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

DefectDojo vs Tenable Security Center comparison

Why PeerSpot?
Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Vulnerability Management
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (8th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (6th)
DefectDojo
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
55th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
DevSecOps (17th)
Tenable Security Center
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
18th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (24th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.2%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DefectDojo is 0.7%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Security Center is 2.4%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Qualys TotalCloud1.2%
Tenable Security Center2.4%
DefectDojo0.7%
Other95.7%
Vulnerability Management
 

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.
reviewer2267097 - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration and Solution Architect at a government with 501-1,000 employees
Easy to use with efficient vulnerability reporting and team collaboration
Use case, so all the reports from GitLeaks, DefectDojo, GitLeaks or dependency check or Trivy, they make reports, and we send this report to DefectDojo to have CVMs, Central Vulnerability Management. DefectDojo is Central Vulnerability Management. If you have a dashboard to set, we have…
reviewer1534134 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Information Security at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
Centralized analytics have strengthened patch visibility and support efficient regulatory reporting
From my experience, I assess the product's analytics capabilities as successful. It helped us significantly with patching and managing the risk of the patching process across all our environments, including network devices with Windows and Unix systems. The product covered several environments and gave us exactly what we needed in our environment. Tenable Security Center's centralized platform helped with risk assessment and management across our IT environments. It covered the patching process, and we previously faced many issues regarding how to patch different environments, how to monitor the patching process, and whether it was successful or not. We obtained good reports showing when patches were closed and the details of each patch, including who executed it and everything related to the patching process until it was closed. This gave us good details about the process which helped us significantly in our reporting and even in audits, whether internal or external. We learned how to close audit issues safely and successfully. We used the dashboards for real-time threat insights and extracted several dashboards from Tenable Security Center. We use these dashboards in our cybersecurity dashboard and committees that we have. These dashboards are part of our committees, especially the cybersecurity committee and other committees that we attend.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Qualys TotalCloud's most valuable features are its security capabilities that help identify and mitigate risk factors."
"Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted our organization by helping us save time and manage all assets and remediation, allowing us to achieve quarterly and half-yearly goals."
"My experience with using TruRisk to mitigate noise from raw CVEs has been extremely effective."
"Qualys TotalCloud's most valuable features are its cloud security posture management, Kubernetes, and container security capabilities."
"One of the features I appreciate is the ability to generate daily reports without relying on anyone else."
"Qualys TotalCloud has great accuracy and reliability, as it is a very complete program with tools that help experts understand the vulnerabilities of today."
"The best part I like is the on-demand scans."
"My experience with using TruRisk to mitigate noise from raw CVEs has been great."
"With the pipeline of detection and DefectDojo, we are able to see the real vulnerabilities, and we fix them."
"Their overall cost of service is pretty good."
"Tenable Security Center scans networks and gives reports."
"The ROI is almost guaranteed because there is a lot of value in using the product and reporting that to our company."
"I prefer Tenable SC because it provides more information."
"In terms of vulnerability mitigation, SecurityCenter has worked quite well and is a perfect replacement for GFI LanGuard."
"Of all the tools I've used, when it comes to managing the vulnerabilities and risks of a whole enterprise environment, I don't think I've used a better tool than Security Center."
"Tenable Security Center's centralized platform helped with risk assessment and management across our IT environments, covering the patching process and providing detailed reports that significantly supported our reporting and audits and helped us close audit issues safely and successfully."
"I think that this is a good solution for evaluating vulnerability in the network."
 

Cons

"We would like to see Windows-based sensors available in Qualys, as this would make the platform more versatile and support a broader range of environments."
"Two areas for improvement in Qualys TotalCloud are the speed of the public cloud platform and vulnerability detection."
"I didn't give it a ten because I would like to see simpler configuration, more customizable dashboards, and better automation and integration options."
"The response part of the Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) module can be improved."
"The onboarding process is a bit difficult. In the initial phase, it is very difficult to understand the features, what the dashboard contains, and what criteria they are using."
"Qualys TotalCloud needs to enhance its scanning capabilities in the IP domain, as it currently lacks the functionality to resolve IPs to their corresponding domain names."
"Customer support with Qualys TotalCloud needs a little improvement with the response times."
"I would like the ability to disable certain default built-in policies as they can be misleading when creating dashboards. That is the top one."
"We need something to notify the team responsible for a product when vulnerabilities are found."
"The reporting needs a lot of work on the template."
"Its reporting can be improved. It is not easy to generate a scan report the way we want. The data is okay, but we can't easily change the template to make it look the way we want."
"A good plugin editor would be a good additional option for the Security Center."
"Though reasonable, the main competitor of Tenable SC, Rapid7, offers a more aggressive and better priced product."
"Certain aspects require manual effort, such as exporting and analyzing data for our dashboards. The built-in components of the Tenable solution are somewhat clumsy that require external tools. So, this is an area of improvement."
"They are not currently handling call flows properly. Some call flows are being deleted from the registry but still show as active."
"Additional costs are associated with using the solution, as additional scanners are required for different endpoints connected to the Tenable Security Center. If Tenable Security Center could extract information from these scanners automatically rather than manually, it would enhance user-friendliness for customers."
"The vulnerability scan does not work correctly until the access privileges are set by the system administrator."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Qualys TotalCloud offers good pricing that is affordable and competitive with the market. Our partnership also provides us with additional benefits."
"The pricing is comparable. It is built into our other product, so I cannot piecemeal it. It is a part of our subscription."
"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 cost is high, but it meets our organizational needs."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers cost-effective licensing flexibility."
"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."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive."
"While Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive and may soon be considered overpriced."
Information not available
"We're able to save because we don't have to employ more staff members to help wit ht he scheduling of the scans, running the reports or sending them out to the systems owners. That alone is a big ROI for us."
"I use a local license to perform penetration testing and I'm pretty happy with everything when it comes to pricing and licensing."
"My company needs to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs. The pricing of the solution falls in the mid-range level, so it is not too expensive"
"I would rate the pricing a nine out of ten, where ten is expensive. It is the most expensive tool my company is using."
"This solution's price is quite high."
"Compared to other companies or other products it could maybe be a little bit less, but the price is okay. I would say it's not very expensive."
"I rate the solution's price as seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive. The tool is quite expensive."
"Tenable SC is priced per asset, with the basic solution starting around US$12,000 for 500 assets."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Vulnerability Management solutions are best for your needs.
920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
18%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise38
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise27
 

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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tenable SC?
The price of Tenable Security Center is not so high; it's relatively a cheaper solution.
What needs improvement with Tenable SC?
We did conduct a long implementation which relates to what I think can be improved about Tenable Security Center. In ...
What is your primary use case for Tenable SC?
The typical use case for Tenable Security Center is that it is an on-premise solution, and it can use the agent and a...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
No data available
Tenable.sc, Tenable Unified Security, Tenable SecurityCenter
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Information Not Available
IBM, Sempra Energy, Microsoft, Apple, Adidas, Union Pacific
Find out what your peers are saying about Wiz, Qualys, Tenable and others in Vulnerability Management. Updated: October 2026.
920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.