No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Symantec Data Center Security comparison

Why PeerSpot?
Sponsored
 

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
7.1
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (11th), Container Security (11th), 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 Networks10.2%
Wiz12.0%
Microsoft Defender for Cloud6.9%
Other70.9%
Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
Cloud and Data Center Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Symantec Data Center Security3.4%
Illumio Segmentation13.4%
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation11.6%
Other71.6%
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

"Qualys TotalCloud has significantly improved our organization by automating our reporting processes, reducing the time spent on report creation from two hours to less than fifteen to twenty minutes."
"I appreciate Qualys TotalCloud's ability to onboard any type of device with ease, including containers."
"Qualys TotalCloud's most valuable feature is its agent versatility."
"Qualys TotalCloud provides a single, prioritized view of risk, reducing the workload associated with consolidating multiple sources for risk prioritization."
"CSPM is currently the most used feature, and we are enjoying the new feature, FlexScan, which is valuable for Internet-facing VMs."
"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."
"The biggest strengths of Qualys TotalCloud are that it is pretty good at cloud visibility, has easy integration, and also has multi-cloud compatibility."
"The most valuable feature is extensibility."
"The most valuable features of the solution are areas like compliance and asset inventories, along with runtime protection."
"It is a good solution. Each team should utilize it. Every good organization is now moving towards or trying to be provider agnostic, so if you are using multiple providers, you should at least give Prisma Cloud a try."
"Prisma has massively reduced our alert investigation times; it is 50 times quicker, turning an issue investigation from two hours into two minutes compared to a cloud-native solution."
"Prisma Cloud's real-time detection and monitoring of our entire system is the most useful."
"One feature we like is the amount of data Prisma gives us. Some infrastructure and platform vulnerabilities that in the cloud are hard to detect, and we were unaware of some of these. It's critical to shed light on these. For example, you create virtual machines and forget about them, but when you revisit them, some vulnerabilities may be detected."
"CSPM is the most valuable feature."
"Overall, it provides all the pieces of information that you require, in one place and time."
"With the query language, we can analyze logs and find out which IPs are malicious. It also provides a graphical representation. It provides the overall visibility and how the traffic is flowing. We can see where the malicious IP is and whether it is an insider threat or an outsider threat."
"We use the product to prevent unauthorized access to data, systems, and servers. It provides essential features for data center security."
"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."
"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."
"Overall, this is a pretty good product."
"The file integrity monitoring features are the most valuable features of this product."
"The most valuable feature is the endpoint protection system."
"The granularity of applying the policies is valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the centralized console, which can handle different products that we have."
 

Cons

"To improve the user experience, reporting could be simplified for better comprehension by end users and project managers, facilitating issue resolution."
"Qualys TotalCloud has the potential to improve by integrating a hybrid platform for comprehensive management of both on-premises and cloud infrastructures."
"In terms of improvement, remediation still belongs to the cloud team, which is one of the issues we faced with Qualys TotalCloud."
"TotalCloud could improve the classification of vulnerabilities. Specifically, it could enhance the categorization of what aspects fall under patches resolved by OS or software updates and what pertains to configuration adjustments."
"Enhancing clarity regarding its compliance capabilities would be beneficial, as the current scope is limited in geographic coverage."
"The main area needing improvement is integration. Although the team is strengthening TotalCloud, integration can be enhanced with SIEM, SOAR, ITSM, and other sources."
"Qualys's ticketing system can be confusing when assigning tasks to individuals, and support could be improved by offering instant call solutions with engineers in addition to ticket replies."
"Some major banks and insurance companies require an on-premises solution for comprehensive vulnerability management, which TotalCloud does not offer."
"When an account is onboarded, if it is missing any permission, it should automatically be updated with the required permissions and policies."
"The Palo Alto support needs to improve."
"The UX part of Prisma's user interface could be simplified and the metrics tool should be highlighted more."
"While Prisma provides a lot of visibility, it also creates a ton of work. Most customers that implement Prisma Cloud have thousands of alerts that are urgent."
"It can be too expensive for small companies."
"The UI could use some improvement; we usually find the information we're looking for, but what fields can be clicked on and what workflow to follow to get the required information is not always evident. Sometimes we're all over the place, clicking around to drill in and uncover the alert and investigation details we're looking for."
"They need to make the settings more flexible to fit our internal policies about data."
"A couple of exporting functionalities should be more user-friendly because if I want to export something, I can get a lot of data visible to that particular CSV."
"There is room for improvement in enhancing its graphical user interface for a more user-friendly experience."
"Symantec is lagging on the reporting side."
"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."
"This solution clashes with Microsoft defender, which results in performance degradation on the machine."
"It would be advantageous if Symantec or Broadcom, given the rebranding, could simplify the process, enabling users to leverage the antivirus functionality more easily."
"There is plenty of room for improvement with this product, and it could start with platform metrics."
"The product blocks certain processes, even after allowlisting them."
"Could have better reporting capabilities and better support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"While Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive and may soon be considered overpriced."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers good pricing that is affordable and competitive with the market. Our partnership also provides us with additional benefits."
"The pricing for TotalCloud is attractive and competitive in the market. Given the features, especially the dashboard, I have no concerns regarding pricing."
"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."
"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."
"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 is comparable. It is built into our other product, so I cannot piecemeal it. It is a part of our subscription."
"The licensing cost is a bit high on the compute side."
"The pricing is competitive. From what I have seen in the past, it is on par with the others."
"If a competitor came along and said, "We'll give you half the price," that doesn't necessarily mean that's the right answer, at all. We wouldn't necessarily entertain it that way. Does it do what we need it to do? Does it work with the things that we want it to work with? That is the important part for us. Pricing wasn't the big consideration it might be in some organizations. We spend millions on public cloud. In that context, it would not make sense to worry about the small price differences that you get between the products."
"The pricing and the licensing are both very fair... The biggest advice I would give in terms of costs would be to try to understand what the growth is going to look like. That's really been our biggest struggle, that we don't have an idea of what our future growth is going to be on the platform. We go from X number of licenses to Y number of licenses without a plan on how we're going to get from A to B, and a lot of that comes as a bit of a surprise. It can make budgeting a real challenge for it."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Almost all the CSPM tools are pretty expensive."
"The pricing structure is easy to understand. Depending on the use case the pricing of the solution can be different. There are not any additional costs to the standard living fees."
"Although the cost can be high, the value is worth the price tag."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) solutions are best for your needs.
912,517 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
16%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
Construction Company
16%
Outsourcing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise32
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?
In terms of improvement, remediation still belongs to the cloud team, which is one of the issues we faced with Qualys...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
My main use case for Qualys TotalCloud is regarding the cloud visibility that we were not having previously. Previous...
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: September 2026.
912,517 professionals have used our research since 2012.