Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Qualys VMDR comparison

The compared Akamai and Qualys solutions aren't in the same category. Akamai is ranked #3 in MS , with an average rating of 7.8, and holds a 26.9% mindshare in the category. Qualys is ranked #2 in VM , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 6.9% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of Akamai users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Qualys users who would recommend it.

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Read 18 Akamai Guardicore Segmentation reviews

8,287 Views
5,387 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Qualys VMDR

Read 95 Qualys VMDR reviews

13,863 Views
8,318 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Qualys VMDR

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Akamai Guardicore Segmentation and Qualys VMDR based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about VMware, Illumio, Akamai and others in Microsegmentation Software.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsegmentation Software Report (Updated: August 2025).

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Microsegmentation Software

August 2025

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Helped 867,370 peers since 2012

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

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud and Data Center Security (1st), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (11th), Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) (6th), Microsegmentation Software (3rd)

Qualys VMDR

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Asset Management (6th), Vulnerability Management (2nd), Configuration Management Databases (2nd), Container Security (9th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (1st)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is designed for Microsegmentation Software and holds a mindshare of 26.9%, up 25.7% compared to last year.
Qualys VMDR, on the other hand, focuses on Vulnerability Management, holds 6.9% mindshare, down 12.2% since last year.

Microsegmentation Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation	26.9%
Illumio	29.5%
VMware NSX	16.3%
Other	27.299999999999997%

Microsegmentation Software

Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Qualys VMDR	6.9%
Wiz	10.8%
Tenable Nessus	8.0%
Other	74.3%

Vulnerability Management

Featured Reviews

Uday Varma

Solution Architecht at Inspira Enterprise

Offers granular control and ease of policy creation with features like telemetry and micro-segmentation but incident tagging is missing

Our customers use the solution for micro-segmentation within the data center or cloud environments. One customer uses it for their on-premises infrastructure, deployed at the code level across their massive network. Another customer uses it in a data center to monitor microsegmentation for their 500-node workload. Moreover, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation has helped our customers manage and secure traffic between different applications or workloads. Earlier, they were using VMware NSX-v, which offered good logging for distributed services on an analytical level. However, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation provides them with better overall visibility and granular control over-segmentation, even for inter-application and inter-routing traffic.

Read full review

Ankesh Raj

Information Security Analyst at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Real-time responses and reporting streamline vulnerability management

Qualys VMDR provides a real-time response and reporting feature, which is excellent. It allows us to see real-time graphs and reports for every asset, server, and more, which is very user-friendly. Our clients have given good feedback, and they are satisfied with the tool. We use it daily to fix vulnerabilities by connecting with infrastructure to remediate. The feedback from the client side is very good.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is very scalable, especially when connected to the cloud resources."

"The tool's most valuable feature is its visibility."

"Guardicore makes its own rule set automatically, so we can work fast when creating a rule set."

"The most valuable feature is the visibility of processes and connections."

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

"The real bonus is the fact that we can secure applications, all the way down to the individual services, on each host. It's actually more granular security than we can get out of a traditional firewall."

"I found the solution to be stable."

"This tool greatly helps in understanding the footprint of the attacks."

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation pros

"It is a stable solution."

"Continuous monitoring is a crucial feature that we use more frequently."

"Great web application security for scanning."

"The most valuable features of Qualys VM are its ability to do proper vulnerability assessment. It has a lot of updates for all the vulnerability databases from all over the globe. It's an amazing solution when it comes to the versatility of the features it has. Additionally, the reports are very good. It generates very detailed reports about the vulnerabilities inside the environment"

"It gives a very good overview of the inventory assessment process, and it can be accessed across our company because it's a global tool."

"The most valuable feature is the certificate management."

"I value the scheduling of scans and reports as per the desired timeframes."

"I find the most valuable features are the continuous monitoring. Even on premises, there is constant monitoring."

More Qualys VMDR pros

Cons

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

"Clients would like to see that the security policies of GuardiCore can continue to be comparable to all the major firewall players out there."

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

"I would rate the stability a six out of ten, where one is low and ten is high stability."

"Customers would want to see the cost improved."

"The product needs a few features like enhanced user policies and payload-level inspection to improve the offering."

"Kubernetes is not installed in the way we need it."

"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."

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation cons

"The response time of technical support takes a while."

"There needs to be better documentation."

"There's a need to upgrade or fix the potential vulnerability rate. Around 20,000 potential vulnerabilities were showing in Qualys VMDR, but none of the other tools showed them. When we checked, it wasn't the case. Support explained that even small issues were being counted as vulnerabilities, causing issues in our audit. So, the security features could be improved to identify vulnerabilities accurately."

"Sometimes we face a problem with accessing the tool and not getting an expected result. From a technology point of view, they need to look into this."

"Qualys could improve the inbuilt dashboards."

"One of the biggest issues from the clients' perspective is that all Qualys computing is on the cloud."

"While Qualys VMDR is comprehensive, improvements in asset management functionality would be beneficial."

"They're still evolving their platform in terms of reporting capabilities."

More Qualys VMDR cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation pricing and cost advice

"The solution is reasonably priced for the value it provides."

"Qualys Virtual Scanner Appliance isn't expensive right now. But the price for their product bundles could be better."

"The product is more expensive than that of any other vendor."

"I used to work there, so I never paid for the product. As an employee, we get a lifetime license for personal use, and that's what I'm using. It is a comprehensive platform, so there is a lot more to it. There could be other solutions that are probably a little bit cheaper, but it depends on what people need. Different people have different needs. It offers many things on the same platform. If you add all the things up, it should be cheaper, but I have not done any analysis specifically."

"The price is very reasonable."

"It is different for every company, but for us, it's every three years."

"It is more expensive than other products on the market."

"An annual license for a single scanner costs around $3,000."

More Qualys VMDR pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	9

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	69

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Qualys VMDR?

I like that we have many scanners and channels that don't overload. It helps us scan and track easily. Also, the tagging system is good for tagging. We can still use QualysAgent task ID tools even ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys VMDR?

Qualys offers better pricing and is feature-packed compared to other tools.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Qualys VMDR?

There were some issues later with Qualys VMDR regarding security, specifically with numerous false positive reports.

See all answers

Comparisons

Illumio vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 45% of the time

VMware NSX vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 10% of the time

Cisco Secure Workload vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 9% of the time

Zero Networks vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 3% of the time

Cisco ACI vs Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

Compared 3% of the time

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation Competitors

Tenable Nessus vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 10% of the time

Rapid7 InsightVM vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 8% of the time

Tenable Security Center vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 6% of the time

Wiz vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 5% of the time

More Qualys VMDR Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

September 2025

Download Akamai Guardicore Segmentation product report

Buyer's Guide

Qualys VMDR

August 2025

Download Qualys VMDR product report

Also Known As

Guardicore Centra, GuardiCore

Qualys VM, QualysGuard VM, Qualys Asset Inventory, Qualys Container Security

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

Vulnerability Management, Detection, and Response (VMDR) is a cornerstone product of the Qualys TruRisk Platform and a global leader in the enterprise-grade vulnerability management (VM) vendor space. With VMDR, enterprises are empowered with visibility and insight into cyber risk exposure - making it easy to prioritize vulnerabilities, assets, or groups of assets based on business risk. Security teams can take action to mitigate risk, helping the business measure their actual risk exposure over time.

Qualys VMDR offers an all-inclusive risk-based vulnerability management solution to prioritize vulnerabilities and assets based on risk and business criticality. VMDR seamlessly integrates with configuration management databases (CMDB), Qualys Patch Management, Custom Assessment and Remediation (CAR), Qualys TotalCloud and other Qualys and non-Qualys solutions to facilitate vulnerability detection and remediation across the entire enterprise.

With VMDR, users are empowered with actionable risk insights that translate vulnerabilities and exploits into optimized remediation actions based on business impact. Qualys customers can now aggregate and orchestrate data from the Qualys Threat Library, 25+ threat intelligence feeds, and third-party security and IT solutions, empowering organizations to measure, communicate, and eliminate risk across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments.

Qualys

Sample Customers

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

Agrokor Group, American Specialty Health, American State Bank, Arval, Life:), Axway, Bank of the West, Blueport Commerce, BSkyB, Brinks, CaixaBank, Cartagena, Catholic Health System, CEC Bank, Cegedim, CIGNA, Clickability, Colby-Sawyer College, Commercial Bank of Dubai, University of Utah, eBay Inc., ING Singapore, National Theatre, OTP Bank, Sodexo, WebEx

Buyer's Guide

Microsegmentation Software

August 2025

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