Akamai Guardicore Segmentation Reviews

We use the solution for micro segmentation.

The most valuable features of the solution are the maps and ring fencing that help monitor events.

It's not easy to learn to use this program. It would be very helpful for beginners if the solution had more windows to help with the terms inside instead of going to the documentation.

I have been using Akamai Guardicore Segmentation for six months.

I rate Akamai Guardicore Segmentation a nine out of ten for stability.

Around four people are working with the solution daily in our organization.

I rate Akamai Guardicore Segmentation a nine out of ten for scalability.

The solution's initial setup is not hard. However, you have to learn it because it's not plug-and-play.

I, an integrator, and the Akamai staff implemented the solution.

Overall, I rate Akamai Guardicore Segmentation a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for a micro-segmentation to match the GDPR compliance.

The limitation of security groups, in terms of the number of services you can open that you can cover by using these tools, is great. 

If you treat your network as a flat, and then you start creating all your, let's say, network security zones using this tool, it makes life easy. For example, you have always flexibility in having different production and management interfaces. 

With a cloud-native construct, you can do micro-segmentation. 

The initial setup is easy.

The solution scales well.

I found the solution to be stable. 

Supports become difficult when it's for a big organization. For a small organization, medium organization, it still makes sense, however, for a big organization, it makes life difficult.

We would like to be able to go agentless.

I'd like support for all types of Kubernetes and service mesh. They say, "Ah, we support this, we support that." This is not the case. 

I've used the solution for almost seven months at this point. I've used it for a while now. 

The stability for Guardicore is high. I cannot comment on FireEye, however. When I say stability, I have to see the production workload. When I say that the stability for Guardicore is high, I mean there's not much an issue. Features were coming in very fast. Whenever we requested something within two to three months there was a rollout. A global rollout, too. It wasn't just for one client. I was amazed and surprised by how fast they implemented suggestions.

The product is scalable. It offers containers, and therefore, it's scalable. I've never had an issue.

I did deal with technical support directly. It was good. I was the guy who was calling them. It was never just a call. They tried to understand the problem and the construct and came up with a solution that would assist us. 

I'm also familiar with FireEye. I need more time with the products in order to effectively be able to compare them.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was not complex.

I can't speak to the cost part as that is managed by the finance team. I never have had visibility into the contracts.

We're partners with Guardicore.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we are using at this time. 

I would rate the solution at a six out of ten. The support for Kubernetes is still missing. They're working on it. It's in the roadmap. That will make it better. That said, right now, it does more than 50% of what we need it to do and it's been good. 

In our company, we have a data center that has approximately 200 servers running Nutanix. We wanted to protect these servers from both internal and external attacks. By implementing Guardicore Centra, it has given us defense against attacks from the outside, as well as those that originate from inside of the organization.

We protect Microsoft machines, as well as some that are running Linux. We also have an SAP HANA database that is protected by Guardicore.

We have no downtime when we use Guardicore Centra for segmentation. This is important to us because we're an industrial company and we operate 24/7. We cannot afford to have even one minute of downtime, which is one of the reasons that we chose this solution.

We bought this system several months before the trouble with COVID happened. During that time, a lot of people started to work from outside of the organization. With all of the staff starting to work from home, other companies started to think about how to protect their servers when the users are outside. Also, attacks against endpoints and the data center were on the rise, so it was important to better protect them. I felt safe knowing that I had this kind of defense for the data center.

One example of this happened a few months ago when we received a letter that said we needed to update the on-premises Exchange server. It was a problem from Microsoft and it required that our server be updated to be more secure. Guardicore called us to say that they have witnessed cases where people from other countries were trying to use this exploit to get into the data center, so we blocked it immediately.

All of our servers are now behind Guardicore. The clients are not. From my perspective, the endpoint clients are attackers and my intention is to protect the servers.

The most valuable feature is the visibility of processes and connections. In addition to the defense it provides, Guardicore gives us a view of each connection that exists on each server. Using this, we can identify things like unused connections, or processes that are using too much in terms of resources. Knowing this, we have the opportunity to block such connections and in turn, improve server performance.

Guardicore supports the operating systems that we require. Primarily, it covers our Microsoft platform, but we have some Linux systems as well. We also used it to protect our SAP HANA database.

I have not compared the range of operating systems that it supports to its competitors because of our use case. We are most interested in LAN segmentation, in particular between the data center and the users' network, so I compared it with other solutions in that context.

It is a benefit that Guardicore supports legacy operating systems, and I have used it with such servers. However, in the long term, it is more important that I have something protecting my data center and having the visibility of what endpoint is initiating connections.

We use the AI-powered segmentation functionality and it affects the time required to design by a lot. It gives us a large number of views and without that, you cannot design the system properly. The AI helps because it shows you what you need to do. Without the AI, either you will not be able to implement the system, or it will take a long time and be very difficult. For us, using this feature saved us a couple of months in implementation time.

In our version, when using the terminal server, we cannot exclude user tasks for each session. When we upgrade, I expect that we can exclude user tasks for each session from the terminal.  

We have been using Guardicore Centra for approximately 10 months.

We have had zero downtime, so the stability is good.

Having no downtime is important to us because of the damage that can occur if we're down for even two minutes. For example, if a company is selling drinks like beer, and a reseller asks for Heineken but they can't buy it because the data center is down, the reseller will purchase it from another company. This can result in a lot of damage so our data center has to work all of the time.

We have implemented Guardicore on several servers without any problems. We have implemented it on our newer servers, as well, and didn't have any trouble. Scalability-wise, we haven't had any kind of difficulty.

Depending on the growth of our company, our usage will expand in the future.

We have 1,200 employees but the solution does not affect the users directly. Rather, it affects the company. The important part is to keep the data center working and to make sure that it does not go down for even a minute. With this in mind, when I talk about scalability, I'm not talking about the number of users.

We have been in contact with technical support and they are excellent. They are responsive and knowledgeable.

This product did not replace a similar system. Also, I did not require human resources for this same task. Our company is approximately 70 years old and our network started very small. As the company grew, we maintained the same flat network that included both the data center and the users. When I looked at it, I considered two solutions for separating them. The first was the traditional firewall and a physical LAN, whereas the second approach was using Guardicore. I felt that this was the easier approach.

In terms of the initial setup, it is of medium complexity. It's not complex but not simple. You need to understand your network. You cannot do it without understanding what you want and what your strategy is. When you understand the policy and the strategy that you want to implement on the network, it's very easy.

Our implementation strategy was to start with machine learning. Our plan was to run this for one or two days, get it working, and then understand what kind of information they're getting from me and then to continue on from that. The initial deployment will take a maximum of two days.

Implementing segmentation is not difficult but it is more from our side. First, you need to understand the strategy that you want to implement on the network. Then, you need to complete it step-by-step, so that you do not harm anything or block things improperly. You have to give the software time to learn about the connections that you have. Overall, it is very easy to do. 

In terms of how long it took us to implement, we have approximately 200 servers and it took a couple of months to implement. This is what I expected because I wanted to take it slowly and make sure that I understand which systems I needed to block, or not.

We worked with a third-party, DNA IT, who assisted with our deployment. I am still working with them, as they take care of updating the system. They are very good and have helped us a lot.

Most of the implementation was done on our side, as we wanted to take our time and learn the solution. We did not want to take down any servers or block things improperly, for example.

A system engineer from our company and one person from DNA IT were involved. Our system engineer is also responsible for maintenance and can contact DNA IT if needed.

This is not a cheap solution but you have to consider the bigger picture, which is what it is giving you. It provides functionality that is similar in some ways to traditional firewalls and with that considered, it is similar in terms of pricing.

In terms of cost-effectiveness, I can say that it's like insurance. You never know the value if it's working properly. To us, if it prevents downtime, it's priceless. Personally, if it's working, I call it 100% success.

I did not evaluate other similar options.

We have been a little behind in updating our version. We have been using version 31 but today or tomorrow, we will upgrade to version 35 or 36.

This product represents the next generation of protection. A lot of people have asked us, "What is the next generation of solution for protecting your internal network?" and the answer is this kind of segmentation. It may seem easier to stick to using traditional firewalls and LAN protection, but this next-generation tool is easier to implement and gives you a more effective network defense.

Every time we see an area of improvement, they give us a new update or platform to fix it. Things are regularly fixed and updated between versions.

The biggest lesson that I have learned by working with this system is the knowledge of what happens in my network, in terms of connections between users and the server. I have seen lots of connections from devices, other than PCs, to the server.

This is a system that works for me. I'm not working for the system.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are using Guardicore Centra mostly for security. I work in the cyber security department at MONEX, and we use this solution mostly for visibility. The product offers good visibility of what is going on in the network and the connections that the servers are making, regardless of the platform that they are on. They could be on-premise, on the cloud, or virtual.

I'm recently working on micro-segmentation of our principal payment applications, like SWIFT.

We use Guardicore Centra mostly in security, because I'm in charge of security. It helps provide us with some alerts about some suspicious behaviors on some of the systems that we have been able to correct right away. That is the main benefit that we have with Guardicore Centra, other than doing micro-segmentation. 

We use it most for visibility. It has even provided good information about some of the connections that I am making in and out of the system. So, we are able to correct some behaviors and kill some applications that are suspicious to the infrastructure.

Once you are familiar with the tool, you can make segmentation rules, then apply them to all the agents. We have been securing some of the machines that we are using in Azure. In that way, we are able to put segmentation rules in those machines. We are saving with the Azure Firewall because we are using the Guardicore Centra agents, which gives us some advantages.

The most valuable feature is the visibility that it provides. It does not have a dependency on a specific platform: It could be on the cloud, on-prem, or virtual. It works with most of the operating systems. 

It's very easy to install. It does not have any problems with other applications. So, it is very transparent. 

The interface is very easy to use and provides good visibility. It does not take you a long time to build rules or have control of your agents.

The integration with other tools could be improved. It would be a very good value to customers if Guardicore Centra could talk with other tools, like Palo Alto or Cisco Firewalls, or agents running on the machine, like anti-malware or the intrusion prevention systems. 

I have been using it for two years now.

The stability is very good. I do not face any problem with Guardicore Centra in terms of stability nor does it have trouble with other systems. It is very transparent.

It does not require any kind of windows where you have to put down the system or network. You can install it, making it run where applications are running. This is very important that we do not have any downtime in the installation of the agent. We can do it in real-time. 

Because we are using SaaS, it is very easy to upgrade or install more agents. Once you have the infrastructure, e.g., we have one server that communicates locally with the agents, then you use it to communicate to the cloud. Once you have that infrastructure, you can grow very rapidly.

We have over 500 agents. We are covering four payment applications, where we have been doing micro-segmentation. That has taken us about six months.

It has results the next day after you install the agents, because now the agents report to the cloud. You have visibility right away of what is going on in your system that next day after you installed the agent. For example, if you installed 100 agents today, then tomorrow they will start reporting to the cloud. Also, you would have visibility regarding what is going on in those machines: Where are they communicating? What processes are being communicated? What are the available reports?

I have two people who are responsible for making the segmentation rules. With those two people, we have been able to secure 500 systems in six months time.

It has very robust technical support. We have three or four people with whom we talk on a biweekly or monthly basis. They are very good. They take care of us. If we have any problems with the tools or rules, they are supportive.

We did not use another solution previously.

It is very easy to set up the agents. You have a script, and you run that script and install it on the system. Once you open the port that it needs for reporting to the cloud, then you have visibility right away.

Guardicore Centra's approach to implementing segmentation is a six or seven out of 10. It is not super easy. You need to take at least one course in preparation. Then, once you are familiar with the platform or where to find the tools, it is very easy. You can replicate those tools over other agents, which is very easy.

It has saved us a lot of time. We can secure around 500 systems. We are not growing in personnel. So, with our current personnel, I have been able to secure all the systems.

Guardicore Centra has reduced the number of human resources needed to deploy security solutions. We have two people working on segmentation rules as well as some agents taking care of the infrastructure. Before Guardicore Centra, we would have needed at least one more person.

It is not cheap. However, it provides you a good value for what you are buying. In relation to how much it costs, the tool is worth it for the value it gives you.

As soon as I saw what Guardicore Centra could do, I did not look at other tools. 

Guardicore Centra is very easy to install. We have very good technical support. The product itself is very good and robust. In security, there are not many products that can do what it can do in terms of visibility, seeing what is going on in the server, and using the type of mapping that it gives you with the application. With the segmentation part, that is saving us a lot of money with traditional firewalls.

It is a very good product. I would rate it a nine (out of 10). I think it lacks publicity. In my community, if you talk to another colleague and tell them about Guardicore Centra, they probably do not know what it is. 

Guardicore Centra is improving on its functionality. The company is putting a lot of effort into growing the tool. I would recommend trying it and giving it a shot, then you can see what the tool can do.

We have just begun to use the solution’s AI-powered segmentation feature.

Guardicore Centra is used to ring-fence a crucial, business-critical application. 

We completed the AD integration while also attempting to isolate the jump station with an agent.

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

The query insight module is something that our customers found very beneficial.

Creating policies down to a process level on a server is a valuable option.

Integration with Active Directory is good.

Customers would want to see the cost improved.

I have been working with the Guardicore Centra for the last month.

It's at a customer where I'm doing an assignment, and we've driven proof of value and proof of concept for a month.

We were working with the latest version.

As far as I can tell Guardicore Centra is a stable solution. But only time will tell how stable the situation is. 

We haven't started to deploy it yet, because we were negotiating the pricing and so on.

We have not contacted technical support, But the Akamai person was extremely well-read on the subject, and there was almost nothing he couldn't answer during the proof of concept project.

I am currently working with Micro-Segmentation on Guardicore, not Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

The only thing that matters is that the customers have a strong plan, a good strategy, and a high-level and low-level design. The most exhausting part will be labeling all of your systems. And if the customer in this situation has around 1000 servers, that may be time-consuming.

We had assistance from Akami themselves.

Akamai volunteered to drive the actual proof of value concept, and I was part of the design team in charge of monitoring the whole process.

The customer would complain about the cost.

I can't tell you how much the license costs because I'm not involved. As a solution architect, and senior solution architect, I never look at the price, therefore I can't tell.

Of the systems that we looked at, Guardicore has the best coverage for legacy operating systems.

We are in cyber defense advice, and we conducted a modest evaluation. We sell both Illumio and Guardicore solutions, but it all depends on the type of customer, the scope, and finally the individual demands of that customer.

We have, I believe, most of our install-based software as Illumio solutions, this is maybe the second install-based for Guardicore. 

It all depends on the real consumer, their needs, how the business is structured, and so on.

I feel both companies are trying hard to better themselves, therefore it's difficult to say.

Illumio may be far ahead in six months or the opposite, it all depends on that and the precise moment. 

I wouldn't say one product is superior to another; it all depends on the customer's needs and so on. However, in this scenario, the customer has a large number of legacy, old XP, and Windows 2003 legacy servers, as well as other operating systems. In this instance, Guardicore was our recommendation, but for other clients who don't have that history, Illumio is just as excellent as Guardicore.

It's the best, I would rate Guardicore Centra a ten out of ten.

Our clients look for server-to-server segmentation that includes both inbound and outbound ringfencing. 

The tool is easy to use and simple to deploy to achieve segmentation objectives. It offers a graphical view of real-time workflows and traffic patterns into server-to-server communications. Also, the amount of process, service level visibility the agents deployed on the servers provide via network logs is very informative.

Guardicore Centra should incorporate automation so that we aren't required to write custom scripts by leveraging APIs quite often. The tool also has limitations on overall policy rules that can be configured on the platform (60k rules) which seems a lot but with big chatty applications and a huge application count to segment, this limit can turn out to be small if the goal is to segment a lot of application servers. Operationally there are too many clicks and analyses needed to do quick and safe changes (for e.g. label replacement) in the production environment. I think that the incorporation of automation templates for some standard use cases can help clients make changes with confidence and without the possibility of human error. 

I have been working with the solution for close to an year. 

I would rate the tool's stability a seven out of ten due to the capacity limit. Once we reach 70-80 percent of the maximum rules, the system becomes slow in terms of response. The backend processes being a SaaS solution need to be more robust. 

I would rate the product's scalability a five out of ten due to the current limits on the number of agents, labels, and rules. Around 5000 servers use Guardicore Centra in my organization. 

The product's support takes more time to respond back. 

Neutral

Guardicore Centra's setup was straightforward and I would rate it a seven out of ten. The tool's setup is straightforward as long as you identify the servers and establish the right processes. The tool came with an installation guide and setup took about four to five hours to complete. The deployment depends on the solution size and if the POC is small, the setup is easier and quicker. If you plan for enterprise-wide deployment, then you need to do capacity sizing and planning.

I was not directly involved in licensing etc. costs but only in solution architecture and operationalization.

I would rate the solution a six out of ten. We mostly have enterprise customers for Guardicore Centra. I would advise users to try this out on a handful of servers for the first time (like < 20 servers to begin with). During and after segmentation, monitor the solution for some period to notice how operationally effective it is and the data sources relied upon for building labels, and policies, and ultimately how easy it is to incorporate any changes needed thereafter.

I am using it for segmentation. If someone has access to a development system, they can't take that development system and access production equipment.

Application Ring-Fencing and Deception Server, which is basically like a honeypot, are pretty useful features.

They can maybe improve their customer service just because they are kind of a small organization, and customer service isn't as big as others such as VMware.

I have been using this solution for probably under one year.

It has been stable so far. I haven't had any big problems.

It is a little too early for me to tell that. Currently, I am the only one using this solution. We probably don't have any plans to increase its usage.

Their support is pretty good. I haven't had to use them that frequently, so I'm not sure about their response times, but when they come and set your stuff up, everything seems pretty good from that end. I would assume the support after that would be similar.

It was like the setup of a typical IT solution.

Their engineers deployed it, so it wasn't any hassle for me.

I would advise others to get a demo but also check out other products to make sure that it is a good fit for you. Every product is not good for every place. It has been pretty good for my use case. I didn't find anything terrible or not good.

I would rate Guardicore Infection Monkey an eight out of ten.

We are a partner, not a customer. We would like to be in a position of trying to provide consultation for this solution and delivery of the product to clients. So, we have partnered with Guardicore in India and we are trying to sell this product and that is our primary use case. The primary use case that we are implementing this product for with clients is micro-segmentation.  

This particular product has a deployment model both in public and private clouds and on-premises. We are pitching it to all of our customers, irrespective of the regulations that they must follow. Some customers are in the government sector, for example, and they will need to go on-premises. There are some customers like IT service-based companies that have most of their infrastructure in the cloud, and those can use cloud-based services. What the client wants and needs totally depends on the type of client they are. We have an advantage with this product in offering it both ways — on cloud and on-premises — to meet the client's needs.

The most important feature or use case, because of micro-segmentation, is the visibility you get when you deploy this product. It will give you very good visibility of your whole data center. The second thing that is valuable is the lateral movement. Often when there is a compromise of vulnerabilities in the organization, this tool greatly helps in understanding the footprint of the attacks. It also helps in stopping the lateral movement of the attack.  

Predominantly I have been working with firewalls and the UTM (Unified Threat Management) solutions for some time. Guardicore has to do something to add on features that help to do a better job of inspection.  

They should have policies based on users. Often we can only add user groups. I think they should offer the ability to assign policies to individual users. The ability to assign policies to both users and groups would make the area of creating policies more flexible. They should also have time-based rules in the policies which they currently do not have.  

They should also get into payload-level inspection. As of now, what they do for threat inspection is to look at the metadata of a packet. This is not in depth enough for proper inspection. They need to start inspecting the payload-level information of a packet or offer this as an option.  

So they should have payload-level inspections to do some deep investigation. Then they should have more user-level control of policies. I think if these two things are introduced, then I could probably change my rating of Guardicore to a nine-out-of-ten.  

We have just recently started working with Guardicore. Six months ago we began working on the POC (Proof of Concept) and we have still not finished so we have yet to deploy the product to production.  

I cannot comment on stability under higher loads because we have not yet deployed it and exposed it to live traffic. We are still in the testing and evaluation phase.  

I think it is an amazing product in terms of scalability.  

I have not had any experience with technical support because we are not in production. Once we deploy the solution to our customers, that is when I think we will be making more use of support resources.  

Earlier we worked more in the firewall space. That is, we worked with Check Point a lot. It was maybe for a period of five years. Then from firewalls, which is a UTM solution, we are trying to move into the new world technologies. That would be things like dedicated security solutions that cover more than what firewalls do.  

As an employee, I am not sure what my organization has gone through in making evaluations and comparisons. I am sure that they have evaluated other products like Illumio, Cisco Tetration, and Guardicore. I do not know, out of all their testing and research, specifically why they found Guardicore to be more a valuable solution. I think these people may be more focused on what they are doing rather than how it is getting done.  

The installation and setup are pretty straightforward.  

Right now, I would definitely recommend Guardicore for someone who is looking into the micro-segmentation space or probably an internal firewall for the organization.  

On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate Guardicore Centra as probably an eight-out-of-ten.  

The interface and dashboard are amazing. I would rate the user interface as a ten-out-of-ten. For other reasons having to do with features and functionality, I have to mark them down a few points.