

Qualys VMDR and Microsoft Defender for Cloud are prominent competitors in the vulnerability management and cloud security domain. Based on the data, Microsoft Defender seems to have an edge due to its seamless integration with Microsoft products and advanced AI capabilities.
Features: Qualys VMDR stands out for its robust vulnerability management and detection, customizable dashboards, and continuous monitoring. It offers comprehensive asset scanning across different environments. Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides strong integration with Microsoft products, effective threat intelligence, and a unified view for managing cloud environments, leveraging its AI capabilities for enhanced protection.
Room for Improvement: Qualys VMDR could improve its integration options, simplify the user interface, and enhance patch management. Users also report challenges with managing large asset volumes and reducing false positives. Microsoft Defender for Cloud could benefit from more granular recommendations, clearer feature explanations, and reduced false positives. Its single-pane interface sometimes causes user confusion, and additional features can be costly.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Qualys VMDR offers versatile deployment options but has mixed reviews on customer service, with some experiencing delays. In the Microsoft ecosystem, deployment of Defender for Cloud is smoother, particularly for cloud environments, although Microsoft's support has similar challenges with promptness and detailed guidance.
Pricing and ROI: Qualys VMDR is often criticized for its high cost, particularly for smaller companies, while offering competitive pricing for larger enterprises with good ROI in vulnerability management. Microsoft Defender for Cloud also faces criticism for its high costs, especially for advanced features, but is seen as cost-effective within the Microsoft suite due to its integration. Both products deliver significant ROI by enhancing security and reducing risk but differ in cost structures and perceived value.
Defender proactively indexes and analyzes documents, identifying potential threats even when inactive, enhancing preventative security.
Identifying potential vulnerabilities has helped us avoid costly data losses.
Compared to not having Microsoft Defender for Cloud in place, we definitely saw an advantage by not having downtime due to a security threat.
We saw a return on investment through significant savings in time, money, and resources.
Since security is critical, we prefer a quicker response time.
The support team was very responsive to queries.
They understand their product, but much like us, they struggle with the finer details, especially with new features.
We usually get on calls with tech support, and they are very helpful.
The response time takes a while.
The technical support provided by Qualys is pretty good.
As we have reduced our on-premises infrastructure, it is about how we can migrate workloads to the cloud to make it easier, and then having everything fully encompassed and secured within that area makes it much easier for us to scale as needed and grow.
We are using infrastructure as a code, so we do not have any scalability issues with Microsoft Defender for Cloud implementation because our cloud automatically does it.
It has multiple licenses and features, covering infrastructures from a hundred to five hundred virtual machines, without any issues.
Scalability depends on the license and the number of assets being monitored.
Qualys VMDR can handle scalability, although increasing the inventory can raise the licensing costs.
Qualys VMDR's scalability is good, and the customer support is good.
Defender's stability has been flawless for us.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is very stable.
Microsoft sometimes changes settings or configurations without transparency.
Qualys VMDR is stable.
Microsoft, in general, could significantly improve its communication and support.
It would be beneficial to streamline recommendations to avoid unnecessary alerts and to refine the severity of alerts based on specific environments or environmental attributes.
The artificial intelligence features could be expanded to allow the system to autonomously manage security issues without needing intervention from admins.
It does not automate patching unless the patch management module is purchased separately.
If AI features were integrated, it could enhance the capabilities significantly.
One area where Qualys VMDR can be improved is the missing feature for deploying agents for over 1,000 assets, as we need to do it manually.
Security has essentially no cost when compared to the cost of a breach.
Every time we consider expanding usage, we carefully evaluate the necessity due to cost concerns.
We appreciate the licensing approach based on employee count rather than a big enterprise license.
I would rate the pricing between seven to eight out of ten.
I have a notion that Qualys might be more expensive than Rapid7.
Qualys offers better pricing and is feature-packed compared to other tools.
The most valuable feature for me is the variety of APIs available.
This feature significantly aids in threat detection and enhances the user experience by streamlining security management.
The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security.
The prioritization of vulnerabilities has improved our remediation efforts by around thirty to thirty-five percent.
It impacts my workflow overall, with the patch management features as it has the missing patches listed in detail, making it easier to get a comprehensive report and providing some dashboards that offer visual representation.
Qualys VMDR's continuous monitoring capabilities help us respond to emergent threats by enabling my team to reach out to the security engineers whenever there is any detection of a vulnerability, informing them about it, and creating an incident.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Qualys VMDR | 5.0% |
| Microsoft Defender for Cloud | 3.6% |
| Other | 91.4% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 27 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 10 |
| Large Enterprise | 49 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 20 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 12 |
| Large Enterprise | 70 |
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a comprehensive security solution that provides advanced threat protection for cloud workloads. It offers real-time visibility into the security posture of cloud environments, enabling organizations to quickly identify and respond to potential threats. With its advanced machine learning capabilities, Microsoft Defender for Cloud can detect and block sophisticated attacks, including zero-day exploits and fileless malware.
The solution also provides automated remediation capabilities, allowing security teams to quickly and easily respond to security incidents. With Microsoft Defender for Cloud, organizations can ensure the security and compliance of their cloud workloads, while reducing the burden on their security teams.
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.
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