EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceNetwork & Firewall ManagementHeadquarters: DE

ARP-GUARD: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

ARP-GUARD is a network access control (NAC) product from ISL Internet Sicherheitslösungen GmbH. It detects every device that connects to a network, identifies it through fingerprinting and applies rules, such as placing it in a quarantine VLAN. Authentication works with SNMP, MAC-based RADIUS and 802.1X, alone or mixed, independent of switch vendors. Sensors report to central management, so several locations can be run from one place. ISL also offers NAC-as-a-Service, in which certified partners operate the solution.

ISL has its seat in Bochum, Germany, and is the manufacturer of ARP-GUARD; its website names no parent company. The product is software that you run in your own network or have a partner run, so device and traffic information stays with you or your chosen partner rather than with a US cloud provider. The vendor lists support for ISO 27001, IT-Grundschutz and B3S; check the details for your sector.

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Sovereignty score
80 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in the EU: European law applies
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    EU-only hosting
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-380
    Closed source, but self-hostable: encryption keys and runtime under your own control
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-680
    Closed source, but self-hostable on your own infrastructure

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked October 14, 2026
Headquarters
DE (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting
Self-hosted, e.g. in EU (your choice)Verified by hand
Open-source
NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
YesVendor-stated
Category
Network & Firewall Management
Type
Product
Website
isl.de ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to ARP-GUARD

The European alternatives to ARP-GUARD come from our knowledge base of over 8,400 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

62 European Network & Firewall Management vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

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Why digital sovereignty matters with ARP-GUARD

ARP-GUARD is headquartered in DE and therefore falls under European law: the GDPR, NIS2 and the Data Act. No foreign legislation can compel access to your data.

ARP-GUARD runs on infrastructure you choose and control yourself. You decide where the data lives, including fully within the EU if you want — this is not a fixed hosting choice made by the vendor.

ARP-GUARD is closed source, but you run the software yourself on your own infrastructure. The encryption keys and the runtime therefore stay under your own control, though you cannot audit or modify the source code. Ask about export options and open standards to limit software-level lock-in.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs ARP-GUARD together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to ARP-GUARD?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to ARP-GUARD include Accelleran, ADTRAN Networks (ADVA) and ALCASAR. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to ARP-GUARD?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to ARP-GUARD include ALCASAR. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is ARP-GUARD GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

ARP-GUARD is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes ARP-GUARD an EU-sovereign choice in its own right; the EU alternatives on this page are comparable European tools.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on October 14, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Cyber Resilience Act

Public signals that relate to the EU Cyber Resilience Act. They do not count towards the score. A missing line means "not found publicly".

security.txt
isl.de/.well-known/security.txt

For products in scope of the CRA, CE marking is required from 11 December 2027; this cannot be checked yet.

Checked on October 14, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

In the changelog

Earlier changes to this page, as listed in the public changelog.

Digital sovereignty in Network & Firewall Management

Network & Firewall Management: Central management of firewalls, switches and Wi-Fi, network access control (NAC), load balancing and DNS/DHCP/IPAM. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

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8 European alternatives to ARP-GUARD — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score