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Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Fortinet FortiOS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (1st), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (9th), Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) (4th), Microsegmentation Software (2nd)
Fortinet FortiOS
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (17th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Security Systems solutions, they serve different purposes. Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is designed for Microsegmentation Software and holds a mindshare of 27.4%, up 23.0% compared to last year.
Fortinet FortiOS, on the other hand, focuses on Firewalls, holds 1.0% mindshare, up 1.0% since last year.
Microsegmentation Software
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

KlavsThaarup - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers micro segmentation capabilities and easy to setup
It's micro-segmentation The label-based segmentation is the most valuable feature. There are always areas for improvement. It doesn't support a PAAC solution (Platforma as a service) in the cloud. So that could be improved. In future releases, I would like to see more integration with other…
Harshama Silva - PeerSpot reviewer
We have improved network security with user-friendly controls and high threat intelligence
FortiOS is very user-friendly and easy to configure for L1, L2, and L3 personnel. Its web filtering, application control, and IPS features are very user-friendly, easy to manage, and deploy. The threat intelligence in FortiOS is very high, and the system is scalable without additional licensing costs. FortiOS allows us to expand the number of users and devices as our network needs grow.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its deception features are great, providing a rich telemetry of lured origins, and are a great resource for any active defense strategy."
"The interface and dashboard are amazing."
"From day one, you get threat intelligence. It will immediately block active threats, which has been useful."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its visibility."
"The tool is a complete package that offers many features like visibility. You can get a graph with real-time workflows and visibility into server-to-server communication. We get visibility into many things happening within our environment."
"The most valuable feature is the visibility of processes and connections."
"The solution is very scalable, especially when connected to the cloud resources."
"We like the centralized management of the firewalls. Until we installed Guardicore Centra, we managed all our firewalls individually, so making changes was complicated, difficult, and time-consuming."
"For ten to 12 years it has been quite secure."
"I like its configuration and the various functions it offers."
"All of the features in this solution are effective and efficient."
"It has a lot of scalability abilities which makes it easy to scale."
"I personally think the site-to-site VPN is the most useful feature. A lot of firewalls have that, but to me, that's one of the features that's essential."
"The fact that is it has a UTM, a Unified Threat Management feature is the most valuable aspect for us. It's an all in one product. It's like our one-stop-shop to the internet."
"We found the initial setup to be straightforward."
"The pricing is excellent."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"Sometimes, the speed needs improvement, especially when it comes to the generation of maps, where it can be a bit slow."
"The long-term management of the security policies could be improved with some kind of automation platform, something like Chef or Puppet or Ansible, to help you manage the policies after day-one... to then manage the policies and changes to those policies, going forward, through some type of automation process is not turning out to be really easy."
"Incident tagging could be improved. Other vendors offer semi-automatic tagging, which Guardicore doesn't yet have."
"It doesn't support a PAAC solution (Platforma as a service) in the cloud."
"The dashboard needs improvement. It should be more flexible so that I can easily see what I want or need to see."
"The product needs a few features like enhanced user policies and payload-level inspection to improve the offering."
"I can only compare it with SonicWall, and it is missing many advanced features that SonicWall has."
"The threat time interval lags a little, especially if there's a heavy load on the firewall."
"The solution could improve by making the dashboard easier to use."
"It should also manage the local DSCP network."
"The pricing model makes this product far more expensive than similar solutions."
"A switch should be introduced."
"Sometimes, Fortinet FortiOS changes its CLI (command line interface) with new versions, which leads to internal incompatibility. When this happens, you need to update the configuration to match the new format, as the commands aren’t always the same. This can create some confusion and extra work because, unlike other vendors where the CLI commands remain primarily consistent with updates, Fortinet often changes the syntax between versions."
"There should be more documentation on how to use the CLI or how to perform CLI versions of tasks that can be done through the GUI."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Guardicore Centra provides better value for money than NSX, was the other solution that we looked at, which was too expensive for what it does."
"The customer would complain about the cost."
"This is not a cheap solution but you have to consider the bigger picture, which is what it is giving you."
"GuardiCore has made some new changes to the license now. We've seen monthly and annual licenses based on a subscription. We have a few clients that pay anywhere from $25,000 a year."
"The pricing is too high."
"Compared to the pricing we were seeing from both Illumio and Edgewise, Guardicore was very competitive."
"Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is expensive."
"The price is the same as other products in the market. There's no price argument to choose one or the other product, it will cost the customer approximately the same."
"We pay an annual license fee. It is rather expensive so I would like to perhaps see a drop in price in the future."
"The program is expensive."
"The pricing is competitive for the medium and high markets but for the small markets it can be expensive."
"The software costs roughly half what the hardware costs. Overall, the product is expensive."
"The price of Fortinet FortiOS has been reasonable."
"A yearly subscription might be around $20,000 to $30,000."
"FortiOS is affordable, but its price could be lower."
"The price of Fortinet FortiOS is comparable to other similar solutions on the market. We are on an annual license to use the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Guardicore Centra?
I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive. I know other micro-segmentation tools like Cisco or Illumio, and so I think they are in the middle.
What do you like most about Guardicore Infection Monkey?
Initially, I liked the telemetry part. But later, we used the microsegmentation features that we were able to deploy and found that they really stood out from other vendors. It allows us to see mi...
What needs improvement with Guardicore Infection Monkey?
When we have more than one interface, we can only have one policy for both interfaces. Normally, you have assets with a production interface and a server interface that are only for management. But...
Features comparison between Palo Alto and Fortinet firewalls
In the best tradition of these questions, Feature-wise both are quite similar, but each has things it's better at, it kind of depends what you value most. PA is good at app control, web filtering a...
What do you like most about Fortinet FortiOS?
The SSL VPN is fee for use is most attractive.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiOS?
I rate the pricing for FortiOS as eight or nine out of ten. It is an affordable solution for us.
 

Also Known As

Guardicore Centra, GuardiCore
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Santander, Frontier Airlines, OpenLink, Intermountain Healthcare, Cellcom, BancoBASE
Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
Find out what your peers are saying about VMware, Akamai, Illumio and others in Microsegmentation Software. Updated: March 2025.
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