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Cisco Secure Workload vs Fortinet FortiDDoS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Cisco Secure Workload
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (7th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (13th), Microsegmentation Software (4th), Cisco Security Portfolio (9th)
Fortinet FortiDDoS
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cisco Secure Workload and Fortinet FortiDDoS aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Cisco Secure Workload is designed for Cloud and Data Center Security and holds a mindshare of 14.0%, up 12.5% compared to last year.
Fortinet FortiDDoS, on the other hand, focuses on Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection, holds 2.9% mindshare, down 3.0% since last year.
Cloud and Data Center Security
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

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
Yazan Omar - PeerSpot reviewer
An easy-to-use tool with great GUI
The product's initial setup phase was really easy. There is a lot of time involved in the testing phase and other processes related to the area of deployment, so it may take up to two weeks to deploy the solution. The solution is deployed on an on-premises model. One person is enough to take care of the deployment phase of the product. The person involved in the deployment phase needs to better understand topologies when dealing with Fortinet.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The only use case I can see that makes sense is micro-segmentation. I think there are other use cases for it. The main purpose of the product is to do micro-segmentation by collecting IP. That could be done by installing an agent, and then you have all the communication coming in and out. You could also use some flow sensors installed in the network that receive a copy of the traffic and then report that back to the system."
"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution."
"The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."
"Scalability is its most valuable feature."
"Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is security."
"The product provides multiple-device integration."
"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 solution is very user-friendly and very easy to use."
"The solution already has security profiles and it can protect from DDoS attacks and other kinds of attacks."
"This solution can protect Layer 3, Layer 4 and Layer 7 attacks of applications for us."
"It allows me to see all the traffic on my network."
"The most valuable feature is the cloud DDoS scrubbing capability."
"Among its key features: Detects and mitigates DDoS attacks at L3 to L7; negligible to zero false-positives; Generates and sends reports without the need for an expensive third-party solution."
"The product allows the users to adjust the thresholds."
"It is a user-friendly product in terms of monitoring and updating policies."
 

Cons

"The interface is really helpful for technical people, but it is not user-friendly."
"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."
"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 is some overlap between Cisco Tetration and AppDynamics and I need to have a single pane of glass, rather than have to jump between different tools."
"It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."
"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."
"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 tool needs to focus more on the area of application traffic management, where it currently has some shortcomings."
"Alerts and reporting features must be improved."
"The solution can be a little more user-friendly and it can be more affordable."
"All the thresholds that need to be configured should be included in the default so that user will not forget or misconfigure."
"I would like to see analytics, big data."
"The web interface could be much better."
"The product’s pricing needs improvement."
"The primary area for improvement is the on-premises capacity limit, currently fixed at 10 GB."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."
"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."
"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."
"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."
"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."
"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."
"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."
"It's quite pricey."
"The solution is reasonably priced."
"The product’s pricing needs improvement."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 discovery. This raises questions about the resources required to discover and write po...
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?
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, provid...
Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Arbor would be the best bid, apart from Arbor, Palo Alto and Fortinet have good solutions. As this is an ISP, I would prefer Arbor.
What do you like most about Fortinet FortiDDoS?
The product's initial setup phase was really easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiDDoS?
Fortinet FortiDDoS offers lower costs compared to other solutions. The licensing costs are annually renewed.
 

Also Known As

Cisco Tetration
Fortinet DDoS, FortiDDos
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)
Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
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