Cisco Secure Workload vs Tenable Cloud Security comparison

Cisco and Tenable are both solutions in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category. Cisco is ranked #18 with an average rating of 9.5, while Tenable is ranked #20 with an average rating of 8.3. Cisco holds a 2.1% mindshare in CWPP, compared to Tenable’s 2.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 77% of Tenable users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Cisco Secure Workload and Tenable Cloud Security are notable competitors in the cloud security solutions category. While Tenable Cloud Security is favored for its advanced features, Cisco Secure Workload receives better feedback on pricing and support.

Features: Cisco Secure Workload is praised for its comprehensive workload protection and seamless integration with other Cisco tools. Tenable Cloud Security stands out with its vulnerability management and exceptional risk assessment capabilities. Cisco's key advantage is in integration, whereas Tenable is known for detailed risk analysis, making it a preferred choice for advanced feature seekers.

Room for Improvement: Cisco Secure Workload could benefit from enhancing its reporting capabilities and reducing operational complexities. Tenable Cloud Security should focus on improving scalability and providing more frequent updates. Cisco's main issue is complexity, while Tenable needs to address scalability and update frequency.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco Secure Workload receives positive feedback for deployment support despite its steep learning curve during setup. Tenable Cloud Security offers an intuitive deployment process, though its customer service experiences are mixed. Cisco faces challenges with deployment complexity, whereas Tenable needs to improve customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco Secure Workload is considered cost-effective, offering good value relative to its price, although setup costs are a noted concern. Tenable Cloud Security, despite being higher priced, justifies its cost with a better ROI due to its comprehensive features. Cisco is valued for affordability, while Tenable's value is associated with its robust features.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Secure Workload vs. Tenable Cloud Security Report (Updated: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload vs. Tenable Cloud Security

August 2026

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.7%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 2.1%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Cloud Security is 2.5%, 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
Product	Mindshare (%)
Qualys TotalCloud	1.7%
Cisco Secure Workload	2.1%
Tenable Cloud Security	2.5%
Other	93.7%

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)

Featured Reviews

Robert Orłowski

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.

Read full review

Raj Metkar

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

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DragosCernat

Information Security Architect at WSP

Has significantly improved proactive monitoring through automated asset discovery and seamless integration with cloud environments

Making the system smarter would be beneficial. Adding modules for integration with AWS and Azure would be helpful. Adding capabilities for the scanner to automatically pick up changes and add assets automatically would be valuable. When discussing a big company, it is mandatory to have tools that will assist us rather than waiting for manual input to add hosts. Adding assets manually is prone to mistakes. Humans might forget to add an asset or make errors when adding multiple assets. Taking the human element out of the context and making it more streamlined is the future for security. The human should be involved where expertise is needed, such as analysis and decision-making. Currently, with resource constraints, we need tools to collect and aggregate data, eliminate false positives as much as possible, and present relevant information to employees for action.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The agent and agentless scanning in TotalCloud, particularly the FlexScan method, is incredibly valuable. With traditional scanning approaches, we had to give IP ranges and whitelist IPs. All that is now simplified. FlexScan requires minimal intervention, and after configuration, it automatically collects data and performs necessary scans."

"CSPM is currently the most used feature, and we are enjoying the new feature, FlexScan, which is valuable for Internet-facing VMs."

"We were able to realize its benefits within 24 to 48 hours."

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

"I would rate Qualys TotalCloud ten out of ten."

"I highly recommend Qualys TotalCloud to other users."

"One of Qualys' best features is its categorization, which allows us to see the types of assets, their security postures, and the AI-powered version of the tool."

"Qualys TotalCloud's most valuable features are its security capabilities that help identify and mitigate risk factors."

More Qualys TotalCloud pros

"The product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."

"The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."

"The most valuable feature right now is to do with having visibility on the network — especially on our servers — and to be able to enforce some type of security measures."

"The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage; the telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent, it's complete, and you see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network."

"The scalability of Cisco Tetration is very good."

"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution."

"Overall, this is a really good product and I am happy with it."

"This product does everything that you need it to do and more and does a lot to provide visibility in a network environment, save time and money, and make the organization IT operate in a much more streamlined fashion."

More Cisco Secure Workload pros

"The product's visibility and remediation work fine for me."

"Ermetic can provide super visibility for our cloud environment (we are using AWS), the dashboard is simple to use, the findings provide all of the information you require, it provides detection and remediation, and creating a Jira ticket from a finding is just one click away."

"The key benefit lies in having the largest and most up-to-date database. When it comes to using any Tenable product, it excels in finding vulnerabilities and providing analytics."

"Element is precisely what we needed for close to real-time external surface monitoring, and the automatic integration capabilities, particularly with DNS, Azure, and AWS, are extremely valuable."

"Scanning and reporting are the most valuable features of Tenable Cloud Security"

"The solution’s vulnerability management feature has helped us identify and mitigate risks well."

"Tenable Cloud Security excels in vulnerability detection, one of its strongest features. Another valuable feature is software composition analysis, which highlights and automates the detection of security flaws. Additionally, their knowledge base is excellent; if anything goes wrong, they provide clear guidance on what needs to be done to address specific vulnerabilities."

"The analytical and reporting capabilities are pretty straightforward and show every transaction and major attempt to attack the application in the cloud."

More Tenable Cloud Security pros

Cons

"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."

"In terms of improvement, remediation still belongs to the cloud team, which is one of the issues we faced with Qualys TotalCloud."

"The response part of the Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) module can be improved."

"One of the things that could be improved is the alerts. Qualys is a fantastic tool, especially with the TruRisk feature, but one challenge that most leaders face involves alert fatigue."

"In a future release, I suggest that zero-day vulnerabilities should be predicted in advance using AI technologies. The system is not 100% secure yet, so proactive threat hunting could be enhanced to be more proactive than the current system."

"Qualys TotalCloud has the potential to improve by integrating a hybrid platform for comprehensive management of both on-premises and cloud infrastructures."

"Two areas for improvement in Qualys TotalCloud are the speed of the public cloud platform and vulnerability detection."

"There is room for improvement in vulnerability scanning, particularly for PaaS environments. Currently, Qualys does not have full access to these instances, which limits its effectiveness."

More Qualys TotalCloud cons

"A feature that I was looking for was emailed alerts and notifications so we'd get them right away."

"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."

"I would have expected Cisco to incorporate more automatic discovery and enforcement features within the existing Cisco Secure Workload product."

"The emailed notifications are either hard to find or they are not available. Search capabilities can be improved."

"The scalability of this solution needs to be improved."

"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 problem is that we can only deploy the particular solution where we have the hardware with Cisco."

"Cisco Tetration needs more flags and system alerts that we should get with network capture."

More Cisco Secure Workload cons

"The product must provide more features."

"There is a need for the support team to improve their response time since it is one of the areas where the product's technical team has certain shortcomings."

"I have faced several bug incidents with the solution"

"If Tenable Cloud Security offers a complete Cnapp solution with CWP, CIEM, and Waap security, it will be able to compete with other competitors."

"I didn't find anything that wasn't useful or needed to be added."

"I do think there might be room for more integrations. This could allow for further customization and flexibility, essentially offering different functionality options to accommodate various budgets."

"Ermetic needs to improve its security scanning. I would like to see more dynamic graphical forms."

"Tenable needs to offer a patch-based solution since it is an area where the tool lacks a bit."

More Tenable Cloud Security cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive."

"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 for TotalCloud is attractive and competitive in the market. Given the features, especially the dashboard, I have no concerns regarding pricing."

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

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

"Qualys TotalCloud offers cost-effective licensing flexibility."

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

"TotalCloud's price is about right where I would expect it to be."

More Qualys TotalCloud pricing and cost advice

"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."

"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."

"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."

"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."

"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."

"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 pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."

"The tool's pricing is fair."

"There is a need to opt for a subscription-based pricing model to use Tenable Cloud Security. I rate the product price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."

"The tool's price is good compared to other brands. The tool's subscription is for a year."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Outsourcing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

Government

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	12
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	31

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	5

Questions from the Community

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

The price is very expensive, actually.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?

To be totally honest, I do not have any best features because I have had a bad experience using this tool, especially...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?

My main use case for Qualys TotalCloud is vulnerability management and exposure management. I use this tool to evalua...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Workload?

CloudStrike offers antivirus capabilities and firewall features for servers and VDI but lacks automatic policy discov...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?

We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration a...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Cisco Secure Workload?

When we onboarded Cisco Secure Workload, the usual use case was to discover internal application dependencies and cre...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Tenable Cloud Security?

Making the system smarter would be beneficial. Adding modules for integration with AWS and Azure would be helpful. Ad...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Tenable Cloud Security?

We had other solutions that we used. One solution was that we did not have something exactly similar to what Element ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Ermetic CSPM?

I wasn't involved with the pricing, setup cost and licensing for Tenable Cloud Security.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

AWS Security Hub vs Qualys TotalCloud

Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 14% of the time

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 13% of the time

VMware NSX vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 8% of the time

Check Point Email Security (formerly Harmony Email & Collaboration) vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 5% of the time

BMC Helix Cloud Security vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 5% of the time

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Wiz vs Tenable Cloud Security

Compared 8% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Tenable Cloud Security

Compared 6% of the time

Orca Security vs Tenable Cloud Security

Compared 6% of the time

Plerion vs Tenable Cloud Security

Compared 6% of the time

Sonrai Security vs Tenable Cloud Security

Compared 5% of the time

More Tenable Cloud Security Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Qualys TotalCloud

August 2026

Download Qualys TotalCloud product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload

August 2026

Download Cisco Secure Workload product report

Buyer's Guide

Tenable Cloud Security

July 2026

Download Tenable Cloud Security product report

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan

Cisco Tetration

Ermetic, Ermetic Identity Governance for AWS

Overview

Qualys TotalCloud enhances security posture across cloud environments with continuous monitoring, vulnerability management, and risk visualization, ensuring efficient threat assessment and automated remediation for improved cyber risk reduction.

Qualys TotalCloud offers a robust suite of security tools essential for organizations managing multi-cloud infrastructures. By integrating cloud accounts and automating workflows, it supports AWS, Azure, and GCP, offering comprehensive vulnerability management and zero-day detection. The platform's user-friendly design, combined with its extensive risk management and unified threat assessment capabilities, enables organizations to prioritize and remediate vulnerabilities effectively. TruRisk Insights provides clear insights on cyber risks, while the automation options streamline patch management and scanning processes. API integration across IaaS and SaaS environments further enhances resource allocation efficiency and saves time, addressing misconfigurations across cloud environments.

What are the most important features of Qualys TotalCloud?

Accurate Vulnerability Reports: Delivers precise and actionable insights for risk mitigation.
Zero-Day Detection: Identifies and addresses zero-day vulnerabilities proactively.
Unified Threat Assessment: Offers comprehensive evaluation of threats across the environment.
Extensive Risk Management: Manages risks effectively with advanced insights and prioritization.
Continuous Monitoring: Provides non-stop surveillance for vulnerabilities and threats.
Cloud-Native Automation: Streamlines processes and reduces manual efforts using automation.
FlexScan for Internet-Facing VMs: Scans external VMs efficiently to detect vulnerabilities.
Dashboard Risk Visualization: Clear visualization helps prioritize vulnerabilities.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Improved Security Posture: Enhances threat detection and response across clouds.
Time Savings: Automation reduces time spent on manual vulnerability management.
Resource Efficiency: Better allocation of resources through streamlined workflows.
Enhanced Risk Prioritization: Focus on critical vulnerabilities for effective mitigation.
Integrated Cloud Accounts: Facilitates seamless cloud management and security.

Qualys TotalCloud is deployed in sectors needing rigorous vulnerability management, such as finance and healthcare. Companies utilize it to secure multi-cloud environments like AWS, Azure, and GCP, focus on compliance, and integrate security into CI/CD pipelines to detect and remedy threats pre-deployment.

Qualys

Cisco Secure Workload offers advanced auditing, micro-segmentation, and network visibility, automating policy presentation for improved security. It enhances application dependency mapping and provides comprehensive telemetry with strategic policy enforcement.

Cisco Secure Workload specializes in automating micro-segmentation, data center management, and traffic analysis. Its capabilities facilitate application dependency mapping and enhance internal micro-segmentation, providing invaluable network visibility. Users find its automation in policy presentation and strategic enforcement beneficial, along with granular control and scalability, despite needing improvements in scalability and integration capabilities. Enhanced notification features, troubleshooting options, and an efficient interface are desired for seamless deployment, along with stronger multi-tenancy, redundancy, and monitoring functions. Broader platform support and integrated cloud connectivity are desired for unified management across tools.

What are the most important features?

Auditing: Provides in-depth network analysis and security auditing capabilities.
Micro-Segmentation: Enhances network security by automating segmentation at a granular level.
Application Dependency Mapping: Visualizes connections and interactions between applications.
Network Visibility: Delivers comprehensive insight into network activities and dynamics.
Policy Discovery: Streamlines policy creation through automation and reduces manual intervention.
Comprehensive Telemetry: Offers complete coverage and insights for better security assessment.

What benefits and ROI should be evaluated?

Enhanced Security Measures: Offers robust features for network security improvement.
Automated Processes: Reduces manual efforts through automation, increasing efficiency.
Scalability: Adapts to growing network demands with flexible scalability options.
Granular Control: Allows detailed control over network policies and enforcement.

Entities in finance, gas, and oil sectors utilize Cisco Secure Workload for networking site management and compliance maintenance. It integrates into extensive Cisco infrastructure, aiding routers, switches, and endpoints, thus supporting auditors in network synchronization and auditing needs.

Cisco

Tenable Cloud Security is a comprehensive solution designed to help organizations secure their cloud environments across various platforms, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. It offers continuous visibility, compliance management, and threat detection to ensure that cloud infrastructure and applications are protected from vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.

Tenable Cloud Security exemplifies a comprehensive Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) by providing a unified solution that covers the entire cloud security lifecycle, from development to runtime. This platform is designed to address vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, threats, and compliance risks across multi-cloud environments, making it an essential tool for organizations adopting cloud-native architectures. In practice, Tenable Cloud Security integrates security into the development process through its shift-left approach, particularly with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) security. This ensures that security measures are embedded early in the development lifecycle, allowing teams to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities before they reach production. Once in production, the platform continues to provide real-time visibility into cloud environments, enabling continuous monitoring and proactive threat detection.

The solution's comprehensive protection spans various aspects of cloud security, including the identification and remediation of misconfigurations, automated compliance management, and advanced threat intelligence. By automating these processes, Tenable Cloud Security reduces the manual effort required to manage cloud security, freeing up resources for more strategic initiatives.

What are the key features of Tenable Cloud Security?

Unified Platform: Covers the entire cloud security lifecycle, from development to runtime, providing comprehensive protection.
Shift-Left Approach with IaC Security: Integrates security early in the development process, ensuring that vulnerabilities are caught and remediated before deployment.
Continuous Monitoring: Offers real-time visibility and monitoring of cloud environments, enabling proactive threat detection and response.
Automation: Streamlines security operations, reducing the need for manual intervention and increasing operational efficiency.
Comprehensive Threat and Compliance Management: Identifies and mitigates vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and compliance risks across multi-cloud environments.

What are the benefits of using Tenable Cloud Security?

Improved Security Posture: Early detection and remediation of vulnerabilities lead to a stronger overall security posture.
Operational Efficiency: Automation reduces the workload on security teams, allowing them to focus on higher-priority tasks.
Risk Reduction: Proactively identifies and addresses risks before they impact production environments.
Simplified Compliance: Helps organizations meet and maintain compliance with industry standards, reducing the complexity and cost of audits.

Tenable Cloud Security is particularly valuable in industries with stringent regulatory requirements, such as finance, healthcare, and retail. For example, in the financial sector, it helps organizations ensure compliance with regulations like PCI-DSS while safeguarding sensitive data across cloud environments.

In summary, Tenable Cloud Security is a robust CNAPP solution that integrates security throughout the cloud lifecycle, providing comprehensive protection and operational efficiency for cloud-native environments.

Tenable

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)

Tyler Technologies, Bilfinger, BarkBox, MongoDB, airSlate, Adama, Latch, Cloudinary, Riskified, AppsFlyer, IntelyCare, Aidoc, 42Dot, and more.

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload vs. Tenable Cloud Security

August 2026

Free Report: Cisco Secure Workload vs. Tenable Cloud Security

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Workload vs. Tenable Cloud Security and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.

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