No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

BMC Helix Cloud Security vs FortiCNAPP comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 22, 2026

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
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (11th), Container Security (11th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (1st), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (6th)
BMC Helix Cloud Security
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
26th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
38th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
FortiCNAPP
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
12th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
14th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (29th), Container Security (19th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (10th), Compliance Management (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.6%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BMC Helix Cloud Security is 1.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FortiCNAPP is 4.0%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Qualys TotalCloud1.6%
FortiCNAPP4.0%
BMC Helix Cloud Security1.4%
Other93.0%
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
 

Featured Reviews

RO
IT Security Expert at Alior Bank S.A.
Unified risk scoring has improved our cloud visibility and simplifies remediation priorities
Qualys TotalCloud provides unified vulnerability and threat assessment across both IAS and SaaS. This solution provides a single prioritized view of risk, which helps reduce the work I would have to do. We are no longer based on CVSS; we are based on Qualys risk scoring, which is based on CVSS plus internal findings made by Qualys, and then assigns its own score. The TruRisk insight feature has found a small number of assets with high vulnerability scores, though I am cautious since some information is classified. Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted our bank's performance, and we have definitely seen benefits after implementing this solution.
DG
Portfolio Manager/ Helix Administrator at Frontier Communications
A highly scalable and straightforward solution with a knowledgeable support team
We work on a third-party shared environment. It wouldn’t have been feasible for a smaller company. My company was actually the first one to do it. Just like any cloud security, it pays to do your research and have complimentary security involved. The product can’t be the be-all and end-all tool for your security. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
Charl Pinches - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Sales Specialist at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Cloud risk has become visible and security teams prioritize and act on threats efficiently
FortiCNAPP can be improved because the platform can feel complex at the start, especially for teams new to CNAP tooling. Some users mention that they found the interface and data models less intuitive than expected, and I have had situations where reporting and alert configurations might require time. Regarding other improvements needed for FortiCNAPP, the majority of the time is that reporting and alert configuration might require time to tune properly. This is the significant issue, combined with the fact that some users find the interface and data model less intuitive than expected. Regarding FortiCNAPP's AI capabilities, I think there might be a bit of improvement needed. However, since Fortinet is a security vendor overall, keeping the data safe is not a problem. I know they have invested a lot in getting it to a place where it is a trusted platform.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would recommend Qualys TotalCloud to other users because it is cost-efficient and has a good return on investment."
"Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted our bank's performance, and we have definitely seen benefits after implementing this solution."
"Qualys TotalCloud has significantly improved our organization by automating our reporting processes, reducing the time spent on report creation from two hours to less than fifteen to twenty minutes."
"Generally, Qualys is very good at detections, whether on cloud or on-prem, and the agent allows deployment on both infrastructures, providing continuous monitoring of your assets, which is a key selling point for us."
"TotalCloud provides the easiest and the best approach for cloud infrastructure management."
"One of the features I appreciate is the ability to generate daily reports without relying on anyone else."
"Qualys TotalCloud provides a single, prioritized view based on requirements such as identifying the most vulnerable assets and calculating the average time to remediate vulnerabilities."
"The most valuable feature of Qualys TotalCloud is the visibility it provides."
"Using this solution is an eye-opener; having that holistic view is the biggest eye-opener because you understand, from any of your connected cloud accounts, what your vulnerabilities are with it."
"Role-based security is a valuable feature."
"It is a good tool to make sure that your containers are safe and sound."
"The most valuable aspects of BMC Helix Cloud Security are its security features and regulatory compliance capabilities."
"It's also multi-cloud. You can look at several cloud providers: AWS, Azure, or GCP."
"The cool feature of Helix Cloud Security is that you can do all that — understand and remediate issues — in one dashboard, based on the different policies that are available for security, out-of-the-box."
"The best feature is time to value. With very minimal effort, you are able to have a cohesive view into your security posture on one or multiple cloud accounts, particularly if you are dealing with multicloud. If you have Azure and AWS deployments, you might have multiple subscriptions in Azure and usually multiple accounts in AWS. You may even be doing some GCP work (around Google Cloud Platform). It's very difficult to manage a common set of policies, even less reporting, across multiple subscriptions, accounts, and cloud environments. What BMC Helix Cloud Security does is provide a unified view or single pane of glass as to your baseline. Then, it also facilitates the ability for Level 1 or 2 operations support to take action and report on security vulnerabilities."
"The features that I've found most valuable are its container security aspect. I also like its vulnerability management tools."
"The most valuable aspects are identifying vulnerabilities—things that are out there that we aren't aware of—as well as finding what path of access attackers could use, and being able to see open SSL or S3 buckets and the like."
"The best feature, in my opinion, is the ease of use."
"There are many valuable features that I use in my daily work. The first are alerts and the event dossier that it generates, based on the severity. That is very insightful and helps me to have a security cap in our infrastructure. The second thing I like is the agent-based vulnerability management, which is the most accurate information."
"Polygraph compliance is a valuable feature. In our perspective, it delivers significant benefits. The clarity it offers, along with the ability to identify and address misconfigurations, is invaluable. When such issues arise, we promptly acknowledge and take action, effectively collaborating with our teams and the responsible parties for those assets. This enables us to promptly manage problems as soon as they arise."
"I find the cloud configuration compliance scanning mature. It generates a lot of data and supports major frameworks like ISO 27001 or SOC 2, providing reports and datasets. Another feature I appreciate is setting custom alerts for specific events. Additionally, I value the agent-based monitoring and scanning for compute nodes. It gives us deeper insights into our workloads and helps identify vulnerabilities across our deployed assets."
"For the most part, out-of-the-box, it tells you right away about the things you need to work on. I like the fact that it prioritizes alerts based on severity, so that you can focus your efforts on anything that would be critical/high first, moderate second, and work your way down, trying to continue to improve your security posture."
"FortiCNAPP is a competitive and robust solution, the only one in the IT sphere that addresses all quadrants in the Gartner Quadrants."
"The most valuable feature, from a compliance perspective, is the ability to use Lacework as a platform for multiple compliance standards. We have to meet multiple standards like PCI, SOC 2, CIS, and whatever else is out there. The ability to have reports generated, per security standard, is one of the best features for me."
 

Cons

"Areas that need improvement in every solution include the remediation part. The remediation steps should be simple enough for everyone to understand."
"I would appreciate additional integration options to connect Qualys TotalCloud with our other vulnerability management tools."
"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."
"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."
"Although TotalCloud is a helpful tool, some of its advanced features are still under development."
"The cost of Qualys TotalCloud is high and could be more competitive."
"A feature improvement could be the inclusion of Windows OS support for container security, as it is currently only supported for Linux."
"Every organization out there doesn't rely on just one control body. They use FISMA control. They may use HIPAA, CIS, PCI, or SOX, then blend them. One of the things that is now in big demand for BMC Helix Cloud Security is content. That's the next journey in its lifespan, making it easier for the community to share and collaborate on content for security controls that can be measured and remediated."
"We've had some with issues connectors. The connectors have seemed to have caused a little bit of trouble, perhaps with the APIs trying to scan the environment. The only time I've had to reach out to tech support was for that. It seems it may not have been scanning correctly or I wasn't seeing data within a specific time. But we've set up a couple of connectors in the past couple of weeks and they actually scanned the AWS environment and we had data within about 10 minutes. It's working a lot faster and I think they're making improvements as they go."
"We've had some issues with connectors; the connectors have seemed to cause a little bit of trouble, perhaps with the APIs trying to scan the environment."
"The biggest challenge now, which is a good problem to have, with BMC Helix is content."
"BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features."
"I want the role-based security feature to be improved."
"The UI could be more user-friendly."
"I think its TOA interfaces are still not that comfortable. The UI could be more user-friendly, easier to use."
"The vulnerability part is not systematically organized; it is all clumsy in the web UI, and it is not user-friendly."
"The configuration and setup of alerts should be easier. They should make it easier to integrate with systems like Slack and Datadog. I didn't spend too much time on it, but to me, it wasn't as simple as the alerting that I've seen on other systems."
"FortiCNAPP can be improved because the platform can feel complex at the start, especially for teams new to CNAP tooling."
"The biggest thing I would like to see improved is for them to pursue and obtain a FedRAMP moderate authorization... I don't believe they have any immediate plans to get FedRAMP moderate authorized, which is a bit of a challenge for us because we can only use Lacework in our commercial environment."
"Visibility is lacking, and both compliance-related metrics and IAM security control could be improved."
"Lacework lacks remediation features, but I believe they're working on that. They're focused on the reporting aspect, but other features need to improve. They're also adding some compliance features, so it's not worth saying they need to get better at it."
"I am not fully satisfied with FortiCNAPP because the product has limited functions and it requires the use of other Fortinet tools for complete capabilities."
"A feature that I have requested from them is the ability to sort alerts and policies based on a security framework. Right now, when you go into alerts, you have hundreds and hundreds of them that you have to manually pick. It would be useful to have categories for CIS Benchmark or SOC 2 and be able to display all the alerts and policies for one security framework."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Qualys TotalCloud offers competitive pricing given its comprehensive suite of features, including integration, assessment, remediation, and detection capabilities, all within a single platform."
"While Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive and may soon be considered overpriced."
"Although Qualys TotalCloud is relatively expensive due to its unique automation features, its cost-effectiveness is rated an eight out of ten, with ten being the most costly."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers cost-effective licensing flexibility."
"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."
"The pricing is comparable. It is built into our other product, so I cannot piecemeal it. It is a part of our subscription."
"The pricing is based on an annual subscription, upfront, and it's based on cloud assets. Whether your assets are in Azure and AWS combined, the tool tells you how many assets are being scanned and that's the number used for pricing."
"It is a subscription model with term licensing that is usually yearly. This includes, not only the product, but support and maintenance. It is based on cloud assets. Therefore, if you have 100 cloud assets, those cloud assets are measured based on evaluation or transactions. For example, if I'm evaluating that cloud asset for CIS compliance, PCI compliance, and AWS best practices, that asset gets evaluated three times, as those are three transactions. However, the license model is based on peak asset usage. So, over a year, if you deploy 100, 1000, 500, and then 2000 assets, you will be charged for the 2000 peak of assets managed by Helix Cloud Security."
"The pricing has gotten better. That scenario was somewhat unstable. They have a rather interesting licensing structure. I believe you get 200 resources per "Lacework unit." It was difficult, in the beginning, to figure out exactly what a "resource" was... That was a problem until about a year or so ago. They have improved it and it has stabilized quite a bit."
"The licensing fee was approximately $80,000 USD, per year."
"My smaller deployments cost around 200,000 a year, which is probably not as expensive as Wiz."
"It is slightly expensive. It depends on how big your environment is, but it is expensive. Right now, we are spending a lot of money. We have covered all of the cloud providers and most of our colocation facilities as well, so we cannot complain, but it is slightly expensive. It is not super expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) solutions are best for your needs.
903,996 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Construction Company
21%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Performing Arts
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise29
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
Areas that need improvement in every solution include the remediation part. The remediation steps should be simple en...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
Our use case involves the assets that we have under cloud, the assets exposed to the internet, and the internal appli...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Lacework?
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, since it's a marketplace, I find the pay-as-you-go model convenient and...
What needs improvement with Lacework?
When considering improvements for FortiCNAPP, I think there could be enhancements regarding the license, possibly add...
What is your primary use case for Lacework?
Deploying FortiCNAPP is easy for us because our technicians know FortiGate, which is the solution, and they are famil...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
TrueSight Cloud Security, SecOps Policy Service
Polygraph, FortiCNP, Lacework
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
NHS, Vodafone, Kansas City Life, SKY Italia, Cybera
J.Crew, AdRoll, Snowflake, VMWare, Iterable, Pure Storage, TrueCar, NerdWallet, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Helix Cloud Security vs. FortiCNAPP and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
903,996 professionals have used our research since 2012.