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Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs Sysdig Secure comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

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

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Ranking in Container Security
17th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sysdig Secure
Ranking in Container Security
12th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (18th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (12th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Container Security category, the mindshare of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is 0.7%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sysdig Secure is 2.6%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Security
 

Featured Reviews

Shaijith KB - PeerSpot reviewer
Professional services boost confidence but pricing and user-friendliness need attention
We have multiple solutions such as SimpliVity, Nutanix, and DXRail, which are all part of our Ansible-based system. It gives us more confidence and we can control our groups effectively. The solution is not particularly user-friendly for novice administrators, making it challenging to understand certain aspects. Templates are not readily available, requiring users to build their own worksheets and everything from scratch. This is a main decentralization we observe compared to VMware. We have tested various solutions including Rancher, RHEL, Canonical from SUSE, and the bare metal version from RHEL direct. Since pricing is not a major concern, we chose the best fit for our application, which was specifically designed for this particular platform.
Peter Du - PeerSpot reviewer
Gives real-time visibility and helps to articulate constantly-changing landscape
The main benefit for me personally is being able to articulate the ever-growing, dynamic, and constantly changing landscape. Just today, in a management leadership call, I was able to demonstrate that although we are solving a lot of these vulnerabilities, we are picking up new vulnerabilities each and every day. It allows me to articulate the importance of information security with actual real-time data. Sysdig's runtime insights help us detect and respond to threats that are happening in real-time. We can look at Sysdig dashboards or run reports to see precisely what happens in our runtime environment. A good use case of this was that when zero-day vulnerabilities came out, we could scan our environment to see if the vulnerabilities apply to any of our production workloads. Sysdig Secure helps us prioritize issues and distribute work. We are a small company, so we do not have multiple security or dev teams. We have two or three guys on my team. Having the ability to focus on critical vulnerabilities is crucial. It does not make sense to prioritize low-level threats when we have limited time. We do not use live threat investigation features as much as we would like because of different priorities, but it is something that we do use. Over time, it shows us whether we are putting the right effort into resolving issues. For example, when we look at the dashboard scene over a 30-day period, we can see whether the critical vulnerabilities are increasing or decreasing. It lets us know whether we are on the right track. We are currently using agentless scanning. Deploying it onto our cluster has enabled us to get full visibility into what is running on our cluster. Sysdig provides us with the contextual awareness we need to create an immediate incident response strategy. It provides links to the threat and explains the threat and the resolution possible. It equips us with the right information to make a decision on whether to address the threat immediately or take a risk in terms of deploying remediation. Sysdig has not enabled us to reduce the number of security tools we use. We were not using anything before Sysdig, and after choosing Sysdig, we did not have a need to look at anything else. Sysdig has not helped reduce external SOC costs. We are a very small business, so we do not have the budget for an external SOC. However, it has definitely alleviated the pressure to look for one and to source an external SOC. We have a project history to look at a virtual SOC and leverage tools that we do have, and Sysdig is a part of that. There is definitely a saving there because we have not had the need to go out and look for an external SOC. Sysdig has helped reduce the percentage of workloads that have security exposures that put the organization at risk. It has reduced the workload, mainly from an understanding of where we can assign work to cover the most ground in terms of resolving vulnerabilities.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We are not yet fully public cloud-native, however, Azure Kubernetes Service promises interesting scalability and flexibility for the future."
"Integration and automation are the best features of the solution."
"Has a good management feature monitored by the cloud service provider."
"It is appealing to us due to its complexity, which aligns well with our requirements."
"Containerization of the applications is the most valuable feature."
"AKS as a service is very good when you need to leverage applications or functions with much variability in their usage because you're trying to be as efficient as you can with resources."
"The most valuable features of AKS are scalability, deployability, and automation."
"AKS is easy to use. We can scale up and down as needed with AKS, which saves us money on our cloud costs."
"The proactiveness of the support has been fantastic. Every time we mention something in a meeting that we're trying to do, he proactively takes that as an investigation topic and looks into it. He'll provide the solution even though we might not have asked him to investigate it."
"The log monitor is the most valuable feature."
"We appreciate this feature, especially when combined with CD monitoring. The implementation of requested features has been remarkable, such as scanning for compliance in CRM processes for the US government. We heavily rely on this feature to assess compliance with federal requirements."
"Sysdig Secure has many strong foundational features like compliance and benchmark, security, network access management, and vulnerability management."
"The most valuable feature is the level of support that we get. Our solutions or customer success representative is very valuable. I see them as an extension of our security team."
"The tool has the capability to conduct scans initially. It can perform scans on your virtual machines, physical machines, containers, and container images. A standout feature is its ability to scan offline container images stored in your container registry. Additionally, it can scan runtime images in your cluster or on your host machine. This allows for the detection of vulnerabilities in running containers, including loaded libraries. Notably, the tool can identify which library vulnerabilities are already present in your system. An added advantage is its capacity to take action beyond threat detection. It has the ability to block access and respond to encountered threats."
"I have not seen any stability issues so far."
"From a container-based standpoint, it offers excellent scalability to its users...I would tell those planning to use the solution that, from a container standpoint, it's excellent."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in automation processes, as well."
"Unfortunately, when a microservice fails, Azure can take up to 60 seconds to broadcast an alert to the monitoring agents."
"More control over Infra scanning can be introduced."
"The application firewall is lacking some features and there is room for enhancement."
"In terms of cost perspective, they could make the product more affordable."
"The solution's cost could be cheaper."
"If any customer uses a traditional code, the code-level changes take a lot of time."
"There are a lot of features that should be included with the AKS."
"There was a security concern related to a specific feature. While the feature itself was promising, it posed a challenge. The situation revolved around code scanning. If your source code is hosted within your own premises, say on Bitbucket, you naturally wouldn't want your code to be accessible to external parties beyond your company. Keeping your code base private is a standard practice. However, in the case of code scanning using Sysdig Secure, they copy your code to their SaaS platform. This posed an issue for us. When we inquired about this, their response acknowledged the concern. In an upcoming release, they plan to enable code scanning within your on-premises environment through the assistance of an agent. This change is already in progress. While this tool stands out compared to existing solutions in the market, it's important to note that there are still some limitations to consider. Another drawback we encountered relates to our expertise with Kubernetes. The tool can monitor Kubernetes audit logs, triggering alerts and notifications. However, it falls short in terms of taking direct action based on these alerts. There are different methods of event capture, including through system labels and system calls, as well as via Kubernetes audit events. Notably, at the system level, Sysdig Secure can both detect and respond to events, allowing actions like blocking and warning. This proactive approach is effective at the system call level. However, when it comes to monitoring Kubernetes audit events, Sysdig Secure can only notify without being able to execute any further actions. It can't block access or containers. The vendor likened their role to that of a monitoring camera, observing events and sending notifications without the capacity to intervene. This limitation applies to Kubernetes audit events. Given that everything operates within our system, there is a workaround available: configuring system-level policies to block containers as necessary."
"The solution needs to improve overall from a CSPM standpoint since they can't compete with Wiz or Orca."
"The dashboard could be more simple and show the more important issues that are detected first. We'd like to be able to set it up so more important issues show up more prominently in the dashboard."
"Perhaps, it could support more custom implementations, as our company utilizes custom implementations rather than standard ones. Configuring it requires a deep understanding and adjustment to our specific needs, which took some time. Other than that, I'm unsure about potential improvements. We were considering the possibility of compartmentalizing their tools. Currently, in Sysdig Secure, they bundle multiple features, and we are unable to use them individually. For instance, if we only need compliance scanning, we have to deploy the entire secure package. This is because of the way their agent functions, but I can't delve into more details."
"Sysdig Secure needs to scale more for complete cloud-native coverage."
"Reporting can definitely be better. Live dashboards should be configurable for a longer period of time rather than 30 days. Being able to go back in time to compare six months ago to today would be valuable."
"They should make it specific with a couple of features only."
"Banks and financial institutions cannot use Sysdig Secure because it doesn't sell SaaS-hosted versions for under two hundred working nodes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Azure Kubernetes Service offers a pay-as-you-go licensing model."
"You pay for what you use."
"The product is expensive in terms of scalability."
"We could spend as little as $25 or $30 a month on Kubernetes Services, compared to the typical $100 a month expenditure for a virtual machine."
"The pricing of the solution is dependent on the choice of virtual machines, specifically the amount of memory required. There are various options available, ranging from around twenty-five to even more choices to select from. This flexibility allows you to customize the pricing based on your specific needs. From my perspective, virtual machines in the cloud tend to be slightly more expensive compared to virtual machines offered directly by data centers. However, this cost is offset by the benefits of a managed service. Taking the overall picture into account, the managed service approach is advantageous. The pricing for the platform can vary, typically ranging from three hundred euros per month to two thousand euros per month, depending on the specific requirements and setup you choose."
"The solution does not cost much."
"The control plane is free and we only pay for the usage and time."
"We are facing a significant challenge regarding OEM licensing. The issue arises from the fact that certain licenses required for our own purposes are not provided by Microsoft's licensing. Consequently, we are unsure about the most suitable mobile license provisioning model offered by third-party providers."
"It is quite costly compared to other tools."
"In comparison to other cloud solutions, it's reasonably priced. However, when compared to in-house built open-source projects, it might be considered somewhat costly. The cost depends on whether someone sees the support provided by Sysdig as an advantage or if it's deemed unnecessary. Personally, I find the support to be excellent and consider it a good value."
"The solution's pricing depends on the agents...In short, the price depends on the environment of its user."
"Sysdig is competitive. The quality matches the pricing. Obviously, everyone wants things to be cheaper, but if you're realistic, you acknowledge that quality service comes with a price. Sysdig is the gold standard for Kubernetes, and I wouldn't choose anything else. We live in Kubernetes. Everything is containerized, so that means a lot to us, and we're willing to make an investment."
"I am always going to say that it could be a little bit cheaper. I do feel that it is a little bit on the expensive side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?
The platform's high scalability is one of its biggest advantages.
What needs improvement with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?
Could you please tell what areas of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) you think could be improved or enhanced? It doesn't necessarily have to be something advanced. Perhaps there are some minor things...
What is your primary use case for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?
Could you please describe your customers' usual use cases for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?
What do you like most about Sysdig Secure?
The proactiveness of the support has been fantastic. Every time we mention something in a meeting that we're trying to do, he proactively takes that as an investigation topic and looks into it. He'...
What needs improvement with Sysdig Secure?
Sysdig Secure could improve in terms of scalability and expanding services to other areas like database monitoring and support. There is also room for improvement in enhancing their platform speed....
What is your primary use case for Sysdig Secure?
Sysdig Secure ( /products/sysdig-secure-reviews ) is used for cloud-native infrastructure, application monitoring, and detection response.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
SAP Concur, Goldman Sachs, Worldpay, Experian, BigCommerce, Arkose Labs, Calendly, Noteable, Bloomreach. More here: https://sysdig.com/customers/
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs. Sysdig Secure and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.