Qualys VMDR vs Vectra AI comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Qualys VMDR
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (7th), Configuration Management Databases (3rd), Container Security (11th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (3rd)
Vectra AI
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (2nd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (2nd), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (2nd), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (6th)
 

Market share comparison

As of June 2024, in the Risk-Based Vulnerability Management category, the market share of Qualys VMDR is 18.5% and it increased by 3.9% compared to the previous year. The market share of Vectra AI is 0.2% and it decreased by 31.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management
Unique Categories:
IT Asset Management
4.0%
Configuration Management Databases
1.9%
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
14.2%
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
22.0%
 

Featured Reviews

Jan Vobruba - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 3, 2022
Easy to use, well supported with continually improving functionality
If you're not overly experienced and you're looking for something in their management, it can sometimes be quite difficult because they can move buttons around without sending an update. Previously, if you deployed the Cloud Agent, you could define which tech would be under the agent and where it would be deployed. It now requires some text preparation and the Cloud Agent then downloads the specific profile defined without any indication that this might happen. If you are not using vulnerability management, you are not able to create the correct patch process for all applications stored on the system. It would be helpful if Qualys would integrate with more systems like ServiceNow, Jira, and so on, to create some tickets and integrate them into the active directory, because each group works differently and if you need to prepare a ticket, it must be defined to a specific group of people. Qualys just created a kit on ServiceNow, but it doesn't have the correct group of people in the active directory.
RM
Mar 7, 2023
Helps us to have more visibility in terms of what happens in our network and the network at large
In terms of valuable features, I like the ability to record the traffic and the metadata in the traffic. I also like the ability to rewind the past and be able to understand what happened. Some of my colleagues like the ability to investigate incidents. Vectra AI has had a positive effect on the productivity of our company's top teams. They use it a lot to understand what's going on. However, we still need to teach people how to use it to its full potential because it's quite a complicated product. The Sidekick MDR service is quite important to our organization’s security monitoring and management. The Sidekick team is able to give us the ins and outs of what's going on with some incidents. They are able to triage and help us to focus on a particular part of detection. They also gave us advice on how to configure some parts of the product. The two people I worked with from the MDR service are really good at what they do, and it's quite nice to work with them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I find the solution's dashboard interesting...The response time is fine. You can pull up reports without dragging or consuming bandwidth."
"We also like the flexibility in their licensing."
"The features that are most valuable are the identification, scan features, and the identification of vulnerabilities."
"It's very configurable to adjust impact to systems."
"Qualys VM had a recent upgrade and the newer version is supporting the cloud."
"Qualys VM's best feature is vulnerability management."
"Detects new hosts along with vulnerabilities."
"Technical support is fantastic."
"It keeps up with the network traffic, which is a good thing. It provides more context to plain alerts compared to using an older system. So, it helps an analyst reduce the information overload."
"The administrative privilege detection feature is the most valuable feature. The admin accounts are often highly accessible to the high-risk component of the environment. If those accounts are compromised or are being used in a suspicious manner, that's high-fidelity events for us to look into."
"It has helped us to organize our security. We get a better overview on what is happening on the network, which has helped us get quicker responses to users. If we see malicious activity, then we can quickly take action on it. Previously, we weren't getting an overview as fast as we are now, so we can now provide a quicker response."
"The packet-capturing feature is very useful."
"It's important for us that the user interface is easy to understand and that is the biggest benefit we see from Vectra AI."
"Vectra is very compatible with various cloud providers, such as Amazon and Azure AD. This is helpful as customers often migrate their network infrastructure to the cloud."
"One of the things that we didn't expect to happen was that our network team also jumped on it faster than we thought. In most cases, if it's a security tool that's working on the network part, they can also use it to find out certain flaws that have been in the system. Certain flaws, related to some legacy stuff, were already there for quite a few years, which they couldn't explain at first, but we could explain them based on the timing of certain things."
"It's easy to manage, and I love the UX. It's very well designed. When we are looking for something, it's quite easy to find it."
 

Cons

"It's quite complex on the way it is set up, so it takes a fair bit of time in order to get your head around it in order to deploy it. Once you've deployed it, then you're never confident on the versions of the browsers and the SSL certificates, etc. You have to always go back into Qualys and check."
"Certain integration factors between different options could be improved."
"Finding things in management can be quite difficult."
"Qualys could be improved in its overall performance compared to other vulnerability management or scanning tools."
"Its integration with ServiceNow and other similar products is complicated and can be improved. It should also have virtual batching. They should support more standards and compliance requirements and more customizations. For policy compliance, they can add the standards required by the countries in the Middle East. Each country generates its own standards and frameworks, and those frameworks should be there in all products, not only in Qualys. The market here is huge, especially in the cybersecurity field. Qatar has a framework for Qatar 2022, and each and every company in the public or private sector has to follow the Qatar 2022 framework."
"I would like to have CSPM, a continuous scan-like cloud added to the solution."
"I would like to see more accuracy in detections, better reporting capabilities, and better dashboard download capabilities."
"There seems to be a lack of easy onboarding into Qualys."
"It does a little bit of packet capture on alert so you can look at the packet capture activity going on, but it doesn't collect a whole lot of data. Sometimes it's only one or two frames, sometimes it does collect more. That's why they have the addition of their Recall platform, because that really does help expand the capability."
"One area where there's room for improvement is the absence of a comprehensive TCP recording and replay feature."
"The rules for threats are not always precise and Vectra AI should improve this."
"What is most important for us is to have one place where we can manage a few brains because we are based on a zero-trust network. As a result, each customer needs to have a separate brain. For the SOC team, we need to have one place where the SOC analyst can go to visit the website and from that site manage all of the customers. Right now, Vectra AI doesn't have this capability, and I would really like to have this feature."
"The reporting from Cognito Detect is very limited and doesn't give you too many options. If I want to prepare a customized report on a particular host, even though I see the data, I have to manually prepare the report. The reporting features that are built into the tool are not very helpful."
"In education as a sector, we are looking at AI a lot in terms of how it can be used as part of the teaching and learning side of things. It would be great to have Vectra AI look at a better way to enhance the security posture related to the AI tools in our portfolio."
"Vectra Recall could be utilized much more, and I'm seeing some indications of that today with the investigative components. I use the Visualize feature to visualize components and dashboards a lot. I'm interested in new ways to build automated searches or having them leveraged already from Vectra."
"You are always limited with visibility on the host due to the fact that it is a network based tool. It gives you visibility on certain elements of the attack path, but it doesn't necessarily give you visibility on everything. Specifically, the initial intrusion side of things that doesn't necessarily see the initial compromise. It doesn't see stuff that goes on the host, such as where scripts are run. Even though you are seeing traffic, it doesn't necessarily see the malicious payload. Therefore, it's very difficult for it to identify these type of host-driven complex attacks."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing and licensing for Qualys could be improved."
"An annual license for a single scanner costs around $3,000."
"In Nigerian Naira, we spend about roughly four to five million to use this solution and this is expensive compared to solutions like Nessus."
"It's very expensive, especially if you want to use multiple modules of Qualys."
"Qualys VM is quite expensive. It's a subscription-based license, and it's yearly. Right now, it's open for me, and I don't have any limitations or caps on the licenses. They are seeing if the product is viable for 4500 users. I can add as much as I want, and at the end of the subscription, they'll let me know how many licenses were actually used and bill me accordingly. On a scale from one to five, I would give their pricing a three. It's still expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"Usually every implementation is different and the quote is in function of number of assets."
"When you want to cover yourself for scalability, you will be charged for the number you place on the scan itself."
"Vectra's pricing is too high. All schools will not be able to afford it. Vectra will only end up targeting higher education and higher value independence purely because of the price. A lot of schools would love to have a product like Vectra AI, but they simply can't because they struggle to even pay the high E5 licensing from Microsoft. When you're up against that, Vectra AI is never going to be within the sector's price range."
"Vectra AI's pricing is cheaper than that of Darktrace."
"Their licensing model is antiquated. I'm not a fan of their licensing model. We have to pay for licensing based on four different things. You have to pay based on the number of unique IPs, the number of logs that we send through Recall and Stream, and the size of our environment. They need to simplify their licensing down to just one thing. It should be based on the amount of data, the number of devices, or something else, but there should be just one thing for everything. That's what they need to base their licensing on. Cost-wise, they're not cheap. They were definitely the most expensive option, but you get what you pay for. They're not the cheapest option."
"The licensing is on an annual basis."
"At the time of purchase, we found the pricing acceptable. We had an urgency to get something in place because we had a minor breach that occurred at the tail end of 2016 to the beginning of 2017. This indicated we had a lack of ability to detect things on the network. Hence, why we moved quickly to get into the tool in place. We found things like Bitcoin mining and botnets which we closed quickly. In that regard, it was worth the money."
"The solution's pricing was 50 percent lower than the other vendors shortlisted."
"It is an expensive solution, but it's not the most expensive we've seen. We also know how much we're going to pay, unlike with some other providers where all of a sudden our license explodes."
"Vectra AI is not a cheap solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
33%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for Qualys VM?
Qualys VM is used for vulnerability scans for the internet and applications using application exchange. There are many applications. We also use the solution for asset management per team, and the ...
What do you like most about Qualys VMDR?
I like that we have many scanners and channels that don't overload. It helps us scan and track easily. Also, the tagging system is good for tagging. We can still use QualysAgent task ID tools even ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys VMDR?
We have an annual contract for Qualys VMDR. I believe it's for either two years or five years.
What is the biggest difference between Corelight and Vectra AI?
The two platforms take a fundamentally different approach to NDR. Corelight is limited to use cases that require the eventual forwarding of events and parsed data logs to a security team’s SIEM or ...
What do you like most about Vectra AI?
The solution is currently used as a central threat detection and response system.
 

Also Known As

Qualys VM, QualysGuard VM, Qualys Asset Inventory, Qualys Container Security, Qualys Virtual Scanner Appliance
Vectra Networks, Vectra AI NDR
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Agrokor Group, American Specialty Health, American State Bank, Arval, Life:), Axway, Bank of the West, Blueport Commerce, BSkyB, Brinks, CaixaBank, Cartagena, Catholic Health System, CEC Bank, Cegedim, CIGNA, Clickability, Colby-Sawyer College, Commercial Bank of Dubai, University of Utah, eBay Inc., ING Singapore, National Theatre, OTP Bank, Sodexo, WebEx
Tribune Media Group, Barry University, Aruba Networks, Good Technology, Riverbed, Santa Clara University, Securities Exchange, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association
Find out what your peers are saying about Tenable, Qualys, Rapid7 and others in Risk-Based Vulnerability Management. Updated: May 2024.
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