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Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Symantec Data Center 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
7.2
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (11th), Container Security (12th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (8th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (8th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (7th)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (7th), Container Security (2nd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (2nd)
Symantec Data Center Security
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.9
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks10.5%
Wiz12.4%
Microsoft Defender for Cloud7.2%
Other69.9%
Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
Cloud and Data Center Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Symantec Data Center Security3.3%
Illumio Segmentation14.0%
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation12.2%
Other70.5%
Cloud and Data Center Security
 

Featured Reviews

RO
IT Security Expert at Alior Bank S.A.
Unified risk scoring has improved our cloud visibility and simplifies remediation priorities
Qualys TotalCloud provides unified vulnerability and threat assessment across both IAS and SaaS. This solution provides a single prioritized view of risk, which helps reduce the work I would have to do. We are no longer based on CVSS; we are based on Qualys risk scoring, which is based on CVSS plus internal findings made by Qualys, and then assigns its own score. The TruRisk insight feature has found a small number of assets with high vulnerability scores, though I am cautious since some information is classified. Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted our bank's performance, and we have definitely seen benefits after implementing this solution.
reviewer2776578 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Image scanning has supported consistent security practices during cloud deployment
On a scale of ten, we would say people are happy with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks for the part we use. People are okay with it. We probably would give an eight. We don't give ten because if we don't use the other parts of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, it's because it was difficult to implement from an operational point of view. We could have deployed the runtime monitoring with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, but within our organization at our company, it was very difficult to find who would be the owner for the alerts. People have other tools and in the end, we don't use the full capabilities of a product that we pay for. It's partially related to the difficulty to integrate Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks runtime in our company's support process. We don't use the real-time monitoring part of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks. We don't know about the automated remediation feature of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks.
Muhammad Ejaz ul Hassan - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Continuous server hardening has protected critical legacy workloads and simplified security control
Symantec is lagging on the reporting side. I have been working for 10 years and I have identified many gray areas. As a user protecting your infrastructure, you need to sell the value to your management. Management buys the tool for preventing threats, and it works for them. However, you cannot sell it because every solution needs to show what happened in the last few years or how you will be protected in the future. Reporting is the most important thing for the CIO level, not the admin level. I have seen Symantec really lag in this area. I am creating my own tool to build a dashboard to share with the CIO level because they want to know what happened last week, last month, and last year. These reports will tell you about activities. Symantec changed the licensing when Broadcom acquired the company. The question of who will provide support became unclear. Support has now changed and they are making money. I have seen that most of the time when you ask implementation questions, they do not answer you. If you have a problem, they give you a low-level engineer at the first level. This delays resolution. Support has to be better.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would definitely recommend it because it is easy to handle any cloud resources."
"Its dashboards are brilliant. It provides in-depth insights."
"I would rate Qualys TotalCloud ten out of ten."
"Once you have your vulnerabilities fixed and your patches pushed out using Qualys TotalCloud, then you are able to eliminate threats and cyber risk."
"We were able to realize its benefits within 24 to 48 hours."
"CSPM is currently the most used feature, and we are enjoying the new feature, FlexScan, which is valuable for Internet-facing VMs."
"One of Qualys' best features is its categorization, which allows us to see the types of assets, their security postures, and the AI-powered version of the tool."
"The platform's unified view of the organization proves particularly valuable for leadership team meetings."
"I have not seen any limitations. Everything is customizable. You can do whatever you want, defining the reporting and custom use cases. They recently updated the UI, so it's much better than before."
"The ability to monitor the artifact repository is one of the most valuable features because we have a disparate set of development processes, but everything tends to land in a common set of artifact repositories. The solution gives us a single point where we can apply security control for monitoring. That's really helpful."
"The solution gives us a lot of visibility across all of our cloud solutions."
"Prisma Cloud's comprehensive platform offers a range of features, including runtime security and vulnerability assessments, through its Prisma Cloud Compute component."
"We haven't had an issue with the product for over a year."
"It supports the multi-cloud environment beautifully."
"Prisma Cloud's most valuable feature is its user identification capabilities."
"The solution's dashboard looks very user-friendly."
"Overall, this is a pretty good product."
"We have not reduced manpower, the number of servers has gone up, but the number of incidents has tricked down to single digits."
"The tool will then detect any anomalies, such as an intruder who has breached the network, which can trigger the system lockdown feature if it's enabled and meets the defined threshold."
"The monitoring in the management console allows us to find out what is going wrong, and it gets reports even before the user reports it."
"Good file integrity monitoring features."
"Symantec Data Center Security, as a name, represents the perfect solution if you want to harden your servers."
"The advantage of Data Center Security is its ease of use and that it serves as a single unified platform, where I can apply all my security policies to protect that server."
"The real strength lies in its straightforward approach, offering just two key policies: prevention and detection."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the support."
"The support process is inefficient due to the excessive number of replies required when submitting tickets."
"Two areas for improvement in Qualys TotalCloud are the speed of the public cloud platform and vulnerability detection."
"The patching process with Qualys Patch Management, which is part of TotalCloud, does not cover installing certain prerequisites on the servers or workstations. This shortcoming means we must rely on SCCM when any service stack updates or additional prerequisites are needed."
"We encountered challenges identifying the correct resource category for certain items, such as those in containers or storage."
"TotalCloud could improve its scanning of niche devices like Wi-Fi dongles and USB modems because they are often untested. It covers everything else, like laptops, mobile devices, and Bluetooth IoT devices. They can improve on the small IoT devices because hackers and testers use these."
"The onboarding process is a bit difficult. In the initial phase, it is very difficult to understand the features, what the dashboard contains, and what criteria they are using."
"An area for improvement would be to focus on risks related to AI, such as large language models and potential data leakage."
"We have discovered that Prisma is not functioning properly with GCP."
"Prisma is the result of multiple Palo Alto acquisitions, like CWPP, Twistlock, and Aporeto. Though they are part of a single pane of glass, there is no correlation between the solutions."
"One thing that is missing is Cloud Run runtime security—serverless. That would be great to have in the tool. It's not that easy to have Cloud Run in specific environments."
"The Fargate security microservice that's running doesn't support blocking features, which would be helpful. Another issue is the lifecycle. It isn't easy to upgrade if we have a console in Fargate."
"The challenge that Palo Alto and Prisma have is that, at times, the instructions in an event are a little bit dated and they're not usable. That doesn't apply to all the instructions, but there are times where, for example, the Microsoft or the Amazon side has made some changes and Palo Alto or Prisma was not aware of them. So as we try to remediate an alert in such a case, the instructions absolutely do not work. Then we open up a ticket and they'll reply, "Oh yeah, the API for so-and-so vendor changed and we'll have to work with them on that." That area could be done a little better."
"This could be one input that its pricing could be adjusted with respect to other competitors regarding any new features that could be added or improvements to be made in Prisma Cloud (Annual Contract)."
"Prisma Cloud's application security capabilities should be enhanced."
"They charge seven workloads for monitoring one compute, and that is quite expensive. This makes it difficult to move fully with the compute part because of the workload."
"The support is very bad. They're not fast at all. Trend Micro's support is much better."
"The product blocks certain processes, even after allowlisting them."
"Symantec is lagging on the reporting side."
"There is room for improvement in enhancing its graphical user interface for a more user-friendly experience."
"There is plenty of room for improvement with this product, and it could start with platform metrics."
"This solution clashes with Microsoft defender, which results in performance degradation on the machine."
"I think that technical support in general is not really capable of doing their work. They don't have enough knowledge to provide quick solutions, so we usually try to resolve problems within our team."
"They need to develop a more flexible product that can be scaled such that it fits well into a small business or a bigger, enterprise-level solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive."
"Qualys TotalCloud is cost-efficient and was selected for its value compared to other products."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches."
"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."
"As a middle management member, I do not have direct pricing knowledge, but based on the knowledge from our meetings, its pricing is competitive."
"The pricing for TotalCloud is attractive and competitive in the market. Given the features, especially the dashboard, I have no concerns regarding pricing."
"Although Qualys TotalCloud is relatively expensive due to its unique automation features, its cost-effectiveness is rated an eight out of ten, with ten being the most costly."
"TotalCloud's price is about right where I would expect it to be."
"The pricing and licensing are expensive compared to the other offerings that we considered."
"Our licensing fees are $18,000 USD per year."
"The purchasing process was easy and quick. It is a very economical solution."
"Prisma Cloud Enterprise is a costly solution. You need a license for all the components. At the same time, you have everything under one roof, so I think it's still justified."
"Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks has helped the company save some money. Cost-wise, it's okay."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"We are encountering some resistance in the African market regarding the cost of Prisma Cloud."
"The cost was not on the higher side. Overall, the cost gets recovered with its implementation."
"It is notably more expensive when compared to other solutions."
"Compared to some other solutions, such as CrowdStrike, Symantec is more expensive."
"The product is a bit costly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Construction Company
18%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise30
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise58
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
To be totally honest, I do not have any best features because I have had a bad experience using this tool, especially...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
My main use case for Qualys TotalCloud is vulnerability management and exposure management. I use this tool to evalua...
What is your primary use case for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?
Prisma Cloud helps support DevSecOps methodologies, making those responsibilities easier to manage.
What Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform do you recommend?
We like Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, since it offers us incredible visibility into our entire cloud system. We...
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...
What needs improvement with Symantec Data Center Security?
Symantec is lagging on the reporting side. I have been working for 10 years and I have identified many gray areas. As...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Data Center Security?
As a partner support, we handle all Symantec products for various clients. Currently, we work with DLP, Symantec Endp...
What advice do you have for others considering Symantec Data Center Security?
I am still a Symantec partner. Price rating is five out of ten. Symantec Data Center Security is a perfect solution, ...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Amgen, Genpact, Western Asset, Zipongo, Proofpoint, NerdWallet, Axfood, 21st Century Fox, Veeva Systems, Reinsurance Group of America
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Wiz, Palo Alto Networks, SentinelOne and others in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP). Updated: August 2026.
909,701 professionals have used our research since 2012.