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 Jan 12, 2025

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
5th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (6th), Container Security (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (3rd), Compliance Management (3rd)
Cisco Secure Workload
Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security
6th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Microsegmentation Software (5th), Cisco Security Portfolio (9th)
Illumio
Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security
3rd
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Microsegmentation Software (3rd)
 

Featured Reviews

Andrew W - PeerSpot reviewer
Tells us about vulnerabilities as well as their impact and helps to focus on real issues
Looking at all the different pieces, it has got everything we need. Some of the pieces we do not even use. For example, we do not have Kubernetes Security. We are not running any K8 clusters, so it is good for us. Overall, we find the solution to be fantastic. There can be additional education components. This may not be truly fair to them because of what the product is going for, but it would be great to see additional education for compliance. It is not a criticism of the tool per se, but anything to help non-development resources understand some of the complexities of the cloud is always appreciated. Any additional educational resources are always helpful for security teams, especially those without a development background.
Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Alark Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Visual traffic interface aids in network micro-segmentation while a streamlined update option enhances process efficiency
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. We can write rules that can be embedded into the IP table, making it easy to handle. Illumio enables us to see network flows, traffic sources, and destinations. The policy generation and enforcement capabilities are valuable, allowing for selective enforcement. Illumio helps in audit purposes by saving data and showing blocked traffic, ensuring no outside traffic is allowed.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"PingSafe 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. PingSafe'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."
"The tool identifies issues quickly."
"We use the infrastructure as code scanning, which is good."
"It is pretty easy to integrate with this platform. When properly integrated, it monitors end-to-end."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security has improved our security posture."
"The most valuable features of PingSafe are the asset inventory and issue indexing."
"It's helped free up staff time so that they can work on other projects."
"Cloud Native Security's best feature is its ability to identify hard-coded secrets during pull request reviews."
"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 product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."
"It's stable."
"By using Tetration insight, we are able to get the latency on our level accounts and we can determine whatever the issue is with the application latency itself."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is security."
"The product provides multiple-device integration."
"Scalability is its most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."
"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."
"Customer support is excellent."
"I would recommend Illumio to all sizes of companies."
"The solution is easy to use."
"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."
"The flexibility of the solution is its most valuable feature."
"The Explorer allows you to know the traffic between source and destination."
"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."
 

Cons

"There can be a specific type of alert showing that a new type of risk has been identified."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security could be improved with easier integrations to the Singularity Data Lake, particularly for various vendors."
"PingSafe is an excellent CSPM tool, but the CWPP features need to improve, and there is a scope for more application security posture management features. There aren't many ASPM solutions on the market, and existing ones are costly. I would like to see PingSafe develop into a single pane of glass for ASPM, CSPM, and CWPP. Another feature I'd like to see is runtime protection."
"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."
"I'd like to see better onboarding documentation."
"I used to work on AWS. At times, I would generate a normal bug in my system, and then I would check PingSafe. The alert used to come after about three and a half hours. It used to take that long to generate the alert about the vulnerability in my system. If a hacker attacks a system and PingSafe takes three to four hours to generate an alert, it will not be beneficial for the company. It would be helpful if we get the alert in five to ten minutes."
"Currently, we would have to export our vulnerability report to an .xlsx file, and review it in an Excel spreadsheet, and then we sort of compile a list from there. It would be cool if there was a way to actually toggle multiple applications for review and then see those file paths on multiple users rather than only one user at a time or only one application at a time."
"While PingSafe offers real-time response, there is room for improvement in alert accuracy."
"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 integration could be better, especially with different types of solutions."
"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."
"There's room for improvement when it comes to Cisco Secure Workload. A couple of internal areas could be refined a little bit. They are trying to solve it, depending on where you suppose the agent is. Suppose you have the agent on both the server and the client, which could be the front-end server or web server connecting to the. In that case, if those two are communicating on RPC, the server can look into its configuration. It could go down and find the configuration file on the FTP server and then set the policies to it. But there are a lot of different FTP servers out there. It's also a complex case for the tool to support all FTP servers."
"The interface is really helpful for technical people, but it is not user-friendly."
"They should scale down the hardware a bit. The initial hardware investment is two million dollars so it's a price point problem. The issue with the price comes from the fact that you have to have it with enormous storage and enormous computes."
"The multi-tenancy, redundancy, backup and restore functionalities, as well as the monitoring aspects of the solution, need improvement. The solution offers virtually no enterprise-grade possibility for monitoring."
"The product must be integrated with the cloud."
"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."
"I have not had the chance to experiment deeply with it."
"The interaction we've had with the support team hasn't been ideal. Technical support should be improved."
"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."
"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."
"It requires a low-level re-architecting of the product."
"I would like to see better data security in the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 price depends on the extension of the solution that you want to buy. If you want to buy just EDR, the price is less. XDR is a little bit more expensive. There are going to be different add-ons for Singularity."
"It was reasonable pricing for me."
"I would rate the cost a seven out of ten with ten being the most costly."
"The tool is cost-effective."
"PingSafe is not very expensive compared to Prisma Cloud, but it's also not that cheap. However, because of its features, it makes sense to us as a company. It's fairly priced."
"I understand that SentinelOne is a market leader, but the bill we received was astronomical."
"Their pricing appears to be based simply on the number of accounts we have, which is common for cloud-based products."
"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."
"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."
"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."
"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."
"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."
"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."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud and Data Center Security solutions are best for your needs.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
28%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
SentinelOne is relatively cheap. If ten is the most expensive, I would rate it a seven.
What needs improvement with PingSafe?
The areas with room for improvement include the cost, which is higher compared to other security platforms. The dashb...
What do you like most about Cisco Secure Workload?
The product provides multiple-device integration.
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 do you like most about Illumio Adaptive Security Platform?
The features that I have found most useful is the ability to centralize all the rules and then distribute them across...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Illumio Adaptive Security Platform?
I do not have specific knowledge about pricing details as it is handled by upper management. I know that Illumio is t...
What needs improvement with Illumio Adaptive Security Platform?
There should be an option to upgrade from the console to the latest version instead of performing manual upgrades. Th...
 

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: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.