Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs Qualys VMDR comparison

Aqua Security and Qualys are both solutions in the Container Security category. Aqua Security is ranked #19 with an average rating of 9.0, while Qualys is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.3. Aqua Security holds a 3.8% mindshare in Container Security, compared to Qualys’s 2.6% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Aqua Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Qualys users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Qualys VMDR and Aqua Cloud Security Platform are key competitors in the cybersecurity sector, both focusing on different security priorities. While Qualys VMDR excels in vulnerability management, Aqua Cloud Security Platform shines in container and cloud security, making each platform suitable for unique business requirements.

Features: Qualys VMDR is recognized for its robust vulnerability management, continuous monitoring, policy compliance, and web application scanning, offering a holistic security solution. Aqua Cloud Security Platform features strong container security, image scanning, and runtime protection; these capabilities are essential for cloud-native security environments. Both platforms have distinct advantages, making them leaders in their respective specializations.

Room for Improvement: Qualys VMDR could enhance its user experience with better reporting and integration, along with reducing false positives in vulnerability assessments. Aqua Cloud Security Platform can improve its reporting and user interface, with a need for broader server environment support outside Kubernetes. Customers of both solutions express desires for faster API responses and improvements in runtime security tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Qualys VMDR supports diverse deployment models across private, public, and hybrid clouds, generally receiving positive customer service reviews despite some reports of slow technical support. Aqua Cloud Security Platform is similarly versatile in deployment and praised for responsive tech support, although it faces some challenges with complex installation processes.

Pricing and ROI: Qualys VMDR offers a premium pricing model with a clear ROI through improved security and risk management, appealing to medium-to-large enterprises. Aqua Cloud Security Platform is competitively priced for cloud environments but may be costly for smaller businesses, with its value rooted in tailored licensing arrangements for client needs. Both deliver significant ROI through their specialized focus areas.

To learn more, read our detailed Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs. Qualys VMDR Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs. Qualys VMDR

March 2025

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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

SentinelOne Singularity Clo...

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Container Security category, the mindshare of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is 2.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Aqua Cloud Security Platform is 3.8%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qualys VMDR is 2.6%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Container Security

Featured Reviews

Andrew W

VP - Information Technology at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees

Tells us about vulnerabilities as well as their impact and helps to focus on real issues

Looking at all the different pieces, it has got everything we need. Some of the pieces we do not even use. For example, we do not have Kubernetes Security. We are not running any K8 clusters, so it is good for us. Overall, we find the solution to be fantastic. There can be additional education components. This may not be truly fair to them because of what the product is going for, but it would be great to see additional education for compliance. It is not a criticism of the tool per se, but anything to help non-development resources understand some of the complexities of the cloud is always appreciated. Any additional educational resources are always helpful for security teams, especially those without a development background.

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Burak AKCAGUN

Business Development Manager at Axoft Ukraine

A robust and cost-effective solution, excelling in scalability, on-premises support, and responsive technical support, making it well-suited for enterprises navigating stringent regulatory environment

The most crucial aspect is runtime protection, specifically image scanning before preproduction and deployment. Customers find it invaluable to have the ability to check for vulnerabilities in an image before deployment, similar to a sandbox environment. This feature ensures that customers can identify any potential issues with the image, such as misconfigurations or vulnerabilities, before integrating it into their workloads and infrastructure. In their source pipeline, companies can identify issues before deploying changes. This is crucial because customers prefer resolving any problems or misconfigurations before the deployment process. Software change security, including GSPM Cloud, is a key feature customers seek in their infrastructure.

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Harold Jensen

Senior Cybersecurity Engineer at 3M Health Information Systems

Good visibility but expensive and needs better support

Support: It's often overseas and often following a script, basically asking us to redo what we opened the case with. Multiple APIs: There seems to be a lack of easy onboarding into Qualys. We had to use manual inputs and some API calls to get items in place. Dashboard: It is very rudimentary with very little customization. The Qualys Scripting Language (QSL) works differently in different Qualys modules, so when you get it working in one area you have to modify the syntax in others. User account management: We often have to give users more rights than needed just to give them what they need. Integration with the various Qualys Modules: You can tell the UI is different based on of the different teams that created them. QSL syntax same in all modules Responsiveness of some of the components: They time out, you get a blank screen, etc. Backend updates between the various modules: You update connectors and information takes a few minutes to show in VMDR or Global Asset View Connectors: Connectors have a throttling issue with AWS which causes them to frequently fail unless you manually run them again.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"PingSafe can integrate all your cloud accounts and resources you create in the AWS account, We have set it up to scan the AWS transfer services, EC2, security groups, and GitHub."

"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security offers valuable scalability suitable for organizations of all sizes, from small businesses to large enterprises."

"The real-time detection and response capabilities overall are great."

"Cloud Native Security is a tool that has good monitoring features."

"It is pretty easy to integrate with this platform. When properly integrated, it monitors end-to-end."

"The mean time to detect has been reduced."

"It is fairly simple. Anybody can use it."

"Its performance impact on the systems is low, which means there is a minimal impact on system performance compared to traditional antivirus solutions."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security pros

"The solution was very user-friendly."

"The most valuable feature of Aqua Security is the scanner."

"The most helpful feature of Aqua Security is Drift Prevention, which is a feature that allows images to be immutable. In addition, one of the main reasons we went with Aqua Security is because it provides strong protection when it comes to runtime security."

"Valuable features include the ability to connect it to our Docker Hub where our images are stored, good integration with Slack, and the connection to the CV, to easily see which CVs are on each image."

"Support is very helpful."

"Aqua Security allowed us to gain visibility into the vulnerabilities that were present in the container images, that were being rolled out, the amount of risk that we were introducing to the platform, and provided us a look into the container environment by introducing access control mechanisms. In addition, when it came to runtime-level policies, we could restrict container access to resources in our environment, such as network-level or other application-level access."

"The container security element of this product has been very valuable to our organization."

"The most valuable feature is the security."

More Aqua Cloud Security Platform pros

"The process of defining and discovering scans is organized efficiently."

"I find the solution's dashboard interesting...The response time is fine. You can pull up reports without dragging or consuming bandwidth."

"The solution is easy to use."

"The most valuable features are vulnerability scanning, policy compliance scanning, and tablet for web application scanning."

"Qualys VM had a recent upgrade and the newer version is supporting the cloud."

"Technical support is fantastic."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to run different capabilities with the same agent. With only one agent, we can have EDR, vulnerability management, compliance and some basic SaaS security capabilities."

"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 if tags aren't made."

More Qualys VMDR pros

Cons

"When we request any changes, they must be reflected in the next update."

"I'd like to see better onboarding documentation."

"The cloud-based operations might pose challenges in areas with limited or unavailable internet connectivity. Desktop features might be useful for smaller organizations with less complex security needs."

"With Cloud Native Security, we can't selectively enable or disable alerts based on our specific use case."

"I would like to see the map feature improve. It's good, but it isn't fully developed. It lets us use custom resources and policies but does not allow us to perform some actions. I would also like more custom integration and runtime security for Kubernetes."

"The main area for improvement I want to see is for the platform to become less resource-intensive. Right now, it can slow down processes on the machine, and it would be a massive improvement if it were more lightweight than it currently is."

"While SentinelOne offers robust security features, its higher cost may present a challenge for budget-conscious organizations."

"Some of the navigation and some aspects of the portal may be a little bit confusing."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security cons

"Sometimes I got stressed with the UI."

"They want to release improvements to their product to work with other servers because now there are more focused on the Kubernetes environment. They need to improve the normal servers. I would like to have more options."

"We would like to see an improvement in the overview visibility that this solution offers."

"The solution could improve user-friendliness."

"Aqua Security could provide more open documentation so that their learning resources can be more easily accessed and searched through online. Right now, a lot of the documentation is closed and not available to the public."

"Aqua Security could improve the forwarding of logging into Splunk and into other tools, it should be easier."

"It's a bit hard to use the user roles. That was a bit confusing."

"I would like Aqua Security to look into is the development of a web security portal."

More Aqua Cloud Security Platform cons

"Reports were lacking somewhat on the customization side."

"Improve the API speed."

"Qualys should improve their customer experience. They need to improve the tech support experience and the turnaround time."

"The customer support is very bad."

"The reporting in this solution can be improved."

"Certain integration factors between different options could be improved."

"Qualys VM's vulnerability scan could be improved, especially the number of CVE numbers it can manage at a time."

"What we have found is that the solution is not closely tied with the patch management. It is okay with newer ones, like Windows 10 machines; it gives the correct patch. But for Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008, it does not give us the correct patch so we have to manually identify the patches. This is a major problem."

More Qualys VMDR cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"PingSafe is less expensive than other options."

"SentinelOne offers excellent pricing and licensing options."

"I would rate the cost a seven out of ten with ten being the most costly."

"I am not involved in the pricing, but it is cost-effective."

"PingSafe is cost-effective for the amount of infrastructure we have. It's reasonable for what they offer compared to our previous solution. It's at least 25 percent to 30 percent less."

"I understand that SentinelOne is a market leader, but the bill we received was astronomical."

"Its pricing was a little less than other providers."

"We found it to be fine for us. Its price was competitive. It was something we were happy with. We are not a Fortune 500 company, so I do not know how pricing scales at the top end, but for our cloud environment, it works very well."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security pricing and cost advice

"It comes at a reasonable cost."

"They were reasonable with their pricing. They were pretty down-to-earth about the way they pitched their product and the way they tried to close the deal. They were one of the rare companies that approached the whole valuation in a way that made sense for our company, for our needs, and for their own requirements as well... They will accommodate your needs if they are able to understand them and they're stated clearly."

"Dealing with licensing costs isn't my responsibility, but I know that the licenses don't depend on the number of users, but instead are priced according to your workload."

"Aqua Security is not cheap, and it's not very expensive, such as Splunk, they are in the middle."

"The pricing of this solution could be improved."

"Usually every implementation is different and the quote is in function of number of assets."

"The product is more expensive than that of any other vendor."

"The price is very reasonable."

"It is a high cost product. Compared to the other solutions, it is around 15 to 20% higher in cost."

"We do see over $100,000 in terms of price, for mid-size programs. You likely will pay more than $100,000 without any discount. It is a bit pricey."

"The pricing and licensing for Qualys could be improved."

"It is more expensive than other products on the market."

"We have an annual contract for Qualys VMDR. I believe it's for either two years or five years."

More Qualys VMDR pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

25%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Educational Organization

35%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about PingSafe?

The dashboard gives me an overview of all the things happening in the product, making it one of the tool's best featu...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PingSafe?

It is cost-effective compared to other solutions in the market.

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What needs improvement with PingSafe?

The documentation could be better. Besides improving the documentation, obtaining a professional or partner specializ...

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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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What do you like most about Aqua Security?

Customers find it invaluable to have the ability to check for vulnerabilities in an image before deployment, similar ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Aqua Security?

It comes at a reasonable cost. When compared to Prisma Cloud, it is more budget-friendly.

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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 tagg...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys VMDR?

Qualys offers better pricing and is feature-packed compared to other tools.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Qualys VMDR?

They can tweak their UI since the new version seems a bit jumbled up, and the old UI was more user-friendly.

See all answers

Comparisons

Wiz vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 24% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 20% of the time

AWS GuardDuty vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 7% of the time

Sysdig Secure vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 3% of the time

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security Competitors

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Aqua Cloud Security Platform

Compared 22% of the time

Wiz vs Aqua Cloud Security Platform

Compared 21% of the time

SUSE NeuVector vs Aqua Cloud Security Platform

Compared 7% of the time

Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes vs Aqua Cloud Security Platform

Compared 6% of the time

Tenable.io Container Security vs Aqua Cloud Security Platform

Compared 2% of the time

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Tenable Nessus vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 14% of the time

Rapid7 InsightVM vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 8% of the time

Tenable Security Center vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 6% of the time

Wiz vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 5% of the time

More Qualys VMDR Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

March 2025

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security report

Download SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Aqua Cloud Security Platform

April 2025

Download Aqua Cloud Security Platform product report

Buyer's Guide

Qualys VMDR

March 2025

Download Qualys VMDR product report

Also Known As

PingSafe

Aqua Security Platform, CloudSploit, Argon

Qualys VM, QualysGuard VM, Qualys Asset Inventory, Qualys Container Security

Overview

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security protects cloud workloads, offering advanced threat detection and automated response. It integrates seamlessly with cloud environments and secures containerized applications and virtual machines against vulnerabilities.

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is renowned for its efficiency in mitigating threats in real-time. The platform integrates effortlessly with existing cloud environments, ensuring robust cloud security management with minimal manual intervention. Securing containerized applications and virtual machines, it excels in threat intelligence and endpoint protection. However, improvements are needed in performance during high workload periods, and more integrations with third-party tools and better documentation would be beneficial. Users often find the installation process complex, support response times slow, and the dashboard's navigation unintuitive.

What are the key features of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security?

Real-time Threat Detection: Identifies and mitigates threats as they occur.
Automated Response: Automatically responds to threats to minimize impact.
Ease of Deployment: Simple setup process with scalable options.
Machine Learning Insights: AI-driven insights enhance threat prevention.
Seamless Integration: Integrates with cloud environments for unified security management.

What are the primary benefits or ROI to expect from SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security?

Enhanced Threat Mitigation: Improved security against real-time threats.
Reduced Manual Intervention: Automated processes save time and resources.
Scalability: Easily adapts to growing security requirements.
Centralized Management: Manage security across platforms from a single console.
Advanced Threat Intelligence: Provides in-depth analysis and protection.

In specific industries, SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is implemented to safeguard critical data and infrastructure. Organizations in finance, healthcare, and technology depend on its real-time threat detection and automated response to protect sensitive information. Its ability to secure containerized applications and virtual machines is particularly valuable in dynamic environments where rapid scaling is necessary.

SentinelOne

Aqua Security stops cloud native attacks, preventing them before they happen and stopping them when they happen. Dedicated cloud native threat research and the most loved cloud native security open source community in the world put innovation at your fingertips so you can transform your business. Born cloud native, The Aqua Platform is the most integrated Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP), securing from day one and protecting in real-time. Aqua has been stopping real cloud native attacks on hundreds of thousands of production nodes across the world since 2015.

Aqua Security Features

Aqua Security has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Vulnerability scanning
Dynamic threat analysis
Automates DevSecOps
CI/CD integrations
Cloud security posture management
Kubernetes security
Hybrid and multi-cloud
Container security
Serverless security
VM security
Cloud workloads protection

Aqua Security Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Aqua Security. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Designed for scale and performance: The Aqua Security platform was designed to scale to the largest environments in order to protect huge clusters and massive DevOps pipelines.

Empowers DevOps to detect issues early and fix them fast: The solution was designed to help you solve issues immediately - before they cause greater damage to your organization. It helps you gain insight into your vulnerability posture and prioritize remediation and mitigation according to contextual risk.

Automated compliance and security posture: Aqua Security checks your cloud services, Infrastructure-as-code templates, and Kubernetes setup against best practices and standards. This way, you can ensure the infrastructure you run your applications on is securely configured and in compliance.

Artifact scanning: The Aqua Security platform scans artifacts for vulnerabilities, malware, and other risks during development and staging. It allows you to set flexible and dynamic policies to control deployment into your runtime environments.

Minimizes false positives: Aqua Security relies on a variety of sources and proprietary research to curate and present vulnerabilities in the most accurate way, which helps to minimize false positives and unnecessary noise in the pipeline.

Automated security testing: The Aqua Security platform automates security testing in your CI/CD pipeline, and continuously scans registries and serverless function stores to detect emerging risks. By implementing the platform, you can get actionable feedback within your CI environments to empower your organization’s developers to fix issues rapidly.

Granular controls: The solution provides protection for your VM, container, and serverless workloads using granular controls with instant visibility and real-time detection and response.

Sandboxed environment: With Aqua Security, you can run images in a secure sandboxed environment that traces indicators of compromise (IOCs) such as container escapes, reverse shell backdoors, malware drops, code injection backdoors, and network anomalies.

Reviews from Real Users

Lizeth Z., Cloud Security Specialist at Telstra, says, “Aqua Security is the most advanced solution in the market for container security. Aqua Security allows us to check for vulnerabilities in the CI/CD pipeline, so application teams can remediate issues before going into production. Aqua Security helps us to check the vulnerability of image assurance and check for malware.”

Aqua Security

Vulnerability Management, Detection, and Response (VMDR) is a cornerstone product of the Qualys TruRisk Platform and a global leader in the enterprise-grade vulnerability management (VM) vendor space. With VMDR, enterprises are empowered with visibility and insight into cyber risk exposure - making it easy to prioritize vulnerabilities, assets, or groups of assets based on business risk. Security teams can take action to mitigate risk, helping the business measure their actual risk exposure over time.

Qualys VMDR offers an all-inclusive risk-based vulnerability management solution to prioritize vulnerabilities and assets based on risk and business criticality. VMDR seamlessly integrates with configuration management databases (CMDB), Qualys Patch Management, Custom Assessment and Remediation (CAR), Qualys TotalCloud and other Qualys and non-Qualys solutions to facilitate vulnerability detection and remediation across the entire enterprise.

With VMDR, users are empowered with actionable risk insights that translate vulnerabilities and exploits into optimized remediation actions based on business impact. Qualys customers can now aggregate and orchestrate data from the Qualys Threat Library, 25+ threat intelligence feeds, and third-party security and IT solutions, empowering organizations to measure, communicate, and eliminate risk across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments.

Qualys

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

HPE Salesforce Telstra Ellie Mae Cathay Pacific HomeAway

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

Buyer's Guide

Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs. Qualys VMDR

March 2025

Free Report: Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs. Qualys VMDR

Find out what your peers are saying about Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs. Qualys VMDR and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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