Users have noted that Qualys VMDR offers strong automated vulnerability scanning capabilities, comprehensive reporting features, and integration capabilities with other security tools, although there are concerns about the outdated user interface and system performance. On the other hand, Prisma Cloud is praised for its competitive pricing, ease of deployment, and comprehensive security capabilities.
The summary above is based on 142 interviews we conducted recently with Qualys VMDR and Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"We are provided with a single tool to protect all of our cloud resources and applications without having to manage and reconcile compliance reports."
"Most of the customers we are tackling have different tools and solutions, like Qualys, Nessus, and vulnerability management assessment solutions. There are plugins for them, and we can integrate Prisma Cloud with them. We can enrich our telemetry with their data and use the predefined correlation rules in Prisma Cloud. That means we have that work done in seconds."
"The client wasn't using all of the features, but the one that stood out was infrastructure-as-code (IaC). I built IaC use cases and was trying to get them to use it. I also liked cloud workload protection. I worked with the vulnerability management team to develop a process. It's a manual process, so it can be challenging to remediate many image or container issues. It was nice that we could build out a reporting process and download the reports. The reports are solid."
"The application visibility is amazing. For example, sometimes we don't know what a particular custom port is for and what is running on it. The visibility enables us to identify applications, what the protocol is, and what service is behind it. Within Azure, it is doing a great job of providing visibility. We know exactly what is passing through our network. If there is an issue of any sort we are able to quickly detect it and fix the problem."
"It has improved the overall collaboration between SecOps and DevOps. Now, instead of asking people to do something, it is a default offering in the CI/CD. There is less manual intervention and more seamless integration. It is why we don't have many dependencies across many teams, which is definitely a better state."
"The most valuable features of Prisma Cloud are its cloud security posture management and cloud workload protection capabilities."
"CSPM is very useful because it gives us good policies and violation alerts."
"The most valuable features are the alerts and auto-remediation because it allows us a lot of flexibility to customize and do things the Palo Alto team never intended. We faced some challenges with certificates because we also have next-gen firewalls. We would like to equip all the traffic because there have been many cases in which the developers have done things by mistake. Deploying certificates on virtual machines can be complex in a development environment, but we managed to do that with Prisma Cloud."
"It's a good product. After the scan our internet works well. It scans our security posture."
"It is quite easy to implement."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The most valuable feature is the certificate management."
"I find Qualys VM very robust, and it's very useful for vulnerability management and patch management. The value that it brings to my environment is economies of scale. There is no limitation on adding any endpoints. You go by the rule, and it's added once another endpoint is added to our environment. It's automatically installed, and it's less work from our end. It frees up my license automatically if I don't need an endpoint or if my machine is decommissioned. I like the dashboard displays because I don't see any duplication. The most important part is vulnerability management and prioritization. Unlike Symantec, it shows the kind of vulnerability I would want to patch first. It provides a holistic view of the kind of vulnerabilities and the ones I should remediate first. I don't have to do a scan; it just brings up those critical kinds of vulnerabilities like zero-day vulnerabilities and tells me to prioritize them. You have to prioritize these vulnerabilities first and go on with the rest. The dashboard shows me the ones that have been fixed, so I don't have to complete an aging report. The user experience and the graphical interface are good. As it's user-friendly and understandable on an executive level, it brings real value. We also use this solution because it's robust and flexibile."
"Qualys has a continuous endpoint monitoring feature for agent-based scanning. Once you deploy the solution, it monitors everything that is happening every 30 minutes. Then, if there are any vulnerabilities, they are reported."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to run different capabilities with the same agent. With only one agent, we can have EDR, vulnerability management, compliance and some basic SaaS security capabilities."
"Provides great functionality."
"The licensing is a bit confusing."
"A couple of exporting functionalities should be more user-friendly because if I want to export something, I can get a lot of data visible to that particular CSV."
"We would like to have the detections be more contemporaneous. For example, we've seen detections of an overprivileged user or whatever it might be in any of the hundreds of Prisma policies, where there are 50 minutes of latency between the event and the alert."
"When it comes to protecting the full cloud-native stack, it has the right breadth. They're covering all the topics I would care about, like container, cloud configuration, and serverless. There's one gap. There could be a better set of features around identity management—native AWS—IAM roles, and service account management. The depth in each of those areas varies a little bit. While they may have the breadth, I think there's still work to do in flushing out each of those feature sets."
"The challenge that Palo Alto and Prisma have is that, at times, the instructions in an event are a little bit dated and they're not usable. That doesn't apply to all the instructions, but there are times where, for example, the Microsoft or the Amazon side has made some changes and Palo Alto or Prisma was not aware of them. So as we try to remediate an alert in such a case, the instructions absolutely do not work. Then we open up a ticket and they'll reply, "Oh yeah, the API for so-and-so vendor changed and we'll have to work with them on that." That area could be done a little better."
"The UI is the worst."
"There are hundreds of built-in policies for AWS and Azure, but GCP and Oracle are not covered as much as AWS. There is a lot of work to do on that part. There is, obviously, a tiny bit of favoritism towards AWS because it has the most market share."
"One definite area for improvement is the auto-remediation or the CWP area. The second one is the RQL language. It is still not very flexible and does not cover a lot of use cases. The RQL language could be dramatically improved to add more options."
"The tool needs to improve the adding assets and report generation features. I would like to see the policy scan of offline appliances in the product's future releases."
"The solution is a bit expensive if you do not have access to discounts."
"There seems to be a lack of easy onboarding into Qualys."
"There's a need to upgrade or fix the potential vulnerability rate. Around 20,000 potential vulnerabilities were showing in Qualys VMDR, but none of the other tools showed them. When we checked, it wasn't the case. Support explained that even small issues were being counted as vulnerabilities, causing issues in our audit. So, the security features could be improved to identify vulnerabilities accurately."
"Qualys VMDR is basically susceptible to false positives, and false negatives."
"Endpoint stability and fault resolution could be improved."
"Qualys should improve their customer experience. They need to improve the tech support experience and the turnaround time."
"Qualys does have an on-prem solution, but it is very expensive."
More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Pricing and Cost Advice →
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is ranked 1st in Container Security with 82 reviews while Qualys VMDR is ranked 11th in Container Security with 77 reviews. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is rated 8.4, while Qualys VMDR is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks writes "The dashboard is very user-friendly and can be used to generate custom RQL based on user requirements". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Qualys VMDR writes "Good visibility but expensive and needs better support". Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is most compared with Wiz, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Aqua Cloud Security Platform, AWS Security Hub and AWS WAF, whereas Qualys VMDR is most compared with Tenable Nessus, Tenable Security Center, Rapid7 InsightVM, Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management and CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security. See our Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs. Qualys VMDR report.
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