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

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Symantec Cloud Workload Protection comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 11, 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 (13th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (9th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (8th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (1st), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (8th)
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) (9th), Container Security (2nd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (2nd)
Symantec Cloud Workload Pro...
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (29th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks11.0%
Wiz13.8%
Microsoft Defender for Cloud8.1%
Other67.1%
Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Symantec Cloud Workload Protection0.7%
Microsoft Defender for Cloud14.0%
AWS GuardDuty11.3%
Other74.0%
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.
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.
Mahadi Ma - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at M.Tech
Has a good active directory feature and good technical support
One area for improvement in Symantec Cloud Workload Protection is integration. Other features that could be improved are defense control and encryption, particularly in the USB. For example, users should be able to control the USB and have the capability of blocking and allowing USB reading and writing. Having a USB encryption feature in Symantec Cloud Workload Protection would also be very useful. An additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of Symantec Cloud Workload Protection is more advanced defense on mobile devices such as iOS and Android. For example, even offline or with no internet connection, it would be good if the solution could defend devices against malware and ransomware.

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 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."
"The best part I like is the on-demand scans."
"The best feature would be the ability to create policies. It is easy to control and update policies as required."
"Qualys TotalCloud's most valuable features are its cloud security posture management, Kubernetes, and container security capabilities."
"TotalCloud offers a comprehensive suite of features, including EDR, XDR, and TrueRisk, providing a centralized platform for managing vulnerabilities and security risks."
"I would definitely recommend Qualys TotalCloud to other users."
"I would recommend Qualys TotalCloud to other users because it is cost-efficient and has a good return on investment."
"Its excellent graphical interface makes the scanning process simple."
"It gives us a central location to see what the security posture is like for multiple cloud providers."
"The product is quite good for providing multi-clouds or cross-cloud security from a single-pane-of-glass."
"The most valuable feature is the closed VPN connection, which provides better performance than traditional VPN boxes. For example, let's say a user in New York State normally connects in the East, but if they travel to the UK, they can connect to the same portal, which automatically redirects to any VPN gateway. We can control traffic based on Active Directory groups instead of the user's IP. That means a user in New York can access his application based on his user ID and AD group access when he travels to the UK or anywhere else."
"The runtime mechanism on the solution is very useful, and it has very good network mapping between containers, so if you have more than one container, you can create a content data link between them."
"The CWP module, runtime protection, and WAAS API are valuable."
"In the GlobalProtect module, we can easily guide users experiencing connection issues through the notification column."
"Prisma scans things and shows all the vulnerabilities and packages that are vulnerable, and which layers, by default, have vulnerabilities. So developers can easily go into the package or a particular layer and make changes to their code. It's very transparent."
"CSPM is the most valuable feature."
"This is a very good tool for cloud protection."
"Symantec Cloud Workload Protection is a stable solution and it offers very good protection for organizations."
"The most valuable features in Symantec Cloud Workload Protection are endpoint protection and active directory features. The active directory features in the product are very good, and in terms of security, the most valuable feature in Symantec Cloud Workload Protection is threat defense or threat protection."
"It will read various logs, diagnose what is wrong, and then alert you."
 

Cons

"We encountered challenges identifying the correct resource category for certain items, such as those in containers or storage."
"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."
"We encountered challenges identifying the correct resource category for certain items, such as those in containers or storage."
"Areas that need improvement in every solution include the remediation part. The remediation steps should be simple enough for everyone to understand."
"I sometimes have difficulty detecting or uninstalling certain versions of applications, which I have to do manually."
"Regarding technical support from Qualys, they respond, but the response time can be too long. Sometimes we need to wait weeks for solutions to simple questions."
"Qualys TotalCloud needs to improve its accuracy for non-Windows operating systems."
"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."
"The automation must continue to become much smoother."
"I believe there are some issues with the product's maturity. In some cases, it could malfunction concerning Cloud Native."
"Prisma Cloud's application security capabilities should be enhanced."
"Based on my experience, the customization—especially the interface and some of the product identification components—is not as customizable as it could be."
"The solution does not currently support servers for GCP."
"We would like to have the detections be more contemporaneous. For example, we've seen detections of an overprivileged user or whatever it might be in any of the hundreds of Prisma policies, where there are 50 minutes of latency between the event and the alert."
"Though Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks provides excellent security, is a pioneer in this space, and knows what it's doing, from a user perspective, it would have been better if it was a little easier to use."
"Some of the navigation is just a little dense; there is a lot of navigation where there is a tab and dropdowns, so just improving some of the navigation where there is a very dense amount of buttons and drop-down menus is probably the only thing, which comes from having a lot of features."
"One area for improvement in Symantec Cloud Workload Protection is integration. Other features that could be improved are defense control and encryption, particularly in the USB. For example, users should be able to control the USB and have the capability of blocking and allowing USB reading and writing. Having a USB encryption feature in Symantec Cloud Workload Protection would also be very useful."
"In the future, we may need to use features that are only available in one of the competing products."
"In the future, we may need to use features that are only available in one of the competing products."
"One area for improvement in Symantec Cloud Workload Protection is integration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I am not sure about the pricing. From what I understand, it is a bit on the higher side, but I do not have the exact numbers."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers competitive pricing given its comprehensive suite of features, including integration, assessment, remediation, and detection capabilities, all within a single platform."
"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 is cost-efficient and was selected for its value compared to other products."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive."
"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."
"One thing we're very pleased about is how the licensing model for Prisma is based on work resources. You buy a certain amount of work resources and then, as they enable new capabilities within Prisma, it just takes those work resource units and applies them to new features. This enables us to test and use the new features without having to go back and ask for and procure a whole new product, which could require going through weeks, and maybe months, of a procurement process."
"Prisma Cloud is more expensive than Check Point CloudGuard."
"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."
"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."
"You can expect a premium price because it is a premium quality product by a leading supplier."
"I find the pricing to be expensive."
"The pricing is competitive. From what I have seen in the past, it is on par with the others."
"Although the cost can be high, the value is worth the price tag."
"The licensing cost for Symantec Cloud Workload Protection is paid yearly."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) solutions are best for your needs.
896,202 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise28
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise57
No data available
 

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 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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Amgen, Genpact, Western Asset, Zipongo, Proofpoint, NerdWallet, Axfood, 21st Century Fox, Veeva Systems, Reinsurance Group of America
LifeLock
Find out what your peers are saying about Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs. Symantec Cloud Workload Protection and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
896,202 professionals have used our research since 2012.