Likelihood to Recommend Retina Network Security Scanner is well suited for any environment and infrastructure that would like to expose security deficiencies across their network as well as visualize vulnerabilities as they pertain to assets in their environment. I cannot think of any scenario that would not be appropriate for this product. Since the product carries over to pretty much all assets in your environment, I don't know off the top of y head what it wouldn't be appropriate for.
Read full review Qualys Cloud Platform is well suited for organizations that need additional tools to secure and bolster their security from end to end. The automated, real-time threat protection is very quick to notify an admin of potential vulnerabilities and risks, as well as recommending quick fixes to resolve/close the gap before an incident occurs. QCP excels at portraying all of these in a single pane of glass, and find that the Qualys reports are more detailed than competitor product lines. One of our big issues with QCP is that you do have to pay for each scanner, which can quickly add up to large costs. For this reason, I would rate Qualys at a ~7 due to great features and functionality, but overall value could be better for a large organization. I would also say that QCP may make more sense for smaller organizations due to this pricing model.
Read full review Pros Besides the fact that Retina NSS performs the fundamental task of scanning all my network devices, one of the main strengths is the speed at which it scans. Time is money and I know people tent to wear that cliché out a bit, but when you are as small as we are of a team, every minute counts. We have utilized other network security scanners over the past 21 years and Retina NSS seems to have the smallest footprint with no evidence of scanning degrading performance of the devices scanned. They seem to update their database frequently enough that we notice a correlation of threats to discovery. There is a small learning curve, but overall, a seasoned IT professional can quickly get up and running in a few hours and get usable results quickly. This falls back on the speed at which Retina NSS scans. My previous network security scanners would sometimes take hours to complete a full vulnerability scan of between 250 - 400 devices, now it only takes a fraction of that time. Read full review It really does well at vulnerability scanning, which it is well known for. It's accuracy at finding vulnerabilities is top notch, more so than a lot of other vulnerability tools out there. In an organization/company you want this kind of accuracy at finding vulnerabilities in your network/endpoints It is very good at managing endpoints on a consistent basis, meaning you can add endpoints to Qualys and have the platform scan/track/protect for vulnerabilities on an ongoing basis, without user intervention It does really well at separating out and identifying what levels of criticality each vulnerability should fall into. This way, an organization/company can attack the more critical vulnerabilities first Read full review Cons I do not have any obvious cons to report at this time. Read full review This program is really complicated, the multiple functions that are presented to us are not very clear and in some cases, it is a matter of intuition to execute a function, it is not very informative. The interface of this program can be a real problem; for our taste, this program looks a bit messy, and the interface does not help or guide you to find the options you need. Read full review Usability Again, the usability of Qualys has been a pinpoint for this entire review. It was easily the worst thing about the product and because of this, I would not recommend Qualys to anybody in my field. This should be something that Qualys strives to improve if they wish to stay in business.
Read full review Support Rating They had a support page within the WAS to report any concerns or seek help. But the UI of that is not smooth. Regardless support staff were pretty responsive and helpful. They scheduled calls to understand and address our problems. Email support is good as well.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Retina Network Security Scanner is the only product we have used in our enterprise. I have used a product in the past called GFI LanGuard Network Security Scanner and while it did perform the functions of vulnerability testing, etc...it just wasn't nearly as refined as Retina NSS. It was slow and was not as lightweight as Retina as far as end-user detection.
Read full review As described before Qualys is used to scan periodically the environment in order to check if there are some packages (Linux) or Applications (Windows) outdated, generating reports to the Service Owners, fulfilling what's is expected from us, attending all our expectations regarding the tool. That's why we'd choose Qualys to our organization.
Read full review Return on Investment The product is extremely easy to deploy, extremely positive. If you take full advantage of this product as I did, you will maximize your ROI quickly as we did. We were able to visualize our vulnerabilities efficiently and effectively and maintain scheduled scans that allowed us to maintain a continuous improvement atmosphere while securing our investments. The ability provide reporting allows our IT department to prioritize issues and remediate as required without chasing down low risk issues over high risk issues that need immediate attention. Read full review Big time-saving tool vs. having to comb through several system reports which ultimately can still have you missing unapproved software. Quick snapshot via the dashboard provided a nice summary of where you're assets meet or do not meet your organization's policy requirements. Read full review ScreenShots