Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM) vs Qualys VMDR comparison

Cisco and Qualys are both solutions in the Risk-Based Vulnerability Management category. Cisco is ranked #20, while Qualys is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.6. Cisco holds a 2.6% mindshare in RBVM, compared to Qualys’s 12.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Qualys users who would recommend it.

Cisco Vulnerability Managem...

Read 1 Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM) review

1,032 Views
660 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Qualys VMDR

Read 96 Qualys VMDR reviews

12,908 Views
3,872 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Cisco Vulnerability Managem...

Qualys VMDR

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

Qualys VMDR and Cisco Vulnerability Management compete in the vulnerability management domain. Cisco seems to have the upper hand due to its superior intelligence-driven insights that better justify its cost.

Features: Qualys VMDR offers vulnerability detection, prioritization, and remediation. It includes asset discovery and continuous monitoring. Cisco Vulnerability Management provides robust threat context, predictive insights, and advanced analytics for risk prioritization.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Qualys VMDR is known for quick deployment with clear instructions and suits organizations with mature IT infrastructure. Cisco's scalable approach is ideal for large enterprises, offering detailed risk analytics and is noted for enterprise-level integration support.

Pricing and ROI: Qualys VMDR generally offers a straightforward pricing model appealing to budget-constrained organizations while still being feature-rich. Cisco's higher price point offers significant ROI for those who prioritize proactive threat management, often justified by its superior intelligence-driven insights.

To learn more, read our detailed Risk-Based Vulnerability Management Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Risk-Based Vulnerability Management

March 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 884,933 peers since 2012

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

Cisco Vulnerability Managem...

Ranking in Risk-Based Vulnerability Management

20th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cisco Security Portfolio (11th)

Qualys VMDR

Ranking in Risk-Based Vulnerability Management

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Asset Management (3rd), Vulnerability Management (3rd), Configuration Management Databases (3rd), Container Security (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Risk-Based Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM) is 2.6%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qualys VMDR is 12.1%, down from 17.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Risk-Based Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Qualys VMDR	12.1%
Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM)	2.6%
Other	85.3%

Risk-Based Vulnerability Management

Featured Reviews

AshishPaliwal

Self-employed at Self-employed

Offers contextual prioritization and risk-based remediation of vulnerability

An improvement would be some sort of an integration with any GRC suite. There are a lot of GRC suites available, like Archer, MetricStream, Rsam, Protiviti, for example. So how would a solution like this work if my company has already invested thousands or maybe millions in a GRC solution? Do I still need it and how does it fit into an existing SAP environment? There could be interoperability, having more data sources, integrating Splunk, Qualys, FireEye, Rapid7, Carbon Black. I'm sure all that can be done to an extent, with a little more insight and a little more accuracy on the industry numbers and trends. I'd like the solution to offer any sort of assistance in any way with the remediation part, not just identification of vulnerability risk, and that is second.

Read full review

Vaibhav Ghule

Soc Lead & Edr Administration at Persistent Systems

Continuous risk-based monitoring has strengthened incident response and vulnerability prioritization

I haven't explored Qualys VMDR's vulnerability lifecycle automation yet. One of my analysts mentioned that queries lack grouping operators in Qualys VMDR. From my experience, I would appreciate improvements in the query options in Qualys VMDR, specifically in the query-building process where I would need more features and operators. Additionally, we have been facing issues with Qualys on the cloud level. We cannot download the configuration profile from the cloud agent, and it is showing a pending action for download. During 2025, we noticed outages of Qualys a couple of times. I want to mention that there is an issue with receiving timely RCA deliveries. While this is not necessarily about the tool, it relates to support. The support has not been very responsive, and we are receiving RCAs a little delayed whenever we raise support cases or communicate with the TAMs. Additionally, the UI has a slight latency, which I and my team have experienced. They have also reported this latency issue when navigating through different pages.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The risk context of any vulnerability is a valuable feature."

"It is a stable solution."

"Great web application security for scanning."

"The reporting functionality is great."

"The most valuable features of Qualys VM are its ability to do proper vulnerability assessment. It has a lot of updates for all the vulnerability databases from all over the globe. It's an amazing solution when it comes to the versatility of the features it has. Additionally, the reports are very good. It generates very detailed reports about the vulnerabilities inside the environment"

"The most valuable feature of Qualys Container Security is the detailed information in the reports and the remediation. This is done to make sure there are no vulnerabilities."

"I like the automated report generation and vulnerability report generation."

"It provides fully automated internal and external vulnerability management."

"The integrations for this solution are very good. I use a different product for virtual patching of vulnerabilities and Qualys integrates well with that product."

More Qualys VMDR pros

Cons

"An improvement would be some sort of an integration with any GRC suite."

"Qualys VM's scanner doesn't pick up every vulnerability, so we have to use multiple scanners to cover that gap."

"Qualys VMDR is basically susceptible to false positives, and false negatives."

"The reporting and dashboards could improve in Qualys VM. However, they have improved since the previous versions."

"Finding things in management can be quite difficult."

"It would be helpful to have features for better tracking, including options for adding relevant owners or supporting groups for each asset."

"One area for improvement is the simplification of the process to ignore certain vulnerabilities on specific devices."

"They have integrated with other third parties, but it is still not viable."

"In terms of improvement for the web application console, in the older version, things were more segregated and presented in a brief format."

More Qualys VMDR cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think the pricing is based on the number of endpoints, so it's more subscription-based."

"It's very expensive, especially if you want to use multiple modules of Qualys."

"The pricing and licensing for Qualys could be improved."

"The pricing is very competitive."

"We do see over $100,000 in terms of price, for mid-size programs. You likely will pay more than $100,000 without any discount. It is a bit pricey."

"The price is very reasonable."

"The solution is expensive."

"Qualys VM is quite expensive. It's a subscription-based license, and it's yearly. Right now, it's open for me, and I don't have any limitations or caps on the licenses. They are seeing if the product is viable for 4500 users. I can add as much as I want, and at the end of the subscription, they'll let me know how many licenses were actually used and bill me accordingly. On a scale from one to five, I would give their pricing a three. It's still expensive."

"It is a high cost product. Compared to the other solutions, it is around 15 to 20% higher in cost."

More Qualys VMDR pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Risk-Based Vulnerability Management solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Retailer

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	70

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

What do you like most about Qualys VMDR?

I like that we have many scanners and channels that don't overload. It helps us scan and track easily. Also, the tagging system is good for tagging. We can still use QualysAgent task ID tools even ...

See all answers

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

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing shows that we can consider both time and money saved.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Qualys VMDR?

See all answers

Comparisons

Vulcan Cyber vs Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM)

Compared 14% of the time

Rapid7 InsightVM vs Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM)

Compared 10% of the time

Brinqa vs Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM)

Compared 8% of the time

Tenable Security Center vs Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM)

Compared 7% of the time

Unified Vulnerability Management vs Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM)

Compared 7% of the time

More Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM) Competitors

Rapid7 InsightVM vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 9% of the time

Tenable Nessus vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 7% of the time

Tenable Security Center vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 4% of the time

Wiz vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 4% of the time

More Qualys VMDR Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Risk-Based Vulnerability Management

March 2026

Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM) report

Download Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM) product report

Buyer's Guide

Qualys VMDR

March 2026

Download Qualys VMDR product report

Also Known As

Kenna.VM, Kenna Security, Kenna, Kenna Security Platform

Qualys VM, QualysGuard VM, Qualys Asset Inventory, Qualys Container Security

Overview

Cisco Vulnerability Management equips you with the contextual insight and threat intelligence needed to intercept the next exploit and respond with precision.

Prioritization is no longer a dark art—it's data science. Advanced algorithms, combined with rich internal and external intel, offer recommended fixes that will lower risk in as few moves as possible.

Track vulnerability fluctuations and forecast weaponization with up to 94% accuracy, giving you the chance to remediate high-risk vulnerabilities before bad actors can mount an attack.

With more than 19 threat intelligence feeds at your fingertips, you gain a comprehensive view of emerging threats, shifting trends, and your own risk profile.

A single source of data-verified truth aligns security and IT, eliminating friction and freeing up resources. And intuitive, simplified risk scores help you generate reports anyone can understand.

Cisco

Vulnerability Management, Detection, and Response (VMDR) is a cornerstone product of the Qualys TruRisk Platform and a global leader in the enterprise-grade vulnerability management (VM) vendor space. With VMDR, enterprises are empowered with visibility and insight into cyber risk exposure - making it easy to prioritize vulnerabilities, assets, or groups of assets based on business risk. Security teams can take action to mitigate risk, helping the business measure their actual risk exposure over time.

Qualys VMDR offers an all-inclusive risk-based vulnerability management solution to prioritize vulnerabilities and assets based on risk and business criticality. VMDR seamlessly integrates with configuration management databases (CMDB), Qualys Patch Management, Custom Assessment and Remediation (CAR), Qualys TotalCloud and other Qualys and non-Qualys solutions to facilitate vulnerability detection and remediation across the entire enterprise.

With VMDR, users are empowered with actionable risk insights that translate vulnerabilities and exploits into optimized remediation actions based on business impact. Qualys customers can now aggregate and orchestrate data from the Qualys Threat Library, 25+ threat intelligence feeds, and third-party security and IT solutions, empowering organizations to measure, communicate, and eliminate risk across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments.

Qualys

Sample Customers

TransUnion

Agrokor Group, American Specialty Health, American State Bank, Arval, Life:), Axway, Bank of the West, Blueport Commerce, BSkyB, Brinks, CaixaBank, Cartagena, Catholic Health System, CEC Bank, Cegedim, CIGNA, Clickability, Colby-Sawyer College, Commercial Bank of Dubai, University of Utah, eBay Inc., ING Singapore, National Theatre, OTP Bank, Sodexo, WebEx

Buyer's Guide

Risk-Based Vulnerability Management

March 2026

Download Free Report

Find out what your peers are saying about Qualys, Tenable, Rapid7 and others in Risk-Based Vulnerability Management. Updated: March 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our list of best Risk-Based Vulnerability Management vendors.

We monitor all Risk-Based Vulnerability Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.