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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
7.3
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

"Qualys TotalCloud provides a single, prioritized view based on requirements such as identifying the most vulnerable assets and calculating the average time to remediate vulnerabilities."
"Qualys TotalCloud provides a single, prioritized view of risk, reducing the workload associated with consolidating multiple sources for risk prioritization."
"I would definitely recommend Qualys TotalCloud to other users."
"I would definitely recommend Qualys TotalCloud to other customers."
"The best feature would be the ability to create policies. It is easy to control and update policies as required."
"Qualys TotalCloud has improved our security posture."
"One of the features I appreciate is the ability to generate daily reports without relying on anyone else."
"By integrating TotalCloud, we have significantly reduced vulnerabilities in our deployment pipeline."
"What I like most about Prisma Cloud is its zero-day signatures, maximum security, minimal downtime, cloud visibility, control, and ease of deployment."
"It gave us visibility into and control over complex cloud environments, which helped us feel better about our security and secure the environment with the clinical data."
"I find the CSPM area to be a more valuable and flexible feature."
"One of the most valuable features is the compliance of RedLock, which we are using for any issues with security. It flags them and that's the primary objective of that feature."
"What I found most valuable in Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is the VAS, such as the web application and API security. I feel that VAS adds a lot of value, mainly because it gives visibility through the application layer and threat detection features."
"The Cloud Workload Protection module is a very strong solution. I like the Cloud Workload Protection part. It is something I have not used for the banking client, but I had a chance to try it out for roughly a month on actual deployment of another customer. That part was really robust. Cloud Workload Protection would be the main feature that I enjoy the most."
"Prisma scans things and shows all the vulnerabilities and packages that are vulnerable, and which layers, by default, have vulnerabilities. So developers can easily go into the package or a particular layer and make changes to their code. It's very transparent."
"Overall, it provides all the pieces of information that you require, in one place and time."
"We have not reduced manpower, the number of servers has gone up, but the number of incidents has tricked down to single digits."
"Good file integrity monitoring features."
"The most valuable feature is the endpoint protection system."
"Overall, this is a pretty good product."
"The most valuable feature is the centralized console, which can handle different products that we have."
"The ability to finely control permissions and restrictions on servers or assets through a customizable rule set is a key strength."
"The file integrity monitoring features are the most valuable features of this product."
"The granularity of applying the policies is valuable."
 

Cons

"A feature improvement could be the inclusion of Windows OS support for container security, as it is currently only supported for Linux."
"There is room for improvement in the support."
"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."
"There should be improvement from a dashboard perspective when collecting and showcasing data to lead management."
"The support process is inefficient due to the excessive number of replies required when submitting tickets."
"Although TotalCloud is a helpful tool, some of its advanced features are still under development."
"The price is very expensive, actually."
"Qualys' customer service provides quality answers, but the response time is long, even though it is within the SLA."
"The access controls for our bank roles were not granular enough. We needed specific people to do particular actions, and we often had to give some people way too much access for them to be able to do what they needed in Prisma. They couldn't do their jobs if they didn't have that level of access, so other people had to do that part for them. It would help to have more granular role-based access controls."
"In our testing, we have found the Check Point product CloudGuard Dome9 to be more user-friendly at this point. Palo Alto Prisma's interface was not as user-friendly."
"Technical support could use some improvement."
"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."
"Prisma Cloud's application security capabilities should be enhanced."
"It can be too expensive for small companies."
"They should improve the user experience."
"The remediation part could be better."
"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."
"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 room for improvement in enhancing its graphical user interface for a more user-friendly experience."
"Symantec is lagging on the reporting side."
"A user or administrator making the policy in the DCS should have a very thorough knowledge of the operating system or policy making. You have to be very specific about the data structure."
"Agent management is a challenging task."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Qualys TotalCloud is cost-efficient and was selected for its value compared to other products."
"The cost is high, but it meets our organizational needs."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers cost-effective licensing flexibility."
"It isn't cheap, but it's reasonable. It helps us to manage things with very few resources."
"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."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive."
"The pricing is comparable. It is built into our other product, so I cannot piecemeal it. It is a part of our subscription."
"As a middle management member, I do not have direct pricing knowledge, but based on the knowledge from our meetings, its pricing is competitive."
"Prisma Cloud is remarkably expensive."
"Prisma Cloud is more expensive than Check Point CloudGuard."
"This solution is good for a company with at least 400 people that must be connected remotely. For smaller companies, it can be too expensive."
"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."
"If you pay for three years of Palo Alto, it's better. If you're planning on doing this, it's obviously not going to be for one year, so it's better if you go with a three-year license... The only challenge we have is with the public cloud vendor pricing. The biggest lesson I have learned is around the issues related to pricing for public cloud. So when you are doing your segmentation and design, it is extremely important that you work with someone who knows and understands what kinds of needs you will have in the future and how what you are doing will affect you in terms of costs."
"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 is competitive; for the most part, the security firms have similar prices."
"Regarding Prisma Cloud's pricing, we started small, and then we just kept on growing."
"The product is a bit costly."
"It is notably more expensive when compared to other solutions."
"Compared to some other solutions, such as CrowdStrike, Symantec is more expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Construction Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
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: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.