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Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs XM Cyber comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
5.5
Qualys TotalCloud boosts efficiency, reduces manual effort, decreases risk, and offers significant cost savings with a notable ROI.
Sentiment score
3.7
Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks boosts efficiency and ROI with XSOAR integrations, though ROI quantification can be challenging.
Sentiment score
6.0
XM Cyber improves efficiency, cutting vulnerability management labor, saving money, and enhancing risk management with superior risk tracking capabilities.
It has saved about 90% of our time.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
TotalCloud has generated overall savings of 30 to 40 percent across various departments.
Security Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
CallStream helps us integrate and automate tasks.
Senior Security Consultant at CyberNxt Solutions LLP
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.
Technical Solutions Architect at IBM
There was a specific issue that our other security tooling did not pick up, but XM Cyber did.
Group CISO at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
It's reduced the timescale to remediate vulnerabilities that are identified as representing a high risk.
Chief Information Security Officer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.4
Qualys TotalCloud support is praised for efficiency and staff knowledge but criticized for delays and inconsistent quality.
Sentiment score
6.6
Cortex Cloud's customer service is praised for prompt, knowledgeable support and effective troubleshooting, earning high user ratings.
Sentiment score
6.2
XM Cyber's customer service is highly rated for responsiveness and effectiveness, with some minor improvement suggested by a user.
They are helpful, respond to my queries, and can answer any question.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Qualys's tech support is highly responsive, providing multiple ways to interact with them.
Service Manager, Security Operations at CDA IT SOLUTIONS
Qualys' customer service provides quality answers, but the response time is long, even though it is within the SLA.
Works at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
If I make it a high priority, they have resolved one query within 20 minutes.
Assistant Security Architect at Cloudnomics
If local Indian support cannot resolve an issue, global tech support aligns promptly within the agreed SLA.
Senior Cybersecurity Consultant at Ernst & Young
Fast response times and knowledgeable staff who understand the intricacies of the system.
Principle Cloud Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The customer support is fantastic; it's probably some of the best we've received across all our security vendors.
Group CISO at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
Customer support for XM Cyber is good, responsive, and it follows up on issues.
Chief Information Security Officer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Qualys TotalCloud excels in scalability, efficiently supporting diverse environments and business sizes, though it may require skilled management.
Sentiment score
4.5
Palo Alto's Cortex Cloud is scalable and efficient, with easy onboarding, but can be costly for higher licenses.
Sentiment score
7.3
XM Cyber provides scalable, reliable solutions with easy licensing and deployment, receiving high ratings and responsive partner support.
We started our organization about nine months back. We started with about 30 users, and we now have more than 100 users.
CIO at a venture capital & private equity firm with 11-50 employees
Our organization currently uses it to manage over 1200 web applications.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
It is absolutely scalable, and I would rate its scalability as nine out of ten.
retired at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
For stability, scalability, mean time to response, and potential incident investigation improvements, I would give it a nine or probably even a ten.
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.
Assistant Security Architect at Cloudnomics
The platform is able to auto-shut certain resources that are not in use through the agentless scan feature.
Technical Solutions Architect at IBM
Its scalability is great; it's easy to deploy and fully scalable.
IT Security manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
We have not experienced any issues with scalability or reached its limits.
Group CISO at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Qualys TotalCloud is highly stable with reliable support, 99.9% uptime, minimal bugs, and effective maintenance communication.
Sentiment score
7.8
Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is praised for its stability, reliability, and seamless security performance without latency or issues.
Sentiment score
8.0
XM Cyber is highly stable, quickly addressing minor issues, ensuring reliable and consistent performance in complex environments.
Overall, the support provided has been excellent.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
It is a stable solution, which is why we chose it.
CIO at a venture capital & private equity firm with 11-50 employees
Continuous monitoring is crucial to ensure system stability and avoid vulnerabilities or threats.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
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.
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.
Assistant Security Architect at Cloudnomics
My evaluation of how stable and reliable Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is very positive.
Technical Solutions Architect at IBM
We have quite a complex and large IT estate, and we've certainly experienced no limitations or problems arising from the ability of XM Cyber's product to scale across that estate.
Chief Information Security Officer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Users suggest enhancing Qualys TotalCloud with clearer reports, better integration, intuitive UI, AI risk assessments, and improved documentation.
Cortex Cloud's interface and costs challenge users, with needs for improved integration, efficiency, and identity management features.
XM Cyber should enhance mobile access, AI integration, support, visualization, tool compatibility, vulnerability detection, pricing, and advanced analytics.
Ideally, the scanner should automatically detect and scan all subdomains, even if not explicitly defined, ensuring comprehensive vulnerability assessment.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
Ideally, updates should be more immediate, enabling quicker implementation of solutions.
Project Lead at Persistent Systems
Our goal is to integrate all these functions into Qualys, creating a single dashboard for comprehensive security monitoring and management.
Senior Information Security Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Regarding the generative AI security tool, I know for sure it's Agentic.
Cybersecurity Analyst at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The solution is quite premium in cost compared to alternatives such as Wiz.
Principle Cloud Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
There is not a clear MSP model compared to other vendors such as CrowdStrike.
Business Development Manager For Palo Alto Networks at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We push the boundaries with digital twins; I understand XM Cyber uses a similar concept of graph databases to map environments.
Group CISO at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
They could improve support because when we need to create a super case and escalate to resolve with technical support, they resolve our ticket in approximately two weeks.
Chief Information Security Officer at Prezero
The part that can be improved is the mobile exposure and the IBM i specific equipment.
IT Security manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is high yet justified by comprehensive features and flexibility, benefiting larger enterprises seeking robust security.
Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Pricing is managed by our finance team; however, Qualys TotalCloud offers cost-effective licensing flexibility.
IT Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches.
Vice President at Inspira Enterprise
The solution is costly, with high-end capabilities suitable for enterprises.
Senior Cybersecurity Consultant at Ernst & Young
Today, it is smart and easy to calculate the licenses.
Cloud Security Manager at T-Systems International GmbH
We have a large, complicated estate, and in the licensing discussions, we were keen not to have the cost balloon because of the complication, the number of PCs and servers that we have.
Chief Information Security Officer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Qualys TotalCloud offers comprehensive vulnerability detection, cloud security management, and automation with insightful dashboards for efficient threat management.
Cortex Cloud enhances security management with AI-driven threat detection, automation, and seamless CI/CD integration, reducing response times significantly.
XM Cyber enhances security by simulating attacks, assessing risks, identifying vulnerabilities, and optimizing asset protection with metrics and cost savings.
This view of risk helps reduce the work we would have to do to combine multiple sources to prioritize risk.
Works at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
It will help cybersecurity professionals monitor the cloud and find vulnerabilities.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We are enjoying the new feature, FlexScan, which is valuable for Internet-facing VMs.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
AI/ML aids in anticipating remediation for misconfigurations and vulnerabilities, and automatic remediation can be easily configured.
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.
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.
Business Development Manager For Palo Alto Networks at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Our loss exposure amount has reduced significantly, leading to two big wins: our loss exposure amount has gone down, and we have direct savings from focusing our team's time on what's important, allowing them to work on other business benefits and generate value for the company.
Group CISO at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
By far, the best feature of XM Cyber is being able to map out the way vulnerabilities can be exploited based on what they call the choke points in the network where the path that a bad actor would take comes closest to assets within our environment that are most vulnerable but also most valuable.
Chief Information Security Officer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
XM Cyber allows us to quantify the risk, and we are able to track remediation, so we can quantify the risk at an executive level and also to a technical IT team.
IT Security manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Qualys TotalCloud
Sponsored
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
11th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (13th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (9th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (1st), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (8th)
Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto N...
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
29th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (13th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (11th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (12th), Software Supply Chain Security (6th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (6th), Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) (6th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (5th)
XM Cyber
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
37th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
27th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Continuous Controls Monitoring (3rd), Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is 1.1%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of XM Cyber is 1.0%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Qualys TotalCloud1.0%
Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks1.1%
XM Cyber1.0%
Other96.9%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

RO
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.
SJ
Technical Solutions Architect at IBM
Cloud security has improved as AI-driven runtime protection detects threats and reduces incidents
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.
Stephen Owen - PeerSpot reviewer
Group CISO at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
Has significantly improved risk visibility and optimized remediation efforts across dynamic environments
We tightly integrate with APIs, consuming feeds and open source data. We have integrated with XM Cyber, and we are elevating ourselves with AI and MCP tools as we view this as a forerunner to reducing the workload for our agents and IT staff. We're pushing all our security partners to provide AI and MCP tools. Our vision is for them to offer a chat interface where a junior IT or an experienced infrastructure engineer can ask for what needs to be patched next without using an interface. Their current interface is very usable and professional, ranking in the top tier of applications. Their reporting is good, offering custom reports, and their API integration is a new capability that serves us well. We have high expectations for the next generation, such as a chat interface to ask questions. However, everything has been very good. We push the boundaries with digital twins; I understand XM Cyber uses a similar concept of graph databases to map environments. I would like access to that and querying languages, enabling more informed business decisions. XM Cyber sees much of our estate, which is beneficial for making informed decisions, and we can harness those insights and data for business analytics. For instance, it could help us gain insights into change management—if a particular server impacts another and that server is supported by yet another server, we could glean significant insights for change management meetings.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise28
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
Areas that need improvement in every solution include the remediation part. The remediation steps should be simple en...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?
I am not fully aware of the pricing and licensing of Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks. The pricing is also based on...
What needs improvement with Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?
In my opinion, Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks could be improved or enhanced in various ways. I don't have an idea...
What is your primary use case for Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?
The usual use cases for Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks that I have been working with mostly are as simple as dete...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for XM Cyber?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was that we have a large, complicated estate, and in the licens...
What needs improvement with XM Cyber?
The roadmap is a disadvantage because this kind of technology should incorporate AI. At the moment, we don't have any...
What is your primary use case for XM Cyber?
My major use case for XM Cyber is managing the services in our company, Prosegur Iberia, for Spain and Portugal. We d...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Information Not Available
Hamburg Port Authority, Plymouth Rock Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs. XM Cyber and other solutions. Updated: May 2026.
896,510 professionals have used our research since 2012.