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Cisco SecureX [EOL] vs Qualys Web Application Scanning comparison

 

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

Cisco SecureX [EOL]
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Qualys Web Application Scan...
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (16th), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (11th)
 

Featured Reviews

Alon K - PeerSpot reviewer
CTO & VP of Cyber Solutions, Israel at Rockwell Automation
Gives our customers visibility and they don't have to go multiple management consoles anymore
One of the examples is related to forensics. The forensics are amazing because when you have enrichment, and the solutions talk with each other, when you need it, you have the ability to know everything in the organization: when, why, whatever. With just one click you have information from email, from the endpoint, from the web. Let's say that tomorrow morning, you have a ransom[ware] attack in your organization and you would like to know from which email it came, or where the customer saved the file, even though the incident didn't occur at the same moment. With SecureX, you have Cisco Threat Response inside. [With] one click, you get all of the flow. That's amazing value. That also releases resources for our customers. The customers don't have to connect many systems and try to register the event on each system, or to go to the SIEM and do a correlation. That's the one-stop shop for the customers, and that's amazing.
AnkitSharma13 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Officer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Web scanning needs improvement but offers good vulnerability detection
The downside of Qualys Web Application Scanning is that it cannot crawl automatically. If I provide an IP address and a login form, it does basic testing, but it doesn't go deep as IBM AppScan does. If Qualys Web Application Scanning could improve its crawling capability, it would be more user-friendly. Qualys Web Application Scanning does IP-level testing, requiring direct input of credentials, and can only scan a few pages to provide known generic vulnerabilities, which isn't as beneficial from my point of view. The Vulnerability Management also relies heavily on version numbers and will flag vulnerabilities based on the component version, but it doesn't check if a real fix exists, leading to flags on components that actually have workarounds available.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the most valuable features is the simplicity of deploying SecureX. It's very easy to do that and then you gain very detailed visibility into everything that's going on in your network and, obviously, at the device level. There's just a wealth of information that you can pull from all of these products that are part of SecureX. You know exactly if you have an issue or not."
"It is one of my favorite things that has ever been built."
"It has evolved a lot, just that monitoring piece to the current Orchestrator piece. The additional analytics are there. They now have something called Insight, which can basically take data from Microsoft Azure AD and Intune to give us information about our endpoints. This is detailed information about the endpoints, from Secure Endpoint and all these different products. So, it is just constantly evolving. Every time that it evolves, we have more information with more visibility. There are more features that we have that just make everything so much easier, and it is in one place. I don't have to keep going back and forth. I don't have to go to Secure Endpoint and ISE to get the data. I don't have to go to Intune on Microsoft to get the information. It is all in one place."
"Its cybersecurity and resilience have been extremely important for our organization."
"The ability to create firewalls online has been most valuable including the ability to create rules."
"SecureX takes all the separate pieces of security within your company, adds in intelligence from different sites and services on the internet, and makes them work together."
"This solution definitely helps us meet our cyber security goals and we haven't had any problems so far."
"Integrates well with our existing security infrastructure."
"Qualys Web Application Scanning is accurate and provides minimal false positives."
"The interface is user-friendly and easy to understand."
"The most valuable features are the scheduled scanning, detailed reports, asset management, the knowledge database, and the overall product framework."
"​QualysGuard web-based scanner is very useful for performing external penetration and PCI scans from remote locations.​"
"By using QualysGuard, we are able to finish external scans with assured results in half the time."
"Qualys Web Application Scanning is very stable and reliable."
"It combines both web application vulnerability management and internal vulnerability management on one platform and dashboard."
"The most valuable feature is that we are able to scan the services and put credentials like a user ID password, and we can verify the vulnerability level."
 

Cons

"The documentation can be improved and the on-prem integration. The set of applications that it was integrated with wasn't comprehensive."
"It would be nice if they had a different pricing model. Most of our budget for projects goes towards Cisco."
"Enhancing automation capabilities could further improve the product."
"They could put in more third-party integrations, but also more playbooks out-of-the-box for automation would be helpful."
"The automation and orchestration could be simpler."
"It is good that it provides information. However, I think that there needs to be more actionable items for us based on the information provided."
"For us, the biggest sticking point is that the product is not being designed for multi-tenancy use at present, from an MSP perspective."
"I'm not sure that I would call it a bug, but sometimes the solution is a little slow."
"I have dealt with Qualys's technical support, and any enhancements are challenging. I would rate them a five out of ten."
"The tool should have a live HTTP editor and more configuration options for some situations, such as handling applications that have URL rewriting enabled."
"New features need to be added, specifically LLM-based solutions."
"They should try to include business logic vulnerabilities in the scanner testing."
"There should be better visibility into the application."
"The reporting contains too many false positives."
"I have experience with adaptive scanning for single-page applications, which was not very effective."
"It's missing some zero-day patches."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For the value you get, the pricing of the solution is excellent."
"The product is absolutely free to any customer. As such, the only thing one must keep in mind is that as long as he already has one Cisco security product, irregardless of what that product is, SecureX is available for free."
"You can spend less money for another solution, but if you really want to have a good solution you have to pay. We are happy that we are getting such a good solution for what we are spending."
"The pricing is competitive, especially for education institutions. Licensing can be a little bit difficult to navigate, especially with resellers with Cisco, but for us it has been pretty easy."
"It would be nice if they had a different pricing model. Most of our budget for projects goes towards Cisco."
"Cisco SecureX is more expensive than Trend Micro. However, considering the integration capabilities with other solutions and the quality of technical support, I believe there's justification for the price difference."
"The pricing is the best part of this solution. It is free if you buy Umbrella or Duo Security. It is also a good solution."
"It is free. It can't get any better than that."
"We are on an annual license for the solution and the pricing could be more affordable."
"There are different options available with respect to licensing."
"The product is expensive, at least initially, in comparison to other products in this category."
"Qualys has an IT-based licensing based on a yearly license, which is a good way of handling it. However, in some cases, when we do the PCI scanning, the host will not like the scanning and we lose the IT license. So, this could be improved."
"Qualys WAS' pricing is competitive."
"I rate the software’s pricing a six out of ten."
"From my perspective, it is a budget-friendly option."
"Pricing was reasonable and competitive. It was not too far above the other products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
11%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise27
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys Web Application Scanning?
Regarding pricing, I think for personal use, it is costly, but if organizations are ready to pay, then it is fine as they are using it.
What needs improvement with Qualys Web Application Scanning?
The downside of Qualys Web Application Scanning is that it cannot crawl automatically. If I provide an IP address and a login form, it does basic testing, but it doesn't go deep as IBM AppScan does...
What is your primary use case for Qualys Web Application Scanning?
I use Qualys Web Application Scanning, and we are using Vulnerability Management. By Vulnerability Management, I mean not TotalCloud; they have some on-premises solutions also. Patch Management and...
 

Also Known As

Kenna.AppSec, Kenna.VI
Qualys WAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NHS, Rackspace, UNC Pembroke, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Missing Piece
BskyB, Cartagena, ClearPoint Learning Systems, Connect Group, du, Fortrex Technologies, HBOR, HDI, Highlights for Children, The Lithuanian State Enterprise Centre of Registers, City of Miami Beach, Microsoft, MidlandHR, MSCI Inc., Northern Arizona University, Ofgem, Olympus Europa, PhoneFactor, RTL Nederland, ThousandEyes, VGZ Organisatie B.V.
Find out what your peers are saying about SonarSource Sàrl, Checkmarx, Veracode and others in Application Security Tools. Updated: May 2026.
896,034 professionals have used our research since 2012.