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Cisco Secure Workload vs Illumio Insights comparison

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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
Ranking in Microsegmentation Software
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (9th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (23rd), Cisco Security Portfolio (9th)
Illumio Insights
Ranking in Microsegmentation Software
6th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
1.8
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Network Detection and Response (NDR) (20th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (11th)
 

Featured Reviews

Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA
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
EM
Manager at OOCL
Micro-segmentation has improved threat visibility and supports ongoing zero-trust monitoring
Deployment of Illumio Insights was not difficult, but the difficulty depends on how micro your design is. For Docker containers, it is not quite suitable for that kind of application traffic. For container architectures, it is not quite designed that way. For normal VMs it might be acceptable, but for container architectures, I cannot be as micro-segmented as I want to be. Illumio Insights is not very well designed for containers, which is one of the drawbacks and weak sides of the product. I use Illumio Insights' real-time analytics for micro-segmentation, and beyond zero-trust monitoring, I also want to do analysis. However, the product coverage is not very broad, so I have to do my own filtering and analysis, and integration with other tools is necessary. The reporting and analysis are not ready out of the product itself. Reporting is another area for improvement in this product and is not very sufficient, so I have to further integrate or do it on my own. Illumio Insights is stable and a mature product. The functionality, such as reporting and analysis, may extend in the roadmap, but it has not in the past. The current functionality is adequate and quite mature, which is how I chose it based on maturity and market share. However, it is not very modern for Kubernetes and containers. If this functionality can extend, that would be a valuable roadmap addition. Streamline integration with Illumio Insights does not help me much since it does not require too much integration with my other operations.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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, which clients appreciate."
"The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."
"Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."
"The scalability of Cisco Tetration is very good."
"Scalability is its most valuable feature."
"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."
"This product does everything that you need it to do and more and does a lot to provide visibility in a network environment, save time and money, and make the organization IT operate in a much more streamlined fashion."
"This solution has contributed to quick detection of risky traffic and offers one-click containment."
"One of the most valuable features is the ability to map traffic and patterns over multiple hyperscalers, not just AWS."
"Illumio Insights impressed me with its ease of use, clarity, and potential to significantly improve breach containment strategies."
"Illumio Insights is stable and a mature product."
 

Cons

"I'd like to see better documentation for advanced features. The documentation is fairly basic. I would also like to see better integration with other applications."
"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 problem is that we can only deploy the particular solution where we have the hardware with Cisco."
"There is some overlap between Cisco Tetration and AppDynamics and there are few DC tools, it would be great to have a single pane of glass, rather than have to jump between different tools."
"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."
"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."
"There was a controversy when Cisco reduced the amount of data they kept, and the solution became quite cost-intensive, which made its adoption challenging….Although they have modified it now, I preferred the previous version, and I wish all the functionality were back under the same product."
"Cisco Tetration needs more flags and system alerts that we should get with network capture."
"In some of the views, an IP address appears to be a link, but it doesn't open any new windows or display any new information."
"Illumio Insights is not very well designed for containers, which is one of the drawbacks and weak sides of the product."
"There is room for improvement with more AI-based detection to report traffic abnormalities and potential issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Secure Workload?
When we onboarded Cisco Secure Workload, the usual use case was to discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map for Cisco ACI. As the network team, we chose to implement A...
What needs improvement with Illumio Insights?
Deployment of Illumio Insights was not difficult, but the difficulty depends on how micro your design is. For Docker containers, it is not quite suitable for that kind of application traffic. For c...
What is your primary use case for Illumio Insights?
Illumio Insights plays its own role in enhancing threat visibility. Illumio Insights performs micro-segmentation according to the traffic, determining whether to trust it, allow it, or block it. Mi...
 

Also Known As

Cisco Tetration
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Workload vs. Illumio Insights and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.