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Cisco Secure Workload vs Symantec Data Center Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 14, 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

Cisco Secure Workload
Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (13th), Microsegmentation Software (4th), Cisco Security Portfolio (9th)
Symantec Data Center Security
Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 13.8%, up from 12.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Data Center Security is 1.5%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud and Data Center Security
 

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
Shahram Dehghani - PeerSpot reviewer
A robust solution that provides comprehensive protection for data centers, offering agentless security, powerful intrusion prevention, and a wide range of security features
The primary focus of data center security often revolves around serving customers who offer services to other clients within the data center. For example, if I operate a data center and provide security services, third-party customers might purchase virtual machine products within my data center. These products are automatically deployed, and we safeguard these virtual machines using intrusion prevention system features. This aspect is considered the most valuable part because when we set up these security policies, it's as if we're fortifying the entire infrastructure. It's not just about having good technical support; it's about having a robust IPS and comprehensive DOS prevention system on those operating systems. The advantage of Data Center Security is its ease of use and that it serves as a single unified platform, where I can apply all my security policies to protect that server.

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 of this solution is security."
"It's stable."
"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution."
"Scalability is its most valuable feature."
"The product provides multiple-device integration."
"The product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."
"The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."
"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 tool will then detect any anomalies, such as an intruder who has breached the network, which can trigger the system lockdown feature if it's enabled and meets the defined threshold."
"The most valuable feature is the centralized console, which can handle different products that we have."
"The console and tools are very user-friendly."
"The real strength lies in its straightforward approach, offering just two key policies: prevention and detection."
"The advantage of Data Center Security is its ease of use and that it serves as a single unified platform, where I can apply all my security policies to protect that server."
"The most valuable feature is the endpoint protection system."
"We use the product to prevent unauthorized access to data, systems, and servers. It provides essential features for data center security."
"The monitoring in the management console allows us to find out what is going wrong, and it gets reports even before the user reports it."
 

Cons

"The integration could be better, especially with different types of solutions."
"It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."
"The multi-tenancy, redundancy, backup and restore functionalities, as well as the monitoring aspects of the solution, need improvement. The solution offers virtually no enterprise-grade possibility for monitoring."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Agent management is a challenging task."
"There is room for improvement in enhancing its graphical user interface for a more user-friendly experience."
"The support is very bad. They're not fast at all. Trend Micro's support is much better."
"A user or administrator making the policy in the DCS should have a very thorough knowledge of the operating system or policy making. You have to be very specific about the data structure."
"It would be advantageous if Symantec or Broadcom, given the rebranding, could simplify the process, enabling users to leverage the antivirus functionality more easily."
"This solution clashes with Microsoft defender, which results in performance degradation on the machine."
"There is plenty of room for improvement with this product, and it could start with platform metrics."
"They need to develop a more flexible product that can be scaled such that it fits well into a small business or a bigger, enterprise-level solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."
"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."
"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."
"Compared to some other solutions, such as CrowdStrike, Symantec is more expensive."
"The product is a bit costly."
"It is notably more expensive when compared to other solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
24%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
5%
 

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...
What do you like most about Symantec Data Center Security?
The granularity of applying the policies is valuable.
What needs improvement with Symantec Data Center Security?
Agent management is a challenging task. We cannot do it from the console. We will have to use other tools.
What is your primary use case for Symantec Data Center Security?
One key use case for data center security is protecting files within the data center. This is especially important for Linux systems, where locking down specific files is essential to prevent unaut...
 

Also Known As

Cisco Tetration
No data 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. Symantec Data Center Security and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,687 professionals have used our research since 2012.