Overview
Product Information on Cisco Secure Workload
What is Cisco Secure Workload?
Cisco Secure Workload Pricing
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Overall experience with Cisco Secure Workload
“Cisco Secure Workload - Entry Into The World of Enterprise Segmentation”
“Strong vendor but weak inner workings”
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Company Description
Cisco is a company that specializes in networking technologies, particularly Internet Protocol (IP)-based solutions. It was established in 1984 by a group of computer scientists from Stanford University. As of today, Cisco has a global workforce, continuing to innovate in various fields, notably in routing and switching. Adding to its core business, the company also delves into emerging technologies including home networking, IP telephony, optical networking, security features, storage area networking, and wireless technology. Moreover, Cisco extends its expertise to offer a sweeping range of services such as technical support and advanced services. The company sells its products and services on an enterprise level, to commercial businesses, service providers, and end-users.
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Key Insights
A Snapshot of What Matters - Based on Validated User Reviews
User Sentiment About Cisco Secure Workload
Reviewer Insights for: Cisco Secure Workload
Deciding Factors: Cisco Secure Workload Vs. Market Average
Performance of Cisco Secure Workload Across Market Features
Cisco Secure Workload Likes & Dislikes
Strengths of the product include the versatility to not only provide brownfield segmentation capabilities, but also enable application dependency mapping, application observability, forensic analysis capabilities, vulnerability insights, and integration into existing investments to drive intelligent segmentation, both inside and outside of the Cisco ecosystem.
Strong vendor support, unified experience when moving product-to-product
Granular micro segmentation and policy enforcement - the UI makes it easier to see application flows and create rules, and the real-time telemetry helped us catch lateral-movement attempts faster than before.
Weaknesses of the product observed in PoC, in comparison to peers, included policy push time from the central orchestrator being slower than comparative vendors. Further, the language regarding 'Consumer' & 'Provider' is different to other peer tooling, where the conventional 'Source' and 'Destination' language is used - this requires adaptation. Lastly, the evolving story between Secure Workload and Hypershield is still unclear, given the overlap in supported operating systems. It is understood the difference in enablement (eBPF) vs native OS firewall configuration, however, the story of when to use which solution needs to be clearer.
There is a lot of room left for improvement for actual tech behind the scenes. Customization is also of question due to known limits of it.
Steep learning curve and somewhat clunky initial setup; documentation is decent but could be more prescriptive for complex multi-cloud environments. Also, the licensing/pricing can feel heavy for smaller teams.
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Cisco Secure Workload Reviews and Ratings
- IT Manager1B-10B USDBankingReview Source
Cisco Secure Workload - Entry Into The World of Enterprise Segmentation
Working with Cisco as part of this engagement has been rewarding and fulfilling, enabling our enterprise to conduct all relevant due-diligence and technical validation, with full support from the account team, both technically and commercially. Cisco demonstrated their credentials as a partner to the enterprise within this engagement. - ENGINEER<50M USDIT ServicesReview Source
Deployment Requires Effort but Boosts Visibility Into East-West Traffic and Segmentation
Solid and professional. Deployment took some effort up front, but once configured, Cisco Secure Workload reliably reduced noise and gave us clearer visibility into east-west traffic and micro segmentation across our cloud and on-premises environments. - IT SOLUTION CONSULTANT50M-1B USDIT ServicesReview Source
Effective Workload Protection With Challenging Learning Curve For New Cisco Users
I would rate my overall experience with Cisco Secure Workload as very good. The platform is reliable, provides strong visibility, and effective workload protection across hybrid environments - NETWORK ENGINEER1B-10B USDTransportationReview Source
Traffic Insights Strong With Cisco CSW, Cost and Compute Demands Noted
Cisco CSW is easy to deploy and manage if you use the SaaS product instead of the on-prem option. It provides valuable insight into traffic flow and helps mitigate the attack surface. - IT Manager1B-10B USDEnergy and UtilitiesReview Source
Smooth deployment of microsegmentation
The SaaS deployment model enabled us to run a short POC to determine the suitability of CSW and then move into a production deployment. We were impressed with the ability of the product to discover and recommend suitable firewall policies which helped avoid any impact to service. CSW is not widely used in our location and finding an experienced implementation partner was essential



