Cisco Secure Workload vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks comparison

The compared Cisco and Palo Alto Networks solutions aren't in the same category. Cisco is ranked #9 in CDCS , with an average rating of 9.5, and holds a 13.1% mindshare in the category. Palo Alto Networks is ranked #2 in CNAP , with an average rating of 8.6, and holds a 14.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of Palo Alto Networks users who would recommend it.

Cisco Secure Workload

Read 15 Cisco Secure Workload reviews

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3,153 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...

Read 111 Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks reviews

24,429 Views
13,192 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Cisco Secure Workload

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 2025

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and Cisco Secure Workload both compete in cloud security solutions, with Prisma Cloud preferred for cost-effectiveness and support, whereas Cisco Secure Workload might appeal more with its comprehensive features.

Features: Prisma Cloud includes advanced threat detection, compliance checks, and cloud-native security capabilities. Cisco Secure Workload offers robust workload protection, extensive access controls, and superior workload visibility.

Room for Improvement: Prisma Cloud could enhance integration complexity and simplify policy management. Cisco Secure Workload might benefit from an easier setup process, reducing manual policy configurations, and improving cost transparency.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Prisma Cloud is known for its easy deployment and responsive support. In contrast, Cisco Secure Workload involves a complex setup process but compensates with detailed onboarding resources.

Pricing and ROI: Prisma Cloud is valued for offering competitive pricing reflecting high ROI on its security features, while Cisco Secure Workload’s premium pricing is justified by its advanced feature set, potentially yielding greater ROI for firms with extensive security needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Secure Workload vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

March 2025

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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

Cisco Secure Workload

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud and Data Center Security (9th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (14th), Microsegmentation Software (4th), Cisco Security Portfolio (9th)

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

111

Ranking in other categories

Web Application Firewall (WAF) (6th), Container Security (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Cisco Secure Workload is designed for Cloud and Data Center Security and holds a mindshare of 13.1%, up 12.0% compared to last year.
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP), holds 14.5% mindshare, down 20.4% since last year.

Cloud and Data Center Security Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cisco Secure Workload	13.1%
Illumio	23.4%
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation	22.2%
Other	41.3%

Cloud and Data Center Security

Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks	14.5%
Wiz	23.8%
Microsoft Defender for Cloud	10.4%
Other	51.300000000000004%

Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)

Featured Reviews

Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

Discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map

We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration allows Cisco Secure Workload to learn about our networks and network tags, providing valuable insights into vulnerabilities related to the operating system and various applications installed on our servers. Recently, Cisco announced a new product called HyperShield, an AI-based autonomous micro-segmentation solution. While Cisco has not stated that HyperShield will replace Cisco Secure Workload, it represents a natural evolution for the company. HyperShield features dynamic policy discovery and enforcement; however, once policies are enforced, they do not change until a discovery occurs, requiring a re-enforcement process. This new platform operates autonomously, minimizing the need for user or security engineer intervention. I would have expected Cisco to incorporate more automatic discovery and enforcement features within the existing Cisco Secure Workload product. Instead of enhancing the current product, they have introduced a new solution. Cisco plans to honor existing Tetration licenses, allowing users to transition to HyperShield without additional costs, reflecting the investment enterprises have already made. From Cisco’s perspective, this represents a natural progression in their product line. While the product name changes, it seems more of a rebranding effort. The enhancements are greater autonomy, improved discovery, and automatic enforcement, which are now being introduced in HyperShield. Cisco Secure Workload offers automatic policy enforcement but cannot adjust policies dynamically as the application needs to change. Having used the platform for the past five years, the recent announcement has been reassuring. Cisco has confirmed that our investment in the platform will not go to waste. They will honor our existing licenses, providing a natural migration path to the new solution without any disruption

Read full review

Mohammad Qaw

Senior Security Consultant at helpag

It gives you one console to see all of your assets, review their configurations, and build your processes

Most customers use Prisma Cloud for visibility and compliance. Prisma has so many features, but many organizations do not use them. They primarily use the visibility part to connect all their cloud accounts and hosts for visibility to see if they are missing any security controls or if they have any misconfigurations. You can connect it to cloud environments such as Azure, AWS, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba, etc., or to an on-prem data center. Prisma Cloud gives you so many options to automate processes related to your daily operations. When it comes to cybersecurity, you can automate things with their existing APIs. They also have out-of-the-box integrations with many solutions. I have not seen any limitations. Everything is customizable. You can do whatever you want, defining the reporting and custom use cases. They recently updated the UI, so it's much better than before.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution."

"By using Tetration insight, we are able to get the latency on our level accounts and we can determine whatever the issue is with the application latency itself."

"Instead of proving that all the access control lists are in place and all the EPGs are correct, we can just point the auditor to a dashboard and point out that there aren't any escaped conversations. It saves an enormous, enormous amount of time."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network."

"Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."

"The product provides multiple-device integration."

"It's stable."

"The product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."

More Cisco Secure Workload pros

"You can also integrate with Amazon Managed Services. You can also get a snapshot in time, whether that's over a 24-hour period, seven days, or a month, to determine what the estate might look like at a certain point in time and generate reports from that for vulnerability management forums."

"The runtime mechanism on the solution is very useful. It's got very good network mapping between containers. If you have more than one container, you can create a content data link between them."

"The most valuable feature is that the rule set is managed and that it can be run on a regularly scheduled basis."

"I have not seen any limitations. Everything is customizable. You can do whatever you want, defining the reporting and custom use cases. They recently updated the UI, so it's much better than before."

"It provides insights into potential vulnerabilities in our code, helping us identify and rectify issues before they can be exploited."

"Integrating with a CI/CD pipeline and incorporating a vulnerability assessment process are highly effective features, especially when combined with runtime protection."

"Comprehensive and valuable for providing security. It is scalable, its stability is impressive, and setting it up is straightforward."

"CSPM is the most valuable feature for any organization that runs its workloads in the cloud."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pros

Cons

"I'd like to see better documentation for advanced features. The documentation is fairly basic. I would also like to see better integration with other applications."

"It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."

"The product must be integrated with the cloud."

"There was a controversy when Cisco reduced the amount of data they kept, and the solution became quite cost-intensive, which made its adoption challenging….Although they have modified it now, I preferred the previous version, and I wish all the functionality were back under the same product."

"The integration could be better, especially with different types of solutions."

"Secure Workload is a little complicated to use, and the dashboard isn't intuitive, so it takes a while to learn how to use it."

"There is some overlap between Cisco Tetration and AppDynamics and I need to have a single pane of glass, rather than have to jump between different tools."

"There's room for improvement when it comes to Cisco Secure Workload. A couple of internal areas could be refined a little bit. They are trying to solve it, depending on where you suppose the agent is. Suppose you have the agent on both the server and the client, which could be the front-end server or web server connecting to the. In that case, if those two are communicating on RPC, the server can look into its configuration. It could go down and find the configuration file on the FTP server and then set the policies to it. But there are a lot of different FTP servers out there. It's also a complex case for the tool to support all FTP servers."

More Cisco Secure Workload cons

"The solution does not currently support servers for GCP."

"While the documentation continually improves, it still has limitations compared to the extensive resources available for older products like hardware firewalls, which have been around for approximately 20 years."

"It would be nice Prisma Cloud merged its modules for CSPM and infrastructure as code. It would simplify the pricing and make it easier for customers to evaluate the solution because there are different modules, and you need to add it to your subscription separately."

"The first time I looked at Prisma Cloud, it took me a while to understand how to implement the integration or how to enable features by using the interface for integration. That portion can probably be improved."

"They need to make the settings more flexible to fit our internal policies about data. We didn't want developers to see some data, but we wanted them to have access to the console because it was going to help them... It was a pain to have to set up the access to some languages and some data."

"We would like to have the detections be more contemporaneous. For example, we've seen detections of an overprivileged user or whatever it might be in any of the hundreds of Prisma policies, where there are 50 minutes of latency between the event and the alert."

"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."

"The automation must continue to become much smoother."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."

"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."

"Regarding price, Cisco Secure Workload can be expensive if you don't have a budget. If you're not doing micro-segmentation, every extra security measure or enforcement you're putting on top of your existing environment will be an extra cost. It's not a cheap solution at all. But from my point of view, if you need to do micro-segmentation, this is one of the best tools I've seen for it. I can't compare that to Microsoft's solution because I haven't looked into it. I've looked into VMware and Cisco. Those are the only two that I know of. I didn't know that Microsoft could do micro-segmentation at all. Maybe they can, but I haven't heard anything about it."

"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."

"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."

"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."

"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."

"Our licensing fees are $18,000 USD per year."

"Prisma Cloud licensing works on credits."

"Prisma Cloud is a value-back cloud-managed solution; cloud-native solutions are quite expensive."

"Regarding Prisma Cloud's pricing, we started small, and then we just kept on growing."

"Although the cost can be high, the value is worth the price tag."

"In general, Prisma Cloud is much cheaper than cloud-native services."

"Prisma Cloud is cost-efficient, but the credits are on the higher end."

"The pricing for Prisma Cloud is high. Providing a pay-as-you-go model or pricing options tailored for medium and small enterprises could help attract more clients."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

23%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	34
Midsize Enterprise	20
Large Enterprise	58

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Secure Workload?

The product provides multiple-device integration.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Workload?

CloudStrike offers antivirus capabilities and firewall features for servers and VDI but lacks automatic policy discovery. This raises questions about the resources required to discover and write po...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Cisco Hypershield vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 23% of the time

Illumio vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 16% of the time

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 15% of the time

Cisco ACI vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 9% of the time

Trend Micro Deep Security vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 3% of the time

More Cisco Secure Workload Competitors

Wiz vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 16% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 10% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 6% of the time

Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 4% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 4% of the time

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload

August 2025

Download Cisco Secure Workload product report

Buyer's Guide

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

August 2025

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

Download Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks product report

Also Known As

Cisco Tetration

Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto

Overview

Cisco Secure Workload is a cloud and data security solution that offers a zero-trust policy of keeping an organization’s application workloads safe and secure throughout the entire on-premise and cloud data center ecosystems.

Cisco Secure Workload will consistently provide protection by discovering workload process anomalies, stopping threats immediately, minimizing the risk threat surface, and aborting any lateral movement.

Today’s ecosystems are very elastic, and in the application-focused dynamic of today’s aggressive marketplace, Cisco Secure Workload delivers a robust security solution that works effectively with today’s most popular applications. The solution uniquely surrounds each and every workload to ensure organizations are able to keep their data, network, and applications safe and secure at all times. Cisco Secure Workload ensures that enterprise organizations can maintain secure applications by consistently building firewalls around every workload level throughout the entire ecosystem. The solution can manage applications that are deployed on containers, virtual machines, or bare-metal servers.

Cisco Secure workload is able to meet an organization's busy needs and offers flexible options such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and on-premises options. Using the Secure Workload SaaS options, users receive all the benefits of Cisco Secure Workload protection without the hassle of having to deploy and maintain the platform on premises. Users are responsible for acquiring the necessary software licensing and deploying software agents. Using SaaS, Secure Workload runs in the cloud and is operated and maintained by Cisco. This option offers the ability to scale easily and is a popular choice for SaaS-first and SaaS-only clients. Many organizations find they get the best TCO and achieve the best productivity and profitability using the SaaS options.

When choosing on-premises options, organizations choose between hardware-based appliance models (large or small form factors). Platform selection is dependent on scalability goals, the desired fidelity level of flow telemetry, and the actual number of workloads. When a user chooses to configure Cisco Secure Workload for a conversation-only flow telemetry for all workloads, each platform has the capability to scale up vertically twice the default platform scale. Additionally, with Secure Workload, it is possible for the platform to be scaled horizontally in order to satisfy the demands of extra large widely distributed enterprise environments using federation capabilities.

Cisco Secure Workload also provides a robust disaster recovery (DR) tool, which helps to make it a complete, comprehensive solution. The DR allows for continuous restore and backup capabilities that enable users to quickly remediate operations and data to a standby cluster in the event of a drastic failure or disaster.

Reviews from Real Users

“The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage. The telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent. It's complete. You see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network. Other valuable features include vast support for annotations, flexible user applications, machine learning, automatic classification, and hierarchical policies.” - CTO at a tech vendor

Cisco

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks provides comprehensive cloud-native security solutions. It covers dynamic workload identity, automated forensics, and multi-cloud protection, ensuring robust security across diverse cloud platforms.

Prisma Cloud delivers advanced capabilities for managing cloud security across AWS, Azure, and GCP platforms. It offers dynamic workload identity creation, real-time monitoring, and seamless integration into CI/CD pipelines. With automation, centralized dashboards, and enhanced visibility, users effectively manage security misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. While optimizing cloud environments through runtime protection and compliance, Prisma Cloud faces challenges with its navigation, pricing, and limited automation capabilities. Users seek improvements in API security, role-based access controls, and documentation quality, emphasizing the need for enhanced customization and reporting features.

What are the important features of Prisma Cloud?

Dynamic Workload Identity: Enables unique workload identities for security purposes.
Automated Forensics: Offers detailed insights into threats and incidents automatically.
Runtime Protection: Provides ongoing detection and blocking of suspicious activities.
Multi-Cloud Security: Protects environments on AWS, Azure, and GCP simultaneously.
Compliance Management: Assists in meeting regulatory standards across cloud platforms.

What benefits or ROI should users consider in reviews?

Enhanced Security Posture: Strengthens cloud defense lines with proactive monitoring.
Centralized Dashboard: Offers unified oversight of multiple cloud environments.
Efficient Misconfiguration Handling: Quickly identifies and addresses security lapses.
Seamless CI/CD Integration: Integrates security within development workflows.
Improved Visibility: Provides transparent insights into security operations and alerts.

Industries like finance and telecom rely on Prisma Cloud for managing cloud security posture and container security. Teams utilize its capabilities across hybrid and multi-cloud settings to ensure compliance and robust threat protection. Features like misconfiguration detection and runtime monitoring are critical in promoting security objectives in these sectors.

Palo Alto Networks

Sample Customers

ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)

Amgen, Genpact, Western Asset, Zipongo, Proofpoint, NerdWallet, Axfood, 21st Century Fox, Veeva Systems, Reinsurance Group of America

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

March 2025

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