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Sysdig Secure vs Tenable Security Center 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Qualys TotalCloud
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (11th), Container Security (11th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (8th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (7th)
Sysdig Secure
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
27th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (20th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (18th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (9th), AI Observability (28th)
Tenable Security Center
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
22nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (15th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 2.0%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sysdig Secure is 1.8%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Security Center is 1.5%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Qualys TotalCloud2.0%
Tenable Security Center1.5%
Sysdig Secure1.8%
Other94.7%
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2859021 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Risk-based triage has transformed container security and now prioritizes high-impact threats
The best features Qualys TotalCloud offers currently include managing cloud infrastructure and container security while facing major challenges such as alert fatigue. Traditional vulnerability scanners flag hundreds of CVEs on short-lived Kubernetes containers, some of which have no internet exposure or are gone before we can even triage them. I leverage Qualys TotalCloud to move beyond static CVSS. I use it to implement runtime exposure, correlation risk reprioritization, and shift-left integration. This notifies developers to fix a base image upstream rather than patching live ephemeral instances. In my work with cloud and container security, the biggest operational hurdle was alert fatigue. I use Qualys to shift left from static CVSS severity to context-aware risk prioritization. I correlated raw vulnerability data with real-time risk factors such as public network exposure, active runtime execution, or overly permissive IAM roles. This allows us to immediately drop the priority of isolated containers and escalate lower-severity CVEs that sit on an exposed, high-risk path. We can map these findings directly back to our CI/CD pipelines so developers can patch the root base images upstream. We have drastically cut down the signal-to-noise ratio, saved a lot of manual hours doing triage work, and ensured engineering effort goes directly towards high-impact risk reduction.
MM
DevSecOps Engineer at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Runtime threat detection has improved and security teams prioritize real Kubernetes risks
The best feature Sysdig Secure offers is threat detection. The threat detection feature on Sysdig Secure stands out compared to other solutions I have seen or used because Sysdig sees the actual behavior inside the container or kernel and correlates it with Kubernetes infrastructure, which makes detection both earlier and more precise in a cloud-native environment. Sysdig Secure has positively impacted our organization by improving visibility into our Kubernetes environment and focusing on real risk, which has reduced alert noise, improved threat detection at runtime, and made vulnerability management more efficient by prioritizing issues that actually affect running workloads.
reviewer1534134 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"TotalCloud's best feature is the integration of cloud accounts. It helps with the risk and security posture management of our cloud infrastructure."
"TotalCloud offers a comprehensive suite of features, including EDR, XDR, and TrueRisk, providing a centralized platform for managing vulnerabilities and security risks."
"Qualys TotalCloud's most valuable feature is its ability to link clusters of assets, providing a clear model of deployments, vulnerabilities, and statuses."
"In my opinion, this is the best tool."
"Qualys TotalCloud provides unified vulnerability and threat assessment for IaaS and SaaS and a single prioritized view of risk, which helps reduce my workload by not having to combine multiple sources."
"Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted our bank's performance, and we have definitely seen benefits after implementing this solution."
"Qualys TotalCloud fulfills all these needs."
"Qualys TotalCloud has helped us view our risk structure, vulnerabilities, and security posture."
"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 most valuable feature is the level of support that we get. Our solutions or customer success representative is very valuable. I see them as an extension of our security team."
"Sysdig Secure has many strong foundational features like compliance and benchmark, security, network access management, and vulnerability management."
"In terms of measurable outcomes, I have seen a reduction in vulnerabilities, as Sysdig Secure can tell us how many vulnerabilities are present on a day-to-day report basis, which has improved our efficiency by more than 50% and helps us stay compliant with necessary regulations."
"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."
"I see Sysdig as the most comprehensive solution in comparison to its competitors."
"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."
"I have not seen any stability issues so far."
"The predictive prioritization features are pretty good. They do a lot of research and we trust the research that they do internally. They have knowledge of what's going on with many companies, where we only get a view into what's going on here. So the ability to get best practices out of them as part of this solution, is valuable to us."
"Tenable is the leading product for vulnerability scanning."
"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."
"The product is our second solution, and we are happy that it meets our requirements."
"Having Tenable is a requirement; it is money well-spent in that it focuses us to work on problems that are prioritized and it allows us to cut down on the manual integration of multiple reports from Microsoft and Linux, etc., so that running with a much smaller team of two people probably saves 80 percent of manpower."
"Very customizable with a lot of templates."
"Overall, I rate the solution 9.8 out of 10."
"Tenable also helps us to focus resources on the vulnerabilities that are most likely to be exploited. And since it is continuously updated, it allows us to reevaluate quickly if there are new vulnerabilities found..."
 

Cons

"TotalCloud could improve the classification of vulnerabilities. Specifically, it could enhance the categorization of what aspects fall under patches resolved by OS or software updates and what pertains to configuration adjustments."
"The areas in the solution that have room for improvement include the UI/UX design, which should be improved, and they should integrate more artificial intelligence into the product."
"TotalCloud could improve its scanning of niche devices like Wi-Fi dongles and USB modems because they are often untested. It covers everything else, like laptops, mobile devices, and Bluetooth IoT devices. They can improve on the small IoT devices because hackers and testers use these."
"From a downside perspective, the UI is not user-friendly and feels dated compared to other tools like Prisma Cloud."
"It has been working very well, but it would be helpful if the dashboard could generate reports tailored to specific compliance needs. For example, in India, we have to comply with RBI and SEBI guidelines. It w"
"In TotalCloud, I would suggest improvements in policy checks to cater to various inventory types like VPCs, subnets, S3 buckets, or IAMs. There is a lack of data segregation according to criticality or inventory."
"Enhancing clarity regarding its compliance capabilities would be beneficial, as the current scope is limited in geographic coverage."
"Overall, we are satisfied with it. However, the response part of the Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) module can be improved. It is not yet in place according to requirements; it is not completely available even though the module has been released."
"They should make it specific with a couple of features only."
"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."
"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."
"The solution needs to improve overall from a CSPM standpoint since they can't compete with Wiz or Orca."
"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."
"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 works well for us, but there are a few areas for improvement, such as the alerting and notification system being more flexible for complex workflows, and some dashboard and reporting features could be more customizable to match specific team needs."
"There is not much room for improvement. However, there should be a guide that describes the step-by-step procedures for doing tasks. Otherwise, training is required from a senior guy to a junior guy."
"Support could be faster."
"I think the vendor training provided for Tenable.sc could be a lower price. It's quite expensive for the training."
"The solution needs to improve its support. I would like to see a bird's eye view of my network architecture. I would also like to see the continuous view feature in the tool."
"It could be more user-friendly for creating custom reports."
"I'm having some issues with that and it's holding things up."
"They are not currently handling call flows properly. Some call flows are being deleted from the registry but still show as active."
"The product should provide risk-based vulnerability management."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am not sure about the pricing. From what I understand, it is a bit on the higher side, but I do not have the exact numbers."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches."
"The pricing for TotalCloud is attractive and competitive in the market. Given the features, especially the dashboard, I have no concerns regarding pricing."
"The pricing is comparable. It is built into our other product, so I cannot piecemeal it. It is a part of our subscription."
"As a middle management member, I do not have direct pricing knowledge, but based on the knowledge from our meetings, its pricing is competitive."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers competitive pricing given its comprehensive suite of features, including integration, assessment, remediation, and detection capabilities, all within a single platform."
"Its price seems higher compared to other tools, but it is worth it. If they could adjust the pricing and make it comparable with other tools, that would be great."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers good pricing that is affordable and competitive with the market. Our partnership also provides us with additional benefits."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I would rate the pricing a nine out of ten, where ten is expensive. It is the most expensive tool my company is using."
"My company needs to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs. The pricing of the solution falls in the mid-range level, so it is not too expensive"
"The pricing depends upon the number of IPs."
"The pricing is more than Nexpose."
"I use a local license to perform penetration testing and I'm pretty happy with everything when it comes to pricing and licensing."
"Though reasonable, the main competitor of Tenable SC, Rapid7, offers a more aggressive and better priced product."
"We pay around 60,000 on a yearly basis."
"Costing is pretty reasonable compared to the competition."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
16%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise34
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise27
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
In terms of improvement, remediation still belongs to the cloud team, which is one of the issues we faced with Qualys...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
My main use case for Qualys TotalCloud is regarding the cloud visibility that we were not having previously. Previous...
What needs improvement with Sysdig Secure?
Sysdig Secure works well for us, but there are a few areas for improvement, such as the alerting and notification sys...
What is your primary use case for Sysdig Secure?
Our primary use case for Sysdig Secure is runtime threat detection and vulnerability management.
What advice do you have for others considering Sysdig Secure?
My advice for others looking into using Sysdig Secure is to clearly define your primary use case before getting start...
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 ...
What is your primary use case for Tenable SC?
The typical use case for Tenable Security Center is that it is an on-premise solution, and it can use the agent and a...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
No data available
Tenable.sc, Tenable Unified Security, Tenable SecurityCenter
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
SAP Concur, Goldman Sachs, Worldpay, Experian, BigCommerce, Arkose Labs, Calendly, Noteable, Bloomreach. More here: https://sysdig.com/customers/
IBM, Sempra Energy, Microsoft, Apple, Adidas, Union Pacific
Find out what your peers are saying about Sysdig Secure vs. Tenable Security Center and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.