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

Brinqa vs Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management 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
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
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)
Brinqa
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
61st
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (52nd), Attack Surface Management (ASM) (52nd), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (19th)
Microsoft Defender Vulnerab...
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
14th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (19th), Microsoft Security Suite (17th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.2%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Brinqa is 0.7%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is 1.3%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Qualys TotalCloud1.2%
Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management1.3%
Brinqa0.7%
Other96.8%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2859021 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Risk-based triage has transformed container security and now prioritizes high-impact threats
The best features Qualys TotalCloud offers currently include managing cloud infrastructure and container security while facing major challenges such as alert fatigue. Traditional vulnerability scanners flag hundreds of CVEs on short-lived Kubernetes containers, some of which have no internet exposure or are gone before we can even triage them. I leverage Qualys TotalCloud to move beyond static CVSS. I use it to implement runtime exposure, correlation risk reprioritization, and shift-left integration. This notifies developers to fix a base image upstream rather than patching live ephemeral instances. In my work with cloud and container security, the biggest operational hurdle was alert fatigue. I use Qualys to shift left from static CVSS severity to context-aware risk prioritization. I correlated raw vulnerability data with real-time risk factors such as public network exposure, active runtime execution, or overly permissive IAM roles. This allows us to immediately drop the priority of isolated containers and escalate lower-severity CVEs that sit on an exposed, high-risk path. We can map these findings directly back to our CI/CD pipelines so developers can patch the root base images upstream. We have drastically cut down the signal-to-noise ratio, saved a lot of manual hours doing triage work, and ensured engineering effort goes directly towards high-impact risk reduction.
RB
Cybersecurity Director at RB Consultancy
Allows us to configure the risk algorithm to suit our specific needs
I would give the easiness of the initial setup a seven out of ten. It can be a bit complex. Some connections are straightforward, but some take a long time. Deploying Brinqa took time, as it was done in phases. Initially, it took about six months before we started getting valuable data from it. Then, it expanded from there. The deployment began with a product demo and contract negotiation. We connected some data sources to Brinqa's cloud service, which was straightforward. We used the default risk ranking algorithm but faced issues with the dashboards, so we customized them to fit our organization's needs over a few years. We depended a lot on Brinqa for the deployment. We had some internal resources, but they lacked the needed skills, so it took time to train our two-man team. Initially, it required one person for maintenance, and they spent most of their time on it.
reviewer2770602 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Security Engineer at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Has helped with regional threat monitoring but needs better documentation and real-time capabilities
The documentation from Microsoft needs significant improvement. The documents are disorganized, with one document linking to another, making the steps unclear and difficult to follow. Regarding updates, it is not truly real-time as it takes between eight to twelve hours for updates to occur. It would be beneficial if updates could happen more quickly, perhaps within 10 minutes to half an hour. Support for integration and documentation needs to be more straightforward. The pricing is expensive, even though it is part of the E5 package.

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."
"Qualys TotalCloud has significantly reduced our workload in terms of managing risks, helping us to be more efficient and save substantial resources."
"By integrating TotalCloud, we have significantly reduced vulnerabilities in our deployment pipeline."
"With TotalCloud, we can scan through the API. If we are not able to deploy cloud agents on the machine, we can use the API."
"Once you have your vulnerabilities fixed and your patches pushed out using Qualys TotalCloud, then you are able to eliminate threats and cyber risk."
"Qualys TotalCloud is an excellent platform, and the beauty of the platform is that we can get all the vulnerabilities, see all the reports in a single dashboard, view them segregated, and easily learn about critical, high, and medium findings with appropriately provided remediation steps."
"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."
"TruRisk Insights is the most important innovation they've released this year."
"The most valuable features of Brinqa are its data integration capabilities."
"The recommendations, scores, and steps to remediate actions are highly useful."
"The product's stability is very high...The scalability of the product is amazing."
"The integration with SIEM is the best, specifically the native integration with Microsoft SIEM."
"Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management provides several valuable features that I utilize, as I use it to control security configuration, for example, the apps that I use or the many connections from my router, and with this configuration, I can filter content and malware."
"Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management provides regular advisories and recommendations that help improve our security posture."
"The solution is highly scalable."
"The main advantage of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is that it can locate and prevent most threats even when the endpoints are not connected to the corporate network, as long as the internet is available."
"Overall, I would rate Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management a nine out of ten."
 

Cons

"Their customer support needs improvement."
"There is room for improvement in vulnerability scanning, particularly for PaaS environments. Currently, Qualys does not have full access to these instances, which limits its effectiveness."
"One of the things that could be improved is the alerts. Qualys is a fantastic tool, especially with the TruRisk feature, but one challenge that most leaders face involves alert fatigue."
"The main area needing improvement is integration. Although the team is strengthening TotalCloud, integration can be enhanced with SIEM, SOAR, ITSM, and other sources."
"There is room for improvement in the support."
"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."
"From a downside perspective, the UI is not user-friendly and feels dated compared to other tools like Prisma Cloud."
"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."
"Brinqa could improve in terms of the speed of their service and resource provision."
"The worst aspect is the refresh rate of the dashboard. A vulnerability I patch within 15 minutes takes 24 additional hours for an update."
"The constant changes in the product configuration or the console setup can sometimes be challenging."
"The technical support takes too much time to resolve tickets."
"There should be risk scoring added to Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management; specifically, they call it quantification of the risk."
"There is a good solution from Microsoft, however, there is a gap between Windows and Linux management."
"The product is not stable; it is very resource-intensive, consuming a lot of memory and CPU, which makes it slow."
"They may need to improve the portal refresh rate for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management because it takes time for recommendations to disappear after mitigation; sometimes, it takes one week, when it should ideally take only one to two hours."
"It is challenging to extract and customize reports from the system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"While Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive and may soon be considered overpriced."
"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."
"The cost is high, but it meets our organizational needs."
"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."
"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."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers good pricing that is affordable and competitive with the market. Our partnership also provides us with additional benefits."
Information not available
"The product’s pricing is medium."
"The licensing costs are reasonable."
"I rate the product's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"The licensing model follows a per-user per-month structure."
"The tool is a bit costly."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Vulnerability Management solutions are best for your needs.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
16%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Retailer
12%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise34
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
 

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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?
Configuration of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is something that needs improvement. In future updates o...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?
I can control the applications using Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management, which are its best features for me ...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Qualys, Wiz, Tenable and others in Vulnerability Management. Updated: August 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.