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Amazon Inspector vs Tenable Cloud Security comparison

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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
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (5th), 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)
Amazon Inspector
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (26th), IT Vendor Risk Management (6th)
Tenable Cloud Security
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (22nd), Container Security (31st), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (19th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (23rd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (19th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon Inspector1.0%
Wiz4.7%
Qualys Exposure Management4.0%
Other90.3%
Vulnerability Management
Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Tenable Cloud Security3.0%
Wiz12.5%
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks10.1%
Other74.4%
Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
 

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.
John D'Arcy - PeerSpot reviewer
Co-Founder, Professional AWS Cloud Architect at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Automated vulnerability assessments continuously enhance security
The most valuable features probably are the ability to do automated vulnerability assessments, which it does with Amazon Inspector version two. It operates continuously, so as soon as resources are created, it scans them for vulnerabilities. This allows me to pinpoint potential security vulnerabilities and provide actionable recommendations relatively quickly. Larger enterprises usually use Inspector to gather all the vulnerabilities, the CVEs, across all accounts in an AWS organization. The enterprises I work for typically have many accounts in their organization, such as thousands of accounts where I am at the moment. It is a way to gather the vulnerabilities that are present on EC2 instances, container images, and Lambda functions.
CD
Information Security Architect at WSP
Has significantly improved proactive monitoring through automated asset discovery and seamless integration with cloud environments
Making the system smarter would be beneficial. Adding modules for integration with AWS and Azure would be helpful. Adding capabilities for the scanner to automatically pick up changes and add assets automatically would be valuable. When discussing a big company, it is mandatory to have tools that will assist us rather than waiting for manual input to add hosts. Adding assets manually is prone to mistakes. Humans might forget to add an asset or make errors when adding multiple assets. Taking the human element out of the context and making it more streamlined is the future for security. The human should be involved where expertise is needed, such as analysis and decision-making. Currently, with resource constraints, we need tools to collect and aggregate data, eliminate false positives as much as possible, and present relevant information to employees for action.

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 agent versatility."
"Qualys TotalCloud has saved our time by giving us better asset visibility and risk-based prioritization, as it has reduced the time spent manually reviewing CVEs and deciding what to address first."
"Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted my organization by providing visibility into the environment."
"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's most valuable features are its security capabilities that help identify and mitigate risk factors."
"Vulnerability and threat detection and assessment of the criticality of the vulnerabilities exposed are most valuable."
"Once you have your vulnerabilities fixed and your patches pushed out using Qualys TotalCloud, then you are able to eliminate threats and cyber risk."
"Qualys TotalCloud's most valuable features are its cloud security posture management, Kubernetes, and container security capabilities."
"The findings dashboards are neat and easy to understand, offering clear demarcations for different types of findings and detailed insights into specific vulnerabilities and their associated instances. It is not a place where everything is dumped together. It offers an easy-to-understand layout."
"I recommend Amazon Inspector because it allows the automation of processes and requires less manual monitoring."
"The vulnerability discovery is valuable, and they also rank those vulnerabilities for you. So, you could rapidly attack some of the higher, severe vulnerabilities as they pop up, if they do pop up."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon Inspector is the categorization of findings, which filters vulnerabilities by instance, container image, container repository, and Lambda function."
"It operates continuously, so as soon as resources are created, it scans them for vulnerabilities."
"Amazon Inspector is highly stable, rated ten out of ten, and this stability impacts business security and administration positively."
"It is scanning the whole repository for any sort of vulnerabilities, so it allows us to be more confident in our DevSecOps and not put a lot of folks or attention to it."
"The assessment reports provided by Amazon Inspector have helped me in identifying security vulnerabilities in my cloud applications by giving us a nicely designed dashboard that provides all the security information we need to work on remediation."
"Ermetic can provide super visibility for our cloud environment (we are using AWS), the dashboard is simple to use, the findings provide all of the information you require, it provides detection and remediation, and creating a Jira ticket from a finding is just one click away."
"Ermetic can provide super visibility for our cloud environment (we are using AWS)."
"The analytical and reporting capabilities are pretty straightforward and show every transaction and major attempt to attack the application in the cloud."
"Element is precisely what we needed for close to real-time external surface monitoring, and the automatic integration capabilities, particularly with DNS, Azure, and AWS, are extremely valuable."
"Tenable Cloud Security excels in vulnerability detection, one of its strongest features. Another valuable feature is software composition analysis, which highlights and automates the detection of security flaws. Additionally, their knowledge base is excellent; if anything goes wrong, they provide clear guidance on what needs to be done to address specific vulnerabilities."
"Scanning and reporting are the most valuable features of Tenable Cloud Security"
"The key benefit lies in having the largest and most up-to-date database. When it comes to using any Tenable product, it excels in finding vulnerabilities and providing analytics."
"The product's deployment phase is easy."
 

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."
"Regarding improvements to Qualys TotalCloud, I suggest that user navigation can be enhanced because initially, many users found it complicated and had trouble understanding the platform due to information being spread across multiple tabs."
"Qualys TotalCloud needs to improve its accuracy for non-Windows operating systems."
"In terms of improvement, remediation still belongs to the cloud team, which is one of the issues we faced with Qualys TotalCloud."
"The support process is inefficient due to the excessive number of replies required when submitting tickets."
"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."
"One of the things that could be improved is the alerts. Qualys is a fantastic tool, especially with the TruRisk feature, but one challenge that most leaders face involves alert fatigue."
"To be honest, I would move out from this tool because it does not give a full view of vulnerability."
"One major area for improvement is remediation. My team works on remediating findings over time, likely using available patches. However, easier integration with Amazon's patching services would be very helpful."
"The false positive rate of Amazon Inspector is a little high, and it is not covering all different applications and scanning."
"It has a limited scope. So, AWS Inspector primarily focuses on the security of the EC2 instance. So, if your architecture includes other AWS services, then you may need to use additional tools for your comprehensive security assessment. So that is one con. Another is, like, we have a dependency on agents."
"There are challenges associated with the interdependencies in AWS services, like requiring an Active Directory for other services, resulting in additional charges."
"It has automated vulnerability assessment, yet I seek more flexibility in defining custom vulnerability checks tailored to my needs, which is more difficult."
"The most challenging aspect I faced with Amazon Inspector during integration was automating the remediation process."
"One area for improvement in Amazon Inspector is the automation aspect."
"The other point is that the reporting features of Inspector need improvement. For example, I am in an organization with millions of CVEs, and getting an overview of all this is challenging."
"There is a need for the support team to improve their response time since it is one of the areas where the product's technical team has certain shortcomings."
"We still maintain Tenable Cloud Security but have reduced the number of licenses. We now use it occasionally to validate specific items rather than monitoring the entire surface, for which we use Element."
"I do think there might be room for more integrations. This could allow for further customization and flexibility, essentially offering different functionality options to accommodate various budgets."
"I have faced several bug incidents with the solution"
"The product must provide more features."
"I didn't find anything that wasn't useful or needed to be added."
"Tenable needs to offer a patch-based solution since it is an area where the tool lacks a bit."
"In my experience, Tenable Cloud Security is not very stable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 cost-efficient and was selected for its value compared to other products."
"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 pricing for TotalCloud is attractive and competitive in the market. Given the features, especially the dashboard, I have no concerns regarding pricing."
"The cost is high, but it meets our organizational needs."
"While Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive and may soon be considered overpriced."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers competitive pricing given its comprehensive suite of features, including integration, assessment, remediation, and detection capabilities, all within a single platform."
"The pricing is comparable. It is built into our other product, so I cannot piecemeal it. It is a part of our subscription."
"It is scaled as you go. There are probably a certain number of scans per month, and there are tiers. If you're under a certain tier, it is free. The second level is pennies, and then all the way up to like a million. So, it has a tiered pricing program. They're pretty good with your initial scanning, and there is room to scale based on being affordable, but it is fairly cheap. There are no additional costs. They pretty much think about it as a pay-per-scan type model."
"The lowest cost would be around $10 for a few small accounts, however, for thousands of accounts, it could be around $5000 to $6000 dollars per month."
"It's priced according to market standards for its services."
"The pricing is very transparent and clear."
"There is a need to opt for a subscription-based pricing model to use Tenable Cloud Security. I rate the product price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"The tool's price is good compared to other brands. The tool's subscription is for a year."
"The tool's pricing is fair."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
18%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise38
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Inspector?
I am not honestly sure about the pricing side of Amazon Inspector, but that is taken care of by a separate team. I be...
What needs improvement with Amazon Inspector?
They might launch support for third-party environments in the next version regarding the best features in Amazon Insp...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Inspector?
I mostly use Amazon Inspector for vulnerability scanning on AWS native applications. For hybrid applications, we have...
What needs improvement with Tenable Cloud Security?
Making the system smarter would be beneficial. Adding modules for integration with AWS and Azure would be helpful. Ad...
What is your primary use case for Tenable Cloud Security?
We had other solutions that we used. One solution was that we did not have something exactly similar to what Element ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Ermetic CSPM?
I wasn't involved with the pricing, setup cost and licensing for Tenable Cloud Security.
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
No data available
Ermetic, Ermetic Identity Governance for AWS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
betterment, caplinked, flatiron, university of nutri dame
Tyler Technologies, Bilfinger, BarkBox, MongoDB, airSlate, Adama, Latch, Cloudinary, Riskified, AppsFlyer, IntelyCare, Aidoc, 42Dot, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Wiz, Qualys, Tenable and others in Vulnerability Management. Updated: October 2026.
920,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.