Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Cisco Secure Workload vs Illumio comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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...
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security
3rd
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (4th), Container Security (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (3rd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (3rd), Compliance Management (2nd), AI Observability (2nd)
Cisco Secure Workload
Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security
8th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
15th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Microsegmentation Software (4th), Cisco Security Portfolio (8th)
Illumio
Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security
6th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
14th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Microsegmentation Software (2nd)
 

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 Cisco Secure Workload is 10.7%, down from 14.0% 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
ProductMindshare (%)
SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security2.7%
Illumio18.4%
Cisco Secure Workload10.7%
Other68.2%
Cloud and Data Center Security
 

Featured Reviews

SC
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.
Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
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
US
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"As a frequently audited company, we value SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security's compliance monitoring features. They give us a report with a compliance score for how well we meet certain regulatory standards, like HIPAA. We can show our compliance as a percentage. It's also a way to show that we are serious about security."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security offers valuable scalability suitable for organizations of all sizes, from small businesses to large enterprises."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security's most valuable feature is its unified console."
"It saves us time based on savings on manual activities."
"The unified platform experience is good for us, and the GUI for the application is easy and not complex."
"The solution saves 40% of my time."
"The monitoring tool has comprehensive monitoring features."
"The most valuable feature of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is its advanced AI and machine learning capabilities, which allow it to identify and respond to threats in real time."
"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."
"It's stable."
"The product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."
"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."
"Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."
"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 is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."
"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution."
"It has helped us to understand internal network visibility and firewall policy implementation. We use the product to simplify firewall policy implementation."
"The strongest aspect of Illumio is the visual traffic interface, which allows us to see all traffic that communicates with our servers and allied companies."
"The features that I have found most useful is the ability to centralize all the rules and then distribute them across various locations. However, I've encountered challenges related to tagging policies, which can be complex to devise. It's a matter that requires careful consideration and stakeholder involvement before implementing such policies."
"I would recommend Illumio to all sizes of companies."
"The solution is easy to use."
"Customer support is excellent."
"The tool helps with my company's security posture."
"The most valuable feature of Illumio Adaptive Security Platform is monitoring. When I have no requirement from the other application, I can use the web block traffic to build."
 

Cons

"Some of the navigation and some aspects of the portal may be a little bit confusing."
"Their search feature could be better."
"While the future roadmap presented by SentinelOne appears promising, I hope the envisioned advancements are realistically achievable and that the gap between current offerings and long-term goals is not too significant."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security has limited legacy system support and may not fully support older operating systems or legacy environments."
"It took us a while to configure the software to work well in this type of environment, as the support documents were not always clear."
"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."
"Whenever I view the processes and the process aspect, it takes a long time to load."
"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."
"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."
"The product must be integrated with the cloud."
"The emailed notifications are either hard to find or they are not available. Search capabilities can be improved."
"The interface is really helpful for technical people, but it is not user-friendly."
"There is some overlap between Cisco Tetration and AppDynamics and I need to have a single pane of glass, rather than have to jump between different tools."
"Secure Workload is a little complicated to use, and the dashboard isn't intuitive, so it takes a while to learn how to use it."
"The solution is very basic and doesn't do anything other than the orchestration of layer four endpoint firewall rules."
"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."
"I have not had the chance to experiment deeply with it."
"I would like to see better data security in the product."
"It requires a low-level re-architecting of the product."
"The customer service is lagging a bit. It could be better."
"We need more details on areas where there is an error or a traffic blockage. I would like the tool to offer a more detailed view."
"Illumio can be improved if we have more interactive sessions with the tech team."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Singularity Cloud Workload Security's licensing and price were cheaper than the other solutions we looked at."
"I wasn't sure what to expect from the pricing, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a little less than I thought."
"The pricing is somewhat high compared to other market tools."
"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."
"We have an enterprise license. It is affordable. I'm not sure, but I think we pay 150,000 rupees per month."
"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 was reasonable pricing for me."
"The licensing is easy to understand and implement, with some flexibility to accommodate dynamic environments."
"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."
"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."
"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."
"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."
"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."
"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."
"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."
"The product's pricing is around 10,000-15,000 USD. The pricing is on a yearly basis."
"There is a subscription needed to use Illumio Adaptive Security Platform and we pay every three years. Overall the solution is expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud and Data Center Security solutions are best for your needs.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business49
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise55
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise9
 

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...
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.
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...
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...
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?
We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration a...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Secure Workload?
When we onboarded Cisco Secure Workload, the usual use case was to discover internal application dependencies and cre...
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...
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...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

PingSafe
Cisco Tetration
Illumio Adaptive Security Platform, Illumio ASP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)
Plantronics, NTT Innovation Institute Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Workload vs. Illumio and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.