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 #18 with an average rating of 9.5, while Orca Security is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.6. Cisco holds a 2.0% mindshare in CWPP, compared to Orca Security’s 5.2% 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 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 Orca Security is 5.2%, down from 6.4% 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	5.2%
Qualys TotalCloud	1.7%
Cisco Secure Workload	2.0%
Other	91.1%

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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Nykole Denoo

Cyber Security Analyst at BNY

Cloud risk visibility has transformed how I prioritize threats and reduce unnecessary spend

From my perspective, Orca Security is a really good tool. I would say one area I would like to see CNAPP platforms get is more intelligence when it comes to risk prioritization, which correlates with vulnerability, exposing assets, identities, and active threats to help the security team focus on risks that are more likely to be exploited. I am a huge advocate for automation. I also think deeper automation for remediation or stronger integration with ticketing and CI/CD pipelines or more customization would help. Executive reporting would help the security team respond significantly faster and communicate risk more effectively if those kinds of improvements are made.

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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 would recommend Qualys TotalCloud to other users because it is cost-efficient and has a good return on investment."

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

"Qualys TotalCloud's most valuable feature is its agent versatility."

"The best feature would be the ability to create policies. It is easy to control and update policies as required."

"I highly 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."

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

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

More Qualys TotalCloud pros

"Overall, this is a really good product and I am happy with it."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network."

"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 offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."

"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 only use case I can see that makes sense is micro-segmentation. I think there are other use cases for it. The main purpose of the product is to do micro-segmentation by collecting IP. That could be done by installing an agent, and then you have all the communication coming in and out. You could also use some flow sensors installed in the network that receive a copy of the traffic and then report that back to the system."

"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."

More Cisco Secure Workload pros

"OrcA Security improved our collaboration because we could explain better to everyone at the company what we were doing and how it positively impacts our security posture."

"Overall, I'm thoroughly impressed with this product, which is the best way I can put it."

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

"Orca Security has impacted my organization positively by giving us visibility on what is happening in the cloud and helping us detect risks fast."

"Orca Security saves resources because it provides the actual output on the screen with the package path."

"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."

"I recommend Orca Security to others looking for a cloud security solution due to its seamless integration and side-scanning technology that does not hamper cloud asset performance."

"Orca Security integration was one of the easiest we have done because it is cloud-native and agentless."

More Orca Security pros

Cons

"There is a lack of data segregation according to criticality or inventory."

"The cost of Qualys TotalCloud is high and could be more competitive."

"Regarding technical support from Qualys, they respond, but the response time can be too long. Sometimes we need to wait weeks for solutions to simple questions."

"Qualys TotalCloud's increasing complexity, due to the development and deployment of multiple solutions, is making the GUI difficult to navigate."

"An area for improvement would be to focus on risks related to AI, such as large language models and potential data leakage."

"Their customer support needs improvement."

"I sometimes have difficulty detecting or uninstalling certain versions of applications, which I have to do manually."

"We would like to see Windows-based sensors available in Qualys, as this would make the platform more versatile and support a broader range of environments."

More Qualys TotalCloud cons

"The problem is that we can only deploy the particular solution where we have the hardware with Cisco."

"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."

"There's room for improvement when it comes to Cisco Secure Workload. A couple of internal areas could be refined a little bit. They are trying to solve it, depending on where you suppose the agent is. Suppose you have the agent on both the server and the client, which could be the front-end server or web server connecting to the. In that case, if those two are communicating on RPC, the server can look into its configuration. It could go down and find the configuration file on the FTP server and then set the policies to it. But there are a lot of different FTP servers out there. It's also a complex case for the tool to support all FTP servers."

"It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."

"I would have expected Cisco to incorporate more automatic discovery and enforcement features within the existing Cisco Secure Workload product."

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

"It has an uninviting interface."

More Cisco Secure Workload cons

"The difference between agentless and agent solutions is that while agentless provides great visibility, it does not offer real-time blocking."

"Orca Security could improve its ticket creation process. Currently, it allows for creating tickets in only one bucket, which requires monitoring to redirect tickets to the appropriate team."

"The main drawback in an agentless approach is that if the solution detects a virus or malware in the environment, we need to manually remove it. But from my experience with other production environments, it's not straightforward to install agents in the hope they will automatically remediate viruses, even from production environments... Ultimately, the ability to auto-remediate is something that I would like to see."

"I work in an SMB organization and find Orca Security quite expensive."

"Orca Security can be improved by adding more connectivity and more integrations because the world is moving so fast that having integrations is really poor compared to other vendors."

"It's not all clouds that they are currently onboarded with. For instance, they are not yet with public cloud and many other private clouds."

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

"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."

More Orca Security cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive."

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

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

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

"Qualys TotalCloud offers competitive pricing given its comprehensive suite of features, including integration, assessment, remediation, and detection capabilities, all within a single platform."

"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 is comparable. It is built into our other product, so I cannot piecemeal it. It is a part of our subscription."

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

More Qualys TotalCloud pricing and cost advice

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

"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."

"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 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."

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

"Overall, the pricing is reasonable and the discounts have been acceptable."

"It is the cost of the visibility that you get. When you really sit down and think about what do you need to do to secure an environment with a low impact on the business, and you take a look out into the world, I think this tool is well justified around cost."

More Orca Security pricing and cost advice

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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

Government

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	30

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	18
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	16

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?

To be totally honest, I do not have any best features because I have had a bad experience using this tool, especially...

See all answers

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...

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?

From my perspective, Orca Security is a really good tool. I would say one area I would like to see CNAPP platforms ge...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Orca Security?

I have used Orca Security for continuous cloud assessment visibility, identifying and prioritizing vulnerabilities an...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Orca Security?

Regarding Orca Sensor, I personally have not used it, but I do know of it. I have not used it directly, but my experi...

See all answers

Comparisons

Wiz vs Qualys TotalCloud

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Qualys TotalCloud

Compared 8% of the time

JupiterOne vs Qualys TotalCloud

Compared 7% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Qualys TotalCloud

Compared 6% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security 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 13% of the time

VMware NSX vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 8% of the time

Check Point Email Security (formerly Harmony Email & Collaboration) vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 5% of the time

TrendAI Deep Security vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 5% of the time

More Cisco Secure Workload Competitors

Wiz vs Orca Security

Compared 8% 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

Checkmarx One vs Orca Security

Compared 3% of the time

More Orca Security Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Qualys TotalCloud

July 2026

Download Qualys TotalCloud product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload

August 2026

Download Cisco Secure Workload product report

Buyer's Guide

Orca Security

July 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

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Workload vs. Orca Security and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.

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