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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
40
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (10th), Container Security (11th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (7th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (2nd), 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) (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 (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks10.2%
Wiz12.5%
Microsoft Defender for Cloud7.3%
Other70.0%
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

"If someone were to ask me to review Qualys TotalCloud, I would summarize it as an end-to-end solution for cloud security with visibility and governance-grade controls without needing to manage multiple disconnected tools."
"Vulnerability and threat detection and assessment of the criticality of the vulnerabilities exposed are most valuable."
"While automatic inventory detection upon connection is a helpful feature, a truly valuable capability would be assessing an environment's security posture against Azure and CIS best practices."
"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."
"The agent and agentless scanning in TotalCloud, particularly the FlexScan method, is incredibly valuable. With traditional scanning approaches, we had to give IP ranges and whitelist IPs. All that is now simplified. FlexScan requires minimal intervention, and after configuration, it automatically collects data and performs necessary scans."
"Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted our bank's performance, and we have definitely seen benefits after implementing this solution."
"Its dashboards are brilliant. It provides in-depth insights."
"Qualys TotalCloud's most valuable feature is its ability to link clusters of assets, providing a clear model of deployments, vulnerabilities, and statuses."
"I would rate Prisma Cloud a ten out of ten."
"I find the CSPM area to be a more valuable and flexible feature."
"The product provides very good network security."
"Engineering is thinking it's easy to integrate because we use many Red Hat products."
"We haven't had an issue with the product for over a year."
"The Twistlock vulnerability scanning tool is its most valuable feature. It provides us insight into security vulnerabilities, running inside both on-premise and public cloud-based container platforms. It is filling a gap that we have with traditional vulnerability scanning tools, where we don't have the ability to scan inside containers."
"It supports the multi-cloud environment beautifully."
"Prisma Cloud is a single tool that we can use to protect all of our cloud resources without having to manage and reconcile several security and compliance reports."
"The console and tools are very user-friendly."
"Overall, this is a pretty good product."
"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 ability to finely control permissions and restrictions on servers or assets through a customizable rule set is a key strength."
"The real strength lies in its straightforward approach, offering just two key policies: prevention and detection."
"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 granularity of applying the policies is valuable."
"We use the product to prevent unauthorized access to data, systems, and servers. It provides essential features for data center security."
 

Cons

"It is already perfect, but they can bring some newer dashboards and customization options for the dashboard. It would be great to be able to include on-prem assets on the dashboard."
"To be honest, I would move out from this tool because it does not give a full view of vulnerability."
"In TotalCloud, I would suggest improvements in policy checks to cater to various inventory types like VPCs, subnets, S3 buckets, or IAMs. There is a lack of data segregation according to criticality or inventory."
"To improve the user experience, reporting could be simplified for better comprehension by end users and project managers, facilitating issue resolution."
"Their support could be improved."
"I would like the ability to disable certain default built-in policies as they can be misleading when creating dashboards. That is the top one."
"Qualys TotalCloud needs to improve its accuracy for non-Windows operating systems."
"With the growing integration of AI, I would like Qualys to enhance its service offerings to better accommodate AI-related risks."
"The security automation capabilities are average."
"They should improve the user experience."
"When it comes to compliance, the issue is that when we are exporting the reports, there is only a single compliance option. If I need to report on multiple compliance requirements, that feature isn't available. For example, I made a single report for ISO 27000 but I can't correlate it with GDPR."
"We have discovered that Prisma is not functioning properly with GCP."
"The Application Security dashboard was not as user-friendly as the Cloud Security dashboard."
"The UX part of Prisma's user interface could be simplified and the metrics tool should be highlighted more."
"They can improve the integrations into the SDLC lifecycle."
"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."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in enhancing its graphical user interface for a more user-friendly experience."
"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."
"Agent management is a challenging task."
"Symantec is lagging on the reporting side."
"It would be advantageous if Symantec or Broadcom, given the rebranding, could simplify the process, enabling users to leverage the antivirus functionality more easily."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches."
"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 offers cost-effective licensing flexibility."
"While Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive and may soon be considered overpriced."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive."
"The cost is high, but it meets our organizational needs."
"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."
"The purchasing process was easy and quick. It is a very economical solution."
"Prisma Cloud is a value-back cloud-managed solution; cloud-native solutions are quite expensive."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Our licensing fees are $18,000 USD per year."
"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."
"The cost was not on the higher side. Overall, the cost gets recovered with its implementation."
"Almost all the CSPM tools are pretty expensive."
"One thing we're very pleased about is how the licensing model for Prisma is based on work resources. You buy a certain amount of work resources and then, as they enable new capabilities within Prisma, it just takes those work resource units and applies them to new features. This enables us to test and use the new features without having to go back and ask for and procure a whole new product, which could require going through weeks, and maybe months, of a procurement process."
"Compared to some other solutions, such as CrowdStrike, Symantec is more expensive."
"It is notably more expensive when compared to other solutions."
"The product is a bit costly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Construction Company
16%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
7%
 

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?
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.
907,768 professionals have used our research since 2012.