Blue Ridge Networks LinkGuard vs Cilium: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
Blue Ridge Networks LinkGuard is a commercial network access control tool by Blue Ridge Networks. Cilium is a free network access control tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best network access control fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, company size fit, deployment model, here is our conclusion:
Mid-market and enterprise security teams defending distributed workforces should consider LinkGuard for its network micro-segmentation paired with cellular-aware remote access, a combination most NAC vendors skip. The vendor covers all four NIST CSF 2.0 categories from access control through continuous monitoring, and the quantum-resilience encryption layer adds genuine future-proofing against data harvesting attacks. Skip this if your priority is visibility into east-west traffic anomalies; LinkGuard emphasizes enforcement and asset obfuscation over the detection analytics that catch lateral movement in real time.
Platform teams running Kubernetes on-premises or in hybrid clouds will get the most from Cilium because its eBPF kernel-level enforcement eliminates the latency and blind spots of traditional overlay networking. With 23,959 GitHub stars and active deployments at scale across financial services and public sector organizations, Cilium's approach to policy enforcement at the dataplane level is proven; it also handles observability without requiring sidecar injection, which keeps resource overhead predictable. Not the right fit for teams needing a managed SaaS experience or those prioritizing CSPM and infrastructure compliance scanning over network microsegmentation.
