Qualys VMDR vs Sysdig Secure comparison

Qualys and Sysdig are both solutions in the Container Security category. Qualys is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.6, while Sysdig is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.4. Qualys holds a 2.3% mindshare in Container Security, compared to Sysdig’s 2.7% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Qualys users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Sysdig users who would recommend it.

Qualys VMDR

Read 95 Qualys VMDR reviews

13,079 Views
2,354 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Sysdig Secure

Read 10 Sysdig Secure reviews

2,884 Views
2,596 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Qualys VMDR

Sysdig Secure

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Qualys VMDR and Sysdig Secure compete in the vulnerability management and cloud-native security category. Sysdig Secure appears to have the upper hand in cloud-native environments due to its strong DevSecOps capabilities and integration with cloud platforms.

Features: Qualys VMDR is known for its vulnerability detection, continuous monitoring, and policy compliance. It provides detailed reporting and automates patching, enhancing traditional infrastructure security. Sysdig Secure focuses on image scanning, Kubernetes security, and cloud-native application protection. Its integration capabilities make it effective in handling dynamic environments.

Room for Improvement: Qualys VMDR faces criticism for its costly private cloud options and cloud-only data storage. Enhancing user account management and integration with third-party apps would be beneficial. Sysdig Secure is suggested to improve dashboarding and reporting to enable quick executive summaries and enhance patch management for third-party tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Qualys VMDR is versatile across cloud environments but encounters challenges in on-premises deployment. Customer service experiences vary by region. Sysdig Secure is praised for its fit in Kubernetes environments and proactive customer support.

Pricing and ROI: Qualys VMDR is seen as expensive for smaller enterprises, though it offers substantial ROI via vulnerability reduction. Price negotiations are common. Sysdig Secure is considered reasonably priced, balancing cost with its focus on Kubernetes, despite being pricier than open-source options.

To learn more, read our detailed Qualys VMDR vs. Sysdig Secure Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Qualys VMDR vs. Sysdig Secure

September 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

Qualys VMDR

Ranking in Container Security

9th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Asset Management (4th), Vulnerability Management (2nd), Configuration Management Databases (2nd), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (1st)

Sysdig Secure

Ranking in Container Security

13th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (18th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (11th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Container Security category, the mindshare of Qualys VMDR is 2.3%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sysdig Secure is 2.7%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Container Security Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Qualys VMDR	2.3%
Sysdig Secure	2.7%
Other	95.0%

Container Security

Featured Reviews

Ankesh Raj

Information Security Analyst at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Real-time responses and reporting streamline vulnerability management

Qualys VMDR provides a real-time response and reporting feature, which is excellent. It allows us to see real-time graphs and reports for every asset, server, and more, which is very user-friendly. Our clients have given good feedback, and they are satisfied with the tool. We use it daily to fix vulnerabilities by connecting with infrastructure to remediate. The feedback from the client side is very good.

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Peter Du

CISO at a recruiting/HR firm with 51-200 employees

Gives real-time visibility and helps to articulate constantly-changing landscape

The main benefit for me personally is being able to articulate the ever-growing, dynamic, and constantly changing landscape. Just today, in a management leadership call, I was able to demonstrate that although we are solving a lot of these vulnerabilities, we are picking up new vulnerabilities each and every day. It allows me to articulate the importance of information security with actual real-time data. Sysdig's runtime insights help us detect and respond to threats that are happening in real-time. We can look at Sysdig dashboards or run reports to see precisely what happens in our runtime environment. A good use case of this was that when zero-day vulnerabilities came out, we could scan our environment to see if the vulnerabilities apply to any of our production workloads. Sysdig Secure helps us prioritize issues and distribute work. We are a small company, so we do not have multiple security or dev teams. We have two or three guys on my team. Having the ability to focus on critical vulnerabilities is crucial. It does not make sense to prioritize low-level threats when we have limited time. We do not use live threat investigation features as much as we would like because of different priorities, but it is something that we do use. Over time, it shows us whether we are putting the right effort into resolving issues. For example, when we look at the dashboard scene over a 30-day period, we can see whether the critical vulnerabilities are increasing or decreasing. It lets us know whether we are on the right track. We are currently using agentless scanning. Deploying it onto our cluster has enabled us to get full visibility into what is running on our cluster. Sysdig provides us with the contextual awareness we need to create an immediate incident response strategy. It provides links to the threat and explains the threat and the resolution possible. It equips us with the right information to make a decision on whether to address the threat immediately or take a risk in terms of deploying remediation. Sysdig has not enabled us to reduce the number of security tools we use. We were not using anything before Sysdig, and after choosing Sysdig, we did not have a need to look at anything else. Sysdig has not helped reduce external SOC costs. We are a very small business, so we do not have the budget for an external SOC. However, it has definitely alleviated the pressure to look for one and to source an external SOC. We have a project history to look at a virtual SOC and leverage tools that we do have, and Sysdig is a part of that. There is definitely a saving there because we have not had the need to go out and look for an external SOC. Sysdig has helped reduce the percentage of workloads that have security exposures that put the organization at risk. It has reduced the workload, mainly from an understanding of where we can assign work to cover the most ground in terms of resolving vulnerabilities.

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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

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the external channel."

"It's really beneficial for scanning and interacting with the agent."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"It allowed us to divide tasks easily among teammates, significantly improving efficiency."

"This is one of the best products I have worked with so far. I like the power of Qualys, and it's a better solution because you can scan a compact file, a BIT file, or batch files. The product already knows what's happening inside, and you don't need to expand the package. Tenable will do the same thing, but you need to have a package issuance claim. With Qualys, we can immediately understand the file, even a compact file. If there's some kind of discovery or incident, you will know what happened in the environment."

"It is quite easy to implement."

"Provides great functionality."

"Qualys VMDR is easy to understand and provides detailed reports."

More Qualys VMDR pros

"The tool has the capability to conduct scans initially. It can perform scans on your virtual machines, physical machines, containers, and container images. A standout feature is its ability to scan offline container images stored in your container registry. Additionally, it can scan runtime images in your cluster or on your host machine. This allows for the detection of vulnerabilities in running containers, including loaded libraries. Notably, the tool can identify which library vulnerabilities are already present in your system. An added advantage is its capacity to take action beyond threat detection. It has the ability to block access and respond to encountered threats."

"The log monitor is the most valuable feature."

"I have not seen any stability issues so far."

"Sysdig Secure has many strong foundational features like compliance and benchmark, security, network access management, and vulnerability management."

"We appreciate this feature, especially when combined with CD monitoring. The implementation of requested features has been remarkable, such as scanning for compliance in CRM processes for the US government. We heavily rely on this feature to assess compliance with federal requirements."

"I see Sysdig as the most comprehensive solution in comparison to its competitors."

"The proactiveness of the support has been fantastic. Every time we mention something in a meeting that we're trying to do, he proactively takes that as an investigation topic and looks into it. He'll provide the solution even though we might not have asked him to investigate it."

"From a container-based standpoint, it offers excellent scalability to its users...I would tell those planning to use the solution that, from a container standpoint, it's excellent."

More Sysdig Secure pros

Cons

"Some of the older features could be polished instead of focusing on releasing new features."

"There seems to be a lack of easy onboarding into Qualys."

"Qualys VM's machine learning and artificial intelligence features could be improved."

"I would like to see this solution more developed and competitive in the Cloud space."

"Qualys doesn't have its own tool to deploy the agents all at once, so we need to use third-party tools such as BigFix or something else to deploy the agents, which is my main concern and should be fixed by the Qualys team."

"Qualys VM's vulnerability scan could be improved, especially the number of CVE numbers it can manage at a time."

"Integration could be better. When you think about scanning, it's not used just with this product alone but with other Qualys products. If you think about the bundle, the product itself is good. But integration with other products and packages has space for improvement. They should also offer a better price for bundles."

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

More Qualys VMDR cons

"Perhaps, it could support more custom implementations, as our company utilizes custom implementations rather than standard ones. Configuring it requires a deep understanding and adjustment to our specific needs, which took some time. Other than that, I'm unsure about potential improvements. We were considering the possibility of compartmentalizing their tools. Currently, in Sysdig Secure, they bundle multiple features, and we are unable to use them individually. For instance, if we only need compliance scanning, we have to deploy the entire secure package. This is because of the way their agent functions, but I can't delve into more details."

"Reporting can definitely be better. Live dashboards should be configurable for a longer period of time rather than 30 days. Being able to go back in time to compare six months ago to today would be valuable."

"The solution needs to improve overall from a CSPM standpoint since they can't compete with Wiz or Orca."

"Banks and financial institutions cannot use Sysdig Secure because it doesn't sell SaaS-hosted versions for under two hundred working nodes."

"The dashboard could be more simple and show the more important issues that are detected first. We'd like to be able to set it up so more important issues show up more prominently in the dashboard."

"There was a security concern related to a specific feature. While the feature itself was promising, it posed a challenge. The situation revolved around code scanning. If your source code is hosted within your own premises, say on Bitbucket, you naturally wouldn't want your code to be accessible to external parties beyond your company. Keeping your code base private is a standard practice. However, in the case of code scanning using Sysdig Secure, they copy your code to their SaaS platform. This posed an issue for us. When we inquired about this, their response acknowledged the concern. In an upcoming release, they plan to enable code scanning within your on-premises environment through the assistance of an agent. This change is already in progress. While this tool stands out compared to existing solutions in the market, it's important to note that there are still some limitations to consider. Another drawback we encountered relates to our expertise with Kubernetes. The tool can monitor Kubernetes audit logs, triggering alerts and notifications. However, it falls short in terms of taking direct action based on these alerts. There are different methods of event capture, including through system labels and system calls, as well as via Kubernetes audit events. Notably, at the system level, Sysdig Secure can both detect and respond to events, allowing actions like blocking and warning. This proactive approach is effective at the system call level. However, when it comes to monitoring Kubernetes audit events, Sysdig Secure can only notify without being able to execute any further actions. It can't block access or containers. The vendor likened their role to that of a monitoring camera, observing events and sending notifications without the capacity to intervene. This limitation applies to Kubernetes audit events. Given that everything operates within our system, there is a workaround available: configuring system-level policies to block containers as necessary."

"Sysdig's biggest weakness is dashboarding and reporting. You have access to the data and can get everything you need, but we need the ability to summarize the information quickly in a format that senior leaders can understand. We report to the executive level and global board. I need to roll all that in-depth information into a quick summary, and their maturity level isn't there. I'm seeing that on the future road map, but it isn't there now."

"Sysdig Secure needs to scale more for complete cloud-native coverage."

More Sysdig Secure cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is very competitive."

"The product is more expensive than that of any other vendor."

"Qualys Virtual Scanner Appliance isn't expensive right now. But the price for their product bundles could be better."

"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."

"They have recently changed the pricing model, which is now better than it was before."

"The solution is reasonably priced for the value it provides."

"I used to work there, so I never paid for the product. As an employee, we get a lifetime license for personal use, and that's what I'm using. It is a comprehensive platform, so there is a lot more to it. There could be other solutions that are probably a little bit cheaper, but it depends on what people need. Different people have different needs. It offers many things on the same platform. If you add all the things up, it should be cheaper, but I have not done any analysis specifically."

"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."

More Qualys VMDR pricing and cost advice

"In comparison to other cloud solutions, it's reasonably priced. However, when compared to in-house built open-source projects, it might be considered somewhat costly. The cost depends on whether someone sees the support provided by Sysdig as an advantage or if it's deemed unnecessary. Personally, I find the support to be excellent and consider it a good value."

"I am always going to say that it could be a little bit cheaper. I do feel that it is a little bit on the expensive side."

"Sysdig is competitive. The quality matches the pricing. Obviously, everyone wants things to be cheaper, but if you're realistic, you acknowledge that quality service comes with a price. Sysdig is the gold standard for Kubernetes, and I wouldn't choose anything else. We live in Kubernetes. Everything is containerized, so that means a lot to us, and we're willing to make an investment."

"It is quite costly compared to other tools."

"The solution's pricing depends on the agents...In short, the price depends on the environment of its user."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	69

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	3

Questions from the Community

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?

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. Qualys doesn't have its own tool to deploy the agents all...

See all answers

What do you like most about Sysdig Secure?

The proactiveness of the support has been fantastic. Every time we mention something in a meeting that we're trying to do, he proactively takes that as an investigation topic and looks into it. He'...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Sysdig Secure?

Sysdig Secure could improve in terms of scalability and expanding services to other areas like database monitoring and support. There is also room for improvement in enhancing their platform speed....

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Sysdig Secure?

Sysdig Secure ( /products/sysdig-secure-reviews ) is used for cloud-native infrastructure, application monitoring, and detection response.

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Qualys VMDR

September 2025

Download Qualys VMDR product report

Buyer's Guide

Sysdig Secure

September 2025

Download Sysdig Secure product report

Also Known As

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

No data available

Overview

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

In the cloud, every second counts. Attacks move at warp speed, and security teams must protect the business without slowing it down. Sysdig stops cloud attacks in real time, instantly detecting changes in risk with runtime insights, a unique AI architecture, and open source Falco. Sysdig delivers live visibility by correlating signals across cloud workloads, identities, and services to uncover hidden attack paths. By knowing what is running, teams can prioritize the vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, permissions, and threats that matter most. From prevention to defense, Sysdig helps enterprises move faster and focus on what matters: innovation.

Sysdig. Secure Every Second.

Sysdig

Sample Customers

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

SAP Concur, Goldman Sachs, Worldpay, Experian, BigCommerce, Arkose Labs, Calendly, Noteable, Bloomreach. More here: https://sysdig.com/customers/

Buyer's Guide

Qualys VMDR vs. Sysdig Secure

September 2025

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