Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Symantec Data Center Security comparison

Akamai and Broadcom are both solutions in the Cloud and Data Center Security category. Akamai is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3, while Broadcom is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.0. Akamai holds a 17.6% mindshare in CDCS, compared to Broadcom’s 2.8% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of Akamai users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 83% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Read 22 Akamai Guardicore Segmentation reviews

7,949 Views
5,246 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Symantec Data Center Security

Read 12 Symantec Data Center Security reviews

1,071 Views
718 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Symantec Data Center Security

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 14, 2024

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation and Symantec Data Center Security compete in the field of data center security, both offering distinct advantages. Akamai Guardicore appears to have the upper hand due to its advanced micro-segmentation, ease of deployment across various environments, and customer service adaptability.

Features: Akamai Guardicore Segmentation provides advanced micro-segmentation, broad visibility across data centers, and flexible policy management. It ensures quick compliance with auditing requirements and offers proactive threat detection. Symantec Data Center Security offers granular control with robust hardening of systems, providing unified security policy enforcement. It emphasizes precise access controls and comprehensive visibility across systems.

Room for Improvement: Akamai Guardicore faces challenges including high licensing costs, limited integration with major appliances, and a need for more flexible dashboards. Improvements in long-term policy management automation are also needed. Symantec requires simplification of its policy structures, increased flexibility and integration options, and better support for newer operating systems.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is versatile, supporting public, private, and hybrid cloud environments. Its technical support is known for quick adaptation and responsiveness. Symantec Data Center Security supports on-premises and private cloud setups, with robust technical support but could benefit from quicker response times and greater expertise.

Pricing and ROI: Guardicore offers flexible licensing scenarios, perceived as competitive despite high costs, demonstrating ROI through enhanced security and reduced resource needs. Symantec is acknowledged for higher costs but offers reasonable ROI according to some users. Guardicore shows potential for higher returns due to its adaptability in protecting diverse applications and systems.

To learn more, read our detailed Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. Symantec Data Center Security Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. Symantec Data Center Security

March 2026

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Helped 884,933 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 Cloud and Data Center Security

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (11th), Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) (8th), Microsegmentation Software (3rd)

Symantec Data Center Security

Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security

10th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

4.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is 17.6%, down from 25.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Data Center Security is 2.8%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud and Data Center Security Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation	17.6%
Symantec Data Center Security	2.8%
Other	79.6%

Cloud and Data Center Security

Featured Reviews

Ken Bauer

Senior Security Analyst at a retailer with 5,001-10,000 employees

Segmentation of legacy systems has protected outdated endpoints and reduces network risk

The best features Akamai Guardicore Segmentation offers make it simple to see all of the connections that are being made to each of the endpoints, and they can be controlled by process and port. The ability to control by process and port helps my team day-to-day because, since there are hundreds of thousands of connections to some of these endpoints, looking at the Reveal Map makes it simple to audit and create rules for what we want to allow. Akamai Guardicore Segmentation has impacted my organization positively because we find it difficult to remove the legacy systems, so it was very important to segment them from the rest of the network to protect them and protect the rest of our network.

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Muhammad Ejaz ul Hassan

CEO at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Continuous server hardening has protected critical legacy workloads and simplified security control

Symantec is lagging on the reporting side. I have been working for 10 years and I have identified many gray areas. As a user protecting your infrastructure, you need to sell the value to your management. Management buys the tool for preventing threats, and it works for them. However, you cannot sell it because every solution needs to show what happened in the last few years or how you will be protected in the future. Reporting is the most important thing for the CIO level, not the admin level. I have seen Symantec really lag in this area. I am creating my own tool to build a dashboard to share with the CIO level because they want to know what happened last week, last month, and last year. These reports will tell you about activities. Symantec changed the licensing when Broadcom acquired the company. The question of who will provide support became unclear. Support has now changed and they are making money. I have seen that most of the time when you ask implementation questions, they do not answer you. If you have a problem, they give you a low-level engineer at the first level. This delays resolution. Support has to be better.

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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

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

"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."

"The interface and dashboard are amazing."

"Initially, I liked the telemetry part. But later, we used the microsegmentation features that we were able to deploy and found that they really stood out from other vendors. It allows us to see microsegmentation as distributed services."

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

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

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

"It will be a great deal for our partner as Guardicore provides excellent network and process visibility, allowing for advanced segmentation with a very friendly UI."

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation pros

"Symantec Data Center Security, as a name, represents the perfect solution if you want to harden your servers."

"We use the product to prevent unauthorized access to data, systems, and servers. It provides essential features for data center security."

"The real strength lies in its straightforward approach, offering just two key policies: prevention and detection."

"The tool will then detect any anomalies, such as an intruder who has breached the network, which can trigger the system lockdown feature if it's enabled and meets the defined threshold."

"The console and tools are very user-friendly."

"Overall, this is a pretty good product."

"The most valuable feature is the centralized console, which can handle different products that we have."

"The most valuable feature is the endpoint protection system."

More Symantec Data Center Security pros

Cons

"I think the pricing is very high."

"The long-term management of the security policies could be improved with some kind of automation platform, something like Chef or Puppet or Ansible, to help you manage the policies after day-one... to then manage the policies and changes to those policies, going forward, through some type of automation process is not turning out to be really easy."

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

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

"The cost of licensing is the biggest issue for clients with GuardiCore."

"Guardicore Centra should incorporate automation so that we don't require to write custom scripts and APIs. The tool also has limitations on rules where it allows only sixty thousand rules. Our clients have also commented that there are too many manual clicks and effort to do changes. I think that the incorporation of automation can help our clients make changes with confidence and without the possibility of human error."

"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."

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation cons

"They need to develop a more flexible product that can be scaled such that it fits well into a small business or a bigger, enterprise-level solution."

"Since the acquisition of Symantec, our customers have not been satisfied with this solution."

"There is room for improvement in enhancing its graphical user interface for a more user-friendly experience."

"This solution clashes with Microsoft defender, which results in performance degradation on the machine."

"Symantec is lagging on the reporting side."

"There is plenty of room for improvement with this product, and it could start with platform metrics."

"Adding more compatibility with common products like Microsoft would be a plus."

"The support is very bad. They're not fast at all. Trend Micro's support is much better."

More Symantec Data Center Security cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

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

"The pricing is too high."

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation pricing and cost advice

"Compared to some other solutions, such as CrowdStrike, Symantec is more expensive."

"It is notably more expensive when compared to other solutions."

"The product is a bit costly."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

10%

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	5

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.

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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

What needs improvement with Symantec Data Center Security?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Symantec Data Center Security?

As a partner support, we handle all Symantec products for various clients. Currently, we work with DLP, Symantec Endpoint Protection, Data Loss Prevention, Data Center Security, Email Security, and...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Symantec Data Center Security?

I am still a Symantec partner. Price rating is five out of ten. Symantec Data Center Security is a perfect solution, but it needs to elaborate its functionalities and functions to the market. Peopl...

See all answers

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

TrendAI Deep Security vs Symantec Data Center Security

Compared 38% of the time

Symantec Endpoint Security vs Symantec Data Center Security

Compared 13% of the time

Trellix MOVE AntiVirus vs Symantec Data Center Security

Compared 13% of the time

Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP vs Symantec Data Center Security

Compared 12% of the time

Cloud Security Cockpit vs Symantec Data Center Security

Compared 4% of the time

More Symantec Data Center Security Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

March 2026

Download Akamai Guardicore Segmentation product report

Buyer's Guide

Symantec Data Center Security

February 2026

Download Symantec Data Center Security product report

Also Known As

Guardicore Centra, GuardiCore

No data available

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

Docker containers make it easy to develop, deploy, and deliver applications where containers can be deployed and brought down in a matter of seconds. This flexibility makes it very useful for DevOps to automate deployment of containers. Symantec Data Center Security: Server Advanced provides agentless Docker container protection that allows you to achieve the performance benefits of Docker without sacrificing security. Full application control enables administrator privilege de-escalation, patch mitigation, and protection against zero day threats in today's heterogeneous data centers.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. Symantec Data Center Security

March 2026

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