Cisco Secure Workload vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

The compared Cisco and Broadcom solutions aren't in the same category. Cisco is ranked #9 in CDCS , with an average rating of 9.5, and holds a 12.8% mindshare in the category. Broadcom is ranked #39 in IM , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Cisco Secure Workload

Read 15 Cisco Secure Workload reviews

4,455 Views
3,074 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

vRealize Network Insight

Read 47 vRealize Network Insight reviews

1,826 Views
840 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Cisco Secure Workload

vRealize Network Insight

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Workload and vRealize Network Insight based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai, Broadcom, SentinelOne and others in Cloud and Data Center Security.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloud and Data Center Security Report (Updated: October 2025).

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Cloud and Data Center Security

October 2025

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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

Ranking in other categories

Cloud and Data Center Security (9th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (14th), Microsegmentation Software (4th), Cisco Security Portfolio (8th)

vRealize Network Insight

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (37th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (39th)

Mindshare comparison

Cisco Secure Workload and vRealize Network Insight 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 12.8%, up 12.4% compared to last year.
vRealize Network Insight, on the other hand, focuses on IT Infrastructure Monitoring, holds 0.6% mindshare, up 0.5% since last year.

Cloud and Data Center Security Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cisco Secure Workload	12.8%
Illumio	22.0%
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation	20.8%
Other	44.400000000000006%

Cloud and Data Center Security

IT Infrastructure Monitoring Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
vRealize Network Insight	0.6%
Zabbix	11.1%
Datadog	4.8%
Other	83.5%

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Raj Metkar

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

Read full review

Shaijith KB

Senior System Specialist at General Directorate of Residence and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA)

Comprehensive management and detailed reports benefit operations while improvements are needed in support and maintenance

We have Tanzu and OpenShift. We have OpenShift, Canonical, and the Tanzu one. The Tanzu platform from VMware is a Kubernetes platform. We haven't completely installed Tanzu yet; we installed the vROps part. vRealize Network Insight is beneficial because you can control the East-West traffic. vRealize has a component called NSX, which has East-West traffic controlling and micro-segmentation, that is one of the best options, and we have the layer extension, layer 2 extension possible through NSX. If you have anything accountable in any business, even in a candy business, having proper accountability on what you are selling and buying will save a lot. If you don't know what you're selling and buying, you will end up with a loss. My team does not use the flow analytics feature; we have a security and network monitoring team, which is a different SOC team. I am using it as an administrator internally. We perform different tasks including costing analysis, capacity management, and many other things. vRealize Network Insight has a concern about the maintenance part, as it requires a person to monitor it completely. It's not something you install and your report will be generated automatically. You have to work on this properly to get the insights. vRealize Network Automation, vRealize Operations, and vRealize Network Insight are completely related to the network. I cannot say much about these network aspects because I am on the operations side, but overall, the vRealize suite is good for reporting perspective or any ISO-related documentation; this is very helpful. The product is called vRealize Operations Manager, and now it is referred to as Aria or vAria. I am now a Senior System Specialist. We use different metrics because we have multiple departments, and we can monitor utilization and comparisons with the previous year. On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution a seven.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."

"The product provides multiple-device integration."

"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."

"It's stable."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network."

"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."

"Scalability is its most valuable feature."

"Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."

More Cisco Secure Workload pros

"It has really tightened down the security. That was something that we were lacking. It has also given us deep visibility into our network. We can really get down and see all of the traffic within the data center, between the VMs, between the applications, database servers, other application servers, web servers. We can identify everything that is communicating, and we can see it all on one product."

"It's very user-friendly in the sense that the querying is just regular language like you and I speak or write. You don't need to know any SQL-query type of language to be able to get what you want out of it."

"The solution helps reduce time to value, increase performance, provide deep visibility, and easily manage networks."

"One of the most valuable features is the ability to look at the traffic flows, to look at NetFlow data."

"It allows us to see how the network devices function as well as to see network glitches or fluctuations or dropping of packets."

"As a troubleshooting tool, it's a level-3 troubleshooting-skills tool and it's very easy to use and very easy to find the information that you need."

"If we deploy NSX it shows us how the workflow will flow in the organization, what the roadblocks are, and what we need to do to overcome those hurdles. When we run this product, it gives us reports which describe problems with physical switches. We work with the network team to get them all resolved."

"The solution is extremely intuitive and user-friendly. When you log in to the application you are presented with a dashboard that is very reasonable for an initial user, and you can then customize it to your specific needs. But for all the data that we've found, we've only had to go through two or three drill-downs to get into that information."

More vRealize Network Insight pros

Cons

"It has an uninviting interface."

"The product must be integrated with the cloud."

"The emailed notifications are either hard to find or they are not available. Search capabilities can be improved."

"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."

"It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."

"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."

"The integration could be better, especially with different types of solutions."

"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."

More Cisco Secure Workload cons

"I would like to see application identification. That would be cool."

"After you use it for a little while you become accustomed to it but the layout doesn't feel very intuitive. You have to dig around and find the exact place where you can find the information, where you can actually see your east-west traffic, etc. I would like them to bring that information more to the forefront, instead of having to find it."

"There's enough information there, especially in the visualizations, but I would love to see this in a kiosk mode, where I could have a dashboard for interested stakeholders to see and appreciate what's going on. Then, moving on to a more practical level for our Help Desk, our operations team could benefit by seeing, in real-time, a visual view of the network."

"The UI, even though once you get to know it, it's easier, still it's hard to figure out by yourself. You have to go read, watch videos. It has a lot of data on it. So that is an issue."

"While it's not exactly a feature, what normally happens when we are trying to look at the VM flow portion is - although Network Insight does have options to integrate a few physical switches into it - we can't really get an end-to-end flow of the network. We might be using a few switches that are not supported by Network Insight. That is where they can improve, in the support for more physical switches and network devices."

"The product is slightly complex use, while still being user-friendly. It could use more training modules, as it is not a straightforward product."

"The solution can be improved by making it more compatible with other brands, allowing for better integration."

"The only real improvement they can make is to add more third-party vendors into the environment, mostly switch manufacturers, because it's really limited to Cisco equipment and there are a lot of companies out there other than Cisco."

More vRealize Network Insight cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."

"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."

"vRealize Network Insight is expensive."

"The solution has helped us to reduce time, increase performance, reduce costs, and even easily manage networks. We are probably seeing 10 to 20 percent labor savings because we are able to be very specific and focused on what we want to do. It ends up saving the customer money and makes us be more efficient on our cost deliveries."

"Cost always has room for improvement, you could always make it cheaper. But I think it's a good value for what you pay for it."

"It's an expensive product because we have a lot of nodes."

"I rate vRealize Network Insight's pricing a seven point five out of ten."

"The solution has reduced the time that we spend on other products. For example, with NSX, we were able to quickly find things that we would normally spend days trying to figure out."

"It's a little expensive, but for what you're getting out of the product, you often see the trade-off. It depends on the type of licensing you have. It might be a little too pricey for some."

"We have spent less time investigating network flows, so it is absolutely cost-effective."

More vRealize Network Insight pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	41

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Secure Workload?

The product provides multiple-device integration.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?

See all answers

What do you like most about vRealize Network Insight?

The tool's ease of configuration and use and the availability of information and artifacts through professional services and the web are key factors that customers find valuable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vRealize Network Insight?

In VMware you have to buy a separate license for it. We have VVF and VCF-type of licenses, and if you want to go with this NSX and sort of higher-end professional services, you need to go with VCF....

See all answers

What needs improvement with vRealize Network Insight?

There is room for improvement as not all cases are getting resolved, and we often do not get L3 support directly, having to go through L1 and L2, resulting in delays that usually are a headache for...

See all answers

Comparisons

Cisco Hypershield vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 20% of the time

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 15% of the time

Illumio vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 15% of the time

VMware NSX vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 9% of the time

Cisco ACI vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 9% of the time

More Cisco Secure Workload Competitors

Alluvio AppResponse vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 25% of the time

VMware Aria Operations for Applications vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 16% of the time

DX NetOps vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 13% of the time

Goliath Performance Monitor vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 11% of the time

Nutanix Prism vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 10% of the time

More vRealize Network Insight Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload

November 2025

Download Cisco Secure Workload product report

Buyer's Guide

vRealize Network Insight

October 2025

Download vRealize Network Insight product report

Also Known As

Cisco Tetration

Arkin

Overview

Cisco Secure Workload is a cloud and data security solution that offers a zero-trust policy of keeping an organization’s application workloads safe and secure throughout the entire on-premise and cloud data center ecosystems.

Cisco Secure Workload will consistently provide protection by discovering workload process anomalies, stopping threats immediately, minimizing the risk threat surface, and aborting any lateral movement.

Today’s ecosystems are very elastic, and in the application-focused dynamic of today’s aggressive marketplace, Cisco Secure Workload delivers a robust security solution that works effectively with today’s most popular applications. The solution uniquely surrounds each and every workload to ensure organizations are able to keep their data, network, and applications safe and secure at all times. Cisco Secure Workload ensures that enterprise organizations can maintain secure applications by consistently building firewalls around every workload level throughout the entire ecosystem. The solution can manage applications that are deployed on containers, virtual machines, or bare-metal servers.

Cisco Secure workload is able to meet an organization's busy needs and offers flexible options such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and on-premises options. Using the Secure Workload SaaS options, users receive all the benefits of Cisco Secure Workload protection without the hassle of having to deploy and maintain the platform on premises. Users are responsible for acquiring the necessary software licensing and deploying software agents. Using SaaS, Secure Workload runs in the cloud and is operated and maintained by Cisco. This option offers the ability to scale easily and is a popular choice for SaaS-first and SaaS-only clients. Many organizations find they get the best TCO and achieve the best productivity and profitability using the SaaS options.

When choosing on-premises options, organizations choose between hardware-based appliance models (large or small form factors). Platform selection is dependent on scalability goals, the desired fidelity level of flow telemetry, and the actual number of workloads. When a user chooses to configure Cisco Secure Workload for a conversation-only flow telemetry for all workloads, each platform has the capability to scale up vertically twice the default platform scale. Additionally, with Secure Workload, it is possible for the platform to be scaled horizontally in order to satisfy the demands of extra large widely distributed enterprise environments using federation capabilities.

Cisco Secure Workload also provides a robust disaster recovery (DR) tool, which helps to make it a complete, comprehensive solution. The DR allows for continuous restore and backup capabilities that enable users to quickly remediate operations and data to a standby cluster in the event of a drastic failure or disaster.

Reviews from Real Users

“The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage. The telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent. It's complete. You see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network. Other valuable features include vast support for annotations, flexible user applications, machine learning, automatic classification, and hierarchical policies.” - CTO at a tech vendor

Cisco

VMware vRealize Network Insight delivers intelligent operations for software-defined networking and security. It helps customers build an optimized, highly-available and secure network infrastructure across multi-cloud environments. It accelerates micro-segmentation planning and deployment, enables visibility across virtual and physical networks and provides operational views to manage and scale VMware NSX deployments.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)

NTTi3, VCIX-NV, VMware Networking and Security Business Unit, Illumio, CompuNet

Buyer's Guide

Cloud and Data Center Security

October 2025

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