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Cisco Secure Workload vs Illumio vs TrendAI Deep Security 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 9.5%, down from 14.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Illumio is 16.1%, down from 25.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TrendAI Deep Security is 8.3%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud and Data Center Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Illumio16.1%
TrendAI Deep Security8.3%
Cisco Secure Workload9.5%
Other66.1%
Cloud and Data Center Security
 

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
Irfan Sharfi - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Professional at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Micro-segmentation has transformed endpoint protection and now isolates internal threats effectively
Illumio can be improved in several areas based on our feedback. Sometimes, the PCE experiences slowness, especially when deploying around 300,000 endpoint devices. When these devices communicate within the network, loading the map or connections can cause latency, which needs improvement for a more user-friendly and faster experience. Regarding improvements to the interface, I believe we can add more features to the graphical user interface, such as proper logs. While the logs currently indicate what was blocked or allowed, clicking on a specific log should provide more information, such as which extra-scope rule is causing a denial, offering better analysis for troubleshooting.
reviewer2759025 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Service Desk Manager at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Virtual patching has protected critical workloads and reduced downtime across financial environments
The best features Trend Micro Deep Security offers include virtual patching and comprehensive protection from multiple modules such as anti-malware, web reputation, firewall, integrity monitoring, and log inspection. It is very user-friendly, easy to understand, and helps us integrate multiple products with Deep Security. The user-friendly aspect and integration of Trend Micro Deep Security have helped my team significantly. For example, we can integrate our SIEM product, Active Directory, and multiple platforms. If an operations engineer cannot find something or forgets about a suspicious activity, we can identify the suspicious thing with the help of the SIEM. With Active Directory, we maintain our compliance, checking which server has Deep Security and which does not. By integrating these solutions, we effectively maintain compliance in our environment. Trend Micro Deep Security has positively impacted our organization because we have implemented it for multiple purposes, primarily for server security. It is installed on both multiple virtual and physical servers with minimal performance impact. It has been extremely stable throughout our usage, with no major disturbances.

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."
"Overall, this is a really good product and I am happy with it."
"Scalability is its most valuable feature."
"The product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."
"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."
"The scalability of Cisco Tetration is very good."
"I observe extensive return on investment with Illumio."
"It has helped us to understand internal network visibility and firewall policy implementation. We use the product to simplify firewall policy implementation."
"The flexibility of the solution is its most valuable feature."
"I would recommend Illumio to all sizes of companies."
"We have been using the Illumio Adaptive Security Platform for a while now and we have seen a return on investment."
"Illumio does more than general security product, it provides East-West traffic flow visibility and auditorial log which benefits on daily operation and periodical auditing."
"The solution is easy to use."
"The client is getting more security and is more confident in their network because they now have the micro-segmentation feature in their environment."
"There are a good signature set and a high rate of detection."
"Trend Micro was selected because it has better whitelisting of applications, its intrusion detection was far superior, and it has configurability."
"There is no competition for this product, as no other product provides HIPS, host-firewall, and anti-malware together."
"There are compliance issues for legacy applications and after applying OS security patches. The product's HIPS (Host Intrusion Prevention System) modules do the job for you automatically, without any downtime."
"Automated virtual patching would be the most valuable feature."
"We have saved a 50% ROI for the on-premise product, which gave us significant improvement overall in productivity, costs, and efficiency."
"You can scale the solution to different versions."
"Not only do these benefits reduce both capital and operational expenditures, but they also provide resource agility that promotes business innovation and growth."
 

Cons

"The interface is really helpful for technical people, but it is not user-friendly."
"They should scale down the hardware a bit. The initial hardware investment is two million dollars so it's a price point problem."
"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."
"The integration could be better, especially with different types of solutions."
"The entire interface could be improved; it's ugly and uninviting, and Tetration tends to be a lot more cumbersome and not very intuitive compared to the biggest competitor's modern-looking GUI."
"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'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."
"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."
"Illumio does not have much in terms of application dependency mapping features."
"One area for improvement regarding Illumio might be making the policy management even more intuitive."
"The customer service is lagging a bit. It could be better."
"Some of the features that can be improved is offer additional guidance on creating an effective and risk-free tagging policy would be highly beneficial."
"I have not had the chance to experiment deeply with it."
"I would like to see better data security in the product."
"The product’s agents don't work very well in OT environments."
"Technical support could be better. When we get a reply from support engineers, it is not kind or empathetic."
"We'd like to have more application control."
"They need to build in a central console because central integration is not very good right now."
"The licensing structure could improve."
"While it is fundamentally good, the patches are released every month; if it could remain stable for a longer time, it would be helpful instead of requiring monthly patches."
"Enhancements in agent performance are needed, specifically in reducing server utilization during scanning."
"It is a very expensive solution, so it has mostly been used at an enterprise level."
"There's a little room for improvement as far as being more concise with the error messages."
"One problem with this kind of products is scaling."
 

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."
"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."
"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."
"There is a subscription needed to use Illumio Adaptive Security Platform and we pay every three years. Overall the solution is expensive."
"The product's pricing is around 10,000-15,000 USD. The pricing is on a yearly basis."
"The tool's pricing is quite high."
"We have saved a 50% ROI for the on-premise product. It gave us significant improvement overall in productivity, costs, and efficiency."
"It is a very expensive solution. It would be nice if they lower its price. Its license is based on the machines."
"The cost is approximately six thousand Qatari Riyal ($1650 USD) per user."
"We are an original partner with AWS, so a couple of customers chose to directly take it from AWS Marketplace. A couple of customers will want us to take care of the billing. So, it's a mixed type of reaction that we receive from the customer."
"Trend Micro Deep Security is quite expensive."
"It's more expensive than other solutions, such as Sophos and Kaspersky, as an endpoint solution."
"The solution is considerably cheaper than other similar solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise47
 

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 discov...
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?
We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration a...
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 cre...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Illumio Adaptive Security Platform?
It will be the same price as the Akamai price for Guardicore. It's expensive, that's true. But when you compare it to...
What needs improvement with Illumio Adaptive Security Platform?
Illumio does not have much in terms of application dependency mapping features. They lack layer 7 process level segme...
What is your primary use case for Illumio Adaptive Security Platform?
Illumio's use case compared to Akamai is exactly the same. For the purpose of micro-segmentation, it is the same.
Is Crowdstrike Falcon better than Trend Micro Deep Security?
I like that Crowdstrike allows me to easily correlate data between my firewalls. What’s most useful for my needs is t...
What's the difference between Trend Micro Deep Security and Trend Micro Apex One?
Trend Micro Deep Security offers a lot of features. It guarantees security for your data center, cloud, and container...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Trend Micro Deep Security?
My experience with pricing is that it is really challenging because its pricing is very high. However, the setup cost...
 

Also Known As

Cisco Tetration
Illumio Adaptive Security Platform, Illumio ASP
Deep Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)
Plantronics, NTT Innovation Institute Inc.
Rush University Medical Center, Guess? Inc., Mazda Motor Logistics Europe, MEDHOST, KSC Commercial Internet Co., Ricoh Company Ltd., Square Enix, SoftBank Telecom, Telecom Italia, United Way of Greater Atlanta, A&W Food Services of Canada
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai, Broadcom, Illumio and others in Cloud and Data Center Security. Updated: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.