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BMC Helix Cloud Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 1, 2026

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

BMC Helix Cloud Security
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
41st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (24th)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (9th), Container Security (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) category, the mindshare of BMC Helix Cloud Security is 0.7%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is 8.3%, down from 14.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks8.3%
BMC Helix Cloud Security0.7%
Other91.0%
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
 

Featured Reviews

DG
Portfolio Manager/ Helix Administrator at Frontier Communications
A highly scalable and straightforward solution with a knowledgeable support team
We work on a third-party shared environment. It wouldn’t have been feasible for a smaller company. My company was actually the first one to do it. Just like any cloud security, it pays to do your research and have complimentary security involved. The product can’t be the be-all and end-all tool for your security. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
reviewer2776578 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Image scanning has supported consistent security practices during cloud deployment
On a scale of ten, we would say people are happy with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks for the part we use. People are okay with it. We probably would give an eight. We don't give ten because if we don't use the other parts of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, it's because it was difficult to implement from an operational point of view. We could have deployed the runtime monitoring with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, but within our organization at our company, it was very difficult to find who would be the owner for the alerts. People have other tools and in the end, we don't use the full capabilities of a product that we pay for. It's partially related to the difficulty to integrate Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks runtime in our company's support process. We don't use the real-time monitoring part of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks. We don't know about the automated remediation feature of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best feature is time to value. With very minimal effort, you are able to have a cohesive view into your security posture on one or multiple cloud accounts, particularly if you are dealing with multicloud. If you have Azure and AWS deployments, you might have multiple subscriptions in Azure and usually multiple accounts in AWS. You may even be doing some GCP work (around Google Cloud Platform). It's very difficult to manage a common set of policies, even less reporting, across multiple subscriptions, accounts, and cloud environments. What BMC Helix Cloud Security does is provide a unified view or single pane of glass as to your baseline. Then, it also facilitates the ability for Level 1 or 2 operations support to take action and report on security vulnerabilities."
"Using this solution is an eye-opener; having that holistic view is the biggest eye-opener because you understand, from any of your connected cloud accounts, what your vulnerabilities are with it."
"It is a good tool to make sure that your containers are safe and sound."
"The features that I've found most valuable are its container security aspect. I also like its vulnerability management tools."
"Role-based security is a valuable feature."
"The most valuable aspects of BMC Helix Cloud Security are its security features and regulatory compliance capabilities."
"The cool feature of Helix Cloud Security is that you can do all that — understand and remediate issues — in one dashboard, based on the different policies that are available for security, out-of-the-box."
"With very minimal effort, you are able to have a cohesive view into your security posture on one or multiple cloud accounts, particularly if you are dealing with multicloud."
"It has a feature for customized security policy. I implement it in banking, health insurance, and other sectors, and every organization has its own customized policies and procedures. In Prisma Cloud, you can customize policies, and based on that, you can do monitoring."
"I've been really pleasantly surprised with how Prisma Cloud is, over time, covering more and more of the topics I care about, and listening to customer feedback and growing the product in the right directions."
"The CSPM and CWPP functionalities are pretty good."
"The most valuable feature is the closed VPN connection, which provides better performance than traditional VPN boxes. For example, let's say a user in New York State normally connects in the East, but if they travel to the UK, they can connect to the same portal, which automatically redirects to any VPN gateway. We can control traffic based on Active Directory groups instead of the user's IP. That means a user in New York can access his application based on his user ID and AD group access when he travels to the UK or anywhere else."
"The solution gives us a lot of visibility across all of our cloud solutions."
"Prisma Cloud offers robust runtime scanning capabilities, which is beneficial for security teams."
"CSPM is the most valuable feature for any organization that runs its workloads in the cloud."
"One feature we like is the amount of data Prisma gives us. Some infrastructure and platform vulnerabilities that in the cloud are hard to detect, and we were unaware of some of these. It's critical to shed light on these. For example, you create virtual machines and forget about them, but when you revisit them, some vulnerabilities may be detected."
 

Cons

"The UI could be more user-friendly."
"BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features."
"The biggest challenge now, which is a good problem to have, with BMC Helix is content."
"Every organization out there doesn't rely on just one control body. They use FISMA control. They may use HIPAA, CIS, PCI, or SOX, then blend them. One of the things that is now in big demand for BMC Helix Cloud Security is content. That's the next journey in its lifespan, making it easier for the community to share and collaborate on content for security controls that can be measured and remediated."
"I think its TOA interfaces are still not that comfortable. The UI could be more user-friendly, easier to use."
"We've had some issues with connectors; the connectors have seemed to cause a little bit of trouble, perhaps with the APIs trying to scan the environment."
"I want the role-based security feature to be improved."
"We've had some with issues connectors. The connectors have seemed to have caused a little bit of trouble, perhaps with the APIs trying to scan the environment. The only time I've had to reach out to tech support was for that. It seems it may not have been scanning correctly or I wasn't seeing data within a specific time. But we've set up a couple of connectors in the past couple of weeks and they actually scanned the AWS environment and we had data within about 10 minutes. It's working a lot faster and I think they're making improvements as they go."
"Palo Alto needs to add more support staff to improve their response time."
"The area for improvement is less about the product and more about the upsell. If we've already agreed that we'd like your product x, y, or z, don't try to add fries to my burger. I don't need it."
"Support is an area that needs improvement."
"There should be some kind of automation, AI incorporation, and bot system. All these would add value."
"The tool's UI is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"In terms of securing cloud-native development at build time, a lot of improvement is needed."
"I don't have any specific notes for improvement; however, if they could continue to focus more on giving users the ability to create custom policies and configurations, that would be ideal."
"They should improve the user experience."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a subscription model with term licensing that is usually yearly. This includes, not only the product, but support and maintenance. It is based on cloud assets. Therefore, if you have 100 cloud assets, those cloud assets are measured based on evaluation or transactions. For example, if I'm evaluating that cloud asset for CIS compliance, PCI compliance, and AWS best practices, that asset gets evaluated three times, as those are three transactions. However, the license model is based on peak asset usage. So, over a year, if you deploy 100, 1000, 500, and then 2000 assets, you will be charged for the 2000 peak of assets managed by Helix Cloud Security."
"The pricing is based on an annual subscription, upfront, and it's based on cloud assets. Whether your assets are in Azure and AWS combined, the tool tells you how many assets are being scanned and that's the number used for pricing."
"Its licensing cost depends on the type of license such as the business license or the enterprise license. The enterprise license is costlier than the business license, but we get more visibility and more modules. If you have a multi-cloud environment and subscribe to each cloud's native CSPM tool, it is costly. If you are using a single tool like Prisma Cloud, with a single license, you can monitor all environments, such as Google Cloud, Azure, AWS, and Oracle Cloud. The cost of Prisma Cloud is less than the cost of subscribing to the CSPM tool of each cloud provider. This is where Prisma Cloud can save costs."
"The price for Prisma Cloud is reasonable."
"Although the cost can be high, the value is worth the price tag."
"It is an expensive tool. It is not cheap technology. It is a serious investment for any customer. Customers typically buy it together with services. In my experience, customers buying Prisma Cloud are prepared to pay for the implementation and the tool itself."
"If a competitor came along and said, "We'll give you half the price," that doesn't necessarily mean that's the right answer, at all. We wouldn't necessarily entertain it that way. Does it do what we need it to do? Does it work with the things that we want it to work with? That is the important part for us. Pricing wasn't the big consideration it might be in some organizations. We spend millions on public cloud. In that context, it would not make sense to worry about the small price differences that you get between the products."
"Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks carries a higher cost, but its enhanced security measures justify the expense."
"The purchasing process was easy and quick. It is a very economical solution."
"Prisma Cloud is cost-efficient, but the credits are on the higher end."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Performing Arts
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise57
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your primary use case for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?
Prisma Cloud helps support DevSecOps methodologies, making those responsibilities easier to manage.
What Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform do you recommend?
We like Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, since it offers us incredible visibility into our entire cloud system. We are able to easily see where our container vulnerabilities lie and and where cl...
What do you think of Aqua Security vs Prisma Cloud?
Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valuable feature and their speed of integration is very good. The initial setup was ...
 

Also Known As

TrueSight Cloud Security, SecOps Policy Service
Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NHS, Vodafone, Kansas City Life, SKY Italia, Cybera
Amgen, Genpact, Western Asset, Zipongo, Proofpoint, NerdWallet, Axfood, 21st Century Fox, Veeva Systems, Reinsurance Group of America
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Helix Cloud Security vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,668 professionals have used our research since 2012.