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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

"The most valuable feature right now is to do with having visibility on the network — especially on our servers — and to be able to enforce some type of security measures."
"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."
"By using Tetration insight, we are able to get the latency on our level accounts and we can determine whatever the issue is with the application latency itself."
"Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."
"Scalability is its most valuable feature."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is security."
"The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage; the telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent, it's complete, and you see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network."
"Illumio serves as a single endpoint technology where I can implement various features, including a zero-trust network, north-to-south and east-to-west configurations, and micro-segmentation, all coming from one platform, which ultimately saves us time and money."
"The Explorer allows you to know the traffic between source and destination."
"It has helped us to understand internal network visibility and firewall policy implementation. We use the product to simplify firewall policy implementation."
"The strongest aspect of Illumio is the visual traffic interface, which allows us to see all traffic that communicates with our servers and allied companies."
"Everything is valuable in Illumio."
"The flexibility of the solution is its most valuable feature."
"Illumio definitely demonstrates its value in money-saving capabilities, enhancing our lateral environment inside the organization and providing effectiveness overall once integrated."
"Overall, Illumio is a powerful tool for micro-segmentation and zero trust security that provides strong visibility, flexible policy management, and effective threat containment, enhancing an organization's internal security posture."
"It's scalable."
"We have saved a 50% ROI for the on-premise product, which gave us significant improvement overall in productivity, costs, and efficiency."
"The customer service/technical support for this solution is very fast."
"This product is one of the leaders in terms of endpoint protection, server protection, and network protection."
"The integration options of Trend Micro Deep Security have been particularly valuable."
"Deep Security provides us with a lot of reassurance about security threats. You don't have to worry about a patch not being there in the software. You're confident that all the patches and vulnerabilities are taken care of."
"The modules that are included with it will help us displace the local anti-virus that we're currently using today."
"Technical support is where Trend Micro really shines."
 

Cons

"A feature that I was looking for was emailed alerts and notifications so we'd get them right away."
"The integration could be better, especially with different types of solutions."
"The product should be easy to use, but it is not. Comparing it to other products, it was very complex."
"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 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 I need to have a single pane of glass, rather than have to jump between different tools."
"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."
"Illumio can be improved if we have more interactive sessions with the tech team."
"It requires a low-level re-architecting of the product."
"I would like to see better data security in the product."
"Illumio Adaptive Security Platform could improve by supporting more operating systems, for example, Cisco and Apache appliances."
"The interaction we've had with the support team hasn't been ideal. Technical support should be improved."
"We need more details on areas where there is an error or a traffic blockage. I would like the tool to offer a more detailed view."
"There should be an option to upgrade from the console to the latest version instead of performing manual upgrades. This would be more helpful to streamline processes."
"Illumio requires me to create policies for each type of traffic, and for new users, the policy design can be a bit complex."
"The solution could use more integration."
"In the area of policy management and overall administration, Trend Micro Deep Security could improve some settings that require attention."
"The default reports provided don't provide much insight."
"The tool should integrate SIM functionality. It should also improve customer support."
"The pricing on the cloud model could be better. It's a bit high."
"It should have XDR and EDR integration. It would be nice if they can tie it up with an XDR or EDR."
"The solution could use more integration."
"The working interface and the reports for non-technical people could use improvement."
 

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."
"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."
"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."
"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."
"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."
"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."
"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."
"The product's pricing is around 10,000-15,000 USD. The pricing is on a yearly basis."
"There is a subscription needed to use Illumio Adaptive Security Platform and we pay every three years. Overall the solution is expensive."
"The price of Trend Micro Deep Security could be less expensive."
"The price is reasonably good as compared to other products into the market."
"We have saved a 50% ROI for the on-premise product. It gave us significant improvement overall in productivity, costs, and efficiency."
"There is a subscription cost to use this product."
"The AWS licensing model is scalable and easy to use, but could do with tiered discounts. I am not sure how well this model will scale when we start to use Auto Scaling with AWS resources."
"It is expensive but reasonable compared to other products by Trend Micro."
"We do pay-as-you-go pricing, which is good for us. We are working with Trend Micro's sales rep to see if we can have something similar for on-premise."
"The solution is offered at an average price point"
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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.