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

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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's most valuable feature is its ability to link clusters of assets, providing a clear model of deployments, vulnerabilities, and statuses."
"Qualys TotalCloud has significantly reduced our workload in terms of managing risks, helping us to be more efficient and save substantial resources."
"CSPM is currently the most used feature, and we are enjoying the new feature, FlexScan, which is valuable for Internet-facing VMs."
"Qualys TotalCloud's most valuable features are its security capabilities that help identify and mitigate risk factors."
"Qualys TotalCloud has helped us view our risk structure, vulnerabilities, and security posture."
"The vulnerability management feature is the one I like the most because it provides a clear picture of all vulnerabilities."
"Qualys TotalCloud provides a single, prioritized view of risk, reducing the workload associated with consolidating multiple sources for risk prioritization."
"The most valuable feature is extensibility."
"CSPM is the most valuable feature."
"It's definitely a good product, and if a company is heavily into the public cloud environment, they must look to use a product like this to gain good visibility into their security."
"The most valuable feature is the continuous cloud compliance monitoring and alerting."
"Prisma Cloud helped us with compliance. Most of my deployments have been greenfield, so I don't have a benchmark to compare how the security posture has improved. I've always used this from day zero of the configuration. However, I can say that the compliance checks for PCI, DSS, HIPAA, etc., made my life simpler. I don't need to look at each of these standards and compare the rules I have in place."
"Prisma Cloud's most important feature is its auto-remediation."
"I like the scanning features provided by Prisma Cloud, including the image scan and source scan."
"The support is excellent."
"The most valuable feature of Prisma Cloud is WAF (web application firewall)."
"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."
"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."
"It will read various logs, diagnose what is wrong, and then alert you."
 

Cons

"Qualys' customer service provides quality answers, but the response time is long, even though it is within the SLA."
"The main area needing improvement is integration. Although the team is strengthening TotalCloud, integration can be enhanced with SIEM, SOAR, ITSM, and other sources."
"TotalCloud could improve its scanning of niche devices like Wi-Fi dongles and USB modems because they are often untested. It covers everything else, like laptops, mobile devices, and Bluetooth IoT devices. They can improve on the small IoT devices because hackers and testers use these."
"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."
"Although TotalCloud is a helpful tool, some of its advanced features are still under development."
"In my opinion, what can be improved in Qualys TotalCloud includes pricing and container scanning."
"In TotalCloud, I would suggest improvements in policy checks to cater to various inventory types like VPCs, subnets, S3 buckets, or IAMs. There is a lack of data segregation according to criticality or inventory."
"To improve the user experience, reporting could be simplified for better comprehension by end users and project managers, facilitating issue resolution."
"A better correlation between the multiple products Prisma Cloud contains would be crucial. It would reduce the time spent looking at reports and enable you to get all the actionable insights across products. I think that Palo Alto is working on it, but they need to work faster because it doesn't make sense to have all these products in a single pane of glass without any correlation between them."
"Palo Alto should work on ease-of-use and the user-friendliness to be more competitive with some competing products."
"One of the main backlogs in their development is in the area of integration. For example, we have ServiceNow in place for ticket management and Prisma Cloud is supposed to send closure emails for incidents. But from time to time, it fails to do so. We have several other mismatches between Prisma Cloud and ServiceNow."
"The automation must continue to become much smoother."
"The integration of the Compute function into the cloud monitoring function—because those are two different tools that are being combined together—could use some more work."
"Runecast gave us more visibility into VMware's private cloud. We have more environments there, but Prisma's lack of visibility into the private cloud was a downside—there weren't many."
"Areas like the deployment of their defenders and their central control need manual intervention. They have a very generic case for small companies; however, for bigger companies to work, we have to do a lot of changes to our system to accommodate it."
"Some module customization might be needed and certain features like adding custom labels are currently unavailable unless we have administrator access."
"One area for improvement in Symantec Cloud Workload Protection is integration."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers cost-effective licensing flexibility."
"The pricing for TotalCloud is attractive and competitive in the market. Given the features, especially the dashboard, I have no concerns regarding pricing."
"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 is comparable. It is built into our other product, so I cannot piecemeal it. It is a part of our subscription."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers good pricing that is affordable and competitive with the market. Our partnership also provides us with additional benefits."
"TotalCloud's price is about right where I would expect it to be."
"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."
"The Prisma Cloud pricing is good."
"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."
"Prisma Cloud licensing works on credits."
"Its price is reasonable as compared to other products. The main challenge is explaining the licensing model to customers. It isn't a problem related to Palo Alto. Commonly, people don't understand cloud licensing or security licensing. When they have fixed virtual machines, they know what they are going to be charged, but when it comes to cloud automation, it is hard for them to get clarity in case of high workloads or when they have enabled auto-scaling, etc. It would be helpful if Palo Alto can educate people on their licensing programs."
"The product is very expensive, but the cost is a necessary evil; I don't know how we could have any kind of cloud presence without this type of monitoring. The pricing is calculated by module and resource usage. Ultimately, it saves us money in the amount of time we would spend uncovering what it uncovers, and we might not make the required discoveries without it anyway. Prisma offers incredible value, though I wish it were cheaper."
"The pricing is competitive. From what I have seen in the past, it is on par with the others."
"The licensing cost is a bit high on the compute side."
"Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks carries a higher cost, but its enhanced security measures justify the expense."
"The licensing cost for Symantec Cloud Workload Protection is paid yearly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
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...
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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
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