Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs ShieldX comparison

Akamai and Fortinet are both solutions in the Microsegmentation Software category. Akamai is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.8, while Fortinet is ranked #11. Akamai holds a 21.9% mindshare in MS, compared to Fortinet’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Akamai users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Fortinet users who would recommend it.

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Read 22 Akamai Guardicore Segmentation reviews

8,138 Views
5,127 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

ShieldX

Read 4 ShieldX reviews

626 Views
232 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

ShieldX

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 14, 2024

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation and ShieldX compete in the network security market with a focus on micro-segmentation and cyber defense. ShieldX seems to have the upper hand due to its advanced threat detection and adaptive security features.

Features: Akamai Guardicore Segmentation offers extensive network visibility, robust micro-segmentation controls, and real-time monitoring, making it ideal for environments demanding deep packet inspection. ShieldX provides adaptive security solutions using AI for enhanced threat detection, automated intelligence for dynamic threat adaptation, and proactive defense mechanisms.

Room for Improvement: Akamai Guardicore Segmentation could improve its automated threat detection, enhance ease of rule configuration, and simplify its user interface. ShieldX might benefit from more extensive integration capabilities, increased customization options for unique environments, and enhanced cloud-native support to broaden its applicability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is noted for its streamlined yet complex deployment with scalable cloud support, backed by strong technical assistance. In contrast, ShieldX offers flexible deployment options with auto-scaling capabilities and proactive customer service, simplifying installation and ensuring responsive support.

Pricing and ROI: Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is viewed as cost-effective with scalable pricing models suited for high-traffic enterprises, promising long-term ROI. ShieldX, despite a higher initial cost, delivers significant ROI through AI-driven security and rapid threat mitigation, with its advanced technology investments justifying the cost in environments requiring proactive defenses.

To learn more, read our detailed Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. ShieldX Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. ShieldX

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

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Ranking in Microsegmentation Software

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud and Data Center Security (1st), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (12th), Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) (8th)

ShieldX

Ranking in Microsegmentation Software

11th

Average Rating

9.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Microsegmentation Software category, the mindshare of Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is 21.9%, down from 27.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ShieldX is 1.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Microsegmentation Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation	21.9%
ShieldX	1.5%
Other	76.6%

Microsegmentation Software

Featured Reviews

Vibin Thomas

Team Lead, Technical Content Security at Valuepoint Systems

Zero-trust micro-segmentation has strengthened security and improves east-west traffic visibility

While Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is a very powerful solution, there are a few areas where it could be improved. One of the main challenges is the initial deployment and policy design complexity. In large environments, understanding all application dependencies and creating the right policies can take time and requires close coordination with application teams. The user interface and policy management can also be improved. As the number of policies grows, managing and organizing them becomes slightly complex. A more simplified or intuitive policy structure would help operational teams. Another area is integration with other security tools such as SIEM or SOAR platforms. While integration is possible, making it more seamless and easier to configure would add value. Additionally, the reporting and dashboard could be enhanced to provide more customizable and business-level insights, especially for management and reporting. One small improvement I would suggest for Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is having more automation capabilities for policy creation and recommendation. For example, AI-driven suggestions based on observed traffic patterns would help reduce manual effort during the initial policy design. It would also help to have more predefined templates for common use cases, especially for industries such as banking, to speed up deployment. Another area is enhanced reporting customization where we can easily generate business-level dashboards for management and compliance teams without any additional effort.

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MichaelProcyshyn

IT Director at park holidays uk

Proactively monitors, blocks, and reports what it has blocked; and self-updates meaning there is zero maintenance

The most valuable feature is the automatic scaling. With its microservices, it scales both up and down, depending on traffic and throughput. The traffic through our website depends on holiday bookings. It's very quiet in November through January, and then our traffic picks up quite rapidly and, at our peak, we will take in excess of a million pounds of business a day through our website. The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides. Uptime on the system has been 648 days and we do very little to it because it self-updates and alerts. It does everything that we need it to do, so the administration side of it is zero. One of the beauties about ShieldX is that it's such a good "fire-and-forget" product.

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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

"The most important feature or use case, because of micro-segmentation, is the visibility you get when you deploy this product."

"Akamai Guardicore Segmentation offers us large visibility in all our environments and helps us to understand network segmentation and traffic."

"The technical support has been excellent, and is probably one of the best customer services provided by any company, as they are helpful, reactive to problems, and constantly work to enable us to do what we want to do."

"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."

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

"Its deception features are great, providing a rich telemetry of lured origins, and are a great resource for any active defense strategy."

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

"From day one, you get threat intelligence. It will immediately block active threats, which has been useful."

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation pros

"The Adaptive Intention Engine is fantastic. It allows us to develop security policies using the language of our internal customers. It's machine-learning applied to security workflows. That allows us to much more easily construct the policies that will protect those workflows."

"The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides."

"ShieldX makes it a lot easier and a lot simpler to define your policies and define your rules, and that greatly reduces the opportunity for user error."

"Very often, when new challengers come in, what they do is they end up coming in at a lower cost with more functionality."

"The most valuable feature is the automatic scaling. With its microservices, it scales both up and down, depending on traffic and throughput."

"Once you install it you can virtually forget about it; it's very low-maintenance and high-protection."

"For other security professions who are looking for something which is low in cost that does microsegmentation, they should look at ShieldX."

"...It takes the exact same policies that you would apply to your on-premise environment and enables you to simply apply them to the cloud. It becomes one policy for both on-prem and for the cloud."

More ShieldX pros

Cons

"Customers would want to see the cost improved."

"Sometimes, the speed needs improvement, especially when it comes to the generation of maps, where it can be a bit slow."

"The cost of licensing is the biggest issue for clients with GuardiCore."

"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."

"Incident tagging could be improved. Other vendors offer semi-automatic tagging, which Guardicore doesn't yet have."

"The maps could go a bit faster. They are useful but slightly slow."

"Needs more customization of honeypots and a vaster catalog of systems able to be mimicked."

"The dashboard needs improvement. It should be more flexible so that I can easily see what I want or need to see."

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation cons

"They need to be consistent in performance and capabilities over time, given the fact that this is new and I want to see where this goes in the next year or so."

"There should be a bit more customer care, with regular review meetings on it or regular reports. It would be nice to have a quarterly or biannual review of what ShieldX has blocked."

"The one criticism I might have is there should be a bit more customer care, with regular review meetings on it or regular reports."

"We are having some issues with their LDAP and integrating it with the Active Directory. We can't seem to set it up."

"I would like better reports and in-depth reporting."

"We are having some issues with their LDAP and integrating it with the Active Directory."

"With any kind of tool like ShieldX, where you're in the cloud instead of a traditional firewall, you're using CPU resources in those environments to provide the protection. So there's a cost associated with CPU resources. I'm pressing upon them to make the product much more efficient and use less CPUs to do the same thing."

More ShieldX cons

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."

"Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is expensive."

"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."

"This is not a cheap solution but you have to consider the bigger picture, which is what it is giving you."

"The customer would complain about the cost."

"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."

"The solution is reasonably priced and I would rate it a six out of ten. The tool's licensing costs are yearly."

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation pricing and cost advice

"ShieldX ensures that we can have the separation needed for our environment to avoid drastically increasing the cost on the licensing side. From this perspective, it's been very positive and helpful."

"We are very happy with the pricing and licensing. It's about getting a site-wide license. One of the challenges that we've had with our previous vendor had been the cost of licensing."

"For a three-year deal we paid £55,000 plus tax... But, and this is a big "but," this was over two years ago. ShieldX had only just hit the market. We were the first company in Europe to buy ShieldX."

"For other security professions who are looking for something which is low in cost that does microsegmentation, they should look at ShieldX. It might not be the big name out there, but it does everything that you are looking for in microsegmentation at a very low price."

"Security policies are now applied as applications are going up. Because it's automated, we don't have the three to four week delay. The insertion of applications in the cloud for us dropped from an average of three to four weeks to a couple of days."

"We are actually expecting our costs to drop in the coming year, but it is just a matter of the licensing expiring. That is going to happen in the next six months or so. Then, we will start to see a decrease in overall spend."

"ShieldX also enables us to migrate to cloud environments faster. That is an important part of it for sure because it takes the exact same policies that we would apply to our on-premise environment and enables us to simply apply them to the cloud. It becomes one policy for both on-prem and for the cloud."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	12

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Guardicore Centra?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that overall everything worked out really well. The pricing was flexible, and it has worked out well with our budget.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Guardicore Infection Monkey?

I think the pricing is very high. It is a big cost. The price of Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is very expensive, but it is important to the enterprise. I think it is more or less.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Guardicore Infection Monkey?

I use Akamai Guardicore Segmentation to block lateral movement of malicious software like ransomware. This is very important to protect my business and my corporation. I create labels for any asset...

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Comparisons

Illumio vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 32% of the time

VMware NSX vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 9% of the time

Cisco Secure Workload vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 9% of the time

TrendAI Deep Security vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 5% of the time

Zero Networks vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 3% of the time

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation Competitors

Illumio vs ShieldX

Compared 22% of the time

Check Point CloudGuard Network Security vs ShieldX

Compared 16% of the time

Nutanix Flow Network Security vs ShieldX

Compared 10% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs ShieldX

Compared 9% of the time

Appgate SDP vs ShieldX

Compared 9% of the time

More ShieldX Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

April 2026

Download Akamai Guardicore Segmentation product report

Buyer's Guide

ShieldX

March 2026

Download ShieldX product report

Also Known As

Guardicore Centra, GuardiCore

APEIRO, ShieldX APEIRO

Overview

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is a software-based microsegmentation solution that provides the simplest, fastest, and most intuitive way to enforce Zero Trust principles. It enables you to prevent malicious lateral movement in your network through precise segmentation policies, visuals of activity within your IT environment, and network security alerts. Akamai Guardicore Segmentation works across your data centers, multicloud environments, and endpoints. It is faster to deploy than infrastructure segmentation approaches and provides you with unparalleled visibility and control of your network.

Akamai

The ShieldX Elastic Security Platform dynamically scales to deliver comprehensive and consistent controls to protect data centers, cloud infrastructure, applications and data no matter where they are or where they go to make the cloud more secure than on-premise deployments. Our frictionless approach leverages agentless technology as well as the ShieldX Adaptive Intention Engine which autonomously translates and enforces intention into a set of comprehensive controls - microsegmentation, firewall, IPS and more - making security the easiest thing you do in the cloud.

Fortinet

Sample Customers

Santander, Frontier Airlines, OpenLink, Intermountain Healthcare, Cellcom, BancoBASE

Iowa State University

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. ShieldX

March 2026

Free Report: Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. ShieldX

Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. ShieldX and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.

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