Cisco Secure Workload vs Orca Security comparison

Cisco and Orca Security are both solutions in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category. Cisco is ranked #16 with an average rating of 9.5, while Orca Security is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.4. Cisco holds a 2.1% mindshare in CWPP, compared to Orca Security’s 4.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Orca Security users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Cisco Secure Workload and Orca Security cater to distinct security solution needs. Orca tends to lead in features, while Cisco shines in pricing and customer support.

Features: Cisco Secure Workload offers comprehensive network segmentation, threat detection, and seamless integration with existing infrastructure. Orca Security provides robust cloud-native security features, intuitive threat detection, and extensive visibility across multi-cloud environments.

Room for Improvement: Cisco Secure Workload could improve in scaling, faster updates, and user interface simplicity. Orca Security may enhance scalability, comprehensive reporting, and refined analytics capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco Secure Workload is praised for straightforward deployment and responsive customer service. Orca Security requires effort initially but is supported by detailed deployment guides. Cisco is seen as more accessible with quicker response times.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco Secure Workload offers competitive pricing, appealing to those with existing infrastructure, often leading to satisfactory ROI. Orca Security has higher initial costs but justifies them with comprehensive features, providing long-term ROI benefits for cloud-centric operations.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Secure Workload vs. Orca Security Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload vs. Orca Security

June 2026

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.5%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 2.1%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Orca Security is 4.9%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Orca Security	4.9%
Qualys TotalCloud	1.5%
Cisco Secure Workload	2.1%
Other	91.5%

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)

Featured Reviews

Robert Orłowski

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.

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Raj Metkar

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

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reviewer2800203

Assistant Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Cloud posture management has improved remediation and optimizes costs with contextual risk insights

Since I have not used Orca Security for 10 months, I am uncertain what areas still need improvement, as they may have rolled out features that addressed issues I faced in the past. However, I can say the tool is good. A few things could potentially be improved, particularly regarding false positives and the UI. What I observed is that they release updates to the platform without notifying the customer. Every time the UI is upgraded, they release something without notification. This could be a slight improvement. If they released some kind of notification to just inform the customer about UI changes, the customer would be aware of the changes that Orca Security is making in the backend.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I appreciate Qualys TotalCloud's ability to onboard any type of device with ease, including containers."

"I would definitely recommend Qualys TotalCloud to other users."

"If I had to say something positive about the product that brings me the biggest benefit, I would say it has accurate reports, gets new update CVEs, zero-day attack detection, and is easy to manage with its GUI."

"Once you have your vulnerabilities fixed and your patches pushed out using Qualys TotalCloud, then you are able to eliminate threats and cyber risk."

"We were able to realize its benefits within 24 to 48 hours."

"It is a cloud-native app that integrates with both IaaS and SaaS. It seamlessly integrates with other platforms."

"The most valuable feature of Qualys TotalCloud is the visibility it provides."

"Qualys TotalCloud has improved our security posture."

More Qualys TotalCloud pros

"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 is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."

"This product does everything that you need it to do and more and does a lot to provide visibility in a network environment, save time and money, and make the organization IT operate in a much more streamlined fashion."

"Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."

"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution."

"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is security."

More Cisco Secure Workload pros

"The best features of Orca Security include its ability to perform a lot of security controls without requiring any installation of agents, making it very easy to set up."

"The initial setup is very easy."

"For me, it's a no-brainer to have Orca running in your cloud."

"Orca gives you great visibility into your assets. It shows you the issues and the things that you need to attend to first, by prioritizing things. You can see a lot of information that is not always visible, even to DevOps, to help you know about the machines and their status. It's very easy to see everything in a single dashboard. That makes it a very useful tool."

"Once our organization is configured, any cloud account under that organization is automatically detected in Orca Security, along with all the assets associated with it."

"With its Cloud Security Posture Management capability, we have the ability to read across all of our cloud-based environments, which includes AWS and Azure. We have visibility into those environments. Seeing all vulnerabilities and configurations is really powerful for us, but ultimately, the ability to use the API to query across the fleet to understand what is the current state, what is the patch level, which ones are potentially exposed for a new CVE that just came out is even more valuable. It allows us to gather really specific intelligence through simple queries."

"It covers our entire multi-cloud environment in a single view and tells us everything we need to know about our vulnerability footprint."

"With Orca, I feel confident that I have full coverage of all of my resources."

More Orca Security pros

Cons

"It has been working very well, but it would be helpful if the dashboard could generate reports tailored to specific compliance needs. For example, in India, we have to comply with RBI and SEBI guidelines. It w"

"The onboarding process is a bit difficult. In the initial phase, it is very difficult to understand the features, what the dashboard contains, and what criteria they are using."

"Some major banks and insurance companies require an on-premises solution for comprehensive vulnerability management, which TotalCloud does not offer."

"Their customer support needs improvement."

"There is room for improvement in the support."

"The main area needing improvement is integration. Although the team is strengthening TotalCloud, integration can be enhanced with SIEM, SOAR, ITSM, and other sources."

"Two areas for improvement in Qualys TotalCloud are the speed of the public cloud platform and vulnerability detection."

"In my opinion, what can be improved in Qualys TotalCloud includes pricing and container scanning."

More Qualys TotalCloud cons

"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."

"There was a controversy when Cisco reduced the amount of data they kept, and the solution became quite cost-intensive, which made its adoption challenging….Although they have modified it now, I preferred the previous version, and I wish all the functionality were back under the same product."

"The emailed notifications are either hard to find or they are not available. Search capabilities can be improved."

"A feature that I was looking for was emailed alerts and notifications so we'd get them right away."

"The scalability of this solution needs to be improved."

"The product must be integrated with the cloud."

"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."

More Cisco Secure Workload cons

"They can expand a little bit in anti-malware detection. While we have pretty good confidence that it's going to detect some of the static malware, some of the detections are heuristics. There could be a growth in the library from where they're pulling their information, but we don't get a lot of those alerts based on the design of our products. In general, that might be an area that needs to be filled since they offer it as a service within it."

"There is one issue that I encountered: when Orca Security provides CVEs and we attempt to implement its solutions, sometimes those solutions are not available on the cloud and cannot be implemented."

"Orca Security can be improved as it is very good at posture, but it does not detect attacks or behavioral attacks in the cloud on its own; it depends on other security features or logs like GuardDuty from Amazon, lacking its own intelligence to detect and respond to attacks."

"The solution could improve by making the dashboards more elaborative and more descriptive."

"The timeout settings could be made more customizable, as sometimes if I leave the office early, it's still running unless manually turned off."

"In the future, I'd like to see Orca work better with third-party vendors. Specifically, being able to provide sanitized results from third parties."

"I would be happy if they offered more automatic remediation options."

"I experienced some problems with custom tags in Orca Security where I tried to separate the environment for business units so I could ask the tech lead responsible for that vulnerability to fix them."

More Orca Security cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As a middle management member, I do not have direct pricing knowledge, but based on the knowledge from our meetings, its pricing is competitive."

"It isn't cheap, but it's reasonable. It helps us to manage things with very few resources."

"Qualys TotalCloud is cost-efficient and was selected for its value compared to other products."

"While Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive and may soon be considered overpriced."

"The cost is high, but it meets our organizational needs."

"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches."

"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 for TotalCloud is attractive and competitive in the market. Given the features, especially the dashboard, I have no concerns regarding pricing."

More Qualys TotalCloud pricing and cost advice

"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."

"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."

"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 cost for the hardware is around 300k."

"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."

"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."

"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."

"The most expensive solution is Palo Alto. They claim to be very robust. The next most expensive is Wiz, followed by Orca and all the rest."

"While it's competitive with Palo Alto Prisma, I think Orca's list price is very high. I would advise Orca to lower it because, at that price, I might consider alternatives like Wiz, which also offers agentless services."

"The price is a bit expensive for smaller organizations."

"Orca Security charges are based on cloud workloads. So, it's based on workloads. If we look at one feature, it might be expensive."

"Orca Security is cheaper compared to other solutions in the same space."

"Orca is very competitive when compared to the alternatives and is not the most expensive in the market, that's for sure."

"Its license is a bit expensive."

"We have a total of 25 licenses for this solution. The solution is on a pay-and-you-use model."

More Orca Security pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Construction Company

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	29

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	11

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys TotalCloud?

The price is very expensive, actually.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?

Areas that need improvement in every solution include the remediation part. The remediation steps should be simple en...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?

We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration a...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Orca Security?

Orca Security could benefit from more agentic workflows, where agentic workflows could be integrated with Orca Securi...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Orca Security?

Orca Security serves as a centralized solution within our organization that offers scanning of all issues found in ou...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Orca Security?

The advice I would give is that you can make good use of the issues depending on different organizational use cases. ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Wiz vs Qualys TotalCloud

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Qualys TotalCloud

Compared 8% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Qualys TotalCloud

Compared 6% of the time

JupiterOne vs Qualys TotalCloud

Compared 5% of the time

Amazon Inspector vs Qualys TotalCloud

Compared 3% of the time

More Qualys TotalCloud Competitors

Illumio Segmentation vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 14% of the time

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 12% of the time

VMware NSX vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 9% of the time

TrendAI Deep Security vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 5% of the time

Cisco Hypershield vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 5% of the time

More Cisco Secure Workload Competitors

Wiz vs Orca Security

Compared 10% of the time

Upwind vs Orca Security

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Orca Security

Compared 4% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Orca Security

Compared 4% of the time

Darktrace vs Orca Security

Compared 3% of the time

More Orca Security Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Qualys TotalCloud

June 2026

Download Qualys TotalCloud product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload

June 2026

Download Cisco Secure Workload product report

Buyer's Guide

Orca Security

June 2026

Download Orca Security product report

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan

Cisco Tetration

No data available

Overview

Qualys TotalCloud enhances security posture across cloud environments with continuous monitoring, vulnerability management, and risk visualization, ensuring efficient threat assessment and automated remediation for improved cyber risk reduction.

Qualys TotalCloud offers a robust suite of security tools essential for organizations managing multi-cloud infrastructures. By integrating cloud accounts and automating workflows, it supports AWS, Azure, and GCP, offering comprehensive vulnerability management and zero-day detection. The platform's user-friendly design, combined with its extensive risk management and unified threat assessment capabilities, enables organizations to prioritize and remediate vulnerabilities effectively. TruRisk Insights provides clear insights on cyber risks, while the automation options streamline patch management and scanning processes. API integration across IaaS and SaaS environments further enhances resource allocation efficiency and saves time, addressing misconfigurations across cloud environments.

What are the most important features of Qualys TotalCloud?

Accurate Vulnerability Reports: Delivers precise and actionable insights for risk mitigation.
Zero-Day Detection: Identifies and addresses zero-day vulnerabilities proactively.
Unified Threat Assessment: Offers comprehensive evaluation of threats across the environment.
Extensive Risk Management: Manages risks effectively with advanced insights and prioritization.
Continuous Monitoring: Provides non-stop surveillance for vulnerabilities and threats.
Cloud-Native Automation: Streamlines processes and reduces manual efforts using automation.
FlexScan for Internet-Facing VMs: Scans external VMs efficiently to detect vulnerabilities.
Dashboard Risk Visualization: Clear visualization helps prioritize vulnerabilities.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Improved Security Posture: Enhances threat detection and response across clouds.
Time Savings: Automation reduces time spent on manual vulnerability management.
Resource Efficiency: Better allocation of resources through streamlined workflows.
Enhanced Risk Prioritization: Focus on critical vulnerabilities for effective mitigation.
Integrated Cloud Accounts: Facilitates seamless cloud management and security.

Qualys TotalCloud is deployed in sectors needing rigorous vulnerability management, such as finance and healthcare. Companies utilize it to secure multi-cloud environments like AWS, Azure, and GCP, focus on compliance, and integrate security into CI/CD pipelines to detect and remedy threats pre-deployment.

Qualys

Cisco Secure Workload offers advanced auditing, micro-segmentation, and network visibility, automating policy presentation for improved security. It enhances application dependency mapping and provides comprehensive telemetry with strategic policy enforcement.

Cisco Secure Workload specializes in automating micro-segmentation, data center management, and traffic analysis. Its capabilities facilitate application dependency mapping and enhance internal micro-segmentation, providing invaluable network visibility. Users find its automation in policy presentation and strategic enforcement beneficial, along with granular control and scalability, despite needing improvements in scalability and integration capabilities. Enhanced notification features, troubleshooting options, and an efficient interface are desired for seamless deployment, along with stronger multi-tenancy, redundancy, and monitoring functions. Broader platform support and integrated cloud connectivity are desired for unified management across tools.

What are the most important features?

Auditing: Provides in-depth network analysis and security auditing capabilities.
Micro-Segmentation: Enhances network security by automating segmentation at a granular level.
Application Dependency Mapping: Visualizes connections and interactions between applications.
Network Visibility: Delivers comprehensive insight into network activities and dynamics.
Policy Discovery: Streamlines policy creation through automation and reduces manual intervention.
Comprehensive Telemetry: Offers complete coverage and insights for better security assessment.

What benefits and ROI should be evaluated?

Enhanced Security Measures: Offers robust features for network security improvement.
Automated Processes: Reduces manual efforts through automation, increasing efficiency.
Scalability: Adapts to growing network demands with flexible scalability options.
Granular Control: Allows detailed control over network policies and enforcement.

Entities in finance, gas, and oil sectors utilize Cisco Secure Workload for networking site management and compliance maintenance. It integrates into extensive Cisco infrastructure, aiding routers, switches, and endpoints, thus supporting auditors in network synchronization and auditing needs.

Cisco

Orca Security provides comprehensive security management with agentless visibility and SideScanning technology, ensuring efficient threat detection without performance impact.

Orca Security offers agentless visibility across multi-cloud environments, streamlining security management with features like SideScanning technology and centralized security tools. It focuses on automation, vulnerability management, and compliance checks, enhancing a company's security posture with real-time alerts and integrated threat detection. Its intuitive interface prioritizes critical issues, making it suitable for managing DevSecOps processes efficiently.

What are the key features of Orca Security?

Agentless Visibility: Gain comprehensive insights into cloud environments without deploying agents.
SideScanning Technology: Detect threats and vulnerabilities efficiently across platforms.
Comprehensive Security Management: Centralizes security across AWS, GCP, and Azure with minimal setup effort.
CIEM Feature: Enhances security posture with integrated identity and access management.
Real-Time Alerts: Provide immediate awareness of security threats and vulnerabilities.
Automation and Compliance: Streamline processes with automated vulnerability management and compliance checks.

What benefits and ROI should companies look for in Orca Security?

Centralized Management: Simplifies security operations by consolidating tools across cloud environments.
Improved Security Posture: Reduces alerts and manages threats effectively with detailed insights.
Efficient Threat Detection: Enhances response capabilities with integrated threat detection and real-time alerts.
Easy Deployment and Setup: Facilitates quick implementation without complex configurations.
Enhanced Integration: Supports seamless integration with existing security frameworks and processes.

Companies in industries such as finance, healthcare, and technology leverage Orca Security for cloud security posture management, ensuring compliance with standards and securing applications and databases. Its agentless approach provides comprehensive visibility across AWS, GCP, and Azure, enhancing risk assessment and vulnerability management without impacting asset performance.

Orca Security

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)

BeyondTrust, Postman, Digital Turbine, Solarisbank, Lemonade, C6 Bank, Docebo, Vercel, and Vivino

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload vs. Orca Security

June 2026

Free Report: Cisco Secure Workload vs. Orca Security

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