Data center security software protects data, applications, and infrastructure in on-premises, hybrid cloud, and multicloud environments.
The data center security market was estimated to be valued at around $11.7 billion in 2020, and it is anticipated to reach $26.6 billion by 2026, according to Mordor Intelligence.
See below to learn all about the top data center security software in the market:
Choosing the data center security software
- Top data center security software
- Data center security software features
- Data center security software benefits
- Use cases
See more: The Data Center Equipment Market
Top data center security software
Cisco ACI
Cisco, based in San Jose, California, is a software development company with 71,000 professionals working on every software from IP telephony to wireless technology. Cisco’s product, Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), is a data center security solution. 
Cisco ACI is vital to a data center’s safety and security as data needs become more prevalent in business. Cisco ACI aims to give automation and consistency, multi-cloud acceleration, network protection, and centralized management. Connecting, building, and governing data centers and their data is a valuable part of Cisco ACI.
“Our Cisco ACI network is one of the largest data center fabrics in the world. It’s the ‘nerve center’ that provides connectivity between our subscribers and mobile services,” says Ryota Mibu, vice division manager, cloud platform, Rakuten Mobile
Cisco ACI won the “Data Center Networking Vendor of the Year” award by Channel Middle East awards and won the “infoTECH Spotlight Data Center Excellence” Awards by TMC.
Differentiators
- Cisco ThousandEyes integration
- Use GUI and REST API under one dashboard
- SSL offload engines
Pricing
For pricing, go to Cisco’s how to buy page.
FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW)
Sunnyvale, California-based Fortinet is a computer and network security company whose mission is to protect devices and data for their customers. Their product, FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW), is a data center security solution. 
FortiGate NGFW’s focus is to provide enterprise security through visibility and protection; integrated proxy; hyper-scale security; built-in security fabric; and automation-driven network management. By using artificial intelligence (AI), SOC, and NOC processes, and prevention software, FortiGate NGFW enables security for data centers.
“Very easy to implement and configure, especially if you already have other Fortinet products in your network they all bind into the one “security fabric” and provide a great overview of all your network devices and events in your network,” says a user of FortiGate NGFW on Gartner Peer Insights.
Fortinet has been recognized for the Enterprise Data Center, Distributed Enterprise, and SMB use cases in the Critical Capabilities report.
Differentiators
- Uses FortiGuard Services
- Converges NOC and SOC
- High gigabit port density
Pricing
For a demo of FortiGate NGFW, go to Fortinet’s demo center page.
HashiCorp Vault
HashiCorp is a software company with a freemium business model that provides open-source tools and commercial products that enable developers, operators, and security professionals to provision, secure, run and connect cloud-computing infrastructure. HashiCorp’s product, Vault, is security software that works specifically with data centers.
Vault supports multi-data center replication to provide applications with high availability, give high latency for remote businesses, and aims to prevent loss or outages during connectivity failures. Vault protects an organization’s important data and forms, along with having credential rotation and encryption key rolling.
“HashiCorp Vault had all the features, functionality, and security settings we needed to drive greater standardization and adoption across the company while still maintaining each team’s autonomy and unique work style,” says Donald Havas, Associate director, Ubisoft, a user of HashiCorp Vault.
HashiCorp is the U.S. winner and a global finalist for the 2022 Microsoft Open Source Software (OSS) Azure Partner of the Year Award.
Differentiators
- Generates PKI certificates
- Encryption key
- Secret management
Pricing
For pricing, join HashiCorp Cloud Platform and start a free trial.
Juniper Advanced Threat Prevention
Juniper Networks is a computer networking products company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Juniper has over 9,000 professionals working to service over 30,000 enterprises. Juniper Networks’ product, Juniper Advanced Threat Prevention (ATP), is a data center security software.
Juniper ATP Cloud is available in North America, EMEA, and APAC. The worldwide connection allows customers to benefit from cloud-based threat prevention. Juniper ATP to add AI-driven risk profiling, analytics, flexible deployment, malware detection, and traffic insights. A key part of Juniper ATP is the SRX Series Firewall made for correlation, inspection, and collection of a company’s data.
“Being a Juniper shop makes my life and my team’s lives easier. We run a network that supports 30,000 employees with four people, and on a day-to-day basis, the network is run by two or three people. We have efficient network operations,” says Dennis Doyne, chief network operations officer, City of Philadelphia, a user of Juniper ATP.
Juniper Networks won both “Voice of the Customer: Network Firewalls” by Gartner Peer Insights and Juniper received the Highest Security Effective Rating from CyberRatings Enterprise.
Differentiators
- Uses SecIntel
- Malware sandboxing
- Uses Adaptive Threat Profiling
Pricing
For pricing, go to the Juniper Networks how to buy page.
McAfee Data Center Security Suite for Databases
San Jose-based computer and network security company, McAfee, is focused on online protection and growing along with it. McAfee’s data center security software, McAfee Data Center Security Suite for Databases, is one of the top security software.
The McAfee Data Center Security Suite for Databases has three main parts to achieve positive results: McAfee Vulnerability Manager for Databases, McAfee Database Activity Monitoring, and McAfee Virtual Patching for Databases. These security measures seek to automatically discover potential vulnerabilities; show timely visibility into database activity; protect databases from potential malware or hacks before installing patch updates.
“McAfee Data Center Security Suite for Databases is the best antivirus or malware security for databases. By utilizing this we can verify our databases. We can likewise give a preliminary rendition which is useful for testing the security of the item,” says a user of McAfee Data Center Security Suite for Databases on G2.
McAfee was named Gold Winner for Best Cybersecurity Company in North America; Secure Home Platform for Cybersecurity for Connected Home; McAfee LiveSafe for Anti-Virus in the Cybersecurity Excellence Awards.
Differentiators
- Eliminate IT teams need to know DBMS knowledge
- Minimize audit cycles
- Made of three systems
Pricing
For pricing, go to this page.
Symantec Data Center Security
Symantec, a software company owned by Broadcom Software, works to protect applications and data for distinct organizations. Symantec’s data center security software, Symantec Data Center Security (DCS), focuses on software-defined data centers (SDDC) and works to secure their infrastructure.
Symantec DCS uses security services including anti-malware; server, device, OS, and application hardening; firewall; and network intrusion prevention to assist in protecting data centers. The cybersecurity platform offers a suite of data security tools, including endpoint security; web and network security; cloud security; ongoing threat intelligence; AI and machine learning; API management; and automation.
“Symantec Data Center Security offers advanced data center protection in all its infrastructure, … including that in the cloud and virtual or specific environments. It concentrates its focus on the protection against malware, IPS, and bastion of all the data center processes,” says Bryan S., a user of Symantec DCS.
Symantec was named a Top Player in the Radicati Endpoint Security by Market Quadrant and won six AV-TEST Awards.
Differentiators
- Host IDS and IPS Policies
- Application and protected whitelisting
- Ability to secure unpatched applications
Pricing
For pricing, go to buy via partner or contact us page.
Trend Micro Cloud One
Tokyo-based Trend Micro is a software development company focused on cyber security. With 7,000 employees spread across 65 countries, Trend Micro offers a broad array of tools and solutions that address data center security requirements. Their product, Trend Micro Cloud One, is a data center security device built to protect both physical and cloud data centers.
Trend Micro Cloud One’s workload security has been developed to specifically work with virtualized data centers, supporting operations and security teams to expand their security systems with the least impact on performance. Trend Micro Cloud One delivers less risk, lower operational costs, and a brisk response to threats with security, visibility, and hands-on or automated management by using Trend Micro Cloud One’s Deep Security software.
Threats are monitored every day through 45 billion URLs, emails, malware, ransomware, and vulnerabilities. Trend Micro has over 15 global research centers and 450 internal researchers to maximize security awareness.
“At our central data center, everything is transmitted via SSL and protected by Trend Micro Deep Security, which keeps our environment secure,” says Thomas M. Cifrino Jr., technology manager, BIDCO, a user of Trend Micro Deep Security.
Trend Micro was recognized in IDC’s Worldwide Cloud Workload Security Market Shares report along with being named a leader in The Forrester Wave: Cloud Workload Security.
Differentiators
- Speed PCI-DSS
- Vendor-defined service capacity
- Government security clearance
Pricing
For pricing, go to the buy page.
VMware NSX
VMware, based in Palo Alto, California, is a software development provider of services for apps and giving digital innovation with enterprise control. VMware aims to provide safety and security measures for their customers using edge computing, AI, machine learning (ML), and other new technologies. VMware’s data center security software, VMware NSX, is a leading software.
VMware NSX for data centers includes security components such as a firewall, network switch, route, and load balancer to streamline security. This grants the organization to utilize VMware NSX to reproduce security configurations over multiple clouds and physical servers. The security measures VMware NSX gives an organization the ability to change as the environment and threats change.
“Our customers trust us with their data and applications. We use VMware technologies to ensure we’re meeting their requirements,” says David Hewett, director of infrastructure services, Grant Street Group, a user of VMware NSX.
VMware was awarded a “Best in Class Award” from Loyalty360.
Differentiators
- Decoupled from vCenter server
- Intrinsic segmentation
- Internal routing of VXLans
Pricing
For pricing, go to the get started page, and select what option works best.
Trellix Intrusion Prevention System
Trellix is a computer and network security company with over 40,000 business and government customers. Trellix uses a partner ecosystem, accelerates technology innovation, uses machine learning (ML), and automation to make their security products assist customers. Their data center security software, Trellix Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), is an up-and-coming product on the market.
Trellix IPS can detect and block threats with both applications and data; give both centralized management for visibility and control; signature-less malware analysis; inbound and outbound SSL decryption for the network traffic, and provides virtual appliances if needed.
“Supporting our customers to be more resilient and stay one step ahead of adversaries has always been a priority — that’s why the majority of our enterprise and government customers have worked with us for over 16 years,” says Bryan Palma, CEO of Trellix.
Trellix has won the “Network Detection and Response Award” by Cyber Security Global Excellence, as well as the “Next-Generation IPS-Certified Secure Distinction Award” by Miercom.
Differentiators
- Botnets (protection against bots)
- Endpoint protection and disk encryption
- Uses ePolicy Orchestrator
Pricing
For pricing, go to the Trellix contact us page.
Bitdefender GravityZone Data Center Security
Bitdefender is a software development company that is focused on cybersecurity, specifically threat prevention, detection, and response solutions in 170 countries. Bitdefender’s data center security software, Bitdefender GravityZone Data Center Security, is ranked as one of the best in the market. 
Bitdefender GravityZone Data Center Security’s goal is to support all software-defined data centers, give manageable streamlines to meet a company’s performance demands and secure enterprises’ data centers. Bitdefender GravityZone Data Center Security provides agentless security, giving enterprise-grade protection, and assists in the support of virtualization and big data for businesses.
“Everything is easier to manage and better protected with GravityZone from a security standpoint. We keep out the malware and no longer have downtime and performance issues related to security,” Johan Vorsterman van Oijen, technical project lead, HAN.
Bitdefender was recognized as the number one in the Real-World Protection in AV-Comparatives Business Security Test by AV and was recognized as a Top Player for ADT protection by Radicati Group.
Differentiators
- Agentless security
- EDR
- Security for exchange
Pricing
For pricing, go to the Bitdefender contact us page.
For more products: Google Compute Engine Review
Data center security software features
Scanning: detects malware and cyber threats, preventing damage before it happens
User-specific: provides customization for what an enterprise needs
Visibility: offers security view to help management view to and protect data
Fabric integration: connects data, applications, processes, devices, and user experience
Data center security software benefits
- Automation and consistency
- Prevention of viruses, malware, and cyber threats
- Protection of an organization’s valuable data
- Reduced costs of development
Data center security software use cases
Creditsafe
Creditsafe is a provider of credit reports, with over 200,000 subscription users and 16 offices in 12 countries.
Creditsafe’s customers needed to be protected from cyberattacks on their financial information, and Creditsafe was required to have more visibility of the data. While trying out different products, they came across Bitdefender.
Bitdefender helped Creditsafe complete full scans quickly, decreased CPU utilization, from 60% to almost none, caught malware, and reduced IT staff time.
“Bitdefender’s reporting is miles ahead of our previous solution. With Bitdefender, it’s easy and clear to see everything across our data center on a granular level and then customize how we want systems to react and perform,” says Dan Crofts, senior infrastructure engineer, Creditsafe group.
America’s Test Kitchen
America’s Test Kitchen is a media business to help its customers create new meals without the hassle.
As America’s Test Kitchen expanded their business, they were needing to strengthen their data centers and expand to fit their growth. America’s Test Kitchen turned to Juniper Networks for help.
Juniper Networks was able to build a foundation to fuel and support their company’s expansion, strengthen their cybersecurity, and maximize visibility and network operations.
“We are doing things that we could never have accomplished before Juniper. We centralized management of our entire network, which is located across several facilities, and reduced administrative overhead due to a consistent network operating system, management commands, and management user interfaces,” says Dustin Brandt, director of IT, America’s Test Kitchen.
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