Orca Security vs Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management comparison

Orca Security and Qualys are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. Orca Security is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.6, while Qualys is ranked #8 with an average rating of 9.2. Orca Security holds a 4.4% mindshare in VM, compared to Qualys’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Orca Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Qualys users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

Orca Security and Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management (CSAM) are both prominent players in the cybersecurity field, focusing on asset management and security monitoring. Based on the comparisons, Orca Security seems to have the upper hand due to its innovative features like agentless deployment and comprehensive visibility whereas Qualys impresses with its robust asset management and integration capabilities.

Features: Orca Security offers agentless deployment and SideScanning technology, providing visibility and risk prioritization that reduces overhead and enhances cloud environment insights. Additionally, it excels in seamless scanning and actionable insights. Qualys CSAM is strong in asset discovery and tracking, using agent-based solutions for detailed asset management and compliance tracking, supported by integration capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Orca Security could enhance automatic remediation capabilities and strengthen support for data centers, while its cloud-only approach limits some potential. Qualys should improve its user interface, reporting customization, and integration with non-VMDR solutions, while also easing configuration and enhancing dynamic tagging functionalities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Orca Security is noted for its rapid, hassle-free deployment due to its cloud-based agentless design, which integrates smoothly with existing cloud environments. Qualys offers a hybrid approach suitable for various environments, including on-premises, but may require more setup. Both companies offer responsive customer support, with Orca's real-time communication often achieving quick resolutions.

Pricing and ROI: Orca Security's pricing, seen as high, is justified by the significant ROI through reduced overhead and improved security posture. It features a straightforward cost structure with no hidden fees. Qualys CSAM's pricing is also perceived as steep, especially when added to VMDR. However, it provides valuable asset management features. Orca's comprehensive functionality provides financial advantages, while Qualys's fragmented asset management involves incremental costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Orca Security vs. Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Orca Security vs. Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management

July 2025

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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

Zafran Security

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 0.9%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Orca Security is 4.4%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management is 1.1%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vulnerability Management

Featured Reviews

Israel Cavazos Landini

Associate Director IT Security Operations at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

Weekly insights and risk analysis facilitate informed security decisions

I appreciate the weekly insights Zafran provides, which include critical topics for networks and IT security, allowing us to evaluate which insights apply to our environment. The organization score feature is valuable to keep the leadership team updated on how our infrastructure fares security-wise. The applicable risk level versus base risk level feature is beneficial because prior to Zafran, we only used the base risk level, but now understand that risk depends on the asset itself. Zafran is an excellent tool.

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CHINTAN MEHTA

Cloud Security Automation Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Consolidating security tools with comprehensive cloud visibility

The documentation for Orca Security could be improved. The compliance framework also needs enhancements, especially concerning integrations with other tools like ServiceNow's vulnerability modules, which are not as mature as expected. It should also increase its capability to ingest data from other security tools like CloudSight for endpoint detection and provide real-time monitoring.

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Scott Frederick

Director of Vulnerability Management at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Well-integrated with our vulnerability scanning utilities and efficient in asset tagging and identification

Our favorite features are the tagging and the ability to quickly find assets in the portal. Additionally, I do like the fact that Qualys CSAM is integrated with the rest of our vulnerability scanning utilities. We use the full suite from Qualys. The fact that it is integrated makes it very easy to understand. It shares tagging information with VMDR. That is very nice. Qualys CSAM has discovered assets not previously covered by our vulnerability management program. Primarily, if we have assets without vulnerabilities, they become less visible, but Qualys CSAM alerts us to them because they have IP addresses and are attached to our network. It could discover everything from printers to servers to endpoints. It could discover UPSs, network devices, and across all operating systems. It discovers our security badge readers and digital signage. We have to feed that the IP address ranges, but beyond that, it finds everything in our internal network. We were able to realize its benefits within the first quarter of installing it. We did have to take some time to learn it and understand how to operationally leverage what it was telling us, but it was very quick. In addition to vulnerabilities, Qualys CSAM helps identify other risk factors to a degree. For instance, we can see if servers or assets have incorrect naming standards. We have our network segmented into development model, test, and production, and we have server naming standards that identify which management they should be in. If a production server has the naming standard of a development model server, we can find that. That is one area we have used it for. We are not fully using TruRisk, but we are using the Qualys detection score that is central to our corporate risk prioritization approach. It has completely replaced our homegrown one.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."

"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."

"Zafran is an excellent tool."

"Overall, we have seen about eighty-seven percent reduction of the number of vulnerabilities that require urgency to remediate, specifically the number of criticals."

"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."

"Orca provides X-ray vision into everything within the cloud properties, whereas normally, this would require multiple tools."

"Orca's SideScanning is the biggest feature. It's the 'wow' factor... With Orca's SideScanning, they just need permissions for your account and that makes it so simple."

"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."

"One of the valuable features of Orca Security is its design and options that allow flexible filtering and user-friendly visualization."

"The vulnerability management does not require network scanning or agent technology, so I don't need to modify any of my products in order to do vulnerability assessments."

"The initial setup is very easy."

"I find Orca Security's CIEM feature invaluable, as it focuses on entitlement and posture management, identifying assets with older OS versions, and asset misconfiguration."

"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."

More Orca Security pros

"The most valuable feature is the Management sensor, which helps identify gaps in policy agent availability, thereby improving agent utilization."

"It provides most of the information needed regarding the assets, including the operating system and whether the assets are network devices or servers."

"Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management offers comprehensive features to cover our entire attack surface."

"Our favorite features are the tagging and the ability to quickly find assets in the portal."

"The scanning results are pretty good, and some insights are quite valuable."

"There are no stability issues, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."

"The most valuable features of Qualys CSAM include the ability to manage authorized and unauthorized applications efficiently. This feature helps in validating applications and maintaining a secure environment."

"Authorized and unauthorized software visibility is the best feature for me. It helps me understand security controls on our network and where we lack visibility. With a single security tool, we are able to get an extensive list."

More Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management pros

Cons

"I think the ability to have some enhanced reporting capabilities is something they can improve on, as they have good reports but we have asked for some specific reporting enhancements."

"Initially, we were somewhat concerned about the scalability of Zafran due to our large asset count and the substantial amount of information we needed to process."

"The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvements."

"The automatic scan only runs every 24 hours, and if an alert is remediated within an hour, it still remains until the next scheduled scan."

"Orca Security could improve its ticket creation process. Currently, it allows for creating tickets in only one bucket, which requires monitoring to redirect tickets to the appropriate team."

"I would be happy if they offered more automatic remediation options. They're working on that, but the more the better. For example, if they want you to harden a server, they would offer a hardening script that would be more aware of what's going on."

"We are PCI DSS compliant, so we need to scan our environment externally with tools vetted by the PCI DSS organization. Orca doesn't scan the environment externally. It only scans what's currently in the cloud."

"They can expand a little bit in anti-malware detection. While we have pretty good confidence that it's going to detect some of the static malware, some of the detections are heuristics. There could be a growth in the library from where they're pulling their information, but we don't get a lot of those alerts based on the design of our products. In general, that might be an area that needs to be filled since they offer it as a service within it."

"I think Orca could give me more alerts. It could give me a dashboard with all the specific types of alerts I want to see for the day. It should just be one click."

"I would like to see better customization options for security frameworks and better integration with reporting tools like Power BI or Grafana dashboards."

"The documentation for Orca Security could be improved."

More Orca Security cons

"The UI needs improvement as it can become overwhelming after prolonged use."

"From the user experience perspective, we need a simpler interface and reduced complexity in certain features, particularly with the Qualys Query Language."

"Qualys could improve by enhancing its dynamic tagging and role-based access control features, and by refining its user interface for a more intuitive and efficient user experience."

"There can be further simplification to reduce the overall noise and provide ESAM-related data."

"Further research and development are needed to enhance integration with other cloud agents and products, particularly improving communication with external products and vendors."

"All required features are available in Qualys CSAM. However, it would be helpful if Qualys CSAM started incorporating AI models. An inclusion of threat details for AI and LLM-related risks would be beneficial."

"In our reporting, we faced a challenge syncing with cloud devices."

"The main aspect that needs improvement is the user interface, which should be more intuitive."

More Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The price is a bit expensive for smaller organizations."

"We have a total of 25 licenses for this solution. The solution is on a pay-and-you-use model."

"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."

"Orca Security charges are based on cloud workloads. So, it's based on workloads. If we look at one feature, it might be expensive."

"Orca is very competitive when compared to the alternatives and is not the most expensive in the market, that's for sure."

"The most expensive solution is Palo Alto. They claim to be very robust. The next most expensive is Wiz, followed by Orca and all the rest."

"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."

"While it's competitive with Palo Alto Prisma, I think Orca's list price is very high. I would advise Orca to lower it because, at that price, I might consider alternatives like Wiz, which also offers agentless services."

More Orca Security pricing and cost advice

"The pricing for Qualys CSAM is nominal."

"The pricing is fair. I would love to see the price come down a little bit, but we do get a lot of value out of it. We are squeezing every ounce of value we can out of the tool."

"The cost for Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management is high."

"Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management can be expensive, especially if we already have VMDR."

"Qualys is competitively priced for its features. Its pricing is suitable for large organizations with more than 4,000 assets, but for smaller organizations with few assets, such as banks, the costs might be high. They should come up with packages that are suitable for small organizations."

"Qualys offers excellent value for money."

"The pricing is reasonable relative to the features provided, as it collects all module data and operates as a main, centralized inventory, making it a cost-effective solution."

"The pricing for Qualys Cybersecurity Asset Management is reasonable, with an annual subscription costing around $1,000 per year or a monthly subscription starting at approximately $72 per month, depending on the specific package and features included."

More Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

University

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Government

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zafran Security?

Since we stood Zafran Security up in our private cloud, we handle the maintenance on our side. As we opted not to use...

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What needs improvement with Zafran Security?

In terms of areas for improvement, Zafran Security is doing a really great job as a new and emerging company. Oftenti...

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What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?

My use cases for Zafran Security revolve around two primary areas. One is around vulnerability management and priorit...

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What do you like most about Orca Security?

It's for protection. It's an agentless tool. We don't need to install anything at a customer's premises. We can just ...

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What needs improvement with Orca Security?

I really love the way Orca Security worked. A potential improvement could be additional security features for the two...

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What is your primary use case for Orca Security?

We used Orca Security ( /products/orca-security-reviews ) for about two to three months until I left the company. The...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management?

The pricing is reasonable relative to the features provided, as it collects all module data and operates as a main, c...

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What needs improvement with Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management?

Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management helps us prioritize assets according to operating system, kernel version, insta...

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What is your primary use case for Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management?

We are using Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management for daily activities such as identifying new assets through networ...

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Comparisons

Wiz Code vs Zafran Security

Compared 37% of the time

Vulcan Cyber vs Zafran Security

Compared 15% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Zafran Security

Compared 9% of the time

ServiceNow Security Operations vs Zafran Security

Compared 8% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs Zafran Security

Compared 7% of the time

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Wiz vs Orca Security

Compared 29% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Orca Security

Compared 8% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Orca Security

Compared 6% of the time

Upwind vs Orca Security

Compared 4% of the time

AWS Security Hub vs Orca Security

Compared 3% of the time

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CrowdStrike Falcon vs Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon Inspector vs Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management

Compared 10% of the time

Armis vs Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management

Compared 8% of the time

Axonius vs Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management

Compared 8% of the time

Bitsight vs Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management

Compared 7% of the time

More Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Zafran Security

July 2025

Download Zafran Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Orca Security

August 2025

Download Orca Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management

August 2025

Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management report

Download Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management product report

Overview

Zafran Security integrates with existing security tools to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities effectively, proving that most critical vulnerabilities are not exploitable, optimizing threat management.

Zafran Security introduces an innovative operating model for managing security threats and vulnerabilities. By leveraging the threat exposure management platform, it pinpoints and prioritizes exploitable vulnerabilities, reducing risk through immediate remediation. This platform enhances your hybrid cloud security by normalizing vulnerability signals and integrating specific IT context data, such as CVE runtime presence and internet asset reachability, into its analysis. No longer reliant on patch windows, Zafran Security allows you to manage risks actively.

What are the key features of Zafran Security?

Threat Exposure Management: Utilizes existing tools to prioritize vulnerabilities and manage threats.
Integrative Analysis: Combines security data with IT context for precise vulnerability management.
Real-time Risk Reduction: Enables immediate risk management without waiting for patches.
Hybrid Cloud Compatibility: Functions across diverse cloud environments for comprehensive security.

What benefits can users expect from Zafran Security?

Improved Security: Enhances protection by efficiently identifying and mitigating risks.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces unnecessary patching expenses by confirming non-exploitable vulnerabilities.
Time Savings: Frees developers to focus on root causes by handling immediate threats.
Comprehensive Insight: Offers a holistic view of security threats and vulnerabilities.

In industries where security is paramount, such as finance and healthcare, Zafran Security provides invaluable protection by ensuring that only exploitable vulnerabilities are addressed. It allows entities to maintain robust security measures while allocating resources efficiently, fitting seamlessly into existing security strategies.

Zafran Security

Orca Security is the pioneer of agentless cloud security that is trusted by hundreds of enterprises globally. Orca makes cloud security possible for enterprises moving to and scaling in the cloud with its patented SideScanning™ technology and Unified Data Model. The Orca Cloud Security Platform delivers the world's most comprehensive coverage and visibility of risks across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and Kubernetes.

At Orca Security, we’re on a mission to make it fast, easy, and cost effective for organizations to address critical cloud security issues so they can operate in the cloud with confidence.

Key Platform Features:

Agentless: Complete, centralized coverage of the entire cloud estate, without the need for installing and configuring agents or layering together multiple siloed tools. Full visibility of cloud misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, workload protection, malware scanning, image scanning, file integrity monitoring and more.
Asset Inventory: Get a complete inventory of all your public cloud assets, including detailed information on installed OSes, software, and applications, as well as data and network assets such as storage buckets, Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs), and Security Groups.

Attack Path Analysis: Visualize attack vectors to critical assets or crown jewels. See which assets are susceptible to lateral movement, assume roles, privilege escalation, and more.

Risk Prioritization: Prioritize the 1% of risks that matter the most, based on impact scores. Secure the vulnerabilities and misconfigured targets (critical assets) and eliminate the potential risks residing on the attack paths to those targets.
Cloud Threat Detection: Monitor for malicious activity within your entire cloud estate. Be aware of detected threats, user behavior anomalies and more.

Breach Forensics: Log every change and all activity into a central repository for investigation procedures to confirm or deny entry and compromises within the cloud estate.
Cloud To Dev (Shift Left): Orca’s built-in shift left capabilities enables DevOps to focus more security attention earlier in the CI/CD pipelines. Security teams are able to trace a production risk (misconfiguration or vulnerability) directly to the original source code repository from which it came, even down to the exact line of code that is at the root of the identified risk.
Compliance: Choose from over 60 preconfigured compliance frameworks, cloud security best practices, CIS Benchmarks, or design and build your own compliance framework for fast and continuous reporting.
Security Score: The Orca Security Score is found on Orca’s Risk Dashboard and is updated daily. The overall score is calculated based on performance in the following five categories - Suspicious Activity, IAM, Data at Risk, Vulnerable Assets, and Responsiveness. Since the scores are percentage based and not raw numbers, you can objectively make comparisons to other organizations within your industry or business units of different sizes. In addition to reporting to senior management, the Orca Security Score can help with internal self-monitoring, as a way of measuring risk mitigation efforts, to know where to focus efforts, and track progress.

Orca Security Benefits

Consolidate technologies to reduce costs and complexity:

“The more I can get out of this one solution, the better. I see Orca as the tool where we get all cloud-related security data.” - Joshua Scott, Head of Security and IT | Postman

Avoid costly breaches:

"I look at proactive asset discovery, configuration management, and vulnerability management as being able to find a vulnerability before the bad guys do and being able to deal with it before something exploits it. This is what Orca does for us." - Doug Graham, CSO & CPO | Lionbridge

Increase team productivity and efficiency by focusing on high-value activities and solving the 1% of risks that matter most:

"Orca is unique in that it locates vulnerabilities with precision and delivers tangible, actionable results – without having to sift through all the noise." - Aaron Brown, Senior Cloud Security Engineer | Sisense

Quick Time-to-Value with Immediate ROI:

"Orca told us we could have some visibility within 5 or 10 minutes, and I thought, ‘There’s no way.’ Well, I was wrong. They really did it." - Thomas Hill, CISO | Live Oak Bank

Reduce MTTR and remove operational friction:

“We can’t ask developers things like ‘Did you think about security? When you start a new VM on AWS, can you please let me know so I’m able to scan it? Can you please deploy an agent on that machine for me?’ We need a better way to work. Orca provides that better way by eliminating organizational friction.” - Erwin Geirnaert, Cloud Security Architect | NG Data

Orca Security

Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management provides advanced real-time asset visibility, dynamic tagging, and External Attack Surface Management. It streamlines asset discovery and management using cloud agents and IP-based scanning, enhancing risk management and software lifecycle tracking.

Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management offers a comprehensive solution for managing asset inventories and tracking software lifecycle states. It facilitates network visibility and supports zero-day vulnerability solutions, enhancing security posture through efficient monitoring. Users benefit from its cloud-based interface, which provides in-depth asset configurations and insights. Key features include automated vulnerability scanning and unauthorized software management, reducing manual efforts. The platform also emphasizes the importance of timely remediation and ongoing risk mitigation across multiple environments. Despite its strengths, users note the need for enhanced integration with additional CMDBs beyond ServiceNow, as well as cost efficiency improvements. Requests also include better report customization, more scan control, and a simplified UI.

What are the key features of Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management?

Real-time Visibility: Offers continuous insight into asset status and condition.
Dynamic Tagging: Allows for flexible organization and assessment of assets.
External Attack Surface Management: Identifies potential threats from external sources.
Automated Vulnerability Scanning: Reduces manual scanning efforts and identifies vulnerabilities instantly.
Unauthorized Software Management: Detects and manages software not approved for use.
Asset Purge Rule: Automates the removal of obsolete assets from the inventory.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Enhanced Security Posture: Gains stronger defense through effective asset monitoring.
Efficient Risk Management: Identifies threats quickly, enabling timely resolutions.
Improved Compliance: Assists in meeting industry standards and regulations.
Reduced Manual Effort: Automates repetitive tasks, saving time and resources.
Comprehensive Insight: Provides detailed data for informed decision making.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and manufacturing, Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management enhances asset control by offering visibility into hardware and software configurations. It aids in maintaining security compliance and identifying unauthorized software, crucial for sectors with strict regulatory requirements.

Qualys

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

BeyondTrust, Postman, Digital Turbine, Solarisbank, Lemonade, C6 Bank, Docebo, Vercel, and Vivino

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Orca Security vs. Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management

July 2025

Free Report: Orca Security vs. Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management

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