Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Qualys VMDR comparison

Aqua Security and Palo Alto Networks are both solutions in the Container Security category. Aqua Security is ranked #15 with an average rating of 9.0, while Palo Alto Networks is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.6. Aqua Security holds a 3.0% mindshare in Container Security, compared to Palo Alto Networks’s 11.5% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Aqua Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of Palo Alto Networks users who would recommend it.

Aqua Cloud Security Platform

Read 16 Aqua Cloud Security Platform reviews

5,157 Views
4,435 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...

Read 111 Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks reviews

25,382 Views
17,514 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Qualys VMDR

Read 94 Qualys VMDR reviews

14,366 Views
2,586 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Aqua Cloud Security Platform

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...

Qualys VMDR

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Aqua Cloud Security Platform, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, and Qualys VMDR based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks, Wiz, SentinelOne and others in Container Security.

To learn more, read our detailed Container Security Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Container Security

July 2025

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Helped 865,164 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Container Security category, the mindshare of Aqua Cloud Security Platform is 3.0%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is 11.5%, down from 15.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qualys VMDR is 2.3%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Container Security

Featured Reviews

Burak AKCAGUN

Business Development Manager at Axoft Ukraine

A robust and cost-effective solution, excelling in scalability, on-premises support, and responsive technical support, making it well-suited for enterprises navigating stringent regulatory environment

The most crucial aspect is runtime protection, specifically image scanning before preproduction and deployment. Customers find it invaluable to have the ability to check for vulnerabilities in an image before deployment, similar to a sandbox environment. This feature ensures that customers can identify any potential issues with the image, such as misconfigurations or vulnerabilities, before integrating it into their workloads and infrastructure. In their source pipeline, companies can identify issues before deploying changes. This is crucial because customers prefer resolving any problems or misconfigurations before the deployment process. Software change security, including GSPM Cloud, is a key feature customers seek in their infrastructure.

Read full review

Mohammad Qaw

Senior Security Consultant at helpag

It gives you one console to see all of your assets, review their configurations, and build your processes

Most customers use Prisma Cloud for visibility and compliance. Prisma has so many features, but many organizations do not use them. They primarily use the visibility part to connect all their cloud accounts and hosts for visibility to see if they are missing any security controls or if they have any misconfigurations. You can connect it to cloud environments such as Azure, AWS, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba, etc., or to an on-prem data center. Prisma Cloud gives you so many options to automate processes related to your daily operations. When it comes to cybersecurity, you can automate things with their existing APIs. They also have out-of-the-box integrations with many solutions. I have not seen any limitations. Everything is customizable. You can do whatever you want, defining the reporting and custom use cases. They recently updated the UI, so it's much better than before.

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Ankesh Raj

Information Security Analyst at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Real-time responses and reporting streamline vulnerability management

Qualys VMDR provides a real-time response and reporting feature, which is excellent. It allows us to see real-time graphs and reports for every asset, server, and more, which is very user-friendly. Our clients have given good feedback, and they are satisfied with the tool. We use it daily to fix vulnerabilities by connecting with infrastructure to remediate. The feedback from the client side is very good.

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 container security element of this product has been very valuable to our organization."

"The DTA, which stands for Dynamic Threat Analysis, allows me to analyze Docker images in a sandbox environment before deployment, helping me anticipate risks."

"The most valuable feature is the security."

"Aqua Security allowed us to gain visibility into the vulnerabilities that were present in the container images, that were being rolled out, the amount of risk that we were introducing to the platform, and provided us a look into the container environment by introducing access control mechanisms. In addition, when it came to runtime-level policies, we could restrict container access to resources in our environment, such as network-level or other application-level access."

"Aqua Security helps us to check the vulnerability of image assurance and check for malware."

"The most helpful feature of Aqua Security is Drift Prevention, which is a feature that allows images to be immutable. In addition, one of the main reasons we went with Aqua Security is because it provides strong protection when it comes to runtime security."

"The solution was very user-friendly."

"The CSPM product is great at securing our cloud accounts and I really like the runtime protection for containers and functions too."

More Aqua Cloud Security Platform pros

"Prisma Cloud stands out as a user-friendly and powerful CSPM solution thanks to its comprehensive capabilities, built-in features, and flexible tagging system."

"We found it to be easy and flexible. We could easily configure it for our needs, and we could spread the Prisma Cloud platform to 16 countries without encountering any kind of problem."

"Integration is very easy. And because it supports security that spans multi- and hybrid-cloud environments, it's very easy to use."

"Palo Alto enables us to know what security threats are happening in the background."

"The most valuable features of the solution are areas like compliance and asset inventories, along with runtime protection."

"Prisma Cloud offers robust runtime scanning capabilities, which is beneficial for security teams."

"The most valuable features are vulnerability monitoring, serverless access, container runtime features, and Defender."

"The most valuable feature is the closed VPN connection, which provides better performance than traditional VPN boxes. For example, let's say a user in New York State normally connects in the East, but if they travel to the UK, they can connect to the same portal, which automatically redirects to any VPN gateway. We can control traffic based on Active Directory groups instead of the user's IP. That means a user in New York can access his application based on his user ID and AD group access when he travels to the UK or anywhere else."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pros

"The vulnerability management feature is what I used the most. It is a good SaaS product. It is easy to use. It has a nice UI where you can see all the assets and vulnerabilities."

"The prioritization of vulnerabilities has improved our remediation efforts by around thirty to thirty-five percent."

"I find the solution's dashboard interesting...The response time is fine. You can pull up reports without dragging or consuming bandwidth."

"It allowed us to divide tasks easily among teammates, significantly improving efficiency."

"The process of defining and discovering scans is organized efficiently."

"Detects new hosts along with vulnerabilities."

"The Vulnerability Management and Patch Management features are the most valuable features of this solution."

"The prioritization feature is great. I think it has all of the advanced features that we need."

More Qualys VMDR pros

Cons

"There's room for improvement, particularly in management capabilities as it may not be comprehensive enough for all customers, and it has been lacking in the realm of cloud security posture management."

"Aqua Security lacks a lot in reporting."

"The user interface could be improved, especially in terms of organization and clarity."

"Aqua Security could provide more open documentation so that their learning resources can be more easily accessed and searched through online. Right now, a lot of the documentation is closed and not available to the public."

"We would like to see an improvement in the overview visibility that this solution offers."

"The solution could improve user-friendliness."

"It's a bit hard to use the user roles. That was a bit confusing."

"They want to release improvements to their product to work with other servers because now there are more focused on the Kubernetes environment. They need to improve the normal servers. I would like to have more options."

More Aqua Cloud Security Platform cons

"One of the requests is that Prisma Defender for the ECS solution is only supported for Linux. It does not support Windows."

"The automation must continue to become much smoother."

"Palo Alto should work on ease-of-use and the user-friendliness to be more competitive with some competing products."

"Though Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks provides excellent security, is a pioneer in this space, and knows what it's doing, from a user perspective, it would have been better if it was a little easier to use."

"The deployment and onboarding are plug-and-play, but somewhat hard to handle in terms of integration with external operations tools. The product design isn't up to the current standard. I would recommend having higher standards in terms of integration with other tools, especially operationalized tools."

"There needs to be a mechanism that allows me to manually configure compliance more easily."

"Runecast gave us more visibility into VMware's private cloud. We have more environments there, but Prisma's lack of visibility into the private cloud was a downside—there weren't many."

"The cloud integration is too complex. It should be simple to integrate Prisma Cloud with any cloud environment. Policy management could also be simpler."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks cons

"If anything, I would like to see the user interface modernized a bit more."

"Qualys VMDR identifies vulnerabilities and suggests fixes. However, it does not automate patching unless the patch management module is purchased separately."

"Sometimes the scanning can get overwhelmed and start to drag when a lot of users are trying to scan at once."

"Qualys Container Security can improve the interface. It could be easier to navigate and be enriched."

"Integration could be better. When you think about scanning, it's not used just with this product alone but with other Qualys products. If you think about the bundle, the product itself is good. But integration with other products and packages has space for improvement. They should also offer a better price for bundles."

"What we have found is that the solution is not closely tied with the patch management. It is okay with newer ones, like Windows 10 machines; it gives the correct patch. But for Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008, it does not give us the correct patch so we have to manually identify the patches. This is a major problem."

"Qualys VM's scanner doesn't pick up every vulnerability, so we have to use multiple scanners to cover that gap."

"When you want to cover yourself for scalability, you will be charged for the number you place on the scan itself."

More Qualys VMDR cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They were reasonable with their pricing. They were pretty down-to-earth about the way they pitched their product and the way they tried to close the deal. They were one of the rare companies that approached the whole valuation in a way that made sense for our company, for our needs, and for their own requirements as well... They will accommodate your needs if they are able to understand them and they're stated clearly."

"The pricing of this solution could be improved."

"Dealing with licensing costs isn't my responsibility, but I know that the licenses don't depend on the number of users, but instead are priced according to your workload."

"Aqua Security is not cheap, and it's not very expensive, such as Splunk, they are in the middle."

"It comes at a reasonable cost."

"One thing we're very pleased about is how the licensing model for Prisma is based on work resources. You buy a certain amount of work resources and then, as they enable new capabilities within Prisma, it just takes those work resource units and applies them to new features. This enables us to test and use the new features without having to go back and ask for and procure a whole new product, which could require going through weeks, and maybe months, of a procurement process."

"Prisma Cloud Enterprise is a costly solution. You need a license for all the components. At the same time, you have everything under one roof, so I think it's still justified."

"Regarding Prisma Cloud's pricing, we started small, and then we just kept on growing."

"The pricing is competitive; for the most part, the security firms have similar prices."

"Prisma Cloud licensing works on credits."

"Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is a highly expensive solution."

"Prisma Cloud is affordable."

"The price for Prisma Cloud is reasonable."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pricing and cost advice

"We have an annual contract for Qualys VMDR. I believe it's for either two years or five years."

"Usually every implementation is different and the quote is in function of number of assets."

"The tool's pricing is expensive and I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."

"Qualys is a pay-as-you-go model, so there's flexibility to the pricing."

"It's very expensive, especially if you want to use multiple modules of Qualys."

"The license is on a yearly basis."

"Qualys VM is quite expensive. It's a subscription-based license, and it's yearly. Right now, it's open for me, and I don't have any limitations or caps on the licenses. They are seeing if the product is viable for 4500 users. I can add as much as I want, and at the end of the subscription, they'll let me know how many licenses were actually used and bill me accordingly. On a scale from one to five, I would give their pricing a three. It's still expensive."

"The solution is costly."

More Qualys VMDR pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you think of Aqua Security vs Prisma Cloud?

Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valu...

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What do you like most about Aqua Security?

Customers find it invaluable to have the ability to check for vulnerabilities in an image before deployment, similar ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Aqua Security?

It comes at a reasonable cost. When compared to Prisma Cloud, it is more budget-friendly.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?

Prisma Cloud helps support DevSecOps methodologies, making those responsibilities easier to manage.

See all answers

What Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform do you recommend?

We like Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, since it offers us incredible visibility into our entire cloud system. We...

See all answers

How is Prisma Cloud vs Azure Security Center for security?

Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening acros...

See all answers

What do you like most about Qualys VMDR?

I like that we have many scanners and channels that don't overload. It helps us scan and track easily. Also, the tagg...

See all answers

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

Qualys offers better pricing and is feature-packed compared to other tools.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Qualys VMDR?

There were some issues later with Qualys VMDR regarding security, specifically with numerous false positive reports.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes vs Aqua Cloud Security Platform

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Tencent Cloud Workload Protection vs Aqua Cloud Security Platform

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Wiz vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 17% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 10% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 5% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 4% of the time

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Tenable Nessus vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Aqua Cloud Security Platform

August 2025

Download Aqua Cloud Security Platform product report

Buyer's Guide

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

August 2025

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

Download Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks product report

Buyer's Guide

Qualys VMDR

August 2025

Download Qualys VMDR product report

Also Known As

Aqua Security Platform, CloudSploit, Argon

Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto

Qualys VM, QualysGuard VM, Qualys Asset Inventory, Qualys Container Security

Overview

Aqua Security stops cloud native attacks, preventing them before they happen and stopping them when they happen. Dedicated cloud native threat research and the most loved cloud native security open source community in the world put innovation at your fingertips so you can transform your business. Born cloud native, The Aqua Platform is the most integrated Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP), securing from day one and protecting in real-time. Aqua has been stopping real cloud native attacks on hundreds of thousands of production nodes across the world since 2015.

Aqua Security Features

Aqua Security has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Vulnerability scanning
Dynamic threat analysis
Automates DevSecOps
CI/CD integrations
Cloud security posture management
Kubernetes security
Hybrid and multi-cloud
Container security
Serverless security
VM security
Cloud workloads protection

Aqua Security Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Aqua Security. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Designed for scale and performance: The Aqua Security platform was designed to scale to the largest environments in order to protect huge clusters and massive DevOps pipelines.

Empowers DevOps to detect issues early and fix them fast: The solution was designed to help you solve issues immediately - before they cause greater damage to your organization. It helps you gain insight into your vulnerability posture and prioritize remediation and mitigation according to contextual risk.

Automated compliance and security posture: Aqua Security checks your cloud services, Infrastructure-as-code templates, and Kubernetes setup against best practices and standards. This way, you can ensure the infrastructure you run your applications on is securely configured and in compliance.

Artifact scanning: The Aqua Security platform scans artifacts for vulnerabilities, malware, and other risks during development and staging. It allows you to set flexible and dynamic policies to control deployment into your runtime environments.

Minimizes false positives: Aqua Security relies on a variety of sources and proprietary research to curate and present vulnerabilities in the most accurate way, which helps to minimize false positives and unnecessary noise in the pipeline.

Automated security testing: The Aqua Security platform automates security testing in your CI/CD pipeline, and continuously scans registries and serverless function stores to detect emerging risks. By implementing the platform, you can get actionable feedback within your CI environments to empower your organization’s developers to fix issues rapidly.

Granular controls: The solution provides protection for your VM, container, and serverless workloads using granular controls with instant visibility and real-time detection and response.

Sandboxed environment: With Aqua Security, you can run images in a secure sandboxed environment that traces indicators of compromise (IOCs) such as container escapes, reverse shell backdoors, malware drops, code injection backdoors, and network anomalies.

Reviews from Real Users

Lizeth Z., Cloud Security Specialist at Telstra, says, “Aqua Security is the most advanced solution in the market for container security. Aqua Security allows us to check for vulnerabilities in the CI/CD pipeline, so application teams can remediate issues before going into production. Aqua Security helps us to check the vulnerability of image assurance and check for malware.”

Aqua Security

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks provides comprehensive cloud-native security solutions. It covers dynamic workload identity, automated forensics, and multi-cloud protection, ensuring robust security across diverse cloud platforms.

Prisma Cloud delivers advanced capabilities for managing cloud security across AWS, Azure, and GCP platforms. It offers dynamic workload identity creation, real-time monitoring, and seamless integration into CI/CD pipelines. With automation, centralized dashboards, and enhanced visibility, users effectively manage security misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. While optimizing cloud environments through runtime protection and compliance, Prisma Cloud faces challenges with its navigation, pricing, and limited automation capabilities. Users seek improvements in API security, role-based access controls, and documentation quality, emphasizing the need for enhanced customization and reporting features.

What are the important features of Prisma Cloud?

Dynamic Workload Identity: Enables unique workload identities for security purposes.
Automated Forensics: Offers detailed insights into threats and incidents automatically.
Runtime Protection: Provides ongoing detection and blocking of suspicious activities.
Multi-Cloud Security: Protects environments on AWS, Azure, and GCP simultaneously.
Compliance Management: Assists in meeting regulatory standards across cloud platforms.

What benefits or ROI should users consider in reviews?

Enhanced Security Posture: Strengthens cloud defense lines with proactive monitoring.
Centralized Dashboard: Offers unified oversight of multiple cloud environments.
Efficient Misconfiguration Handling: Quickly identifies and addresses security lapses.
Seamless CI/CD Integration: Integrates security within development workflows.
Improved Visibility: Provides transparent insights into security operations and alerts.

Industries like finance and telecom rely on Prisma Cloud for managing cloud security posture and container security. Teams utilize its capabilities across hybrid and multi-cloud settings to ensure compliance and robust threat protection. Features like misconfiguration detection and runtime monitoring are critical in promoting security objectives in these sectors.

Palo Alto Networks

Vulnerability Management, Detection, and Response (VMDR) is a cornerstone product of the Qualys TruRisk Platform and a global leader in the enterprise-grade vulnerability management (VM) vendor space. With VMDR, enterprises are empowered with visibility and insight into cyber risk exposure - making it easy to prioritize vulnerabilities, assets, or groups of assets based on business risk. Security teams can take action to mitigate risk, helping the business measure their actual risk exposure over time.

Qualys VMDR offers an all-inclusive risk-based vulnerability management solution to prioritize vulnerabilities and assets based on risk and business criticality. VMDR seamlessly integrates with configuration management databases (CMDB), Qualys Patch Management, Custom Assessment and Remediation (CAR), Qualys TotalCloud and other Qualys and non-Qualys solutions to facilitate vulnerability detection and remediation across the entire enterprise.

With VMDR, users are empowered with actionable risk insights that translate vulnerabilities and exploits into optimized remediation actions based on business impact. Qualys customers can now aggregate and orchestrate data from the Qualys Threat Library, 25+ threat intelligence feeds, and third-party security and IT solutions, empowering organizations to measure, communicate, and eliminate risk across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments.

Qualys

Sample Customers

HPE Salesforce Telstra Ellie Mae Cathay Pacific HomeAway

Amgen, Genpact, Western Asset, Zipongo, Proofpoint, NerdWallet, Axfood, 21st Century Fox, Veeva Systems, Reinsurance Group of America

Agrokor Group, American Specialty Health, American State Bank, Arval, Life:), Axway, Bank of the West, Blueport Commerce, BSkyB, Brinks, CaixaBank, Cartagena, Catholic Health System, CEC Bank, Cegedim, CIGNA, Clickability, Colby-Sawyer College, Commercial Bank of Dubai, University of Utah, eBay Inc., ING Singapore, National Theatre, OTP Bank, Sodexo, WebEx

Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks, Wiz, SentinelOne and others in Container Security. Updated: July 2025.

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