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Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 5, 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

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (1st), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (12th), Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) (6th), Microsegmentation Software (3rd)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (8th), Container Security (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (2nd)
 

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 26.7%, up 25.9% compared to last year.
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP), holds 14.5% mindshare, down 20.8% since last year.
Microsegmentation Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation26.7%
Illumio29.4%
VMware NSX16.0%
Other27.900000000000006%
Microsegmentation Software
Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks14.5%
Wiz23.4%
Microsoft Defender for Cloud10.9%
Other51.2%
Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
 

Featured Reviews

Uday Varma - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Mohammad Qaw - PeerSpot reviewer
It gives you one console to see all of your assets, review their configurations, and build your processes
Most customers use Prisma Cloud for visibility and compliance. Prisma has so many features, but many organizations do not use them. They primarily use the visibility part to connect all their cloud accounts and hosts for visibility to see if they are missing any security controls or if they have any misconfigurations. You can connect it to cloud environments such as Azure, AWS, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba, etc., or to an on-prem data center. Prisma Cloud gives you so many options to automate processes related to your daily operations. When it comes to cybersecurity, you can automate things with their existing APIs. They also have out-of-the-box integrations with many solutions. I have not seen any limitations. Everything is customizable. You can do whatever you want, defining the reporting and custom use cases. They recently updated the UI, so it's much better than before.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"From day one, you get threat intelligence. It will immediately block active threats, which has been useful."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the visibility of processes and connections."
"Application Ring-Fencing and Deception Server, which is basically like a honeypot, are pretty useful features."
"This tool greatly helps in understanding the footprint of the attacks."
"The label-based segmentation is the most valuable feature."
"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."
"I found the solution to be stable."
"I was looking for a vulnerability scanner and I was looking for one place in which I could find everything. This tool not only does vulnerability scanning, but it also gives me an asset management tool."
"It provides good visibility and control regardless of the complexity."
"The threat detection feature in Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks integrates with cloud-native controls like AWS GuardDuty and similar services on Azure and GCP."
"It has helped us build confidence in our security and compliance. Prisma Cloud enables us to implement all these SOC 2 compliances and check the security. It provides visibility and control regardless of how complex our environment is."
"I like the scanning features provided by Prisma Cloud, including the image scan and source scan."
"I like Prisma's ability to integrate with other tools. We can integrate it with Jira so that when Prisma triggers an alert, it opens a ticket in Jira. That was a big selling point for the product. There's a feature called the guest custom template that allows you to trigger alerts in Jira based on the template. That can also be added as a feature on Jira."
"Prisma was extremely comprehensive. It's easy to drill down to gather more information and keep going. It seemed like you could drill down forever to see what the vulnerability was linked to."
"What I like most about Prisma Cloud is its zero-day signatures, maximum security, minimal downtime, cloud visibility, control, and ease of deployment."
 

Cons

"Clients would like to see that the security policies of GuardiCore can continue to be comparable to all the major firewall players out there."
"The maps could go a bit faster. They are useful but slightly slow."
"Customers would want to see the cost improved."
"Needs more customization of honeypots and a vaster catalog of systems able to be mimicked."
"Incident tagging could be improved. Other vendors offer semi-automatic tagging, which Guardicore doesn't yet have."
"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 would rate the stability a six out of ten, where one is low and ten is high stability."
"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."
"Support is an area that needs improvement."
"One of the requests is that Prisma Defender for the ECS solution is only supported for Linux. It does not support Windows."
"Prisma Cloud lags behind in terms of security automation capabilities."
"When it comes to compliance, the issue is that when we are exporting the reports, there is only a single compliance option. If I need to report on multiple compliance requirements, that feature isn't available. For example, I made a single report for ISO 27000 but I can't correlate it with GDPR."
"The integration of the Compute function into the cloud monitoring function—because those are two different tools that are being combined together—could use some more work. It still feels a little bit disjointed."
"The UI could be improved."
"Palo Alto needs to add more support staff to improve their response time."
"We have discovered that Prisma is not functioning properly with GCP."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The customer would complain about the cost."
"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."
"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."
"This is not a cheap solution but you have to consider the bigger picture, which is what it is giving you."
"The solution is reasonably priced and I would rate it a six out of ten. The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"Compared to the pricing we were seeing from both Illumio and Edgewise, Guardicore was very competitive."
"The pricing is too high."
"Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is expensive."
"Prisma Cloud is more expensive than some other solutions, but when we consider all of its use cases, the cost averages out."
"We are encountering some resistance in the African market regarding the cost of Prisma Cloud."
"Prisma Cloud is remarkably expensive."
"Regarding Prisma Cloud's pricing, we started small, and then we just kept on growing."
"Prisma Cloud is a high-end enterprise solution, making it quite expensive."
"The pricing and licensing are expensive compared to the other offerings that we considered."
"If a competitor came along and said, "We'll give you half the price," that doesn't necessarily mean that's the right answer, at all. We wouldn't necessarily entertain it that way. Does it do what we need it to do? Does it work with the things that we want it to work with? That is the important part for us. Pricing wasn't the big consideration it might be in some organizations. We spend millions on public cloud. In that context, it would not make sense to worry about the small price differences that you get between the products."
"Prisma Cloud licensing works on credits."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise58
 

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...
What is your primary use case for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?
Prisma Cloud helps support DevSecOps methodologies, making those responsibilities easier to manage.
What Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform do you recommend?
We like Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, since it offers us incredible visibility into our entire cloud system. We are able to easily see where our container vulnerabilities lie and and where cl...
What do you think of Aqua Security vs Prisma Cloud?
Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valuable feature and their speed of integration is very good. The initial setup was ...
 

Also Known As

Guardicore Centra, GuardiCore
Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Santander, Frontier Airlines, OpenLink, Intermountain Healthcare, Cellcom, BancoBASE
Amgen, Genpact, Western Asset, Zipongo, Proofpoint, NerdWallet, Axfood, 21st Century Fox, Veeva Systems, Reinsurance Group of America
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
871,358 professionals have used our research since 2012.