Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs Qualys VMDR comparison

Aqua Security and Qualys are both solutions in the Container Security category. Aqua Security is ranked #17 with an average rating of 9.0, while Qualys is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.2. Aqua Security holds a 4.1% mindshare in Container Security, compared to Qualys’s 2.7% 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 Jan 5, 2025

Qualys VMDR and Aqua Cloud Security Platform compete in the cybersecurity market, focusing on vulnerability management and container security. Qualys VMDR has the upper hand due to its comprehensive vulnerability management and integration with cloud services, making it suitable for large organizations.

Features: Qualys VMDR excels in continuous monitoring, managing diverse IT environments, and providing detailed reporting. Its integration with cloud services and up-to-date vulnerability scans are vital for large organizations. Aqua Cloud Security Platform is geared towards container security, offering strong runtime protection, image scanning, and support for Docker and Kubernetes, making it ideal for containerized environments.

Room for Improvement: Qualys VMDR can enhance reporting capabilities, simplify the user interface, and improve product integration. Users report configuration complexity and a prevalence of false positives. Aqua Cloud Security Platform needs to boost reporting intelligence and interface user-friendliness. Both platforms should consider reducing prices and enhancing runtime security.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Qualys VMDR offers flexible deployment options including on-premises and cloud environments but has mixed reviews on customer support responsiveness. Aqua Cloud Security Platform supports various deployment environments, excelling in hybrid clouds, and is praised for its customer support, though there are calls for faster responsiveness.

Pricing and ROI: Qualys VMDR is considered expensive, especially when using multiple modules, but offers significant ROI due to enhanced vulnerability management. Aqua Cloud Security Platform is mid-priced, effective for larger environments with container security needs, but not as cost-effective for smaller setups. Both products demonstrate considerable ROI through risk reduction and improved security posture, though more transparent pricing and flexibility are desired.

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

Buyer's Guide

Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs. Qualys VMDR

January 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 February 2025, in the Container Security category, the mindshare of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is 2.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Aqua Cloud Security Platform is 4.1%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qualys VMDR is 2.7%, down from 2.8% 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

"They're responsive to feature requests. If I suggest a feature for Prisma, I will need to wait until the next release on their roadmap. Cloud Native Security will add it right away."

"The visibility PingSafe provides into the Cloud environment is a valuable feature."

"PingSafe stands out for its user-friendly interface and intuitive software, making it easy to navigate and use."

"It's helped free up staff time so that they can work on other projects."

"Atlas security graph is pretty cool. It maps out relationships between components on AWS, like load balancers and servers. This helps visualize potential attack paths and even suggests attack paths a malicious actor might take."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its storyline, which helps trace an event back to its source, like an email or someone clicking on a link."

"Singularity Cloud Workload Security provides us with better security detection and more visibility. It is another resource that we can use to detect vulnerabilities in our company's systems. For example, it can help us detect new file processes that we are not familiar with, which could be used by attackers to exploit our systems. Singularity Cloud Workload Security can also help us diagnose and analyze data to determine whether it is malicious or not. Singularity Cloud Workload Security is like another pair of eyes that can help us protect our systems from cyberattacks."

"Cloud Native Security helps us discover vulnerabilities in a cloud environment like open ports that allow people to attack our environment. If someone unintentionally opens a port, we are exposed. Cloud Native Security alerts us so we can remediate the problem. We can also automate it so that Cloud Native Security will fix it."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security pros

"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."

"We use Aqua Security for the container security features."

"Aqua Security helps us to check the vulnerability of image assurance and check for malware."

"From what I understand, the initial setup is simple."

"The DTA, which stands for Dynamic Threat Analysis, allows me to analyze Docker images in a sandbox environment before deployment, helping me anticipate risks."

"The solution was very user-friendly."

"Support is very helpful."

"Their sandboxing service is also really good."

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"Overall, the solution is highly rated because of its simplicity and efficiency."

"Great web application security for scanning."

"The best features of Qualys VMDR are its patch management capabilities and the ability to mitigate vulnerabilities automatically."

"The most valuable feature of Qualys Container Security is the detailed information in the reports and the remediation. This is done to make sure there are no vulnerabilities."

"It is very easy to use and there are lots of options. We can usually easily go through it and all of the things we want to configure, and we can configure everything to our specifications very easily."

"I like the automated report generation and vulnerability report generation."

"Qualys has a continuous endpoint monitoring feature for agent-based scanning. Once you deploy the solution, it monitors everything that is happening every 30 minutes. Then, if there are any vulnerabilities, they are reported."

"It gives you a lot of options, and it integrates with our ServiceNow for ticketing and all."

More Qualys VMDR pros

Cons

"We wanted it to provide us with something like Claroty Hub in AWS for lateral movement. For example, if an EC2 instance or a virtual machine is compromised in a public subnet based on a particular vulnerability, such as Log4j, we want it to not be able to reach some of our databases. This kind of feature is not supported in PingSafe."

"They could generally give us better comprehensive rules."

"I believe the UI/UX updates for SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security have room for improvement."

"The resolution suggestions could be better, and the compliance features could be more customizable for Indian regulations. Overall, the compliance aspects are good. It gives us a comprehensive list, and its feedback is enough to bring us into compliance with regulations, but it doesn't give us the specific objects."

"We don't get any notifications from PingSafe when the clusters are down."

"Bugs need to be disclosed quickly."

"The areas with room for improvement include the cost, which is higher compared to other security platforms. The dashboard can also be laggy."

"If I had to pick a complaint, it would be the way the hosts are listed in the tool. You have different columns separated by endpoint name, Cloud Account, and Cloud Instances ID. I wish there was something where we could change the endpoint name and not use just the IP address. We would like to have custom names or our own names for the instances. If I had a complaint, that would be it, but so far, it meets all the needs that we have."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security cons

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

"Aqua Security lacks a lot in reporting."

"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."

"The integrations on CICD could be improved. If Aqua had more plugins or container images to integrate and automate more easily on CICD, it would be better."

"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."

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

"In the next release, Aqua Security should add the ability to automatically send reports to customers."

"Since we are working from home, we would like to have the proper training for Aqua."

More Aqua Cloud Security Platform cons

"Qualys VM's machine learning and artificial intelligence features could be improved."

"I would like to see more accuracy in detections, better reporting capabilities, and better dashboard download capabilities."

"When tested on Zero day, there were errors."

"One area for improvement is the simplification of the process to ignore certain vulnerabilities on specific devices."

"Improve the user interface."

"It would be helpful to have features for better tracking, including options for adding relevant owners or supporting groups for each asset."

"Qualys could improve the inbuilt dashboards."

"Qualys currently does not have any features for scanning SCADA, IoT, and Industrial Control Systems."

More Qualys VMDR cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is based on modules, which was ideal for us."

"It is not that expensive. There are some tools that are double the cost of PingSafe. It is good on the pricing side."

"PingSafe is not very expensive compared to Prisma Cloud, but it's also not that cheap. However, because of its features, it makes sense to us as a company. It's fairly priced."

"The cost for PingSafe is average when compared to other CSPM tools."

"It is a little expensive. I would rate it a four out of ten for pricing."

"For pricing, it currently seems to be in line with market rates."

"PingSafe is priced reasonably for our workload."

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

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security pricing and cost advice

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

"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."

"It comes at a reasonable cost."

"The pricing of this solution could be improved."

"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."

"Qualys is a pay-as-you-go model, so there's flexibility to the pricing."

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

"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."

"It's very expensive, especially if you want to use multiple modules of Qualys."

"In Nigerian Naira, we spend about roughly four to five million to use this solution and this is expensive compared to solutions like Nessus."

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

"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."

More Qualys VMDR pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

25%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Educational Organization

37%

Financial Services Firm

10%

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?

SentinelOne is relatively cheap. If ten is the most expensive, I would rate it a seven.

See all answers

What needs improvement with PingSafe?

The areas with room for improvement include the cost, which is higher compared to other security platforms. The dashb...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

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

For smaller enterprises, the pricing is on the pricier side. However, for larger enterprises, it's considered okay. I...

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What needs improvement with Qualys VMDR?

Regarding improvement, compliance features haven't been utilized much. I anticipate more benefits in this area in the...

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Comparisons

Wiz vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 26% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 23% 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

Trend Vision One - Cloud Security vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 2% of the time

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Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Aqua Cloud Security Platform

Compared 23% of the time

Wiz vs Aqua Cloud Security Platform

Compared 21% of the time

SUSE NeuVector vs Aqua Cloud Security Platform

Compared 8% of the time

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

Compared 7% of the time

JFrog Xray vs Aqua Cloud Security Platform

Compared 2% of the time

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Tenable Nessus vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 17% 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 7% of the time

Wiz vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 6% of the time

More Qualys VMDR Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

January 2025

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security report

Download SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Aqua Cloud Security Platform

February 2025

Download Aqua Cloud Security Platform product report

Buyer's Guide

Qualys VMDR

January 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, Qualys Virtual Scanner Appliance

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

January 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: January 2025.

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