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IBM Security Guardium DSPM vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks comparison

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 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
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (11th), Container Security (11th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (8th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (8th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (1st), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (6th)
IBM Security Guardium DSPM
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (17th)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (8th), Container Security (2nd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (2nd)
 

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.
DevidharsanJ - PeerSpot reviewer
Advisory Consultant at Fiserv
Comprehensive data monitoring has strengthened compliance and protected sensitive information
In terms of improvements for IBM Security Guardium DSPM, I believe there is potential for enhancement in the operational perspective, particularly in the user interface and the deployment of agents. I think they could benefit from having a singular agent that can be pushed directly from a centralized console instead of relying on Unix or Windows admins for deployment.
reviewer2776578 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Image scanning has supported consistent security practices during cloud deployment
On a scale of ten, we would say people are happy with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks for the part we use. People are okay with it. We probably would give an eight. We don't give ten because if we don't use the other parts of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, it's because it was difficult to implement from an operational point of view. We could have deployed the runtime monitoring with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, but within our organization at our company, it was very difficult to find who would be the owner for the alerts. People have other tools and in the end, we don't use the full capabilities of a product that we pay for. It's partially related to the difficulty to integrate Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks runtime in our company's support process. We don't use the real-time monitoring part of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks. We don't know about the automated remediation feature of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I found the initial setup user-friendly."
"Qualys TotalCloud's most valuable feature is its agent versatility."
"TotalCloud provides the easiest and the best approach for cloud infrastructure management."
"The platform's unified view of the organization proves particularly valuable for leadership team meetings."
"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 best part I like is the on-demand scans."
"Qualys TotalCloud has improved our security posture."
"CSPM is currently the most used feature, and we are enjoying the new feature, FlexScan, which is valuable for Internet-facing VMs."
"The most important aspect of database activity monitoring is that it complies with the regulations, offering pre-built reports and numerous options in IBM Security Guardium DSPM to tune policies, along with various integrations such as with SIEM and ticketing products, making it a more compatible product compared to others."
"The CSPM and CWPP functionalities are pretty good."
"Prisma Cloud provides the visibility and control that we need, regardless of how complex or distributed our cloud environments become, and our security and compliance postures are significantly improved through the implementation of this tooling."
"Prisma Cloud's real-time detection and monitoring of our entire system is the most useful."
"Prisma Cloud's comprehensive platform offers a range of features, including runtime security and vulnerability assessments, through its Prisma Cloud Compute component."
"The product is quite good for providing multi-clouds or cross-cloud security from a single-pane -of-glass."
"The reporting, dashboarding, and filtering capabilities which provide reports we can present to our senior staff are the most helpful features of Prisma Cloud (Annual Contract)."
"The most valuable feature of Prisma Cloud for our clients is CSPM, as it helps clients gain visibility into all the assets with their cloud providers."
"Prisma Cloud's most valuable feature is its user identification capabilities."
 

Cons

"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."
"With the growing integration of AI, I would like Qualys to enhance its service offerings to better accommodate AI-related risks."
"The downside is only in container security, but it has not been a long time since they introduced these models."
"The main area needing improvement is integration. Although the team is strengthening TotalCloud, integration can be enhanced with SIEM, SOAR, ITSM, and other sources."
"To improve the user experience, reporting could be simplified for better comprehension by end users and project managers, facilitating issue resolution."
"Their support could be improved."
"I think Qualys TotalCloud needs to improve its handling of zero-day vulnerabilities and supply chain management because modern ransomware attacks not only target prime critical infrastructures but also the supply chain system."
"Overall, we are satisfied with it. However, the response part of the Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) module can be improved. It is not yet in place according to requirements; it is not completely available even though the module has been released."
"In terms of improvements for IBM Security Guardium DSPM, I believe there is potential for enhancement in the operational perspective, particularly in the user interface and the deployment of agents."
"In our testing, we have found the Check Point product CloudGuard Dome9 to be more user-friendly at this point. Palo Alto Prisma's interface was not as user-friendly."
"Prisma Cloud supports generating CSV files, but I would also like it to generate PDF files for reporting."
"The access controls for our bank roles were not granular enough. We needed specific people to do particular actions, and we often had to give some people way too much access for them to be able to do what they needed in Prisma. They couldn't do their jobs if they didn't have that level of access, so other people had to do that part for them. It would help to have more granular role-based access controls."
"The cost of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is too high. I would also appreciate the addition of NLP to reduce the learning curve and make configuring queries more user-friendly."
"They need to make the settings more flexible to fit our internal policies about data. We didn't want developers to see some data, but we wanted them to have access to the console because it was going to help them... It was a pain to have to set up the access to some languages and some data."
"Based on my experience, the customization—especially the interface and some of the product identification components—is not as customizable as it could be. But it makes up for that with the fact that we can access the API and then build our own systems to read the data and then process and parse it and hand it to our teams."
"It's not really on par with, or catering to, what other products are looking at in terms of SAST and DAST capabilities. For those, you'd probably go to the market and look at something like Veracode or WhiteHat."
"When it comes to protecting the full cloud-native stack, it has the right breadth. They're covering all the topics I would care about, like container, cloud configuration, and serverless. There's one gap. There could be a better set of features around identity management—native AWS—IAM roles, and service account management. The depth in each of those areas varies a little bit. While they may have the breadth, I think there's still work to do in flushing out each of those feature sets."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing for TotalCloud is attractive and competitive in the market. Given the features, especially the dashboard, I have no concerns regarding pricing."
"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 offers good pricing that is affordable and competitive with the market. Our partnership also provides us with additional benefits."
"Qualys TotalCloud is cost-efficient and was selected for its value compared to other products."
"As a middle management member, I do not have direct pricing knowledge, but based on the knowledge from our meetings, its pricing is competitive."
"TotalCloud's price is about right where I would expect it to be."
"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."
"While Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive and may soon be considered overpriced."
Information not available
"I don't know a better way to do it, but their licensing is a little confusing. That's due to the breadth of different types of technologies they are trying to cover. The way you license depends on where you're securing. When they were Twistlock it was a simple licensing scheme and you could tell what you were doing. Now that they've changed that scheme with Palo Alto, it is quite confusing. It's very difficult to predict what your costs are going to be as you try to expand coverage."
"The price for Prisma Cloud is reasonable."
"You can expect a premium price because it is a premium quality product by a leading supplier."
"The pricing for Prisma Cloud is high. Providing a pay-as-you-go model or pricing options tailored for medium and small enterprises could help attract more clients."
"If a competitor came along and said, "We'll give you half the price," that doesn't necessarily mean that's the right answer, at all. We wouldn't necessarily entertain it that way. Does it do what we need it to do? Does it work with the things that we want it to work with? That is the important part for us. Pricing wasn't the big consideration it might be in some organizations. We spend millions on public cloud. In that context, it would not make sense to worry about the small price differences that you get between the products."
"I wouldn't mind if it were cheaper. We are spending a fair amount of money on Prisma Cloud."
"The pricing is competitive; for the most part, the security firms have similar prices."
"If you pay for three years of Palo Alto, it's better. If you're planning on doing this, it's obviously not going to be for one year, so it's better if you go with a three-year license... The only challenge we have is with the public cloud vendor pricing. The biggest lesson I have learned is around the issues related to pricing for public cloud. So when you are doing your segmentation and design, it is extremely important that you work with someone who knows and understands what kinds of needs you will have in the future and how what you are doing will affect you in terms of costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
No data available
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise29
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise57
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Security Guardium DSPM?
The pricing of IBM Security Guardium DSPM is based on the number of database servers it covers. I am not sure if my c...
What needs improvement with IBM Security Guardium DSPM?
In terms of improvements for IBM Security Guardium DSPM, I believe there is potential for enhancement in the operatio...
What is your primary use case for IBM Security Guardium DSPM?
The usual use cases for IBM Security Guardium DSPM that I mostly work with are normal data protection, vulnerability ...
What is your primary use case for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?
Prisma Cloud helps support DevSecOps methodologies, making those responsibilities easier to manage.
What Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform do you recommend?
We like Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, since it offers us incredible visibility into our entire cloud system. We...
What do you think of Aqua Security vs Prisma Cloud?
Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valu...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
Polar Security
Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Information Not Available
Amgen, Genpact, Western Asset, Zipongo, Proofpoint, NerdWallet, Axfood, 21st Century Fox, Veeva Systems, Reinsurance Group of America
Find out what your peers are saying about Wiz, Palo Alto Networks, Varonis and others in Data Security Posture Management (DSPM). Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.