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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
39
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (11th), Container Security (11th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (8th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (1st), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (6th)
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) (8th), 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 (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks10.6%
Wiz12.7%
Microsoft Defender for Cloud7.6%
Other69.1%
Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
Cloud and Data Center Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Symantec Data Center Security3.3%
Illumio Segmentation14.8%
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation13.2%
Other68.7%
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

"One of the most valuable features of Qualys TotalCloud is FlexScan, which is specifically for internet-facing VMs. We found this feature to be very useful. It was a key differentiator for us."
"I highly recommend Qualys TotalCloud to other users."
"The best feature would be the ability to create policies. It is easy to control and update policies as required."
"The best part I like is the on-demand scans."
"I would definitely recommend Qualys TotalCloud to other users."
"Qualys TotalCloud has helped us view our risk structure, vulnerabilities, and security posture."
"I would definitely recommend Qualys TotalCloud to other customers."
"The most valuable feature is the consolidated information that it provides from various platforms."
"The initial setup is seamless."
"My impression of Prisma Cloud was pretty good; it's an amazing tool that gives the whole view of your container environment and connection with multiple platforms, such as Splunk, and it is a good solution."
"This solution will ensure that we've got a more secure environment, mitigating any sort of bad actors coming in and either destroying or disrupting the environment."
"Configuration monitoring and alerting is the most valuable feature; it happens at the cloud's speed, allowing our development team to respond quickly. If a configuration goes against our security best practices, we're alerted promptly and can act to resolve the issue. As cloud security staff, we're not staring at the cloud all the time, and we want to let the developers do their jobs so that our company is protected and work is proceeding within our security controls."
"The most valuable feature is the option to add custom queries using the RQL language that they supply so that we can customize the compliance frameworks to what we need to look for."
"The policies that come prepackaged in the tool have been very valuable to us. They're accurate and they provide good guidance as to why the policy was created, as well as how to remediate anything that violates the policy."
"The solution will streamline and minimize manual efforts."
"It has a feature for customized security policy. I implement it in banking, health insurance, and other sectors, and every organization has its own customized policies and procedures. In Prisma Cloud, you can customize policies, and based on that, you can do monitoring."
"The console and tools are very user-friendly."
"The real strength lies in its straightforward approach, offering just two key policies: prevention and detection."
"The file integrity monitoring features are the most valuable features of this product."
"The most valuable feature is the centralized console, which can handle different products that we have."
"We have not reduced manpower, the number of servers has gone up, but the number of incidents has tricked down to single digits."
"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."
"We use the product to prevent unauthorized access to data, systems, and servers. It provides essential features for data center security."
"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."
 

Cons

"In my opinion, what can be improved in Qualys TotalCloud includes pricing and container scanning."
"The price is very expensive, actually."
"The cloud licensing unit system is unclear, especially since "units" aren't well-defined."
"The main area needing improvement is integration. Although the team is strengthening TotalCloud, integration can be enhanced with SIEM, SOAR, ITSM, and other sources."
"The response part of the Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) module can be improved."
"An area for improvement would be to focus on risks related to AI, such as large language models and potential data leakage."
"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."
"Areas that need improvement in every solution include the remediation part. The remediation steps should be simple enough for everyone to understand."
"The regional cost of Prisma Cloud in South Africa is high and could be improved."
"Prisma's notifications aren't up to industry standards."
"There are hundreds of built-in policies for AWS and Azure, but GCP and Oracle are not covered as much as AWS. There is a lot of work to do on that part. There is, obviously, a tiny bit of favoritism towards AWS because it has the most market share."
"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."
"More documentation with real-world use cases would be helpful."
"The cloud integration is too complex. It should be simple to integrate Prisma Cloud with any cloud environment. Policy management could also be simpler."
"Having auto Defender upgrades so that we do not have to upgrade Defender manually would be helpful."
"There needs to be a mechanism that allows me to manually configure compliance more easily."
"It would be advantageous if Symantec or Broadcom, given the rebranding, could simplify the process, enabling users to leverage the antivirus functionality more easily."
"Since the acquisition of Symantec, our customers have not been satisfied with this solution."
"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."
"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."
"There is plenty of room for improvement with this product, and it could start with platform metrics."
"Agent management is a challenging task."
"This solution clashes with Microsoft defender, which results in performance degradation on the machine."
"The product blocks certain processes, even after allowlisting them."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers good pricing that is affordable and competitive with the market. Our partnership also provides us with additional benefits."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers cost-effective licensing flexibility."
"TotalCloud's price is about right where I would expect it to be."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches."
"It isn't cheap, but it's reasonable. It helps us to manage things with very few resources."
"The cost is high, but it meets our organizational needs."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive."
"The cost depends on the pricing model. Compared to other solutions, the cost isn't that bad."
"Prisma Cloud is affordable."
"The price for Prisma Cloud is reasonable."
"Its licensing cost depends on the type of license such as the business license or the enterprise license. The enterprise license is costlier than the business license, but we get more visibility and more modules. If you have a multi-cloud environment and subscribe to each cloud's native CSPM tool, it is costly. If you are using a single tool like Prisma Cloud, with a single license, you can monitor all environments, such as Google Cloud, Azure, AWS, and Oracle Cloud. The cost of Prisma Cloud is less than the cost of subscribing to the CSPM tool of each cloud provider. This is where Prisma Cloud can save costs."
"Prisma Cloud's licensing system functions as expected with a solid licensing infrastructure."
"Prisma Cloud is quite scalable. In our current licensing model, we're able to heavily extend our cloud workload and onboard a lot of customers. It really helps, and it is on par with other solutions."
"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."
"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."
"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
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Construction Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise29
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?
Areas that need improvement in every solution include the remediation part. The remediation steps should be simple en...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
Our use case involves the assets that we have under cloud, the assets exposed to the internet, and the internal appli...
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: July 2026.
904,836 professionals have used our research since 2012.