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Cyera vs Proofpoint Data Security Posture Management comparison

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 21, 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
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (10th), Container Security (11th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (9th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (8th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (7th)
Cyera
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (12th), Data Governance (24th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (9th), AI Data Analysis (20th), AI Security (12th), Data Security Platforms (DSP) (3rd)
Proofpoint Data Security Po...
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
3.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (15th), Data Security Platforms (DSP) (6th)
 

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.
reviewer2795301 - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President, Compliance at a manufacturing company with 1-10 employees
Data discovery has accelerated and now drives faster classification and compliance mapping
The best features Cyera offers include agentless discovery and sampling as well as AI ML-based classifications. I find myself relying on the sampling the most, which makes everything really fast, but also the auto-classification and ML-based functionalities. The main thing that stands out to me and my team about the features is the speed of integration and how fast it does the discovery on the data. Once it discovers the data, it also maps it back to a ton of compliance frameworks and best practices that I can use to operationalize. Cyera has positively impacted my organization by allowing me to identify the highest risk areas but also provide better classification of data, which then leads to better data pillar maturity. Cyera has accomplished all three outcomes: saving time, reducing risk, and improving compliance scores, as the speed at which it discovers data was significantly faster.
EO
Senior Solutions Architect at Cyber Knight Technologies FZ LLC
AI classification has transformed data visibility and now simplifies policy‑driven protection
In my opinion, what should be improved about Proofpoint Data Security Posture Management is that it is quite advanced. I think they should ease it up a bit. When it comes to setting of policies, I wish there were a single policy that deals with multiple channels of exfiltration instead of having to do multiple policies to deal with maybe data exfiltration through web upload, data exfiltration through USB, data exfiltration through print, copy and paste, and so forth. It would have been much easier if I had one policy, and then I could turn on the light for all of these different exfiltration channels. A critical example is saying I want to put up a PII policy that will secure social security numbers. That is the condition, social security number. Then in the same policy, I should be able to state that I want this to block exfiltration through USB. However, I want it to allow uploads through web or uploads to a particular website or URL. I want it to allow that kind of granularity where you can flick around things on the same policy. Currently, with Proofpoint Data Security Posture Management, you have to build multiple policies for different channels. Most importantly, the Boolean logic in their policies is incomplete. It just has the AND function. Boolean should carry AND and OR. I am saying if this data contains PII data OR PCI data—either of them—it flags either PCI or PII. But what it has now is AND. For it to fire or trigger, both must be triggered. So if somebody puts only one, maybe PII, and does not put PCI, then it does not trigger. It should have an OR, so that I can have multiple policies and then differentiate them so that if this OR this OR this, either of these triggers. I have flagged that and raised that as a concern to the product team. I expect additional features from them in the next release, specifically the OR feature for the conditions. However, I am happy with the agent, the lightweight agent, the amount of activities it captures. Beyond just the DLP, it looks at the sites and URLs you are going to, it looks at the file renaming, it looks at the attempt to uninstall, and it looks really deep even though it is user mode. I am happy with that. The Boolean logic is what I think is incomplete at the moment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"In my opinion, this is the best tool."
"Qualys TotalCloud's most valuable features are its security capabilities that help identify and mitigate risk factors."
"The scalability is good as well. I would rate it ten out of ten."
"Qualys TotalCloud is overall the best tool available in the market for scanning purposes."
"Qualys TotalCloud helps you not just to identify misconfigurations, but you can actually also fix issues."
"The best feature would be the ability to create policies. It is easy to control and update policies as required."
"Qualys TotalCloud provides unified vulnerability and threat assessment for IaaS and SaaS and a single prioritized view of risk, which helps reduce my workload by not having to combine multiple sources."
"Cyera has positively impacted my organization by allowing me to identify the highest risk areas but also provide better classification of data, which then leads to better data pillar maturity."
"Cyera has an inbuilt set of policies implemented towards data security, especially cohering with Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)."
"I like how they model the data. They find data in different places that we didn't know, and they can give us a good idea if it's sensitive or not. They understand whether or not something is in the right region because, with the cloud posture management tool, we could see certain things in the infrastructure, but the way they dig into the data is what we like."
"Cyera has positively impacted my organization because we have become more compliant."
"The data discovery, data classification, and CSPM features are most valuable."
"It has helped my data security strategy very well because one thing is to set static DLP rules, however, how do you start setting rules when you have little or zero visibility as to where your critical or sensitive data resides?"
 

Cons

"Qualys TotalCloud's increasing complexity, due to the development and deployment of multiple solutions, is making the GUI difficult to navigate."
"A feature improvement could be the inclusion of Windows OS support for container security, as it is currently only supported for Linux."
"One thing that could be improved is the user experience and navigation."
"The vulnerability part is good, but the policy compliance module needs improvement because it involves a lot of manual work. Specifically, the remediation part of the controls requires enhancements."
"With the growing integration of AI, I would like Qualys to enhance its service offerings to better accommodate AI-related risks."
"The support process is inefficient due to the excessive number of replies required when submitting tickets."
"It has been working very well, but it would be helpful if the dashboard could generate reports tailored to specific compliance needs. For example, in India, we have to comply with RBI and SEBI guidelines. It w"
"Two areas for improvement in Qualys TotalCloud are the speed of the public cloud platform and vulnerability detection."
"They need to add a few things in the UI from an enterprise perspective. It's more along the lines of being able to self-service, have integrations, build alerts, and things like that. Outside of that, they work with us on the API and getting alerts into our SIEM and things like that. There's always a way to do something, and they're always available, which is nice."
"There is room for improvement in making Cyera more user-friendly. Some parts were difficult to navigate, especially for those new to the IT industry."
"The licensing initially was tricky because it is based on storage as well as user count."
"As a startup company, there is a long way for them to go in terms of scalability."
"I would advise others looking into using Cyera to not do so."
"In my opinion, what should be improved about Proofpoint Data Security Posture Management is that it is quite advanced."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The pricing for TotalCloud is attractive and competitive in the market. Given the features, especially the dashboard, I have no concerns regarding pricing."
"TotalCloud's price is about right where I would expect it to be."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers competitive pricing given its comprehensive suite of features, including integration, assessment, remediation, and detection capabilities, all within a single platform."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers good pricing that is affordable and competitive with the market. Our partnership also provides us with additional benefits."
"The cost is high, but it meets our organizational needs."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive."
"I don't know how much exactly it costs, but I know that it's a yearly thing. It's something that will cost money for any company because they're storing all this information. They're doing all this machine learning, and there are a lot of services on their backend that they got to pay for. I'm sure it gets translated back to the customers unless you have everything completely on-prem. If you're not doing much in the cloud, then I could see how it'd be cheaper, but if you have anything that's cloud-hosted and does all the work for you, there's going to be a cost associated with it."
"Compared to the competitors, they are very reasonable."
Information not available
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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
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise38
No data available
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys TotalCloud?
I was not involved in pricing, setup cost, and licensing, but I can say that the setup was fast, within a quarter, an...
What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
In terms of improvements, the features we are using in Qualys TotalCloud are working in the best optimal way, and I d...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
I have been using Qualys TotalCloud for the last eight months to scan the hardware and the virtual devices in our inf...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cyera ?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cyera was that the licensing initially was tricky because i...
What needs improvement with Cyera ?
I think Cyera can improve by expanding beyond Israel.
What is your primary use case for Cyera ?
My main use case for Cyera is security. A quick specific example of how I use Cyera for security is scanning drives f...
What needs improvement with Proofpoint Data Security Posture Management?
In my opinion, what should be improved about Proofpoint Data Security Posture Management is that it is quite advanced...
What is your primary use case for Proofpoint Data Security Posture Management?
I have been dealing with Proofpoint Data Security Posture Management as a distributor. If you are speaking on the Pro...
What advice do you have for others considering Proofpoint Data Security Posture Management?
It has improved my compliance efforts absolutely because first and foremost, with the classification, it guides users...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Cyera's customers include the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (Cboe), Granicus, Takeda, LifeLabs, United Talent Agency, ACV Auctions, and Armis
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Wiz, Palo Alto Networks, Varonis and others in Data Security Posture Management (DSPM). Updated: September 2026.
918,614 professionals have used our research since 2012.