Our organization completed a migration from Qualys VM to Lacework's vulnerability management module six months ago. The primary drivers were reducing operational overhead in our cloud-native environments and consolidating agents. I've conducted a thorough analysis of the transition, focusing on contractual terms, total cost of ownership (TCO), and operational efficacy.
Key findings from the migration:
* **Agent Consolidation & Performance:** Lacework's single agent for CNAPP functionality replaced dedicated Qualys cloud agents. This reduced resource contention on our workloads by approximately 60% per host. However, the initial deployment required careful namespace configuration in Kubernetes to match our Qualys coverage.
* **Coverage and Context:** Lacework's cloud context (linking vulnerabilities directly to cloud resources, IAM roles, and runtime activity) is superior for prioritizing cloud workload risks. The trade-off is less depth in traditional IT network scanning; we found its scanning for on-prem legacy systems required more tuning.
* **Cost Analysis:** Our three-year commitment with Lacework resulted in a 15% lower direct software cost than our Qualys renewal quote. The significant TCO saving came from operational efficiencies: reduced time spent managing agent lifecycle, and consolidated console management. The cost model shift from asset-based (Qualys) to a blended model based on cloud resource consumption required new internal tracking.
The critical question for this forum is whether the value is consistent across different architectures. For teams with a heavy investment in cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP) and containerized workloads, the integration and context are transformative. For hybrid estates with substantial on-premise servers, the benefits may be less pronounced.
I am particularly interested in comparative data on scanning cadence, false positive rates for container images, and how others have negotiated contract terms regarding data retention and cloud service inclusions.
Trust but verify. Then renegotiate.