CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Fastly vs NETSCOUT

Fastly is an edge cloud platform that helps companies deliver fast, secure, and reliable digital experiences. NETSCOUT sells observability, cybersecurity, and AIOps solutions powered by the NETSCOUT Data Platform. CISO Tribune files both under DDoS protection. This page sets the two records side by side: what each sells, where it is based, who owns and funds it, the customers it names and its recent news, each fact numbered to its source.

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Up to four companies side by side.

  • Fastly
  • NETSCOUT
Fastly vs NETSCOUT: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
FastlyFastly is an edge cloud platform that helps companies deliver fast, secure, and reliable digital experiences.fastly.comNETSCOUTNETSCOUT sells observability, cybersecurity, and AIOps solutions powered by the NETSCOUT Data Platform.netscout.com
What it sells
  • Next-Gen WAF[2][9][11]A web application firewall that monitors suspicious and anomalous web traffic.
  • DDoS Protection[5][6][10]Real-time visibility into and defense against common DDoS attacks.
  • API Discovery[10]A continuously-updating record of incoming API requests.
  • Managed Security[5][11]24/7 expert-managed WAF, bot, and DDoS threat protection.
  • AI Runtime Control[7][12]A unified control plane between applications and AI models.
  • Managed CDN[5]Fastly's managed cloud CDN deployed inside the customer's own network.
  • Professional Services[5]Expert help to migrate or optimize a delivery service.
  • Arbor Edge Defense (AED)[7]Arbor Edge Defense (AED) is an inline security appliance deployed at the network perimeter.
  • Arbor Sightline Mobile[7]Arbor Sightline Mobile identifies security threats and traffic anomalies in 4G and 5G networks.
  • ATLAS Intelligence Feed (AIF)[7]ATLAS Intelligence Feed (AIF) provides threat intelligence on DDoS threats.
  • nGenius Collector[7]The nGenius Collector is an appliance that collects flow-based data from enabled instrumentation.
  • NETSCOUT Visibility as a Service[8]NETSCOUT Visibility as a Service (VaaS) pairs a customer team with expert engineers.
Categories
Headquarters
San Francisco, United States[4]Westford, United States
Founded
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Ownership and funding
Public (NYSE: FSLY)[1][8]Public (NASDAQ: NTCT)[2][4][5]
Named customers
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Recent news
  • September 28, 2026Comcast and Fastly are working with NBCUniversal to run Fastly delivery software on Comcast's network for live streaming events on Peacock.[18]
  • September 21, 2026Fastly announced AI Runtime Control, AI Firewall and new API Security capabilities aimed at giving organizations visibility and control across their AI systems.[7]
  • June 10, 2026Fastly and Skyfire announced a partnership under which Skyfire integrated its identity and payment-backed credentials into Fastly's edge cloud platform.[19]
Not stated on its pages
G2 and Gartner Peer Insights
  • G2: listed, seen November 3, 2026[8]
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
  • G2: Not stated on its pages
  • Gartner Peer Insights: listed, seen October 26, 2026[5]
Who it fits
From its own pages, Fastly sells mainly to developers, security teams, and digital businesses. Fastly says its security products protect applications, APIs, and microservices, wherever they live. Fastly says it powers media brands with an open edge cloud platform for live and on-demand entertainment. Fastly Next-Gen WAF can be deployed in three different ways, including directly on customers' own web servers. Managed Security Professional is sold to customers that purchase Fastly Full-Site Delivery and Network Services Enterprise Support, along with either Next-Gen WAF or Edge Rate Limiting.From its own pages, NETSCOUT sells to both enterprises and service providers. Enterprises are offered DDoS mitigation with on-premises and cloud defense in a hybrid model. Mobile network operators are offered DDoS protection for multi-access edge computing environments. Communication service providers are offered service assurance and security for IoT devices. Financial entities are offered compliance solutions for DORA. NETSCOUT can deploy network detection and response into AWS environments.
Last verified
September 27, 2026November 9, 2026

Where they overlap

  • Fastly and NETSCOUT are both filed under DDoS protection.
  • Both are headquartered in the United States.
  • Both are public companies.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Fastly's primary category is WAF and WAAP; NETSCOUT's is DDoS protection.
  • Fastly is also filed under Bot and abuse management and API security. NETSCOUT is also filed under Network visibility and traffic brokering and Network detection and response.
  • Fastly lists Next-Gen WAF, DDoS Protection, API Discovery, Managed Security, AI Runtime Control and 2 more. NETSCOUT lists Arbor Edge Defense (AED), Arbor Sightline Mobile, ATLAS Intelligence Feed (AIF), nGenius Collector and NETSCOUT Visibility as a Service.
  • Fastly is headquartered in San Francisco, United States. NETSCOUT is headquartered in Westford, United States.
  • Fastly is a public company listed on NYSE as FSLY. NETSCOUT is a public company listed on NASDAQ as NTCT.

What it sells: Fastly

What Next-Gen WAF does[2][9][11]
Fastly Next-Gen WAF protects, in real-time, against attacks directed at the applications and origin servers that customers specify. Next-Gen WAF can be deployed in three different ways. Next-Gen WAF continues to be powered by Signal Sciences technology.
What DDoS Protection does[5][6][10]
Fastly DDoS Protection provides real-time visibility into and defense against common Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Fastly describes it as keeping customers performant and available without any required configuration.
What Managed Security does[5][11]
Fastly describes Managed Security as 24/7 expert-managed WAF, bot, and DDoS threat protection. Managed Security Professional provides continuous monitoring of included Fastly security products and proactive action by Fastly in the event of an identified security incident. Managed Security Professional includes enhanced access to Fastly's Customer Security Operations Center (CSOC).
What AI Runtime Control does[7][12]
ARC is a unified control plane that sits between applications and AI models, giving centralized visibility, governance, and control over all AI traffic. AI Firewall is a security module within ARC that protects AI-powered applications from prompt injection attacks with near-zero latency impact.

What it sells: NETSCOUT

What Arbor Edge Defense (AED) does[7]
Arbor Edge Defense (AED) is deployed between the internet router and firewall. Arbor Edge Defense (AED) provides stateless, on-premise DDoS protection.
What Arbor Sightline Mobile does[7]
Arbor Sightline Mobile identifies security threats and traffic anomalies in 4G and 5G networks. Arbor Sightline Mobile provides visibility into traffic behavior across a mobile network.
What nGenius Collector does[7]
The nGenius Collector collects flow-based data from enabled instrumentation. The nGenius Collector then analyzes the data and generates insights for use by network teams.
What NETSCOUT Visibility as a Service does[8]
NETSCOUT Visibility as a Service (VaaS) pairs a customer team with expert engineers. The expert engineers configure and manage the customer deployment.

Questions about Fastly and NETSCOUT

What do Fastly and NETSCOUT sell?
Fastly sells Next-Gen WAF, DDoS Protection, API Discovery, Managed Security, AI Runtime Control and 2 more. NETSCOUT sells Arbor Edge Defense (AED), Arbor Sightline Mobile, ATLAS Intelligence Feed (AIF), nGenius Collector and NETSCOUT Visibility as a Service.
Are Fastly and NETSCOUT in the same category?
They share DDoS protection. Fastly's primary category is WAF and WAAP and NETSCOUT's is DDoS protection.
Where are Fastly and NETSCOUT headquartered?
Fastly is headquartered in San Francisco, United States. NETSCOUT is headquartered in Westford, United States.
Who owns Fastly and NETSCOUT?
Fastly is a public company listed on NYSE as FSLY. NETSCOUT is a public company listed on NASDAQ as NTCT.
Who are Fastly and NETSCOUT sold to?
From its own pages, Fastly sells mainly to developers, security teams, and digital businesses. From its own pages, NETSCOUT sells to both enterprises and service providers.
What have Fastly and NETSCOUT announced recently?
September 28, 2026: Comcast and Fastly are working with NBCUniversal to run Fastly delivery software on Comcast's network for live streaming events on Peacock.

About Fastly

Fastly is an edge cloud platform that helps companies deliver fast, secure, and reliable digital experiences. Fastly combines CDN, security (including WAF and DDoS protection), and edge computing so teams can control how content and applications are delivered and protected in real-time. Fastly describes one programmable platform to scale AI systems, protect content from bots, and run the edge with natural language. Fastly describes Secure as protecting apps and APIs from AI-scale threats. Fastly says it powers millions of mission-critical applications in thousands of the world's most digitally-advanced companies.[3][5][6]

Fastly says its application security solutions are designed for security and resilience at global scale and help teams mitigate evolving threats and control bots. Fastly offers CDN for content delivery, WAF for application protection, DDoS mitigation, bot management, and edge compute solutions for running logic closer to users. Fastly says its products work together as a unified platform. Fastly refers to its global network as having 622 Tbps of capacity.[5][6]

Fastly Next-Gen WAF is a web application firewall that monitors for suspicious and anomalous web traffic and protects, in real-time, against attacks directed at the applications and origin servers that customers specify. Fastly Next-Gen WAF now collectively refers to the products previously known as the Signal Sciences Cloud WAF and Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF. Fastly Next-Gen WAF continues to be powered by Signal Sciences technology. Next-Gen WAF identifies and tracks attacks across all of a customer's deployments and determines whether to flag the originating IP address as potentially problematic, rate limit the IP address or allow the request. Next-Gen WAF can be deployed in three different ways. The On-Prem WAF deployment consists of two components, the module and the agent. Cloud WAF deployment requires uploading a TLS certificate, adding an origin server using the Next-Gen WAF control panel, and updating DNS records. Next-Gen WAF customers receive threat intelligence through the Network Learning Exchange (NLX) feature, which adds a unique signal to information in the control panels.[9]

Fastly DDoS Protection provides real-time visibility into and defense against common Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Fastly Client-Side Protection provides the ability to inventory and control resources such as scripts, images, and fonts.[10]

Fastly describes Managed Security as 24/7 expert-managed WAF, bot, and DDoS threat protection. Managed Security Professional provides continuous monitoring of included Fastly security products and proactive action by Fastly in the event of an identified security incident. Managed Security Professional includes enhanced access to Fastly's Customer Security Operations Center (CSOC) and periodic consultation with a Designated Security Specialist. Managed Security Professional includes a quarterly report documenting events observed and actions taken, recommendations for configuration changes and maintenance, and product updates.[5][11]

ARC is a unified control plane that sits between applications and AI models, giving centralized visibility, governance, and control over all AI traffic. ARC replaces raw provider API keys with rotatable virtual keys and supports connecting to providers via federated SSO pass-through. ARC lets customers set a monthly dollar budget per virtual key, with a choice of hard-block or continue-serving once exhausted. AI Firewall is a security module within ARC that protects AI-powered applications from prompt injection attacks with near-zero latency impact. AI Firewall uses Fastly's SmartParse detection engine and custom guardrails to detect attacks like prompt injection and other LLM specific attacks.[12]

Fastly's cloud CDN accelerates the delivery of dynamic content and caches website content that is unpredictable and event-driven. Fastly's Compute platform helps customers compile custom code to WebAssembly and runs it at the Fastly edge. Deploying to a Compute service makes customer logic available across the Fastly network with a single deploy action. Fastly Object Storage is an Amazon S3-compatible large object storage solution. Fastly's Platform TLS product allows customers to programmatically manage certificates and keys for Transport Layer Security (TLS) using a web API. Origin Inspector provides a dataset and visualizations that offer real-time and historical visibility into responses delivered from origin servers to the Fastly Edge Cloud. Fastly says customers can configure the Fastly CDN service to cache and transmit protected health information (PHI) in keeping with Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) security requirements. Fastly describes Managed CDN as Fastly's managed cloud CDN deployed inside the customer's own network, and Professional Services as expert help to migrate or optimize a delivery service. Fastly describes itself as an ICANN-accredited domain registrar.[2][5][6][10][11][13][14][15][16][17]

Fastly on the record

Sources

Fastly full record

  1. [1]Fastly Announces Acquisition of GlitchFastly via Business Wire · businesswire.com · published May 19, 2022 · Tier A
  2. [2]Web application api protectionFastly · fastly.com · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]SecureFastly · fastly.com · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]Fsly 20241231Fastly, Inc. via SEC EDGAR (Form 10-K) · sec.gov · published February 25, 2025 · Tier A
  5. [5]Powering the best of the internet | FastlyFastly · undated page, accessed October 25, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Fastly Edge Cloud Platform | FastlyFastly · undated page, accessed October 25, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]Fastly Launches AI Firewall and AI Runtime Control to Secure and Scale AIFastly, Inc. (Business Wire) · published September 21, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Fastly Content Delivery Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2G2 · undated page, accessed October 25, 2026 · Tier C
  9. [9]Fastly Next-Gen WAF | Fastly ProductsFastly · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Security | Fastly DocumentationFastly · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Managed Security Professional | Fastly ProductsFastly · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Fastly ARC | AI Runtime Control | FastlyFastly · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Compute | Fastly ProductsFastly · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Products | Fastly DocumentationFastly · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  15. [15]Platform TLS | Fastly ProductsFastly · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  16. [16]Origin Inspector | Fastly ProductsFastly · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  17. [17]Domain Research API | FastlyFastly · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  18. [18]Comcast and Fastly’s New Content Delivery Model Powers Highest Quality Experience for Peacock’s Biggest Live EventsFastly · published September 28, 2026 · Tier A
  19. [19]Fastly and Skyfire Partner to Enable Trusted Agentic Commerce with Verified Identity at the EdgeFastly · published June 10, 2026 · Tier A

NETSCOUT full record

  1. [1]netscout.comNETSCOUT · netscout.com · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]DefaultNETSCOUT · ir.netscout.com · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]D128983d8kNETSCOUT via SEC EDGAR · sec.gov · published June 1, 2022 · Tier A
  4. [4]NETSCOUT Observability, Cybersecurity, DDoS, & AIOps SolutionsNETSCOUT · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]NETSCOUT SYSTEMS Reviews - Gartner Peer InsightsGartner Peer Insights · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier C
  6. [6]Shadow AI Detection | NETSCOUTNETSCOUT · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]Products | NETSCOUTNETSCOUT · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Solutions | NETSCOUTNETSCOUT · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]NETSCOUT Trust Center | Powered by SafeBaseNETSCOUT · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A

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