Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Tenable Security Center comparison

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs. Tenable Security Center

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:

ROI

Sentiment score

3.7

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks enhances response time and ROI with discounts and features, beneficial during critical periods.

Sentiment score

6.5

Tenable Security Center boosts ROI by minimizing costs, enhancing security, reducing manpower needs, and preventing costly data breaches.

The solution provides a good ROI, especially for regular customers, offering discounts for three-year licenses.

Senior Cybersecurity Consultant at Ernst & Young

I don't think the tool in itself is very capable of doing that, but we have XSOAR and other tool integrations done on the platform, so this can be accomplished.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

Technical Solutions Architect at IBM

If we cannot adjust how to operate the solution, then it becomes very difficult, so hearing and initial tuning are very important.

Hiroshi Watanabe

Marketing Expert at J's communication

Through the use of Tenable Security Center, my clients achieve more efficient patching and gain visibility and understanding of security operations, leading to improved resilience and infrastructure insight.

For more quotes and insights, download the Tenable Security Center report

Solution engineer at EXPERTience

Customer Service

Sentiment score

6.6

Cortex Cloud offers efficient global support, expert troubleshooting, and user-friendly dashboards, driving strategic adoption despite its cost.

Sentiment score

7.4

Tenable Security Center customer support is responsive and knowledgeable, with U.S. support rated higher than the European counterpart.

If I make it a high priority, they have resolved one query within 20 minutes.

Ankit Pandagre

Assistant Security Architect at Cloudnomics

If local Indian support cannot resolve an issue, global tech support aligns promptly within the agreed SLA.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

Senior Cybersecurity Consultant at Ernst & Young

Fast response times and knowledgeable staff who understand the intricacies of the system.

reviewer9216065

Sr. Cloud Security Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Longer response times and less thorough assistance.

For more quotes and insights, download the Tenable Security Center report

Solution engineer at EXPERTience

They are helpful and were very helpful to us, coordinating with us on several issues.

reviewer1534134

Head of Information Security at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

4.5

Cortex Cloud offers scalability, efficient response, and integration, maintaining consistent pricing, rated highly for organizations of all sizes.

Sentiment score

8.0

Tenable Security Center is praised for its seamless scalability, adaptability, and integration, accommodating diverse organizational needs and sizes effectively.

For stability, scalability, mean time to response, and potential incident investigation improvements, I would give it a nine or probably even a ten.

reviewer2269782

Business Development Team Lead at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees

Onboarding endpoints and assets on Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is very easy.

Ankit Pandagre

Assistant Security Architect at Cloudnomics

The platform is able to auto-shut certain resources that are not in use through the agentless scan feature.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

Technical Solutions Architect at IBM

I can scale it extensively with the use of agents, allowing scanning in restrictive environments and loosely connected devices.

For more quotes and insights, download the Tenable Security Center report

Solution engineer at EXPERTience

Scalability is a bit limited with Tenable Security Center.

Kevin Mwangi

Cyber Security Consultant at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

7.8

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is reliable, stable, with quick performance, no latency, and effective real-time attack prevention.

Sentiment score

8.0

Tenable Security Center is highly stable and reliable, handling large tasks efficiently with users rating its stability highly.

My impression of Cloud Runtime Security in stopping attacks in real-time is that I have never had an issue where it has let something through, causing an outage or concerns to the customer.

reviewer2269782

Business Development Team Lead at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees

However, now in Cortex Cloud, I have not seen any lag or buffer.

Ankit Pandagre

Assistant Security Architect at Cloudnomics

My evaluation of how stable and reliable Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is very positive.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

Technical Solutions Architect at IBM

The stability of the solution is outstanding.

For more quotes and insights, download the Tenable Security Center report

Solution engineer at EXPERTience

Room For Improvement

Cortex Cloud requires a user-friendly interface, cost efficiency, enhanced features, and skilled personnel to overcome operational challenges.

Users desire improved reporting, third-party integration, interface design, vulnerability handling, web scanning, pricing, support, and user-friendly features.

Regarding the generative AI security tool, I know for sure it's Agentic.

Nuno-Santos

Cybersecurity Analyst at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The solution is quite premium in cost compared to alternatives such as Wiz.

reviewer9216065

Sr. Cloud Security Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

There is not a clear MSP model compared to other vendors such as CrowdStrike.

reviewer1980216

Business Development Manager For Palo Alto Networks at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

It's important for Tenable to catch up on testing capabilities that are present in solutions like Qualys.

Kevin Mwangi

Cyber Security Consultant at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

The reports and plugins for reports and scans could benefit from enhancements.

MB24

IT Helpdesk at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees

Translating reports into European languages is especially relevant in Central Eastern Europe, where clients often require reports in local languages.

For more quotes and insights, download the Tenable Security Center report

Solution engineer at EXPERTience

Setup Cost

Tenable Security Center is costly per asset, with options including subscription and perpetual licenses, generally pricier than competitors.

The solution is costly, with high-end capabilities suitable for enterprises.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

Senior Cybersecurity Consultant at Ernst & Young

Today, it is smart and easy to calculate the licenses.

Wagner Azevedo

Cloud Security Manager at T-Systems International GmbH

The product is somewhat pricey, reflecting its valuable features and status as a high-quality solution in the vulnerability management market.

MB24

IT Helpdesk at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees

Tenable Security Center is quite expensive, particularly for the CEE region, causing us to lose cases due to its pricing.

For more quotes and insights, download the Tenable Security Center report

Solution engineer at EXPERTience

The price of Tenable Security Center is not so high; it's relatively a cheaper solution.

Hiroshi Watanabe

Marketing Expert at J's communication

Valuable Features

Cortex Cloud enhances security with AI-driven automation, reducing manual tasks and improving threat management for lean enterprise teams.

Tenable Security Center offers comprehensive vulnerability management with intuitive tools, strong integration, and flexible compliance for effective threat detection.

AI/ML aids in anticipating remediation for misconfigurations and vulnerabilities, and automatic remediation can be easily configured.

For more quotes and insights, download the Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

Senior Cybersecurity Consultant at Ernst & Young

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks has reduced the time spent on incident investigations, and if I had to estimate, I would say it has cut our investigation time in half.

reviewer2797143

Sr. Compliance Analyst at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

This simplifies the management of shared responsibility among different people and entities, allowing you to use one single tool instead of having dozens of different tools to orchestrate and integrate.

reviewer1980216

Business Development Manager For Palo Alto Networks at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We obtained good reports showing when patches were closed and the details of each patch, including who executed it and everything related to the patching process until it was closed.

reviewer1534134

Head of Information Security at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees

Tenable Security Center provides an overall score of vulnerabilities, comparing an organization with others in the same industry.

MB24

IT Helpdesk at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees

The most effective feature of Tenable Security Center for detecting vulnerabilities is its capability for critical mapping.

Kevin Mwangi

Cyber Security Consultant at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Tenable Security Center report

Categories and Ranking

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto N...

Ranking in Vulnerability Management

27th

Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

18th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (13th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (12th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (12th), Software Supply Chain Security (7th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (6th), Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) (6th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (4th)

Tenable Security Center

Ranking in Vulnerability Management

6th

Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

14th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is 0.9%. The mindshare of Tenable Security Center is 3.1%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Tenable Security Center	3.1%
Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks	0.9%
Other	96.0%

Vulnerability Management

Featured Reviews

Cloud security has improved as AI-driven runtime protection detects threats and reduces incidents

Technical Solutions Architect at IBM

In my opinion, Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks could be improved or enhanced in various ways. I don't have an idea about that yet because for that you actually need to use two or three different other tools to make a basic comparison. If you ask me how good the tool is, I would fairly rate it quite high. The tool is very popular, and customers can already see that it is one of the cloud leaders in the security space. The platform had a very good feature which provides documentation links about how to use a specific feature on the UI. It takes you to the proper documentation page where it suggests what to do and tells you about the steps that need to be done for a resource deployment. My thoughts about improving the product which I believe could greatly aid vendors is that it used to be a very user-friendly tool, but now they have incorporated everything under one umbrella. It has XDR, XSOAR, and Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks. Before, we used to have separate modules and separate environments for each of these capabilities or features. Right now, it is a little complex and users would take their own time to know the tool better. This is something that would have been way better, but I would say there would be different opinions on this. Talking about user-friendliness, it has decreased now.

Read full review

reviewer1534134

Head of Information Security at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees

Centralized analytics have strengthened patch visibility and support efficient regulatory reporting

From my experience, I assess the product's analytics capabilities as successful. It helped us significantly with patching and managing the risk of the patching process across all our environments, including network devices with Windows and Unix systems. The product covered several environments and gave us exactly what we needed in our environment. Tenable Security Center's centralized platform helped with risk assessment and management across our IT environments. It covered the patching process, and we previously faced many issues regarding how to patch different environments, how to monitor the patching process, and whether it was successful or not. We obtained good reports showing when patches were closed and the details of each patch, including who executed it and everything related to the patching process until it was closed. This gave us good details about the process which helped us significantly in our reporting and even in audits, whether internal or external. We learned how to close audit issues safely and successfully. We used the dashboards for real-time threat insights and extracted several dashboards from Tenable Security Center. We use these dashboards in our cybersecurity dashboard and committees that we have. These dashboards are part of our committees, especially the cybersecurity committee and other committees that we attend.

Read full review

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which 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

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Performing Arts

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	4

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	22
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	27

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?

The solution is costly, with high-end capabilities suitable for enterprises. It is less affordable for startups or small-scale vendors.

What needs improvement with Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?

As per my experience with Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, the UI could be simpler. There are few features which are very hidden, such as those in software bill of materials and compliance polic...

What is your primary use case for Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?

My use case for Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is for CSPM, application security, and IAM. I use it for checking on the asset inventory, policies, and standards like GDPR, NIST, and SOC 2 compl...

What do you like most about Tenable SC?

The tool's dashboard and reporting capabilities match our company's needs since we are able to modify the basic view to create a new dashboard, and it works out very well for our needs.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tenable SC?

The price of Tenable Security Center is not so high; it's relatively a cheaper solution.

What needs improvement with Tenable SC?

We did conduct a long implementation which relates to what I think can be improved about Tenable Security Center. In some cases, we needed to refer back to Tenable itself, and in other cases, we ne...

Wiz vs Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Comparisons

Compared 16% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 15% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security vs Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 6% of the time

WithSecure Elements Exposure Management (XM) vs Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 6% of the time

More Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Competitors

Rapid7 InsightVM vs Tenable Security Center

Compared 10% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs Tenable Security Center

Compared 9% of the time

Tenable Nessus vs Tenable Security Center

Compared 7% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Tenable Security Center

Compared 5% of the time

The NodeZero Platform by Horizon3.ai vs Tenable Security Center

Compared 4% of the time

More Tenable Security Center Competitors

Product Reports

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

March 2026

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

Download Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks product report

Download Tenable Security Center product report

Tenable Security Center

February 2026

Also Known As

No data available

Tenable.sc, Tenable Unified Security, Tenable SecurityCenter

Overview

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks provides comprehensive cybersecurity management, focusing on enhancing security operations with advanced automation and threat intelligence, addressing complex security challenges efficiently.

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks integrates cloud-scale data analytics and automation to streamline security operations, enabling faster threat detection and response. It leverages AI and machine learning to provide real-time threat intelligence and automate routine tasks, reducing the burden on security teams. Users benefit from improved visibility across networks and greater operational efficiency, making it crucial for enterprises aiming to secure their digital assets against evolving cyber threats.

What are the key features of Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?

Automated Threat Detection: Identifies and mitigates threats in real-time using AI algorithms.
Advanced Analytics: Provides in-depth data insights for proactive threat prevention.
Incident Management: Streamlines incident response with automated workflows.
Scalable Architecture: Offers flexibility to grow with organizational needs.

What benefits or ROI should you expect from Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks reviews?

Increased Efficiency: Automation reduces manual efforts in threat management.
Enhanced Security Posture: Improved visibility leads to better threat preparedness.
Cost Savings: Minimizes expenses related to manual threat detection and response.
Scalability: Grows with the organization, reducing the need for constant upgrades.

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is favored in sectors like finance, healthcare, and telecommunications, where data security is paramount. Its ability to integrate with existing infrastructure and provide real-time insights makes it a preferred choice for securing sensitive information and ensuring compliance within industry regulations.

Palo Alto Networks

Get a risk-based view of your IT, security and compliance posture so you can quickly identify, investigate and prioritize your most critical assets and vulnerabilities.

Managed on-premises and powered by Nessus technology, the Tenable Security Center (formerly Tenable.sc) suite of products provides the industry’s most comprehensive vulnerability coverage with real-time continuous assessment of your network. It’s your complete end-to-end vulnerability management solution.

Tenable

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

IBM, Sempra Energy, Microsoft, Apple, Adidas, Union Pacific