Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs Cisco Secure Workload comparison

Aqua Security and Cisco are both solutions in the Cloud and Data Center Security category. Aqua Security is ranked #12 with an average rating of 9.0, while Cisco is ranked #8 with an average rating of 9.5. Aqua Security holds a 0.8% mindshare in CDCS, compared to Cisco’s 13.6% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Aqua Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Cisco users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Aqua Cloud Security Platform and Cisco Secure Workload are prominent cybersecurity solutions in the cloud security market. Cisco Secure Workload is viewed to have an edge due to its comprehensive features and strong perceived value, despite higher costs.

Features: Aqua Cloud Security Platform is noted for its strong container security, compliance capabilities, and easy scalability. Cisco Secure Workload offers advanced workload protection, application visibility, and integrated threat management tools, which provide it with an advantage.

Room for Improvement: Aqua Cloud Security Platform users have pointed out integration with third-party tools, enhancing user interface design, and improving monitoring capabilities as areas for development. Feedback on Cisco Secure Workload suggests enhancing intuitive management, improving documentation, and expanding training materials.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Aqua Cloud Security Platform is praised for its straightforward deployment process but experiences some delays in customer support. Cisco Secure Workload features a more complex deployment, offset by responsive customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Aqua Cloud Security Platform is considered cost-effective with a good return on investment. Cisco Secure Workload's higher initial costs are seen as justified by its feature-rich offerings, providing a satisfactory ROI despite the expense.

To learn more, read our detailed Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs. Cisco Secure Workload Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Aqua Cloud Security Platform 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 Aqua Cloud Security Platform is 0.8%, up from 0.4% 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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Burak AKCAGUN

Business Development Manager at Axoft Ukraine

A robust and cost-effective solution, excelling in scalability, on-premises support, and responsive technical support, making it well-suited for enterprises navigating stringent regulatory environment

The most crucial aspect is runtime protection, specifically image scanning before preproduction and deployment. Customers find it invaluable to have the ability to check for vulnerabilities in an image before deployment, similar to a sandbox environment. This feature ensures that customers can identify any potential issues with the image, such as misconfigurations or vulnerabilities, before integrating it into their workloads and infrastructure. In their source pipeline, companies can identify issues before deploying changes. This is crucial because customers prefer resolving any problems or misconfigurations before the deployment process. Software change security, including GSPM Cloud, is a key feature customers seek in their infrastructure.

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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

"Cloud Native Security's evidence-based reporting allows us to prioritize issues by understanding their impact, helping us resolve the most important problems first."

"We mostly use alerts. That has been pretty good. If we use the alert system from Amazon, it is much costlier to us, so we use SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security."

"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is excellent, and I highly recommend it."

"The user interface is well-designed and easy to navigate."

"The cloud misconfiguration feature and Offensive Security Engine, as well as their alerting process, are valuable."

"The remediation process is good."

"The dashboard is intuitive in terms of design and functionality. Additionally, it gives me an email for all the findings that are open."

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

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security pros

"Aqua Security helps us to check the vulnerability of image assurance and check for malware."

"We use Aqua Security for the container security features."

"The most valuable feature of Aqua Security is the scanner."

"The solution was very user-friendly."

"Aqua Security allowed us to gain visibility into the vulnerabilities that were present in the container images, that were being rolled out, the amount of risk that we were introducing to the platform, and provided us a look into the container environment by introducing access control mechanisms. In addition, when it came to runtime-level policies, we could restrict container access to resources in our environment, such as network-level or other application-level access."

"The DTA, which stands for Dynamic Threat Analysis, allows me to analyze Docker images in a sandbox environment before deployment, helping me anticipate risks."

"Their sandboxing service is also really good."

"Support is very helpful."

More Aqua Cloud Security Platform pros

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network."

"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."

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

"The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."

"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."

"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."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is security."

More Cisco Secure Workload pros

Cons

"It would be really helpful if the solution improves its agent deployment process."

"The recommended actions aren't always specific, so it might suggest recommendations that don't apply to the particular infrastructure code I'm reviewing."

"When we request any changes, they must be reflected in the next update."

"I would prefer to see SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security develop into a single pane of glass for ASPM and CSPM."

"We use SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security and also SentinelOne. If SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security integrated some of the endpoint security features of SentinelOne, it would be the perfect one-stop solution for everything. We wouldn't need to switch between the products. At my organization, I am responsible for endpoint security and vulnerability management. Integrating both functions into one application would be ideal because I could see all the alerts, heat maps, and reports in one console."

"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is an excellent CSSPM tool, but the CSC CWPP features need improvement."

"The integration with Oracle has room for improvement."

"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."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security cons

"Aqua Security could provide more open documentation so that their learning resources can be more easily accessed and searched through online. Right now, a lot of the documentation is closed and not available to the public."

"They want to release improvements to their product to work with other servers because now there are more focused on the Kubernetes environment. They need to improve the normal servers. I would like to have more options."

"It's a bit hard to use the user roles. That was a bit confusing."

"The integrations on CICD could be improved. If Aqua had more plugins or container images to integrate and automate more easily on CICD, it would be better."

"Sometimes I got stressed with the UI."

"The solution could improve user-friendliness."

"We would like to see an improvement in the overview visibility that this solution offers."

"In the next release, Aqua Security should add the ability to automatically send reports to customers."

More Aqua Cloud Security Platform cons

"It has an uninviting interface."

"The interface is really helpful for technical people, but it is not user-friendly."

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

"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."

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

"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 product must be integrated with the cloud."

More Cisco Secure Workload cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is based on modules, which was ideal for us."

"I am not involved in the pricing, but it is cost-effective."

"The tool is cost-effective."

"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."

"For pricing, it currently seems to be in line with market rates."

"The price depends on the extension of the solution that you want to buy. If you want to buy just EDR, the price is less. XDR is a little bit more expensive. There are going to be different add-ons for Singularity."

"Its pricing is constant. It has been constant over the previous year, so I am happy with it. However, price distribution can be better explained. That is the only area I am worried about. Otherwise, the pricing is very reasonable."

"It's a fair price for what you get. We are happy with the price as it stands."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security pricing and cost advice

"Aqua Security is not cheap, and it's not very expensive, such as Splunk, they are in the middle."

"Dealing with licensing costs isn't my responsibility, but I know that the licenses don't depend on the number of users, but instead are priced according to your workload."

"It comes at a reasonable cost."

"The pricing of this solution could be improved."

"They were reasonable with their pricing. They were pretty down-to-earth about the way they pitched their product and the way they tried to close the deal. They were one of the rare companies that approached the whole valuation in a way that made sense for our company, for our needs, and for their own requirements as well... They will accommodate your needs if they are able to understand them and they're stated clearly."

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

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 do you think of Aqua Security vs Prisma Cloud?

Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valu...

See all answers

What do you like most about Aqua Security?

Customers find it invaluable to have the ability to check for vulnerabilities in an image before deployment, similar ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Aqua Security?

It comes at a reasonable cost. When compared to Prisma Cloud, it is more budget-friendly.

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

Snyk vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 3% of the time

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security Competitors

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Aqua Cloud Security Platform

Compared 19% of the time

Wiz vs Aqua Cloud Security Platform

Compared 16% of the time

SUSE NeuVector vs Aqua Cloud Security Platform

Compared 5% of the time

Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes vs Aqua Cloud Security Platform

Compared 5% of the time

Snyk vs Aqua Cloud Security Platform

Compared 4% of the time

More Aqua Cloud Security Platform Competitors

Cisco Hypershield vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 23% of the time

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 16% 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

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

Aqua Cloud Security Platform

August 2025

Download Aqua Cloud Security Platform product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload

August 2025

Download Cisco Secure Workload product report

Also Known As

PingSafe

Aqua Security Platform, CloudSploit, Argon

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

Aqua Security stops cloud native attacks, preventing them before they happen and stopping them when they happen. Dedicated cloud native threat research and the most loved cloud native security open source community in the world put innovation at your fingertips so you can transform your business. Born cloud native, The Aqua Platform is the most integrated Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP), securing from day one and protecting in real-time. Aqua has been stopping real cloud native attacks on hundreds of thousands of production nodes across the world since 2015.

Aqua Security Features

Aqua Security has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Vulnerability scanning
Dynamic threat analysis
Automates DevSecOps
CI/CD integrations
Cloud security posture management
Kubernetes security
Hybrid and multi-cloud
Container security
Serverless security
VM security
Cloud workloads protection

Aqua Security Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Aqua Security. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Designed for scale and performance: The Aqua Security platform was designed to scale to the largest environments in order to protect huge clusters and massive DevOps pipelines.

Empowers DevOps to detect issues early and fix them fast: The solution was designed to help you solve issues immediately - before they cause greater damage to your organization. It helps you gain insight into your vulnerability posture and prioritize remediation and mitigation according to contextual risk.

Automated compliance and security posture: Aqua Security checks your cloud services, Infrastructure-as-code templates, and Kubernetes setup against best practices and standards. This way, you can ensure the infrastructure you run your applications on is securely configured and in compliance.

Artifact scanning: The Aqua Security platform scans artifacts for vulnerabilities, malware, and other risks during development and staging. It allows you to set flexible and dynamic policies to control deployment into your runtime environments.

Minimizes false positives: Aqua Security relies on a variety of sources and proprietary research to curate and present vulnerabilities in the most accurate way, which helps to minimize false positives and unnecessary noise in the pipeline.

Automated security testing: The Aqua Security platform automates security testing in your CI/CD pipeline, and continuously scans registries and serverless function stores to detect emerging risks. By implementing the platform, you can get actionable feedback within your CI environments to empower your organization’s developers to fix issues rapidly.

Granular controls: The solution provides protection for your VM, container, and serverless workloads using granular controls with instant visibility and real-time detection and response.

Sandboxed environment: With Aqua Security, you can run images in a secure sandboxed environment that traces indicators of compromise (IOCs) such as container escapes, reverse shell backdoors, malware drops, code injection backdoors, and network anomalies.

Reviews from Real Users

Lizeth Z., Cloud Security Specialist at Telstra, says, “Aqua Security is the most advanced solution in the market for container security. Aqua Security allows us to check for vulnerabilities in the CI/CD pipeline, so application teams can remediate issues before going into production. Aqua Security helps us to check the vulnerability of image assurance and check for malware.”

Aqua Security

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

HPE Salesforce Telstra Ellie Mae Cathay Pacific HomeAway

ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)

Buyer's Guide

Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs. Cisco Secure Workload

July 2025

Free Report: Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs. Cisco Secure Workload

Find out what your peers are saying about Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs. Cisco Secure Workload and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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