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Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks comparison

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (7th), Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), ZTNA as a Service (11th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th)
Microsoft Defender for Clou...
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (14th), Microsoft Security Suite (12th)
Prisma Access by Palo Alto ...
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (4th), Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (5th), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) category, the mindshare of iboss is 2.0%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is 10.0%, down from 13.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is 17.9%, down from 19.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
 

Featured Reviews

Matt Crockford - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless
One aspect we value about iboss is its simplicity. Their customer service is brilliant, and they are super responsive and knowledgeable. It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless. We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times. The user interface is highly intuitive. Our IT team picked it up with minimal training. It's arranged so that it's easy to find where things are. Another advantage is the single pane of glass console, which gives you visibility into what's happening. We're not fully there yet because we haven't implemented zero trust, but we're excited about the possibilities from the demos we've seen. We launched a POC of iboss' ChatGPT Risk Protection feature two weeks ago. AI is a great tool, but you need to be careful what you put into it. My biggest fear is employees inputting sensitive corporate information or customer PII data into one of these chatbots. I was impressed by our trial of the feature. It's exactly what we wanted. Now, when a user goes to ChatGPT, there's a banner warning them not to share information, and we can block conversations containing customer data like bank details and email addresses. I don't want to stop people from using it, but we need visibility. We've only tried it on a test group of 15 people. You can configure it to look for specific keywords or integrate it with your DLP policy if you have that configured
Jagadeesh Gunasekaran - PeerSpot reviewer
Saves us time, has good visibility, and a single dashboard
The solution is user-friendly and provides great visibility into threats. There are easy options available for specific workflow inspections. We can also get support by going through the Microsoft documentation, which is straightforward. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps us prioritize threats across our enterprise. It covers us from a compliance perspective and protects our organization's data. Data protection is a very important aspect of any new organization, as we need to protect our data from both external attacks and insider threats. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps us monitor for abnormal activity by insiders, which is one of the most important access points for attackers today. Additionally, the different cloud apps that Defender for Cloud Apps supports provide us with much more visibility into potential threats and activities on the internet. We have integrated Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps alerts with Sentinel. The integration is straightforward. We can find the configuration details on Microsoft's official documentation website. If we are familiar with how Microsoft products work, we will be able to follow the instructions clearly. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and Sentinel work natively together to deliver coordinated detection and response across our environment. Our integrated Microsoft solutions provide comprehensive threat protection, covering most of the tactics and techniques relevant to the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Sentinel allows us to ingest data from our entire ecosystem. When implementing an SIEM solution, there are always prerequisites such as Active Directory logs, security logs, firewall logs, and DNS logs. These are important logs that need to be ingested into the environment. Sentinel has many third-party connectors available that make integrations straightforward. Microsoft provides the configuration details in the Sentinel platform. It is important to integrate all relevant log sources into the SIEM solution so that we can detect and be alerted to any type of threat factor, whether it is from an internal or external source. Integrating third-party solutions into the platform requires a separate configuration, but Microsoft provides the necessary information. However, we need to have the appropriate permissions to execute these setups. Sentinel provides a centralized dashboard that covers threat management and configuration. It gives us complete insight into what entities are accessing, as well as full details for investigation. We can see how the alerts and threats are relevant to suspicious activities, whether they are related to malicious IP addresses, suspicious ASHAs, or any other indicators of compromise. All of this relevant data can be seen in a single pane. Recently, Microsoft introduced a new investigation experience in a single pane. This means that we can now get a lot of details in a single pane, without having to go there and execute a query. There are a lot of new insights being developed in the Sentinel platform these days. It has software intelligence. They recently introduced Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence, which covers almost all IOCs. This protects organizational assets from threats and suspicious traffic associated with IOCs. If a match is found, alerts are generated. This is a very interesting feature. Another great feature is automation and logic apps. We can create a number of operations, such as posting in a team's channel if a severe incident occurs or sending an email notification. There are many operations available, so we can automate a lot of tasks. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps us stay compliant. It has predefined mechanisms in place to prevent attacks. For example, if an external user tries to access our SharePoint folders or files, an attack will be blocked. This is why it is important to give appropriate access to guest users. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps has many features and benefits. It provides a number of policies that can be configured to meet the specific needs of our security team. These policies can be used to customize cloud applications so that only authorized users can access them and perform operations that benefit the organization. In terms of safety and security, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is top-notch. Using the solution's automation features, we can suppress false positive alerts. We can also close alerts, lower their severity from "high" to "low" or "informational," or close them immediately with the appropriate commands. This will depend on the configuration automation rule and the perspective from which we are testing. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps provides a single console. We are also provided with Microsoft templates to enable workbooks instantly. Alternatively, we can build our own customized workbooks to provide better insights and improve our SOC efficiency and overall performance. Consolidating all of our security data into one dashboard has saved our security operations team a significant amount of time. From an analyst's perspective, it is now much easier to correlate events, investigate alerts, and visualize specific entities. For example, an analyst can quickly see all of the alerts associated with a particular IP address, or they can view all of the activity for a specific entity over the past 24 hours or 7 days. This level of detail and insight would not be possible if our data were siloed in multiple dashboards. The single dashboard saves our operations approximately 20 hours per week by eliminating the need to access multiple consoles and tabs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps threat intelligence can help us prepare for potential threats before they happen. However, it depends on how we develop the policies for the database to block or ignore things in our environment.
Amar-Patil - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables seamless policy management and supports secure remote work
Our primary use case for Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is to control the internet and serve as an internet proxy. Additionally, we use it for secure remote work One of the most valuable features of Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is the ability to manage on-premise firewalls. We can…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We chose iboss for both zero trust and proxy (SWG) because their SWG was superior."
"It was a very easy product to install. It can be deployed very fast."
"Granular setup, which was able to set different levels of filters using the OUs in the AD."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"iboss is easy to use despite its complexity. Multiple engineers manage it, but it's significantly more straightforward to administer than traditional VPNs and web proxies."
"The solution has massively improved our security posture, giving us full visibility into what our staff does online."
"The console is cloud-based, which is something I really appreciate."
"First of all, the security policies are essential. I do not have to rely solely on Active Directory for our users."
"Defender for Cloud Apps has given us good visibility regarding what we've allowed in our environment until now. It helps us to know our inventory, understand what our customers are using, and steer them toward safer practices."
"The general usability of the solution is very straightforward."
"Defender for Cloud Apps has given us good visibility regarding what we've allowed into our environment until now."
"The most valuable feature is its policy implementation."
"All of the features are valuable because all of the features are related."
"I would rate it a ten because I have not experienced any stability issues so far with Defender for Cloud Apps."
"The ability to sanction unsanctioned apps using Secure Score benchmarking, included in Cloud, is also beneficial."
"I like the web GUI/the management interface. I also like the security of Microsoft. As compared to other manufacturers, it's less complex and easy to understand and work with."
"The protection for web-based applications was helpful for my colleagues who didn't want a particular application on their devices. And the non-web access protection was more for our developers because they were writing and building code on their computers. Prisma Access was able to protect them."
"The most valuable features of the solution are in the areas of the secure remote access it provides while also being user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to change the gateway. For example, if there's a problem with a specific region or vendor, we can make modifications. The solution is scalable, and there are different gateways that can be created depending on the demand."
"It is easy to use, easy to integrate, and is stable. It's scalable as well."
"The product's initial setup phase is simple."
"Being able to use the user ID or Active Directory Group is one of the great features for control and providing more flexibility without worrying about IP addresses."
"The most valuable features are ZTNA 2.0, CASB, Threat Prevention, and Autonomous Digital Experience Management (ADAM)."
"A feature I've found very helpful is run time security because most of the products on the market will look at security during the build time, and they don't really look at what happens once you're going into production."
 

Cons

"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"If they could implement an extra security layer preventing access to iboss from the open internet, it would be great."
"The dashboards for local use could be better."
"The area I would like to see improvement in is the ability with in the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing. It is kind of there, but it's not perfect. Quite frequently, I receive links that lead me to pages with error messages."
"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."
"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."
"We are having trouble with our continuous reporting configuration and struggling with configuring the collector properly with our log parsing."
"We are having trouble with our continuous reporting configuration and struggling with configuring the collector properly with our log parsing. We've also faced difficulties getting support for this issue. It's taken us months to figure this out after going through a couple of different support channels."
"The documentation could be improved as it is not updated immediately when Microsoft makes changes. Users must wait a few weeks for the changes to be reflected in the documentation."
"The response time could be better. It will be helpful if the alerts are even more proactive and we can see more data. Currently, the data is a little bit weak. It is not complete. I can't just see it and completely know which user or which device it is. It takes some effort and time on my part to investigate and isolate a user. It would be great if it is more user-friendly or easy for people to understand."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps' initial setup was quite technical but we were prepared. The time of the implementation depends on the job and how many users are being set up."
"There are some features, such as user navigation content filtering, that are disabled by default, and it probably makes sense to enable them by default."
"Defender could integrate better with multi-cloud and hybrid environments. It requires some additional configuration to ingest data from non-Azure environments and integrate it with Sentinel."
"There are certain areas where the product could improve, such as some functionalities that did not work as expected."
"The user interface could be better. They need to work a little bit on the console. It is similar to their firewalls but not exactly. They need to clean it up a bit."
"The documentation is generally good, but they could provide a more detailed description of all the configuration steps. I have to search for information or call support. Palo Alto could add more knowledge base articles about configuration with screenshots and walkthroughs. That would be helpful. When configuring a product, you want to see examples of how it is done."
"Dependencies of applications sometimes is a bit confusing."
"One area for improvement is for them to stay on top of keeping their CVEs on their platform up to date."
"I would like the solution to support a different type of authentication. We can't configure a secondary method for our portal."
"There should be a dedicated portal or SASE-based solution. They're trying to add a plugin but it needs a dedicated portal because it is now an enterprise solution for multiple organizations. People should be able to directly log in to a dedicated page for Prisma Access, rather than going into a Panorama plugin, and always having to update the plugin."
"If you compare Prisma SaaS against other products, such as Cloud Log, it's a little bit tricky to understand, but it offers different functionality that other products don't have. From a user usability point of view, you need some training for this product, as an admin, you need a couple of demos."
"When we deploy firewall rules via Panorama, we find it's a little bit slow. We have a global environment and might have 100 gateways or VPNs in the cloud. When we deploy something, it tries to deploy it one-by-one, and that can be slow."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"I'm not totally involved in the pricing part, but I think its pricing is quite aggressive, and its price is quite similar to Netskope. Netskope has separate licensing fees or additional charges if you want to monitor certain SaaS services, whereas, with MCAS, you get 5,000 applications with their Office 365. It is all bundled, and there's no cost for using that. You only have the operational costs. In the country I am in, it is a bit difficult to get people with the required skill sets."
"It has pretty good pricing."
"We utilize the Microsoft E5 licensing, which encompasses the entire Microsoft suite; however, it is costly."
"The pricing is a little bit high but right now, we are okay with it because of the compatibility with Office 365, Teams, and Azure AD."
"The price could be better and should be reconsidered."
"Our clients normally use the Microsoft E1 licensing, which is renewed yearly."
"This product is not expensive."
"It is a little bit expensive. When you want to have the complete package with Office 365, Defender, and everything else, it is expensive."
"The initial prices of Prisma Access were okay. But as soon as you start deploying Palo Alto gear, the support prices and the recurring prices, which are the major operational costs, tend to increase over time."
"In terms of pricing, considering that it is a two or three years old solution, they should apply big discounts for the next two or three years. This approach will be better for them to capture the market."
"I would advise choosing your options according to your company's needs. Just go for what you want and do not pay for anything extra in terms of licensing. You need to determine how much bandwidth is required in your company network, and according to that, you should pay for the license. The mobile user license is based on the number of users who are going to use the VPN solution. You need to determine how many mobile users you are going to have in your network, and you should pay according to that. There are no other costs in addition to licensing, but if you go for the consultant services of Palo Alto networks to deliver the solution for you, then you need to pay something extra. That is not a part of licensing."
"The licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis and for what we get, the price is good."
"The solution requires a license and the technical support has extra costs. The licensing model could improve."
"The pricing for this solution is on the higher end."
"The licensing cost is about 18,000 euros."
"It's pricey, it's not cheap. But you get what you pay for."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about iboss?
Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss.
What needs improvement with iboss?
For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company Exxon...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
Previously when I used iboss, we did the POC for iboss for ExxonMobil. Four or five people wanted to move from our ol...
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Microsoft Cloud App Security?
Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-nat...
What do you like most about Microsoft Cloud App Security?
It does a great job of monitoring and maintaining a security baseline. For us, that is a key element. The notificatio...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Cloud App Security?
My impression on the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is that it's fair. I do...
What is the better solution - Prisma Access or Zscaler Private Access?
We looked into Prisma Access before choosing Zscaler Private Access (ZPA). Palo Alto’s Prisma Access is a secure ac...
What do you like most about Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks?
The most valuable features of the solution are in the areas of the secure remote access it provides while also being ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks?
From my experience, Palo Alto is more expensive compared to solutions like Netskope and Triscale.
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security
Palo Alto Networks Prisma Access, Prisma Access, GlobalProtect, Palo Alto GlobalProtect Mobile Security Manager, Prisma SaaS by Palo Alto Networks, Prisma Access
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.
Concord Hospital, State of Colorado, Essilor International, RheinLand Versicherungsgruppe, University of Westminster, Universidade Nove de Julho, SPAR Austria, CAME Group, ZipRealty, Greenhill & Co., IKT Agder, Aviva Stadium, Animal Logic, Management & Training Corporation, Brigham Young University Hawaii, School District of Chilliwack
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs. Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,579 professionals have used our research since 2012.