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Cisco Secure Workload vs FortiCNAPP comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 22, 2026

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 Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (10th), Container Security (11th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (7th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (6th)
Cisco Secure Workload
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
18th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (7th), Microsegmentation Software (4th), Cisco Security Portfolio (7th)
FortiCNAPP
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (29th), Container Security (17th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (12th), Compliance Management (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.7%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 2.0%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FortiCNAPP is 4.1%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Qualys TotalCloud1.7%
FortiCNAPP4.1%
Cisco Secure Workload2.0%
Other92.2%
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
 

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.
Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA
Discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map
We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration allows Cisco Secure Workload to learn about our networks and network tags, providing valuable insights into vulnerabilities related to the operating system and various applications installed on our servers. Recently, Cisco announced a new product called HyperShield, an AI-based autonomous micro-segmentation solution. While Cisco has not stated that HyperShield will replace Cisco Secure Workload, it represents a natural evolution for the company. HyperShield features dynamic policy discovery and enforcement; however, once policies are enforced, they do not change until a discovery occurs, requiring a re-enforcement process. This new platform operates autonomously, minimizing the need for user or security engineer intervention. I would have expected Cisco to incorporate more automatic discovery and enforcement features within the existing Cisco Secure Workload product. Instead of enhancing the current product, they have introduced a new solution. Cisco plans to honor existing Tetration licenses, allowing users to transition to HyperShield without additional costs, reflecting the investment enterprises have already made. From Cisco’s perspective, this represents a natural progression in their product line. While the product name changes, it seems more of a rebranding effort. The enhancements are greater autonomy, improved discovery, and automatic enforcement, which are now being introduced in HyperShield. Cisco Secure Workload offers automatic policy enforcement but cannot adjust policies dynamically as the application needs to change. Having used the platform for the past five years, the recent announcement has been reassuring. Cisco has confirmed that our investment in the platform will not go to waste. They will honor our existing licenses, providing a natural migration path to the new solution without any disruption
Charl Pinches - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Sales Specialist at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Cloud risk has become visible and security teams prioritize and act on threats efficiently
FortiCNAPP can be improved because the platform can feel complex at the start, especially for teams new to CNAP tooling. Some users mention that they found the interface and data models less intuitive than expected, and I have had situations where reporting and alert configurations might require time. Regarding other improvements needed for FortiCNAPP, the majority of the time is that reporting and alert configuration might require time to tune properly. This is the significant issue, combined with the fact that some users find the interface and data model less intuitive than expected. Regarding FortiCNAPP's AI capabilities, I think there might be a bit of improvement needed. However, since Fortinet is a security vendor overall, keeping the data safe is not a problem. I know they have invested a lot in getting it to a place where it is a trusted platform.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The dashboards are particularly valuable as they offer a comprehensive view of the environment, highlighting any misconfigurations."
"In my opinion, this is the best tool."
"The most valuable feature is extensibility."
"Generally, Qualys is very good at detections, whether on cloud or on-prem, and the agent allows deployment on both infrastructures, providing continuous monitoring of your assets, which is a key selling point for us."
"Qualys TotalCloud provides unified vulnerability and threat assessment for IaaS and SaaS and a single prioritized view of risk, which helps reduce my workload by not having to combine multiple sources."
"The best features in Qualys TotalCloud include the total asset management of the cloud environment. It is very easy to export the report and see the vulnerabilities related to the cloud specifically."
"TruRisk Insights is the most important innovation they've released this year."
"One of the features I appreciate is the ability to generate daily reports without relying on anyone else."
"The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage; the telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent, it's complete, and you see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network."
"The product provides multiple-device integration."
"Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."
"Scalability is its most valuable feature."
"The scalability of Cisco Tetration is very good."
"By using Tetration insight, we are able to get the latency on our level accounts and we can determine whatever the issue is with the application latency itself."
"It's stable."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network."
"The most valuable feature is Lacework's ability to distill all the security and audit logs. I recommend it to my customers. Normally, when I consult for other customers that are getting into the cloud, we use native security tools. It's more of a rule-based engine."
"For the most part, out-of-the-box, it tells you right away about the things you need to work on. I like the fact that it prioritizes alerts based on severity, so that you can focus your efforts on anything that would be critical/high first, moderate second, and work your way down, trying to continue to improve your security posture."
"There are many valuable features that I use in my daily work. The first are alerts and the event dossier that it generates, based on the severity. That is very insightful and helps me to have a security cap in our infrastructure. The second thing I like is the agent-based vulnerability management, which is the most accurate information."
"What I personally appreciate about FortiCNAPP is that I think it is a good product and a good firewall because it usually offers many options for the company."
"The best feature, in my opinion, is the ease of use, as well as some levels of machine learning anomaly detection that they have that can detect pivotal anomalies faster."
"The compliance reports are definitely most valuable because they save time and are accurate. So, instead of relying on a human going through and checking or providing me with a report, I could just log into Lacework and see for myself."
"If you want to turn your cloud findings into actionable security work, FortiCNAPP is the way to go."
"FortiCNAPP is a competitive and robust solution, the only one in the IT sphere that addresses all quadrants in the Gartner Quadrants."
 

Cons

"There is a lack of data segregation according to criticality or inventory."
"I sometimes have difficulty detecting or uninstalling certain versions of applications, which I have to do manually."
"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."
"I think Qualys TotalCloud needs to improve its handling of zero-day vulnerabilities and supply chain management because modern ransomware attacks not only target prime critical infrastructures but also the supply chain system."
"To be honest, I would move out from this tool because it does not give a full view of vulnerability."
"There is room for improvement in the support."
"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."
"The cloud licensing unit system is unclear, especially since "units" aren't well-defined."
"I'd like to see better documentation for advanced features. The documentation is fairly basic. I would also like to see better integration with other applications."
"It has an uninviting interface."
"It is not so easy to use and configure. It needs a bunch of further resources to work, which is mainly the biggest downside of it. The deployment is huge."
"Secure Workload is a little complicated to use, and the dashboard isn't intuitive, so it takes a while to learn how to use it."
"It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."
"Cisco Tetration needs more flags and system alerts that we should get with network capture."
"There is some overlap between Cisco Tetration and AppDynamics and there are few DC tools, it would be great to have a single pane of glass, rather than have to jump between different tools."
"The entire interface could be improved; it's ugly and uninviting, and Tetration tends to be a lot more cumbersome and not very intuitive compared to the biggest competitor's modern-looking GUI."
"However, the solution could be more user-friendly and intuitive."
"FortiCNAPP can be improved because the platform can feel complex at the start, especially for teams new to CNAP tooling."
"The vulnerability part is not systematically organized; it is all clumsy in the web UI, and it is not user-friendly."
"There are a couple of the difficulties we encounter in the realm of cybersecurity, or security as a whole, that relate to potentially limited clarity. Having the capacity to perceive the configuration aspect and having the ability to contribute to it holds substantial advantages, in my view. It ranks high, primarily due to its role in guaranteeing compliance and the potential to uncover vulnerabilities, which could infiltrate the system and introduce potential risks. I had been exploring a specific feature that captured my interest. However, just yesterday, I participated in a product update session that announced the imminent arrival of this feature. The feature involves real-time alerting. This was something I had been anticipating, and it seems that this capability is now being integrated, possibly as part of threat intelligence. While anomaly events consistently and promptly appear in the console, certain alerts tend to experience delays before being displayed. Yet, with the recent product update, this issue is expected to be resolved. Currently, a comprehensive view of all policies is available within the console. However, I want a more tailored display of my compliance posture, focusing specifically on policies relevant to me. For instance, if I'm not subject to HIPAA regulations, I'd prefer not to see the HIPAA compliance details. It's worth noting that even with this request, there exists a filtering mechanism to control the type of compliance information visible. This flexibility provides a workaround to my preference, which is why it's challenging for me to definitively state my exact request."
"A feature that I have requested from them is the ability to sort alerts and policies based on a security framework. Right now, when you go into alerts, you have hundreds and hundreds of them that you have to manually pick. It would be useful to have categories for CIS Benchmark or SOC 2 and be able to display all the alerts and policies for one security framework."
"The customer support for FortiCNAPP is fine, though it can take time as we need to engage with AWS first, but I would rate it around 7 or 8 out of 10."
"Lacework has not reduced the number of alerts we get. We've actually had to add resources as a result of using it because the application requires a lot of people to understand it to get the value out of it properly."
"When considering improvements for FortiCNAPP, I think there could be enhancements regarding the license, possibly adding more options to it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 offers competitive pricing given its comprehensive suite of features, including integration, assessment, remediation, and detection capabilities, all within a single platform."
"The pricing is comparable. It is built into our other product, so I cannot piecemeal it. It is a part of our subscription."
"Qualys TotalCloud is cost-efficient and was selected for its value compared to other products."
"As a middle management member, I do not have direct pricing knowledge, but based on the knowledge from our meetings, its pricing is competitive."
"TotalCloud's price is about right where I would expect it to be."
"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."
"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."
"Regarding price, Cisco Secure Workload can be expensive if you don't have a budget. If you're not doing micro-segmentation, every extra security measure or enforcement you're putting on top of your existing environment will be an extra cost. It's not a cheap solution at all. But from my point of view, if you need to do micro-segmentation, this is one of the best tools I've seen for it. I can't compare that to Microsoft's solution because I haven't looked into it. I've looked into VMware and Cisco. Those are the only two that I know of. I didn't know that Microsoft could do micro-segmentation at all. Maybe they can, but I haven't heard anything about it."
"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."
"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."
"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."
"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."
"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."
"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."
"My smaller deployments cost around 200,000 a year, which is probably not as expensive as Wiz."
"The licensing fee was approximately $80,000 USD, per year."
"It is slightly expensive. It depends on how big your environment is, but it is expensive. Right now, we are spending a lot of money. We have covered all of the cloud providers and most of our colocation facilities as well, so we cannot complain, but it is slightly expensive. It is not super expensive."
"The pricing has gotten better. That scenario was somewhat unstable. They have a rather interesting licensing structure. I believe you get 200 resources per "Lacework unit." It was difficult, in the beginning, to figure out exactly what a "resource" was... That was a problem until about a year or so ago. They have improved it and it has stabilized quite a bit."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

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 Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
To be totally honest, I do not have any best features because I have had a bad experience using this tool, especially...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
My main use case for Qualys TotalCloud is vulnerability management and exposure management. I use this tool to evalua...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Workload?
CloudStrike offers antivirus capabilities and firewall features for servers and VDI but lacks automatic policy discov...
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?
We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration a...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Secure Workload?
When we onboarded Cisco Secure Workload, the usual use case was to discover internal application dependencies and cre...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Lacework?
We purchased the Fortinet firewall and services from a vendor, not through any other marketplaces.
What needs improvement with Lacework?
FortiCNAPP can be improved because the platform can feel complex at the start, especially for teams new to CNAP tooli...
What is your primary use case for Lacework?
My main use case for FortiCNAPP, from my previous experience distributing it or now as a reseller, is for anyone who'...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
Cisco Tetration
Polygraph, FortiCNP, Lacework
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)
J.Crew, AdRoll, Snowflake, VMWare, Iterable, Pure Storage, TrueCar, NerdWallet, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Workload vs. FortiCNAPP and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.