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Cisco Secure Workload vs Orca Security comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

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)
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (11th), Container Security (11th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (8th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (7th)
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 (8th), Microsegmentation Software (4th), Cisco Security Portfolio (8th)
Orca Security
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
6th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Security (9th), API Security (2nd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (7th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (6th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (7th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (2nd), AI Security (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.8%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 2.0%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Orca Security is 5.4%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Orca Security5.4%
Qualys TotalCloud1.8%
Cisco Secure Workload2.0%
Other90.8%
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
 

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.
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
Nykole Denoo - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the web API security and IoT scanning features the most. The user-friendly design of TotalCloud's interface enables customers to navigate it and use its full potential easily"
"Qualys TotalCloud fulfills all these needs."
"Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted our bank's performance, and we have definitely seen benefits after implementing this solution."
"Vulnerability and threat detection and assessment of the criticality of the vulnerabilities exposed are most valuable."
"TruRisk Insights is the most important innovation they've released this year."
"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."
"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 has positively impacted our organization by helping us save time and manage all assets and remediation, allowing us to achieve quarterly and half-yearly goals."
"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."
"Overall, this is a really good product and I am happy with it."
"The product provides multiple-device integration."
"The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."
"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."
"The most valuable feature right now is to do with having visibility on the network — especially on our servers — and to be able to enforce some type of security measures."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network."
"If I consider the analogy of the house, I expected to be able to see under the floor, what I did not expect was to be able to see behind all of the walls and through the ceiling and through the roof and into the basement, and everywhere."
"For me, it's a no-brainer to have Orca running in your cloud."
"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."
"Another valuable feature with Orca, something that's not talked about enough, is its ability to rank your gaps and your tasks... You can get visibility with agents and there are a lot of ways to do that. But the ranking and the context across the entire environment, that is what is unique about Orca."
"There are so many valuable features that I could list, but one that I appreciate is the PCI DSS compliance report."
"Orca is much better than their competitor; they're the best in their space, they're the best in the security tool industry, and they're probably the best in terms of companies that I've worked with in general."
"Orca Security has helped our organization become compliant and maintain high standards because any organization with multiple products needs to be compliant, especially when it comes to underlying infrastructure and cloud resources."
"Orca Security has impacted my organization positively by giving us visibility on what is happening in the cloud and helping us detect risks fast."
 

Cons

"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."
"The vulnerability part is good, but the policy compliance module needs improvement because it involves a lot of manual work. Specifically, the remediation part of the controls requires enhancements."
"The main area needing improvement is integration. Although the team is strengthening TotalCloud, integration can be enhanced with SIEM, SOAR, ITSM, and other sources."
"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."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in the support."
"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 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."
"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."
"The integration could be better, especially with different types of solutions."
"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."
"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 is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."
"The product must be integrated with the cloud."
"The difference between agentless and agent solutions is that while agentless provides great visibility, it does not offer real-time blocking."
"Some dashboards could be a little more personalized for each company and have more options to show the real data we need for our leadership."
"The timeout settings could be made more customizable, as sometimes if I leave the office early, it's still running unless manually turned off."
"They can expand a little bit in anti-malware detection."
"Orca Security could improve its ticket creation process."
"Orca Security can improve the way that a customer can create auto-remediation without depending on support to do that."
"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 think the downside of Orca Security is the reports."
 

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."
"While Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive and may soon be considered overpriced."
"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 is cost-efficient and was selected for its value compared to other products."
"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 cost is high, but it meets our organizational needs."
"It isn't cheap, but it's reasonable. It helps us to manage things with very few resources."
"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."
"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."
"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 price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."
"Orca Security charges are based on cloud workloads. So, it's based on workloads. If we look at one feature, it might be expensive."
"I think their pricing model is aligned with market demand. Of course, Orca could probably better align their pricing model with the needs of smaller businesses as well as some larger-scale enterprises with millions of assets. But in all fairness, I think the Orca sales team has been accommodating and ensured that we're happy with the pricing."
"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."
"The pricing depends on how many assets you have running in your cloud and how many environments you have. If you have a dev environment, test environment, and a production environment then it's really important that you have coverage for all of them."
"The price is a bit expensive for smaller organizations."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
16%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise34
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise16
 

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...
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 needs improvement with Orca Security?
Regarding how Orca Security can be improved, I think there is not much; it is fully completed and it is great.
What is your primary use case for Orca Security?
My main use case for Orca Security is to secure infrastructure, course, and service. A specific example of how I use ...
What advice do you have for others considering Orca Security?
My advice to others looking into using Orca Security is to practice and study the platform in test scenarios. My impr...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
Cisco Tetration
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)
BeyondTrust, Postman, Digital Turbine, Solarisbank, Lemonade, C6 Bank, Docebo, Vercel, and Vivino
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Workload vs. Orca Security and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.