Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs ShieldX comparison

Akamai and Fortinet are both solutions in the Microsegmentation Software category. Akamai is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.3, while Fortinet is ranked #11. Akamai holds a 22.7% mindshare in MS, compared to Fortinet’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of Akamai users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Fortinet users who would recommend it.

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Read 22 Akamai Guardicore Segmentation reviews

7,949 Views
5,087 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

ShieldX

Read 4 ShieldX reviews

472 Views
203 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

ShieldX

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 14, 2024

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation and ShieldX compete in the network security market with a focus on micro-segmentation and cyber defense. ShieldX seems to have the upper hand due to its advanced threat detection and adaptive security features.

Features: Akamai Guardicore Segmentation offers extensive network visibility, robust micro-segmentation controls, and real-time monitoring, making it ideal for environments demanding deep packet inspection. ShieldX provides adaptive security solutions using AI for enhanced threat detection, automated intelligence for dynamic threat adaptation, and proactive defense mechanisms.

Room for Improvement: Akamai Guardicore Segmentation could improve its automated threat detection, enhance ease of rule configuration, and simplify its user interface. ShieldX might benefit from more extensive integration capabilities, increased customization options for unique environments, and enhanced cloud-native support to broaden its applicability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is noted for its streamlined yet complex deployment with scalable cloud support, backed by strong technical assistance. In contrast, ShieldX offers flexible deployment options with auto-scaling capabilities and proactive customer service, simplifying installation and ensuring responsive support.

Pricing and ROI: Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is viewed as cost-effective with scalable pricing models suited for high-traffic enterprises, promising long-term ROI. ShieldX, despite a higher initial cost, delivers significant ROI through AI-driven security and rapid threat mitigation, with its advanced technology investments justifying the cost in environments requiring proactive defenses.

To learn more, read our detailed Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. ShieldX Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. ShieldX

March 2026

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Helped 884,976 peers since 2012

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

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Ranking in Microsegmentation Software

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud and Data Center Security (1st), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (11th), Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) (8th)

ShieldX

Ranking in Microsegmentation Software

11th

Average Rating

9.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Microsegmentation Software category, the mindshare of Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is 22.7%, down from 27.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ShieldX is 1.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Microsegmentation Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation	22.7%
ShieldX	1.2%
Other	76.1%

Microsegmentation Software

Featured Reviews

SachinShelar

Manager, Account Services Delivery at Softcell Technologies Limited

Micro-segmentation has strengthened zero trust security and reduces lateral movement risks

Some of the best features of Akamai Guardicore Segmentation are its granular micro-segmentation and deep visibility, allowing control to process, service level, and full east-west traffic mapping, while it also stands out for AI-assisted policy creation, real-time threat detection, and software-based enforcement. The feature I rely on most in Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is application dependency mapping and visibility, which gives real-time insight into east-west traffic flows, helping us design accurate policies quickly and troubleshoot issues without impacting production environments. Additionally, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation offers a policy simulation test mode, which is very useful to validate rules before enforcement and avoid outages.

Read full review

MichaelProcyshyn

IT Director at park holidays uk

Proactively monitors, blocks, and reports what it has blocked; and self-updates meaning there is zero maintenance

The most valuable feature is the automatic scaling. With its microservices, it scales both up and down, depending on traffic and throughput. The traffic through our website depends on holiday bookings. It's very quiet in November through January, and then our traffic picks up quite rapidly and, at our peak, we will take in excess of a million pounds of business a day through our website. The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides. Uptime on the system has been 648 days and we do very little to it because it self-updates and alerts. It does everything that we need it to do, so the administration side of it is zero. One of the beauties about ShieldX is that it's such a good "fire-and-forget" product.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

"We have seen a strong ROI both in cost savings and operational efficiency, having reduced 70 percent in incident handling effort and a 30 to 40 percent reduction in security resources, which delivers measurable value through reduced risk, lower operational cost, and faster breach containment."

"At the moment, when I use this product it's great."

"The solution is very scalable, especially when connected to the cloud resources."

"Guardicore is really top-tier in their customer support."

"The impact of Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is very important because it reduced risk for my corporation and organization."

"The change control in GuardiCore has improved our efficiency by over 75% in terms of implementing security policies, and the efficiency of the security team was improved by over 100% in terms of analytics, monitoring, and responding to incidents."

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

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation pros

"The most valuable feature is the automatic scaling. With its microservices, it scales both up and down, depending on traffic and throughput."

"It has helped us tighten our security posture. Now, staff can only access things that they should be accessing."

"We were able to see what devices are talking to each other, giving us more visibility."

"...It takes the exact same policies that you would apply to your on-premise environment and enables you to simply apply them to the cloud. It becomes one policy for both on-prem and for the cloud."

"ShieldX has been designed from the very beginning to work well in cloud environments. It understands autoscaling, automation, and auto-configuration. These are the things which are important in today's operating environment."

"Very often, when new challengers come in, what they do is they end up coming in at a lower cost with more functionality."

"The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides."

"Once you install it you can virtually forget about it; it's very low-maintenance and high-protection."

More ShieldX pros

Cons

"It would be very helpful for beginners if the solution had more windows to help with the terms inside instead of going to the documentation."

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

"Needs more customization of honeypots and a vaster catalog of systems able to be mimicked."

"Akamai Guardicore Segmentation can be improved because keeping it up to date is difficult since it is SaaS-based and updates are not on a regular schedule; I have to reach out to my contact to ask them to update to a newer version, and it would be helpful if updates were on a regular cadence so that I would not have to remember to ask them."

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

"Customers would want to see the cost improved."

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

"The customer support is good, but the documentation is not up to the mark."

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation cons

"They need to be consistent in performance and capabilities over time, given the fact that this is new and I want to see where this goes in the next year or so. As the vendor continues to evolve and add future functionality, we want to make sure that we are still keeping up with the integrations, etc. Time will be the key factor here. The proper support for some of the latest technologies, Docker containers, etc. They need to keep up with threat landscape, so we will see how the security get layered. This is what we are going to be keeping an eye on."

"They need to be consistent in performance and capabilities over time, given the fact that this is new and I want to see where this goes in the next year or so."

"We are having some issues with their LDAP and integrating it with the Active Directory."

"I would like better reports and in-depth reporting."

"With any kind of tool like ShieldX, where you're in the cloud instead of a traditional firewall, you're using CPU resources in those environments to provide the protection. So there's a cost associated with CPU resources. I'm pressing upon them to make the product much more efficient and use less CPUs to do the same thing."

"There should be a bit more customer care, with regular review meetings on it or regular reports. It would be nice to have a quarterly or biannual review of what ShieldX has blocked."

"We are having some issues with their LDAP and integrating it with the Active Directory. We can't seem to set it up."

More ShieldX cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is expensive."

"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."

"The customer would complain about the cost."

"GuardiCore has made some new changes to the license now. We've seen monthly and annual licenses based on a subscription. We have a few clients that pay anywhere from $25,000 a year."

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

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

"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."

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

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation pricing and cost advice

"For a three-year deal we paid £55,000 plus tax... But, and this is a big "but," this was over two years ago. ShieldX had only just hit the market. We were the first company in Europe to buy ShieldX."

"For other security professions who are looking for something which is low in cost that does microsegmentation, they should look at ShieldX. It might not be the big name out there, but it does everything that you are looking for in microsegmentation at a very low price."

"Security policies are now applied as applications are going up. Because it's automated, we don't have the three to four week delay. The insertion of applications in the cloud for us dropped from an average of three to four weeks to a couple of days."

"ShieldX ensures that we can have the separation needed for our environment to avoid drastically increasing the cost on the licensing side. From this perspective, it's been very positive and helpful."

"We are very happy with the pricing and licensing. It's about getting a site-wide license. One of the challenges that we've had with our previous vendor had been the cost of licensing."

"We are actually expecting our costs to drop in the coming year, but it is just a matter of the licensing expiring. That is going to happen in the next six months or so. Then, we will start to see a decrease in overall spend."

"ShieldX also enables us to migrate to cloud environments faster. That is an important part of it for sure because it takes the exact same policies that we would apply to our on-premise environment and enables us to simply apply them to the cloud. It becomes one policy for both on-prem and for the cloud."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	11

No data available

Questions from the Community

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

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that overall everything worked out really well. The pricing was flexible, and it has worked out well with our budget.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Guardicore Infection Monkey?

I think the pricing is very high. It is a big cost. The price of Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is very expensive, but it is important to the enterprise. I think it is more or less.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Guardicore Infection Monkey?

I use Akamai Guardicore Segmentation to block lateral movement of malicious software like ransomware. This is very important to protect my business and my corporation. I create labels for any asset...

See all answers

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Comparisons

Illumio vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 35% of the time

VMware NSX vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 10% of the time

Cisco Secure Workload vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 9% of the time

TrendAI Deep Security vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 4% of the time

Zero Networks vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 3% of the time

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation Competitors

Illumio vs ShieldX

Compared 42% of the time

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs ShieldX

Compared 22% of the time

More ShieldX Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

March 2026

Download Akamai Guardicore Segmentation product report

Buyer's Guide

ShieldX

February 2026

Download ShieldX product report

Also Known As

Guardicore Centra, GuardiCore

APEIRO, ShieldX APEIRO

Overview

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

The ShieldX Elastic Security Platform dynamically scales to deliver comprehensive and consistent controls to protect data centers, cloud infrastructure, applications and data no matter where they are or where they go to make the cloud more secure than on-premise deployments. Our frictionless approach leverages agentless technology as well as the ShieldX Adaptive Intention Engine which autonomously translates and enforces intention into a set of comprehensive controls - microsegmentation, firewall, IPS and more - making security the easiest thing you do in the cloud.

Fortinet

Sample Customers

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

Iowa State University

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. ShieldX

March 2026

Free Report: Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. ShieldX

Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. ShieldX and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.

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