Adaptive Shield vs Qualys TotalCloud comparison

Adaptive Shield and Qualys are both solutions in the SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) category. Adaptive Shield is ranked #5, while Qualys is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7. Adaptive Shield holds a 8.2% mindshare in SSPM, compared to Qualys’s 2.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Adaptive Shield users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Qualys users who would recommend it.

Adaptive Shield

Read 1 Adaptive Shield review

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730 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Qualys TotalCloud

Read 38 Qualys TotalCloud reviews

3,092 Views
186 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Adaptive Shield

Qualys TotalCloud

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Adaptive Shield

Ranking in SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM)

5th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (21st)

Qualys TotalCloud

Ranking in SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM)

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Vulnerability Management (11th), Container Security (13th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (9th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (8th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) category, the mindshare of Adaptive Shield is 8.2%, down from 12.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 2.5%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Qualys TotalCloud	2.5%
Adaptive Shield	8.2%
Other	89.3%

SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM)

Featured Reviews

Asaf Rozenblum

Cyber security engineer at Checkmarx

Provides not only visibility but also remediation information and is helpful in working with people who are not in security-oriented roles

For compliance security checks, it identifies and tells you about a specific compliance, but it would be better if they also attach a link to the rule of the compliance they are referring to. That will be a lot more clear. You won't have to leave the platform every time to find information on the web. They do have a lot of things that keep you inside the app and give you clarity, but there are a couple of little things that got missed. One feature about which I have talked to them multiple times is related to being able to rescan or do a recheck on a specific security issue. Currently, when you fix something and you want to check if it is fixed, you need to power off the integration and then power it on. If there is a clickable button that can re-scan and do a single check or even the whole security check, without powering off and powering on, it will be easier and more efficient.

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Arshad N. R.

Cyber Security Specialist at UBS Financial

A centralized tool for vulnerability and misconfiguration management in a multiple cloud environment

Qualys TotalCloud provides written explanations to help guide the remediation paths and eliminate cyber risk. We are using TruRisk for the remediations. The TruRisk shows anything critical, and we can then focus on that. We also assess manually whether an asset is a critical target or not. Qualys TotalCloud provides a single, prioritized view of risk. We are using CIS-CAT standards to harden our clouds, such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. We are able to analyze the scans and identify which policies have failed and how we can remediate them. We can customize policies as per our organization's requirements. That is very helpful for us. With the TruRisk Insights feature, security has significantly improved. In six months of using it, we see that everything is under control. We've solved many problems related to asset management, cloud configuration, and the new asset identification. If an application team has onboarded any cloud asset, we can see that. We have that information now.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The security checks are valuable because you need to understand what can be improved. There is a remediation tab inside the security check, So, you don't need to go and search how to fix those things. It gives you step-by-step information for all different apps, which is a really strong feature."

"It is very good, and I would recommend it to anybody."

"I highly recommend Qualys TotalCloud to other users."

"I would recommend Qualys TotalCloud to other users because it is cost-efficient and has a good return on investment."

"The best feature would be the ability to create policies. It is easy to control and update policies as required."

"Qualys TotalCloud's most valuable feature is its ability to link clusters of assets, providing a clear model of deployments, vulnerabilities, and statuses."

"Qualys TotalCloud's most valuable features are its cloud security posture management, Kubernetes, and container security capabilities."

"TotalCloud provides the easiest and the best approach for cloud infrastructure management."

"TruRisk Insights is the most important innovation they've released this year."

"The best features in Qualys TotalCloud include the total asset management of the cloud environment. It is very easy to export the report and see the vulnerabilities related to the cloud specifically."

More Qualys TotalCloud pros

Cons

"Currently, when you fix something and you want to check if it is fixed, you need to power off the integration and then power it on."

"One feature about which I have talked to them multiple times is related to being able to rescan or do a recheck on a specific security issue. Currently, when you fix something and you want to check if it is fixed, you need to power off the integration and then power it on. If there is a clickable button that can re-scan and do a single check or even the whole security check, without powering off and powering on, it will be easier and more efficient."

"TotalCloud could improve its scanning of niche devices like Wi-Fi dongles and USB modems because they are often untested. It covers everything else, like laptops, mobile devices, and Bluetooth IoT devices. They can improve on the small IoT devices because hackers and testers use these."

"TotalCloud could improve its scanning of niche devices like Wi-Fi dongles and USB modems because they are often untested."

"Qualys TotalCloud's increasing complexity, due to the development and deployment of multiple solutions, is making the GUI difficult to navigate."

"I sometimes have difficulty detecting or uninstalling certain versions of applications, which I have to do manually."

"Qualys' customer service provides quality answers, but the response time is long, even though it is within the SLA."

"From a downside perspective, the UI is not user-friendly and feels dated compared to other tools like Prisma Cloud."

"We would like to see Windows-based sensors available in Qualys, as this would make the platform more versatile and support a broader range of environments."

"With the growing integration of AI, I would like Qualys to enhance its service offerings to better accommodate AI-related risks."

More Qualys TotalCloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'm not sure about the pricing, but it is worth it."

"Qualys TotalCloud offers competitive pricing given its comprehensive suite of features, including integration, assessment, remediation, and detection capabilities, all within a single platform."

"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches."

"While Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive and may soon be considered overpriced."

"I am not sure about the pricing. From what I understand, it is a bit on the higher side, but I do not have the exact numbers."

"Qualys TotalCloud offers good pricing that is affordable and competitive with the market. Our partnership also provides us with additional benefits."

"As a middle management member, I do not have direct pricing knowledge, but based on the knowledge from our meetings, its pricing is competitive."

"It isn't cheap, but it's reasonable. It helps us to manage things with very few resources."

"Its price seems higher compared to other tools, but it is worth it. If they could adjust the pricing and make it comparable with other tools, that would be great."

More Qualys TotalCloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	27

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys TotalCloud?

The price is very expensive, actually.

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What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?

If Qualys could add some new features to Qualys TotalCloud in future releases, the results for the report and remediation should be more clear and very straightforward. Once we export the report, s...

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What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?

I am working with Qualys TotalCloud for vulnerability management, and the major use cases are patch management and scanning.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 24% of the time

Wing Security vs Adaptive Shield

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID Protection vs Adaptive Shield

Compared 9% of the time

Obsidian CDR Platform vs Adaptive Shield

Compared 9% of the time

Grip Security vs Adaptive Shield

Compared 9% of the time

More Adaptive Shield Competitors

Wiz vs Qualys TotalCloud

Compared 16% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Qualys TotalCloud

Compared 9% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Qualys TotalCloud

Compared 6% of the time

Nucleus Security vs Qualys TotalCloud

Compared 5% of the time

AWS Security Hub vs Qualys TotalCloud

Compared 5% of the time

More Qualys TotalCloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR)

March 2026

Download Adaptive Shield product report

Buyer's Guide

Qualys TotalCloud

March 2026

Download Qualys TotalCloud product report

Also Known As

No data available

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan

Overview

Adaptive Shield is a leading SaaS security posture management (SSPM) solution that provides visibility and remediation of potential risks in the SaaS estate caused by misconfigurations and misappropriated privileges. It enables security teams to locate and fix configuration weaknesses quickly, ensuring compliance with company and industry standards. The solution integrates with all types of SaaS applications, including video conferencing platforms, customer support tools, HR management systems, dashboards, workspaces, content and file-sharing applications, messaging applications, marketing platforms, and more. In addition, Adaptive Shield's framework is easy to use, intuitive, and doesn’t take long to deploy.

Adaptive Shield Features And Benefits

Adaptive Shield has many valuable key features and benefits. Some of the most useful ones include:

Flexible architecture: Adaptive Shield integrates with any SaaS app and can be live within minutes, delivering clear visibility into the whole SaaS ecosystem with a posture score per app.

Deep visibility: Adaptive Shield provides full visibility and control in a single pane of glass.

App integration: The solution can integrate with more than 50 apps and contextualizes all the items at risk to help your security teams prioritize configuration weaknesses and increase time and efficiency to remediation.

In-depth security checks: The Adaptive Shield solution has alerts and in-depth security checks by app, user, severity, or any other metric that can indicate misconfigurations in your SaaS environments. When misconfigurations happen, it automatically alerts you.

Remediation: With Adaptive Shield, you gain access to a step-by-step remediation description to see exactly how to fix SaaS misconfigurations. In addition, you can auto-remediate directly from the system or create a ticket through your ticketing system of choice.

Seamless user management and investigation: Adaptive Shield enables seamless user management and investigation across all SaaS apps - especially useful for securing sensitive users such as IT admins and executives.

Three different types of inventory - The solution offers:
1. User inventory, which gives you a comprehensive view of users across all connected SaaS apps. With the user inventory, you can see what SaaS the user is using or is deactivated on, privilege roles, and what security checks the user shows up in.
2. Device inventory so you can correlate the risk of SaaS users and their endpoints. The solution’s device inventory provides visibility into the devices that have access to the company’s SaaS apps and allows you to manage risks based on the device hygiene score.
3. Third-party app access: With Adaptive Shield, you gain visibility into third-party apps that are integrated with your SaaS stack.

Privileged activity monitoring: By implementing Adaptive Shield, you can monitor privileged users and their activities to track user behavior and detect when suspicious activity occurs.

Scoped users: Adaptive Shield offers limited access to the platform so the SaaS app owner, who exists outside of your security team, can have visibility into their owned apps and remediate issues right away, while your security team oversees.

Timeline view: The Adaptive Shield solution provides a timeline view of your SaaS environment so you can detect changes and see how your system’s posture has evolved over time.

Adaptive Shield

TotalCloud is the Qualys approach to Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) for cloud infrastructure and SaaS environments. With TotalCloud, customers extend TruRisk insights (transparent cyber risk scoring methodology) from the Qualys Enterprise TruRisk Platform to their cloud environments allowing for a seamless unified view of cyber risk across on-prem, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.

Features and capabilities of Qualys TotalCloud include, but are not limited to:

Discover: Complete visibility and insights into cyber-risk exposure across multi-cloud. Continuously discover and monitor all your workloads across a multi-cloud environment for a 360-degree view of your cloud footprint. Identify known and previously unknown internet-facing assets for 100% visibility and tracking of risks.

Assess: Comprehensive cloud-native assessments with FlexScanTM. Extensive scanning capabilities with Qualys FlexScan, including no-touch, agentless, API- and snapshot-based scanning, along with agent- and network-based scanning for in-depth assessment. Use these multiple scanning methods to scan a workload to get a unified and comprehensive view of vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.

Prioritize: Unified security view to prioritize cloud risk with TruRiskTM. Experience a unified risk-based view of cloud security with insights across workloads, services, and resources. Qualys TruRisk quantifies security risk by workload criticality and vulnerabilities; it correlates with ransomware, malware, and exploitation threat intelligence to prioritize, trace, and reduce risk.

Defend: Real-time protection against evolving and unknown threats with InstaProtectTM. Qualys enables continuous monitoring of all cloud assets to ensure they are protected against threats and attacks at runtime. Qualys keeps your cloud runtime safe by detecting known and unknown threats across the entire kill chain in near real-time across a multi-cloud environment.

Remediate: Fast remediation with QFlow – no code, drag-and-drop workflows. The integration of QFlow technology into Qualys TotalCloud saves security and DevOps teams valuable time and resources. Automation and no-code, drag-and-drop workflows help simplify the time-consuming operational tasks of assessing vulnerabilities on ephemeral cloud assets, alerting on high-priority threats, remediating misconfigurations, and quarantining high-risk assets.

Qualys

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