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 7.8, while Fortinet is ranked #13. Akamai holds a 26.9% mindshare in MS, compared to Fortinet’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of Akamai users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Fortinet 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

ShieldX

Read 4 ShieldX reviews

288 Views
86 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: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. ShieldX

July 2025

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Helped 866,744 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

Ranking in Microsegmentation Software

3rd

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)

ShieldX

Ranking in Microsegmentation Software

13th

Average Rating

9.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Microsegmentation Software category, the mindshare of Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is 26.9%, up from 25.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ShieldX is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Microsegmentation Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation	26.9%
ShieldX	0.4%
Other	72.7%

Microsegmentation Software

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

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.

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

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

"The label-based segmentation is the most valuable feature."

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

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

"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."

"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 microsegmentation as distributed services."

"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."

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."

"It has helped us tighten our security posture. Now, staff can only access things that they should be accessing."

"We were able to see what devices are talking to each other, giving us more visibility."

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

"ShieldX has been designed from the very beginning to work well in cloud environments. It understands autoscaling, automation, and auto-configuration. These are the things which are important in today's operating environment."

"...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."

"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."

Cons

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

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

"Customers would want to see the cost improved."

"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."

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

"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."

"In our version, when using the terminal server, we cannot exclude user tasks for each session."

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

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation cons

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

"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."

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

"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. As the vendor continues to evolve and add future functionality, we want to make sure that we are still keeping up with the integrations, etc. Time will be the key factor here. The proper support for some of the latest technologies, Docker containers, etc. They need to keep up with threat landscape, so we will see how the security get layered. This is what we are going to be keeping an eye on."

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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 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."

"Compared to the pricing we were seeing from both Illumio and Edgewise, Guardicore was very competitive."

"The pricing is too high."

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

"Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is expensive."

More Akamai Guardicore Segmentation pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

No data available

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

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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

Illumio vs ShieldX

Compared 100% of the time

More ShieldX Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation

September 2025

Download Akamai Guardicore Segmentation product report

Buyer's Guide

ShieldX

August 2025

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

July 2025

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