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AWS GuardDuty vs Cisco Secure Workload comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 12, 2024

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

Qualys TotalCloud
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (5th), Container Security (8th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (6th)
AWS GuardDuty
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cisco Secure Workload
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
23rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (10th), Microsegmentation Software (5th), Cisco Security Portfolio (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.9%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS GuardDuty is 7.2%, down from 13.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 2.1%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Qualys TotalCloud1.9%
AWS GuardDuty7.2%
Cisco Secure Workload2.1%
Other88.8%
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2859021 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Risk-based triage has transformed container security and now prioritizes high-impact threats
The best features Qualys TotalCloud offers currently include managing cloud infrastructure and container security while facing major challenges such as alert fatigue. Traditional vulnerability scanners flag hundreds of CVEs on short-lived Kubernetes containers, some of which have no internet exposure or are gone before we can even triage them. I leverage Qualys TotalCloud to move beyond static CVSS. I use it to implement runtime exposure, correlation risk reprioritization, and shift-left integration. This notifies developers to fix a base image upstream rather than patching live ephemeral instances. In my work with cloud and container security, the biggest operational hurdle was alert fatigue. I use Qualys to shift left from static CVSS severity to context-aware risk prioritization. I correlated raw vulnerability data with real-time risk factors such as public network exposure, active runtime execution, or overly permissive IAM roles. This allows us to immediately drop the priority of isolated containers and escalate lower-severity CVEs that sit on an exposed, high-risk path. We can map these findings directly back to our CI/CD pipelines so developers can patch the root base images upstream. We have drastically cut down the signal-to-noise ratio, saved a lot of manual hours doing triage work, and ensured engineering effort goes directly towards high-impact risk reduction.
SK
Senior IT Auditor at Ernst & Young
Has provided automated threat detection and daily malicious activity insights while supporting seamless orchestration with existing dashboards
I would assess the integration of AWS GuardDuty with Threat Intelligence as majorly positive; no threat intelligence is 100% accurate, and there are a few false positives, but as a security engineer, this must be accepted, and overall, the response and service is good for us. We do not directly use AWS GuardDuty dashboard by itself, as we have our own integrated security dashboard; AWS GuardDuty gives the feed to that dashboard, and it's giving us a satisfactory view of how the security landscape looks. We use metrics such as zero-day threats, any malicious traffic, and any traffic which originates from OFAC countries to measure its effectiveness, as we are majorly into a financial institution, as any traffic that is from a malicious IP or a rogue device. I don't see any significant negative points regarding AWS GuardDuty; it's a good product to have if you're a cloud consumer. I rate AWS GuardDuty nine out of ten overall.
Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA
Discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map
We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration allows Cisco Secure Workload to learn about our networks and network tags, providing valuable insights into vulnerabilities related to the operating system and various applications installed on our servers. Recently, Cisco announced a new product called HyperShield, an AI-based autonomous micro-segmentation solution. While Cisco has not stated that HyperShield will replace Cisco Secure Workload, it represents a natural evolution for the company. HyperShield features dynamic policy discovery and enforcement; however, once policies are enforced, they do not change until a discovery occurs, requiring a re-enforcement process. This new platform operates autonomously, minimizing the need for user or security engineer intervention. I would have expected Cisco to incorporate more automatic discovery and enforcement features within the existing Cisco Secure Workload product. Instead of enhancing the current product, they have introduced a new solution. Cisco plans to honor existing Tetration licenses, allowing users to transition to HyperShield without additional costs, reflecting the investment enterprises have already made. From Cisco’s perspective, this represents a natural progression in their product line. While the product name changes, it seems more of a rebranding effort. The enhancements are greater autonomy, improved discovery, and automatic enforcement, which are now being introduced in HyperShield. Cisco Secure Workload offers automatic policy enforcement but cannot adjust policies dynamically as the application needs to change. Having used the platform for the past five years, the recent announcement has been reassuring. Cisco has confirmed that our investment in the platform will not go to waste. They will honor our existing licenses, providing a natural migration path to the new solution without any disruption

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Vulnerability and threat detection and assessment of the criticality of the vulnerabilities exposed are most valuable."
"The best feature would be the ability to create policies. It is easy to control and update policies as required."
"Qualys TotalCloud has great accuracy and reliability, as it is a very complete program with tools that help experts understand the vulnerabilities of today."
"Once you have your vulnerabilities fixed and your patches pushed out using Qualys TotalCloud, then you are able to eliminate threats and cyber risk."
"In my opinion, this is the best tool."
"Qualys TotalCloud fulfills all these needs."
"Qualys TotalCloud has helped us view our risk structure, vulnerabilities, and security posture."
"I found the initial setup user-friendly."
"With anomaly detection, active threat monitoring, and set correlation, GuardDuty alerts me to any unusual user behavior or traffic patterns right away, which is great for staying on top of potential security risks."
"GuardDuty is extensive in terms of configuration and security compliance."
"Overall, GuardDuty is a very easy-to-use tool, and I would recommend it even to those who are not tech-savvy."
"GuardDuty's comprehensive threat detection does not only monitor data - it also detects a wide range of security threats."
"AWS GuardDuty helps by providing continuous threat detection and signaling potential threats. Its most valuable feature is continuous monitoring. The tool's integration with other AWS services has improved security. It provides continuous monitoring and intelligent threat detection, quickly signaling any issues. I would rate this improvement a seven out of ten."
"It is a highly scalable solution since it is a service by AWS. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"We have over 1,000 employees, and we monitor their activity through AWS GuardDuty."
"We use the tool for threat detection. AWS includes AI features as well. AWS GuardDuty gives us reports."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is security."
"The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."
"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution."
"The only use case I can see that makes sense is micro-segmentation. I think there are other use cases for it. The main purpose of the product is to do micro-segmentation by collecting IP. That could be done by installing an agent, and then you have all the communication coming in and out. You could also use some flow sensors installed in the network that receive a copy of the traffic and then report that back to the system."
"Overall, this is a really good product and I am happy with it."
"The solution is very user-friendly, which clients appreciate."
"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."
"Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."
 

Cons

"There is a lack of data segregation according to criticality or inventory."
"In my opinion, what can be improved in Qualys TotalCloud includes pricing and container scanning."
"In TotalCloud, I would suggest improvements in policy checks to cater to various inventory types like VPCs, subnets, S3 buckets, or IAMs. There is a lack of data segregation according to criticality or inventory."
"Their customer support needs improvement."
"The cost of Qualys TotalCloud is high and could be more competitive."
"Regarding improvements to Qualys TotalCloud, I suggest that user navigation can be enhanced because initially, many users found it complicated and had trouble understanding the platform due to information being spread across multiple tabs."
"It is already perfect, but they can bring some newer dashboards and customization options for the dashboard. It would be great to be able to include on-prem assets on the dashboard."
"The patching process with Qualys Patch Management, which is part of TotalCloud, does not cover installing certain prerequisites on the servers or workstations. This shortcoming means we must rely on SCCM when any service stack updates or additional prerequisites are needed."
"I would rate Amazon GuardDuty seven out of ten because some of the integrations may not work well with it, and depending on the integration that you're working with, the security tools have a lot of requirements to implement."
"Improvement-wise, Amazon GuardDuty should have an overall dashboard analytics function so we could see what's in the current environment, and then in addition to that, provide best practices and recommendations, particularly to provide some type of observability, and then figure out the login side of it, based on our current environment, in terms of what we're not monitoring and what we should monitor. The solution should also give us a sample code configuration to implement that added feature or feature request. What I'd like to see in the next release of Amazon GuardDuty are more security analytics, reporting, and monitoring. They should provide recommendations and additional options that answer questions such as "Hey, what can we see in our environment?", "What should we implement within the environment?", What's recommended?" We know that cost will always be associated with that, but Amazon GuardDuty should show us the increased costs or decreased costs if we implement it or don't implement it, and that would be a good feature request, particularly with all products within AWS, just for cloud products in general because there are times features are implemented, but once they're deployed, they don't tell you about costs that would be generated along with those features. After features are deployed, there should a summary of the costs that would be generated, and projected based on current usage, so they would give us the option to figure out how long we're going to use those features and the option to keep those on or turn those off. If more services were like that, a lot more people would use those on the cloud."
"GuardDuty is limited to AWS environments."
"There is currently no consolidated dashboard for AWS GuardDuty. It would be helpful if they could provide a dashboard based on severity levels (high, medium, low) and offer insights account-wise, especially for users utilizing automation structures."
"I think that some detections in container environments such as container runtime, and on services such as AWS container service, Fargate service or EKS service could be improved."
"I would like to see more integration with other AWS provided services."
"If you are looking for advanced security that would provide higher checks to secure their environment, this may not be enough."
"It would be great if the solution had some automation capabilities."
"I would have expected Cisco to incorporate more automatic discovery and enforcement features within the existing Cisco Secure Workload product."
"I'd like to see better documentation for advanced features. The documentation is fairly basic. I would also like to see better integration with other applications."
"Secure Workload is a little complicated to use, and the dashboard isn't intuitive, so it takes a while to learn how to use it."
"There was a controversy when Cisco reduced the amount of data they kept, and the solution became quite cost-intensive, which made its adoption challenging….Although they have modified it now, I preferred the previous version, and I wish all the functionality were back under the same product."
"It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."
"There is some overlap between Cisco Tetration and AppDynamics and there are few DC tools, it would be great to have a single pane of glass, rather than have to jump between different tools."
"The multi-tenancy, redundancy, backup and restore functionalities, as well as the monitoring aspects of the solution, need improvement. The solution offers virtually no enterprise-grade possibility for monitoring."
"A feature that I was looking for was emailed alerts and notifications so we'd get them right away."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"TotalCloud's price is about right where I would expect it to be."
"The cost is high, but it meets our organizational needs."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive."
"Qualys TotalCloud is cost-efficient and was selected for its value compared to other products."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers competitive pricing given its comprehensive suite of features, including integration, assessment, remediation, and detection capabilities, all within a single platform."
"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."
"The pricing is comparable. It is built into our other product, so I cannot piecemeal it. It is a part of our subscription."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers good pricing that is affordable and competitive with the market. Our partnership also provides us with additional benefits."
"I have heard that the solution's price is quite high."
"In terms of the costs associated with Amazon GuardDuty, it was $1 per GB from what I recall. Pricing was based on per gigabyte. For example, for the first five hundred gigabytes per month, it'll be $1 per GB, so it'll be $500. If your usage was greater, there's another bracket, for example, the next two thousand GB, then there's an add-on cost of 50 cents per GB. That's how Amazon GuardDuty pricing slowly goes up. I can't remember if there was any kind of additional cost apart from standard licensing for the solution. Nothing else that at least comes to mind. What the service was charging was worth it. That was one good thing when using Amazon GuardDuty because my company could be in a certain tier for a certain period. My company wasn't under a licensing model where it could overestimate its usage and under-utilize its usage and pay much more. This was what made the pricing model for Amazon GuardDuty better."
"I prefer to have something on demand for myself. That's why I haven't been paying for GuardDuty specifically. AWS provides a wide range of offerings, especially in the security area."
"The tool's licensing model is pay-as-you-go."
"The tool has no subscription charges."
"We use a pay-as-you-use license, which is competitively priced in the market."
"Pricing is determined by the number of events sent."
"The price of the solution is exactly right."
"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."
"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."
"Regarding price, Cisco Secure Workload can be expensive if you don't have a budget. If you're not doing micro-segmentation, every extra security measure or enforcement you're putting on top of your existing environment will be an extra cost. It's not a cheap solution at all. But from my point of view, if you need to do micro-segmentation, this is one of the best tools I've seen for it. I can't compare that to Microsoft's solution because I haven't looked into it. I've looked into VMware and Cisco. Those are the only two that I know of. I didn't know that Microsoft could do micro-segmentation at all. Maybe they can, but I haven't heard anything about it."
"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."
"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."
"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."
"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
18%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise38
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys TotalCloud?
We purchased Qualys TotalCloud for GCP and Azure as well. It is comparatively better than others regarding pricing. T...
What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
I am unsure about how Qualys TotalCloud can be improved. I do not have anything else to add about the needed improvem...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
My main use case for Qualys TotalCloud is telemetry, although I am unsure about the specifics. A quick specific examp...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon GuardDuty?
AWS GuardDuty is an expensive feature, and while you can't expect the price to be low, it can be lower because it's p...
What needs improvement with Amazon GuardDuty?
AWS GuardDuty is a good product; it's doing its job right now, and I don't see any additional improvements needed. Co...
What is your primary use case for Amazon GuardDuty?
We generally use AWS GuardDuty for detection of zero-day vulnerabilities and automatic threat responses; it serves as...
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Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
No data available
Cisco Tetration
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
autodesk, mapbox, fico, webroot
ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS GuardDuty vs. Cisco Secure Workload and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
921,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.