Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs Illumio comparison

Aqua Security and Illumio are both solutions in the Cloud and Data Center Security category. Aqua Security is ranked #19, while Illumio is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.7. Aqua Security holds a 2.1% mindshare in CDCS, compared to Illumio’s 18.4% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Aqua Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Illumio users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

Illumio and Aqua Cloud Security Platform compete in the security solutions category, focusing on different aspects like application traffic and container security. Aqua appears to have the upper hand with its specialization in container security, suited for environments using Docker and Kubernetes.

Features: Illumio is noted for its Application Dependency Map, allowing for detailed traffic analysis and micro-segmentation. Its auto policy writing and robust visibility help in managing inbound and outbound traffic effectively. Aqua Cloud Security Platform focuses on container security with support for Docker and Kubernetes. It provides effective vulnerability management through image scanning and runtime security, beneficial for organizations in containerized environments.

Room for Improvement: Illumio could enhance support and provide clearer labeling guidance. Support for more operating systems and better integration are also needed. Aqua is suggested to improve network visibility, logging, and reporting. Users also request better documentation and training resources, plus enhanced support for non-container environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Illumio operates well on-premises with some cloud compatibility. Customer service feedback is mixed, with reports of both timely help and delays. Aqua is versatile, supporting various environments, including cloud and on-premises. Customer service reviews are positive but suggest inconsistency in response times.

Pricing and ROI: Illumio offers cost-effective pricing that scales based on workload, providing good ROI through increased visibility and audit capabilities. Aqua's pricing is flexible yet seen as expensive, but the return on investment is notable due to its strong container security. Users find the pricing competitive compared to similar offerings.

To learn more, read our detailed Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs. Illumio Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs. Illumio

March 2026

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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 March 2026, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is 2.7%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Aqua Cloud Security Platform is 2.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Illumio is 18.4%, down from 24.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud and Data Center Security Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security	2.7%
Illumio	18.4%
Aqua Cloud Security Platform	2.1%
Other	76.8%

Cloud and Data Center Security

Featured Reviews

Satyavijay Chavan

Information Security Engineer at DataVigilant Infotech

Enables us to prioritize and effectively address critical security issues

Evidence-based reporting helps us to prioritize and solve critical security issues. The new visualization feature demonstrates how an attacker can enter the system, highlighting the potential path that can be exploited and outlining all the steps the attacker could take. With that visibility, we can ensure the perimeter is strong and attackers cannot enter, thus reducing the risk. It has helped us prioritize issues. The visibility into how an attack could happen is valuable. For example, it highlights the system vulnerability and outlines where an attack could propagate. The visualization helps me to prioritize remediation, and if I don't know where to start, I can check to see the score that enables me to prioritize issues. I am using infrastructure-as-code scanning, and it's one of the useful features. In pre-production, it identifies embedded secrets and misconfigurations, including issues with Kubernetes or some privileged containers. This feature allows us to pass the audit and secure IaC code so that it isn't easily exploitable by attackers. We can more proactively work to identify and resolve vulnerabilities by using the dashboard and the alerting system that SentinelOne provides. It helps us with audits and compliance. We can show the compliance in percentage. We can confidently say that our company or infrastructure is very secure. It has improved our security posture by 30% to 35%. It has reduced our false positives by 30%. It has helped teams collaborate better. The security team manages SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security, and when it flags vulnerabilities, they are forwarded to DevOps for remediation. Previously, we needed to identify and report the issues, but there would be lapses in communication. Now, there is a centralized dashboard that anyone can look at and see the open issues and work on them.

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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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Utkarsh Shakya

Cyber Security Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Have created granular security policies based on roles and application behavior

The best feature that Illumio offers is that we can easily understand how to label the applications, how to install Illumio agent on the client machines, how to install the agent on the servers, and how to do the ring-fencing. The log analysis is very simple, and we can map the traffic very easily, such as the traffic view and map view. We have many views to do that, and then we have a topology environment where we can expand the topology and understand how we want to prepare our policy based on the requirement. These are some of the very good use cases that Illumio provides, which none of the other vendors can offer in such an easy and usable way. The most important feature is the traffic review analysis, where we use the draft view and the reported view that helps us understand how the application interacts with other applications in the environment, and based on that, we are able to define the policies. It has increased the business for the organization. We are creating business by supporting the client. The client is getting more security and is more confident in their network because they now have the micro-segmentation feature in their environment. This is new technology and that's how it helps the organization as a whole. The clients we support are benefited, and at the same time, we are making money out of it. This is definitely a good approach. After implementing Illumio, there has been significant progress. Most of the app owners now understand what applications are communicating, how these applications interact with others, and we are more aware of which application is talking to what other servers and applications, and their roles. For instance, whether an application is talking to the DB server or an app server. We have a more granular understanding of the traffic view. Additionally, after implementing Illumio, there is greater segmentation, and fewer incidents are occurring. There have been times when an attack was halted from expanding laterally.

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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 offers attack path analysis."

"Overall, I would rate it a ten on ten for cloud security."

"The solution's most valuable features are its ability to detect vulnerabilities inside AWS resources and its ability to rescan after a specific duration set by the administrator."

"Cloud Security has provided a single view to observe all workloads, prioritization for handling cloud assets, and reduced noise by distinguishing false positives effectively."

"With SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security, it's easy to onboard new accounts."

"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security released a new security graph tool that helps us identify the root issue. Other tools give you a pass/fail type of profile on all misconfigurations, and those will run into the thousands. SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security's graphing algorithm connects various components together and tries to identify what is severe and what is not. It can correlate various vulnerabilities and datasets to test them on the back end to pinpoint the real issue."

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

"It's helped free up staff time so that they can work on other projects."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security pros

"The CSPM product is great at securing our cloud accounts and I really like the runtime protection for containers and functions too."

"The most helpful feature of Aqua Security is Drift Prevention, which is a feature that allows images to be immutable. In addition, one of the main reasons we went with Aqua Security is because it provides strong protection when it comes to runtime security."

"Support is very helpful."

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

"Valuable features include the ability to connect it to our Docker Hub where our images are stored, good integration with Slack, and the connection to the CV, to easily see which CVs are on each image."

"From what I understand, the initial setup is simple."

"The solution was very user-friendly."

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

More Aqua Cloud Security Platform pros

"The product provides visibility into how the applications communicate and how the network protocols are being used."

"The solution is easy to use."

"Customer support is excellent."

"The tool helps with my company's security posture."

"The client is getting more security and is more confident in their network because they now have the micro-segmentation feature in their environment."

"The solution helps to maintain logs and monitor activities. It also helps us with access management. The tool helps us to secure organizational data that include files."

"It has helped us to understand internal network visibility and firewall policy implementation. We use the product to simplify firewall policy implementation."

"The Explorer allows you to know the traffic between source and destination."

More Illumio pros

Cons

"I would like to see the map feature improve. It's good, but it isn't fully developed. It lets us use custom resources and policies but does not allow us to perform some actions. I would also like more custom integration and runtime security for Kubernetes."

"The SentinelOne customer support needs improvement, as they are sometimes late in responding, which is critical in a production issue."

"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 terms of ease of use, initially, it is a bit confusing to navigate around, but once you get used to it, it becomes easier."

"We are experiencing problems with Cloud Native Security reporting."

"The documentation could be better."

"While SentinelOne offers robust security features, its higher cost may present a challenge for budget-conscious organizations."

"It does not bring much threat intel from the outside world. All it does is scan. If it can also correlate things, it will be better."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security cons

"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."

"Since we are working from home, we would like to have the proper training for Aqua."

"The user interface could be improved, especially in terms of organization and clarity."

"There's room for improvement, particularly in management capabilities as it may not be comprehensive enough for all customers, and it has been lacking in the realm of cloud security posture management."

"I would like Aqua Security to look into is the development of a web security portal."

"Sometimes I got stressed with the UI."

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

"The solution could improve user-friendliness."

More Aqua Cloud Security Platform cons

"There should be an option to upgrade from the console to the latest version instead of performing manual upgrades. This would be more helpful to streamline processes."

"There should be an option to upgrade from the console to the latest version instead of performing manual upgrades."

"Illumio can be improved if we have more interactive sessions with the tech team."

"Some of the features that can be improved is offer additional guidance on creating an effective and risk-free tagging policy would be highly beneficial."

"Illumio Adaptive Security Platform could improve by supporting more operating systems. For example, Cisco and Apache appliances."

"I would like to see better data security in the product."

"I have not had the chance to experiment deeply with it."

"Illumio does not have much in terms of application dependency mapping features."

More Illumio cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We found it to be fine for us. Its price was competitive. It was something we were happy with. We are not a Fortune 500 company, so I do not know how pricing scales at the top end, but for our cloud environment, it works very well."

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

"It is a little expensive. I would rate it a four out of ten for pricing."

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

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

"Their pricing appears to be based simply on the number of accounts we have, which is common for cloud-based products."

"Singularity Cloud Security by SentinelOne is cost-efficient."

"It is cost-effective compared to other solutions in the market."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security pricing and cost advice

"The pricing of this solution could be improved."

"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."

"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."

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

"It comes at a reasonable cost."

"There is a subscription needed to use Illumio Adaptive Security Platform and we pay every three years. Overall the solution is expensive."

"The product's pricing is around 10,000-15,000 USD. The pricing is on a yearly basis."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	49
Midsize Enterprise	22
Large Enterprise	55

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	10

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	9

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?

Regarding the pricing for SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security, I do not think it is something I can compare.

See all answers

What needs improvement with PingSafe?

I do not see room for improvement in SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security. In the future, I would like to see the i...

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Illumio Adaptive Security Platform?

My experience was really good because I think it's not very expensive if we compare it with Guardicore. I believe tha...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Illumio Adaptive Security Platform?

Illumio can be improved if we have more interactive sessions with the tech team. The support of Illumio can be better...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Illumio Adaptive Security Platform?

The main use case for Illumio is providing micro-segmentation where we don't want to segment the network based on IP ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Wiz vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 10% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 6% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 5% of the time

Orca Security vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 2% of the time

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Sysdig Secure vs Aqua Cloud Security Platform

Compared 10% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Aqua Cloud Security Platform

Compared 10% of the time

Wiz vs Aqua Cloud Security Platform

Compared 8% 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

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Illumio

Compared 29% of the time

VMware NSX vs Illumio

Compared 10% of the time

Cisco Secure Workload vs Illumio

Compared 9% of the time

Zero Networks vs Illumio

Compared 4% of the time

More Illumio Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

February 2026

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security report

Download SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Aqua Cloud Security Platform

March 2026

Download Aqua Cloud Security Platform product report

Buyer's Guide

Cloud and Data Center Security

March 2026

Download Illumio product report

Also Known As

PingSafe

Aqua Security Platform, CloudSploit, Argon

Illumio Adaptive Security Platform, Illumio ASP

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

Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation is a cloud and data center security solution that helps stop breaches from spreading across hybrid and multi cloud IT environments. The solution is designed to stop ransomware, contain cyber attacks, and reduce risk. With Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation, users can understand relationships and communications to map exposure risk of systems and data, identify the right security posture and secure applications through least-privilege policies, and ensure a Zero Trust security posture.

Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation Features

Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Scalability: Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation scales up to 200,000 managed workloads or over 700,000 unmanaged workloads. These workloads can be in the cloud, on-premises, and in hybrid environments.

Single pane of visibility: The solution’s single pane of visibility improves your security posture and ability to prevent and respond rapidly to cyberattacks.

Simplicity: With Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation, setting up groups and tags is simple. The solution is easy to integrate with next-generation firewalls and can also integrate with IT service management tools to import workload tags to provide more context to workloads.

Ransomware containment: The solution provides enforcement boundaries to contain attackers from moving laterally across your organization, enabling security architects to immediately isolate any workload or endpoint compromised in an attack. Enforcement boundaries can be activated instantly through scripts or by manual control, isolating workloads and endpoints already infected from spreading across the organization.

Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Visibility everywhere: The Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation solution helps ensure that every interaction on your network is accounted for.

Least-privilege access: By implementing Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation, your organization can prevent unexpected breaches from propagating.

Adaptability and consistency: The solution guarantees consistent network behavior everywhere.

Proactive posture: Using the solution enables your organization to always be on the lookout for an attack.

Improve breach containment: With the solution, you can prevent unauthorized lateral movement and reduce your blast radius. Creating micro-perimeters around specific assets breaks up your attack surface and gives you the granular control needed to contain breaches.

Streamline policy management: The solution enables organizations to decouple segmentation from the underlying network to define policies based on the language that IT uses. Illumio's human-readable labels make policy creation much simpler and faster than traditional network segmentation approaches like VLANs, IP addresses, and port numbers.

Reviews from Real Users

Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation is a solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Some of its major advantages are that it has a good auto policy writing feature, great mapping, and useful monitoring.

Shashi, Technical Consultant at a financial services firm, explains which features she really likes. “The auto policy writing is great. The feature will give you the option of inbound-outbound traffic. The Explorer allows you to know the traffic between source and destination. The illumination definitely stands out. Mapping is great. The application group mapping is useful.”

The solution has “helpful support, useful monitoring, and high availability,” according to Edwin L., Security Architect at MGM.

Illumio

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

HPE Salesforce Telstra Ellie Mae Cathay Pacific HomeAway

Plantronics, NTT Innovation Institute Inc.

Buyer's Guide

Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs. Illumio

March 2026

Free Report: Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs. Illumio

Find out what your peers are saying about Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs. Illumio and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.

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