Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Reviews

Prisma Cloud is the amalgamation of multiple products. The main component was acquired from Twistlock. The main use case is to perform cloud security posture assessments of your cloud workload. You can connect multiple cloud providers to Prisma Cloud and review the security configurations.

The two Prisma modules I use are cloud security posture management and cloud workload protection. The compute part of Prisma Cloud Cloud can also be deployed on-prem. It's mainly for an on-premise environment. You can deploy a standalone host to protect or review the configurations if you have a Kubernetes Docker host.

I work for a system integrator, so I deploy these solutions to customers, but I don't typically operate them. Clients are looking for visibility into their multi-cloud environment. When you have an environment distributed across AWS, Azure, etc., controlling all the cloud environments from different consoles is difficult. 

Prisma Cloud gives you one console to see all of your assets, review their configurations, and build your processes. If you have a development team or your organization is developing a product, you can use Prisma Cloud to secure the product development lifecycle. You can integrate Prisma Cloud with your CICD pipelines to scan the containers and ensure they aren't vulnerable to any known CVEs.

It's a single pane of glass that covers all aspects of your cloud environment. It also provides your DevSecOps or DevOps teams with an excellent tool. Prisma Cloud is a collection of acquisitions, so you have multiple products within one tool. 

None of the solutions that promise to reduce alerts have done that, but Prisma Cloud gives you meaningful alerts. In rare cases, I've experienced alert fatigue or some false positives. It identifies guaranteed alerts. I can prioritize alerts based on several factors. If you have a resource on the cloud that has given vulnerability, it will check to see if the resource is exposed to the Internet and prioritize it accordingly. 

I am using Prisma Cloud CSPM. It is a business as well as an enterprise license. We have the licenses for data security and host security for particular tenants. We have IAM, Code to Cloud, CI/CD pipelines, and scanning of code. These models are activated.

We are getting alerts and vulnerabilities for cloud asset misconfiguration and identity access management. We are using Prisma Cloud to find out these vulnerabilities and remediate them manually and automatically.

We have a multi-cloud environment. We have on boarded multiple client clouds. The data is on the AWS, Azure, Oracle, and Google clouds. All the organization-level accounts or individual accounts are onboarded into Prisma Cloud. Instead of using cloud-native CSPM solutions such as Security Hub for AWS, Security Command Center for GCP, and Microsoft Defender for Azure, we have integrated all cloud accounts with Prisma Cloud. So, centrally, we can manage and monitor all the vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and cloud environments. We have all the logs. It may be the audit log. It may be the virtual network log, network flow log, firewall log, or any cloud trail log.

We can monitor all the cloud assets and cloud resources. For example, if a user has wildcard permission or is a power user but only requires read-only access, Prisma Cloud lets us know. It recommends the access that needs to be given to the user. We can create custom policies according to the customer usage over the last 90 days.

If some users and service accounts have access keys that are not rotated in 90 days, Prisma Cloud alerts us that a key has expired or not rotated in 90 days. We then manually rotate the keys and update them in the cloud environment. Prisma Cloud provides best practices for insider threats and external security exposure.

If a VM or S3 bucket is publicly exposed, Prisma Cloud alerts us about it. It also suggests a way to fix the issue. It provides remediation and also provides information about the severity. The recommendations are given based on best practices and ISO standards, and we can then remediate those alerts.

Prisma Cloud provides security spanning multi- and hybrid-cloud environments. They are also launching Prisma for MSPs. It is in progress and not yet officially launched. That will help with the next-generation cloud security.

Prisma Cloud continuously scans the cloud assets we have, such as virtual machines, S3 buckets, IAM configurations, CloudTrail logs, and VPC flow logs. It continuously scans and generates alerts. There is also a feature for the outbound integration with Splunk, Teams, or Slack so that you can get alerts in these solutions.

The remediation team takes action on generated alerts. The recommendations that it gives speed up the remediation. We can remediate issues or threats before they spread in the cloud environment.

It has a lot of features. It has different modules for application security, cloud security, DSP, etc. There are different versions. Prisma Cloud provides overall network security, application data security, and customer data security. If a customer has a Palo Alto firewall installed on their on-premise data centers, its logs can be integrated into Prisma Cloud. From the cloud infrastructure perspective and the network infrastructure perspective, Prisma Cloud helps to improve the overall security posture. It is very helpful.

Because of Prisma Cloud, we have reduced asset misconfiguration within the asset inventory. We have also reduced the risk and improved governance and compliance. We get proper alerts and recommendations to improve the security posture. It also helps from the application security perspective.

Its benefits can be realized very quickly. Once a cloud account or a cloud environment is integrated with Prisma Cloud, it takes seven to eight hours for Prisma Cloud to scan it. After the logs are ingested into Prisma Cloud, it assesses misconfigurations and generates alerts.

From the operations perspective, it is good. The console availability is there. They notify us about any upgrades and maintenance. For any data or logs being ingested, it creates alerts and provides the recommendation.

It categorizes the risks based on their severity. We are confident about our security and compliance postures. We can create our own compliance rules or follow the compliance standards applicable to an industry such as HIPAA, SOC2, etc. It is a good feature.

It is comprehensive. It can scan all cloud assets. It can scan Docker images, so image scanning is there. Infrastructure As Code scanning is there. Agent-based scanning is there. Container security is there. We can scan these and find out the vulnerabilities. Prisma Cloud supports application security and container security.

It reduces the remediation time. The critical alerts that we get also provide the remediation steps. We can remediate an issue in five to ten minutes.

They have data security posture management. We can apply the data loss prevention policies to S3 buckets or the data assets we have in the cloud. It is a good tool for securing our sensitive information.

Prisma Cloud is more cost-effective than cloud-native tools. We can remediate the multi-cloud environment and improve the overall cloud security through this single tool. As compared to the other solutions, Prisma Cloud is good. There is runtime protection, container security, and other things for multi-cloud environments.

The main use case was identification of cloud security compliance and detection of misconfigurations (including user and service principal identity and permissions) across multi-cloud environment. Secondary use case was development of custom policies based on internal security requirements of the banking client.

For the Financial Services client, I mainly used the CSPM and Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) modules. Code Security module was integrated to a limited extent, as part of CI/CD pipeline to enable Infrastructure as Code scanning before deployment. The primary cloud platforms of this client were AWS and Azure (limited cloud presence).

I also used Prisma Cloud for a PoC for another client of mine who used Azure and Oracle cloud platforms. The evaluation included different capability set as well: in addition to CSPM, CIEM, the Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) module capabilties were evaluated.

Prisma Cloud provides security spanning multi-cloud environments. I have used the it for securing AWS, Azure, and Oracle Cloud environments.

Main Benefit: 

Increased visibility across multiple cloud platforms is the main benefit. Before implementing Prisma Cloud, cloud-native solutions were available, however they did not show all of the problems that were present. The main benefit of implementing Prisma Cloud was the increased visibility into cloud permissions of users, roles and their usage in AWS. Prisma Cloud enabled that visibility and enabled the teams to see misconfigurations that were present in the cloud environment and start addressing them.

In addition to the identity part, Prisma Cloud provided some foundational visibility into the cloud workload misconfigurations. While a lot of false positives were identified, after the initial alert triage, the result was a lot of valuable insights to various misconfigurations.

Threat Detection: 

In regards to threat detection, for the other client where I carried out the PoC, I have done some testing after onboarding the Cloud Workload Protection module. Malware samples, EICAR files were uploaded to the test environment, and Prisma Cloud detected all of it.

Compliance Monitoring:

During the PoC for one of the clients, I have used cloud compliance monitoring of Prisma Cloud CSPM as well as CWPP modules, and found some discrepancies between the two. Some built-in compliance frameworks are available for the CSPM module, however not available in CWPP module. Cloud compliance monitoring and reporting can be done, however, there were discrepancies on what built-in compliance policies and frameworks are available in different modules. Custom security and compliance policies can be created and were used extensively in the Financial Services customer's project.

Hybrid Environments:

In regards to hybrid environments, I have only used it for Kubernetes deployment during the PoC. Kubernetes can be hosted on-premises or used as a managed service offered by any of the major cloud providers. I suppose that covers the hybrid use case. I have not used agent-based installations on anything other than Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). In my experience, this part is where Prisma Cloud stands out from the competitors. It demonstrated easy onboarding as well as comprehensive visualisation of Kubernetes workloads running on the cluster, vulnerability and malware detection capabilties.

Features That Require Client's Time Investment:

The initial "alert burndown", as Palo Alto Networks themselves call it. The alert triage and policy tuning phase where the security team goes in, reviews the initial findings, updates the policies and/or creates custom ones, and disables some of the policies that are not relevant so that internal teams are not overloaded. That has required a significant amount of time invested. For the Financial Services customer, Code Security module has also been deployed (Checkov integration into the CI/CD pipeline). It took a lot of time to tune Code Security policies, because it performs static analysis of Infrastructure as Code files. It can produce a lot of false positives, especially in cases where Terraform modules are used in the infrastructure code. 

I am a cloud security architect. I assess the cloud infrastructure for customers and help implement security control. I use Prisma Cloud for assessment. After we have the visibility, we deploy security controls, such as perimeter firewall control, proxy control, and endpoint security control.

We have purchased the enterprise license that provides all the capabilities such as CSPM, CWP, and DSPM.

Prisma Cloud provides security spanning multi- and hybrid-cloud environments with Azure, GCP, and AWS clouds. It provides comprehensive security for all these CSPs.

By default, Prisma Cloud supports integration with ServiceNow and Remedy. There are a few more default integrations. Cortex is their own native solution, but in terms of overall automation, Prisma Cloud supports a lot of integrations. It is very helpful for organizations to be able to automate these daily tasks. Different organizations use different security tools. A few of them are directly integrated with Prisma Cloud and a few of them are not. However, most organizations use solutions like Remedy and ServiceNow, so these direct integrations are very helpful. They can save about 70% of the time.

Prisma Cloud provides comprehensive visibility into cloud-based resources. Most organizations are shifting their workloads from on-prem to the cloud. Nowadays, everyone is using the cloud infrastructure, and it is a very big challenge for every organization because, without a CNAPP solution, they do not have much visibility into their cloud resources. CNAPP solutions like Prisma Cloud provide visibility into any misconfigurations, threats, or anomalies. They are very good for code-to-cloud visibility.

Prisma Cloud provides code-to-cloud visibility for the application development cycle of an organization. Some organizations use SAST and some organizations use DAST. Prisma Cloud is a combination of both. You can integrate your GitHub or your IDE environment with Prisma Cloud. You can have a view of the vulnerabilities inside your IAC or application code. You also can integrate it with CI/CD. It is very comprehensive. Not many can leverage the complete benefit of Prisma Cloud. In my last organization, we only used it for runtime protection. We did not use it for CI/CD or code and build. In my current organization, we are using it end to end. It is a good tool. We have the complete capability. The first stage is code and build. The second stage is deployment, and the third stage is run time. It provides complete development life cycle protection.

The time to value is usually immediate. At times, the deployment can take some time, but as soon as the deployment is complete, you get the findings.

The visibility and control Prisma Cloud provides completely align with the customers' needs. At times, we have to create some custom policies. It is completely compatible with the needs of the customers.

It provides end-to-end visibility from development to deployment to production. It prevents the development teams from pushing vulnerable code to production. A lot of things can be prioritized and resolved before deployment. By fixing things beforehand, you save a lot of effort or workload later.

Prisma Cloud's findings help us to create policies. In our organization, the vulnerability reports go to the network team or cloud infrastructure team. They analyze the alerts and create organization-level policies. For example, if there is an instance that is using a public IP, based on that incident, they would create a policy at the org level so that in the future, no one assigns any public IP to an instance. It helps them to create better policies.

We currently leverage Prisma Cloud's Cloud Security Posture Management and Cloud Workload Protection Platform modules and plan to migrate to their full Cloud Native Application Protection Platform solution for a more holistic security approach.

Our security system uses three major CSPMs, ingesting logs and integrating them with a central CSPM page for visibility. We also incorporate identity and document management systems. Prisma Cloud's detection tool based on its policies provides initial alerts, with our SOC team focusing on the most relevant ones. We leverage a modified threat framework combining NTSF and MITRE to monitor key policy areas like malware, unauthorized access, phishing, data loss, and system failures. Within Prisma, we categorize policies based on our organization's priorities, using custom tags to identify them and create dashboards. Webhooks then send these alerts to our SIEM platform for further analysis.

Prisma Cloud offers security spanning across multi-cloud and hybrid cloud deployments, supporting industry leaders like Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Alibaba Cloud, and Oracle Cloud.

Prisma Cloud simplifies compliance with regulations, a crucial security aspect for large organizations, by providing full visibility into our cloud environments. This eliminates the time-consuming need to manually check configurations within each cloud service provider. With Prisma Cloud's single pane of glass view, everything can be done in one place, saving us an average of 15-20 percent of the time compared to the previous method of having a dedicated person manage each CSP individually.

Automation streamlines report delivery and notification generation. It can also integrate with various third-party services like Slack, Jira, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft Sentinel, allowing for further automated notifications and actions within those platforms.

Our cloud visibility was limited before Prisma Cloud. Now, we have a good level of insight, not perfect, but significantly improved. We can monitor new deployments, configurations, and overall activity. This is crucial because most organizations, like ours, are increasingly cloud-based. Stricter regulations require compliance, and Prisma Cloud simplifies this. They offer pre-built compliance standards so we can easily generate reports, ensuring we meet our obligations.

While Prisma Cloud delivered as promised, realizing its full benefits in our large organization took several months. Due to the size and complexity of our internal communication and collaboration structures, it naturally took time for everyone to fully understand and adopt the platform's capabilities.

Prisma Cloud offers timely runtime alerts when properly configured. These alerts integrate well with our SIEM and are easy to understand. However, the majority stem from the CSPM module, as CWPP typically necessitates manual investigation for actionable insights. Prisma Cloud has reduced the runtime alerts by 20 percent.

Our initial Prisma Cloud deployment has already delivered a 5 percent cost saving, and we expect these savings to grow as we expand its use across our cloud environment.

I use Prisma Cloud for one of my clients to provide Cloud Workload Protection Platform, Cloud Security Posture Management, and Identity and User Controls services.

Prisma Cloud is the tool of choice for my client's container security and infrastructure-as-code security, including cloud security posture management.

We implemented Prisma Cloud primarily for its code-to-cloud feature. Recognizing the industry's emphasis on automated resource deployment, we developed a Terraform script to deploy resources on the Azure platform. We aim to maintain full security monitoring from the initial code to the cloud environment. By proactively identifying and addressing high-critical vulnerabilities in container images during the build process and enforcing compliance standards within Terraform scripts through policy-driven pipelines, Prisma Cloud helps us mitigate risks and ensure the security of our cloud infrastructure.

Prisma Cloud offers full integration with all major cloud platforms, making it a versatile choice for multi-cloud environments. I've successfully implemented it for both GCP and Azure, which provides consistent security coverage across both platforms. Its streamlined onboarding process for subscription or tenant-level agentless scanning and discovery is highly efficient. The platform's cloud discovery feature also offers valuable, cost-free, enhanced data for robust reporting. This, combined with informative labels, simplifies report generation at the product level, especially in organizations utilizing microservices and namespaces for application management. These capabilities make Prisma Cloud a vital asset for managing complex cloud infrastructures.

Prisma Cloud seamlessly integrates with popular DevOps tools like GitHub and Azure DevOps, which we commonly use for our clients. Automation is straightforward: incorporate a block into your workflow or pipeline to initiate scanning and other processes. Additionally, cloud account onboarding requires only adding a service as a key. This streamlined approach facilitates automated security guardrail implementation, eliminating the need for manual vulnerability remediation. Instead, scans are run directly within the pipeline, and critical vulnerabilities are flagged for immediate attention, enhancing overall security efficiency.

Shifting security left by ensuring only sanitized images are pushed to production for container use requires a dedicated team for twelve months to address all image vulnerabilities. Prisma Cloud automation significantly accelerates this process by remediating vulnerabilities automatically.

Prisma Cloud enhances visibility for our clients, enabling them to adopt a zero-trust model with monitoring at all entry and exit points. This full approach, coupled with a robust SOAR solution, effectively manages alerts from various tools and facilitates timely remediation efforts. The platform seamlessly integrates cloud security, application security, and threat detection, providing our client a unified view of their security posture.

Prisma Cloud offers comprehensive security across the entire cloud-native development lifecycle, covering all stages from code creation to cloud deployment, including the build, run, and deploy phases. Essentially, it provides security protection for every critical step within the development and production process.

Prisma Cloud offers a consolidated tool for cloud security, effectively covering CSPM, CNAP, CWPP, and ISE components. While their AppSec capabilities are still under development, I anticipate a comprehensive solution in the near future. Although Prisma Cloud is a strong standalone option, integrating a SOAR tool from another provider might be necessary for a truly end-to-end solution.

Prisma Cloud has proven effective in reducing runtime alerts by up to 20 percent, a significant benefit for our clients. While they are still verifying our adherence to proper procedures for this new solution, it's worth noting that Prisma Cloud offers a comprehensive set of policies, including those for detecting crypto mining and other threats.

We use Prisma Cloud for container security, serverless function security, and our Cloud Security Posture Management.

We realized the benefits of Prisma Cloud almost immediately. It can comprehensively secure the entire cloud-native development lifecycle, from build to deploy and run. It has that capability. We are using it in the build and run space, but we aren't using it for secure code review.

We are more dependent on another product for visibility. Prisma Cloud does not have a natural feel, so we use another tool. About 75 to 80 percent of our workloads are connected to one solution, but Prisma Cloud has limitations. It doesn't have agents for them, so we use other tools or other native security tools to protect them. 

When we started, many false positives and mismatched rules were not properly created. We created a more mature ruleset and now have a manageable set of alerts. It's not that much and has reduced over time.

We use different tools to achieve the same result, and consolidating that helps us save money. It has saved us, but it is a costly product. We are also saving some money on projects where there is competition. It's much cheaper, and they have the same or similar features.

We specialize in all Palo Alto modules, including visibility, compliance, governance, threat detection, data security, and hub security. Our comprehensive suite of services covers all aspects of these modules. We leverage the SaaS security product for advanced threat detection, and for all-encompassing monitoring, we utilize Cortex XDR from Palo Alto.

Many customers store sensitive data in on-premises data centers and require robust security measures. Prisma Access licenses can protect internal networks, but some customers prefer avoiding internet exposure. To address this, we offer gateways that create a secure environment for internet access. With the rise of remote work, we provide VPN connections, such as GlobalProtect, for secure access to both internal and external resources. Customers can deploy multiple gateways in different regions to meet their needs. Traffic flow typically involves a VPN connection to a gateway, followed by routing through internal service connections and potentially a data center firewall before reaching the desired resource. For external access, traffic is routed directly to the internet through the VPN.

Prisma Cloud offers comprehensive security across multi and hybrid cloud environments. For instance, our ADEM tool, considered industry-leading, requires installation on user machines to enable continuous monitoring of all ADEM-equipped users. This includes detecting anomalous activity outside the corporate network and tracking user online time, providing valuable insights into network usage.

Security automation and EA Ops significantly reduce manual configuration and management tasks compared to previous methods, saving valuable time. Now, we only need to configure a few minor details rather than handling everything. For instance, with service connections and gateways, we don't have to manage multiple VPN gateways; Palo Alto is managed on the backend. Our primary responsibility will be monitoring after initial tunnel creation. We've preconfigured connections to on-premises firewalls, whether third-party or Palo Alto, eliminating manual configuration. Automation is in place, and we'll only need to purchase licenses. The autonomous system further enhances automation for all processes.

Intune security automation has significantly reduced our costs, making us more financially efficient making us more financially efficient. Automation is now highly valued as it eliminates the need for engineers to configure and manage systems manually. With AI-driven automation, we can effectively monitor configurations through a dashboard, providing a complete overview. This automation simplifies tasks like creating BGP connections, which previously required complex CLI commands. Prisma Access Palo Alto's GUI interface automates tenant creation with minimal input. Integrating Prisma MDM and Palo Alto device deployment further streamlines the process, reducing manual intervention. Overall, this automation saves money and frees up engineer resources by eliminating time-consuming configuration tasks.

Palo Alto Networks is a global leader in cybersecurity, providing top-tier protection to its customer base of over 90,000. Traditionally, customers relied on on-premise hardware firewalls, but the shift towards cloud-based solutions has driven a demand for more flexible and cost-effective security options. In response, Palo Alto Networks offers cloud security solutions that leverage its existing global device infrastructure. Customers only need to purchase licenses to activate cloud security features, tailoring protection to their specific needs for internal, external, or network environments. For customers seeking complete independence, Palo Alto Networks also provides interconnect licenses that eliminate the need for a service connection.

Customers do not directly purchase Palo Alto products or deploy them into production. Our professional engineers provide a lab environment for customers to test any desired Palo Alto services, from essential Prisma Access to advanced cybersecurity solutions like SaaS security and Cortex XDR. Once customers are satisfied with the lab environment, they can deploy the chosen products into production. If they encounter any issues during deployment or operation, the support team promptly addresses them.

I have resolved numerous customer issues, closing over 400 or 500 cases globally. While many cases can be resolved within a week, some complex issues may take up to a month. Palo Alto Networks aims to provide timely support for all customer issues, regardless of severity. When a customer encounters a VPN connection problem, they can create a case with varying priority levels. Critical cases are assigned to engineers immediately, with hourly updates provided to the customer. If the issue persists, the case is escalated to senior resources. Prisma, a relatively new platform, is constantly being monitored for bugs. Any issues identified are addressed promptly and communicated to customers. Our goal is to deliver exceptional support services.

Prisma Cloud offers complete visibility across our entire environment, from end users to the data center. We'll have full control and oversight within a single unified portal, eliminating the need to juggle multiple platforms as often required by other solutions. Prisma Cloud provides dedicated applications for various functions, such as SaaS security, threat and vulnerability management, cloud identity engine, and log analysis. These applications work seamlessly together, automatically connecting through APIs once deployed and licensed. For configuration management, the Strata Cloud Manager handles Prisma Access and Prisma SD-WAN. This centralized approach allows us to efficiently manage multiple aspects of our security infrastructure within a single platform.

Prisma Cloud offers SaaS security and data loss prevention as separate features requiring additional licensing. Both can be managed through a single portal. For threat prevention, they provide Cortex XDR, a recent cybersecurity offering from Palo Alto. When combined, we have a single tool to protect all of our cloud resources and applications.

Prisma Cloud helps reduce the number of runtime alerts. Users will only receive live alerts generated when Prisma detects an issue within the environment. For instance, if Prisma Access observes an attack, it will generate a live alert visible in the startup cloud manager's dashboard.

Prisma Cloud effectively reduces the overall number of alerts by prioritizing them into categories: critical, high, medium, low, and informational. Less critical warnings are consolidated into the informational category, minimizing alert fatigue. Critical alerts persist until resolved, and recurring issues can be configured to trigger email notifications for proactive monitoring, ensuring timely attention even when engineers are unavailable.

Prisma Cloud offers significant cost savings for customers. Previously, customers managed multiple firewalls, including internal and external devices. With Prisma Access, this complex management is eliminated, as Palo Alto handles firewall management. Customers configure and purchase a license to access gateways for end-user connections. This eliminates the need to purchase expensive individual firewalls, which can cost billions. While customers retain visibility through a provided portal to monitor traffic, the primary benefit is the streamlined management and cost reduction achieved through Prisma Cloud.