of different FTP servers out there. It's also a complex case for the tool to support all FTP servers."

"There is some overlap between Cisco Tetration and AppDynamics and I need to have a single pane of glass, rather than have to jump between different tools."

"It is not so easy to use and configure. It needs a bunch of further resources to work, which is mainly the biggest downside of it. The deployment is huge."

"There was a controversy when Cisco reduced the amount of data they kept, and the solution became quite cost-intensive, which made its adoption challenging….Although they have modified it now, I preferred the previous version, and I wish all the functionality were back under the same product."

"I'd like to see better documentation for advanced features. The documentation is fairly basic. I would also like to see better integration with other applications."

"The multi-tenancy, redundancy, backup and restore functionalities, as well as the monitoring aspects of the solution, need improvement. The solution offers virtually no enterprise-grade possibility for monitoring."

More Cisco Secure Workload cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost for PingSafe is average when compared to other CSPM tools."

"While I'm slightly out of touch with pricing, I know SentinelOne is much cheaper than other products."

"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is on the costlier side."

"PingSafe is less expensive than other options."

"The features included in PingSafe justify its price point."

"PingSafe falls within the typical price range for cloud security platforms."

"PingSafe is priced reasonably for our workload."

"PingSafe is cost-effective for the amount of infrastructure we have. It's reasonable for what they offer compared to our previous solution. It's at least 25 percent to 30 percent less."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security pricing and cost advice

"The customer would complain about the cost."

"This is not a cheap solution but you have to consider the bigger picture, which is what it is giving you."

"Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is expensive."

"The solution is reasonably priced and I would rate it a six out of ten. The tool's licensing costs are yearly."

"The pricing is too high."

"Guardicore Centra provides better value for money than NSX, was the other solution that we looked at, which was too expensive for what it does."

"Compared to the pricing we were seeing from both Illumio and Edgewise, Guardicore was very competitive."

"The price is the same as other products in the market. There's no price argument to choose one or the other product, it will cost the customer approximately the same."

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation pricing and cost advice

"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."

"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."

"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."

"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."

"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."

"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."

"Regarding price, Cisco Secure Workload can be expensive if you don't have a budget. If you're not doing micro-segmentation, every extra security measure or enforcement you're putting on top of your existing environment will be an extra cost. It's not a cheap solution at all. But from my point of view, if you need to do micro-segmentation, this is one of the best tools I've seen for it. I can't compare that to Microsoft's solution because I haven't looked into it. I've looked into VMware and Cisco. Those are the only two that I know of. I didn't know that Microsoft could do micro-segmentation at all. Maybe they can, but I haven't heard anything about it."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

23%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about PingSafe?

The dashboard gives me an overview of all the things happening in the product, making it one of the tool's best featu...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PingSafe?

I don't handle the price part, but it isn't more expensive than Palo Alto Prisma Cloud. It's not cheap, but it is wor...

See all answers

What needs improvement with PingSafe?

There is scope for more application security posture management features. Additionally, the runtime protection needs ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Guardicore Centra?

I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive. I know other micro-segmentation t...

See all answers

What do you like most about Guardicore Infection Monkey?

Initially, I liked the telemetry part. But later, we used the microsegmentation features that we were able to deploy ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Guardicore Infection Monkey?

When we have more than one interface, we can only have one policy for both interfaces. Normally, you have assets with...

See all answers

What do you like most about Cisco Secure Workload?

The product provides multiple-device integration.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Workload?

CloudStrike offers antivirus capabilities and firewall features for servers and VDI but lacks automatic policy discov...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?

We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration a...

See all answers

Comparisons

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 14% of the time

Wiz vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 13% of the time

AWS GuardDuty vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 6% of the time

Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 5% of the time

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security Competitors

Illumio vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 43% of the time

VMware NSX vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 11% of the time

Cisco ACI vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 3% of the time

Zero Networks vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 3% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 3% of the time

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation Competitors

Cisco Hypershield vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 23% of the time

Illumio vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 16% of the time

Cisco ACI vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 10% of the time

VMware NSX vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 9% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 6% of the time

More Cisco Secure Workload Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

July 2025

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security report

Download SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

August 2025

Download Akamai Guardicore Segmentation product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload

August 2025

Download Cisco Secure Workload product report

Also Known As

PingSafe

Guardicore Centra, GuardiCore

Cisco Tetration

Overview

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security offers a streamlined approach to cloud security with intuitive operation and strong integration capabilities for heightened threat detection and remediation efficiency.

Singularity Cloud Security stands out for its real-time detection and response, effectively minimizing detection and remediation timelines. Its automated remediation integrates smoothly with third-party tools enhancing operational efficiency. The comprehensive console ensures visibility and support for forensic investigations. Seamless platform integration and robust support for innovation are notable advantages. Areas for development include improved search functionality, affordability, better firewall capabilities for remote users, stable agents, comprehensive reporting, and efficient third-party integrations. Clarity in the interface, responsive support, and real-time alerting need enhancement, with a call for more automation and customization. Better scalability and cost-effective integration without compromising capabilities are desired.

What are SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security's standout features?

Ease of Use: Intuitive operation simplifies navigation across platforms.
Real-Time Detection: Quick identification and response to threats.
Automated Remediation: Streamlines recovery processes with integration capabilities.
Forensic Visibility: Aids in thorough threat analysis and prevention strategies.
Comprehensive Console: Offers full visibility and historical data tracking.
Platform Integration: Supports seamless operation across cloud and hybrid environments.

What benefits should users expect from SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security?

Enhanced Efficiency: Automation and third-party integration improve threat response.
Improved Detection: Reduces mean time to detect and respond to threats.
Operational Support: Comprehensive visibility and forensic tools aid operational decisions.
Cost Efficiency: Affordable integration with scaling capabilities without high overhead.

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is deployed in industries needing robust cloud security posture management, endpoint protection, and threat hunting. Utilized frequently across AWS and Azure, it assists in monitoring, threat detection, and maintaining compliance in diverse environments while providing real-time alerts and recommendations for proactive threat management.

SentinelOne

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is a software-based microsegmentation solution that provides the simplest, fastest, and most intuitive way to enforce Zero Trust principles. It enables you to prevent malicious lateral movement in your network through precise segmentation policies, visuals of activity within your IT environment, and network security alerts. Akamai Guardicore Segmentation works across your data centers, multicloud environments, and endpoints. It is faster to deploy than infrastructure segmentation approaches and provides you with unparalleled visibility and control of your network.

Akamai

Cisco Secure Workload is a cloud and data security solution that offers a zero-trust policy of keeping an organization’s application workloads safe and secure throughout the entire on-premise and cloud data center ecosystems.

Cisco Secure Workload will consistently provide protection by discovering workload process anomalies, stopping threats immediately, minimizing the risk threat surface, and aborting any lateral movement.

Today’s ecosystems are very elastic, and in the application-focused dynamic of today’s aggressive marketplace, Cisco Secure Workload delivers a robust security solution that works effectively with today’s most popular applications. The solution uniquely surrounds each and every workload to ensure organizations are able to keep their data, network, and applications safe and secure at all times. Cisco Secure Workload ensures that enterprise organizations can maintain secure applications by consistently building firewalls around every workload level throughout the entire ecosystem. The solution can manage applications that are deployed on containers, virtual machines, or bare-metal servers.

Cisco Secure workload is able to meet an organization's busy needs and offers flexible options such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and on-premises options. Using the Secure Workload SaaS options, users receive all the benefits of Cisco Secure Workload protection without the hassle of having to deploy and maintain the platform on premises. Users are responsible for acquiring the necessary software licensing and deploying software agents. Using SaaS, Secure Workload runs in the cloud and is operated and maintained by Cisco. This option offers the ability to scale easily and is a popular choice for SaaS-first and SaaS-only clients. Many organizations find they get the best TCO and achieve the best productivity and profitability using the SaaS options.

When choosing on-premises options, organizations choose between hardware-based appliance models (large or small form factors). Platform selection is dependent on scalability goals, the desired fidelity level of flow telemetry, and the actual number of workloads. When a user chooses to configure Cisco Secure Workload for a conversation-only flow telemetry for all workloads, each platform has the capability to scale up vertically twice the default platform scale. Additionally, with Secure Workload, it is possible for the platform to be scaled horizontally in order to satisfy the demands of extra large widely distributed enterprise environments using federation capabilities.

Cisco Secure Workload also provides a robust disaster recovery (DR) tool, which helps to make it a complete, comprehensive solution. The DR allows for continuous restore and backup capabilities that enable users to quickly remediate operations and data to a standby cluster in the event of a drastic failure or disaster.

Reviews from Real Users

“The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage. The telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent. It's complete. You see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network. Other valuable features include vast support for annotations, flexible user applications, machine learning, automatic classification, and hierarchical policies.” - CTO at a tech vendor

Cisco

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Santander, Frontier Airlines, OpenLink, Intermountain Healthcare, Cellcom, BancoBASE

ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. Cisco Secure Workload

July 2025

Free Report: Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. Cisco Secure Workload

Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. Cisco Secure Workload and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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