Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Skybox Security Suite comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Zafran Security
Sponsored
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
18th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) (3rd)
Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto N...
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
38th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (17th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (23rd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (16th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (14th), Software Supply Chain Security (14th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th), Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) (9th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (9th)
Skybox Security Suite
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
39th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
Firewall Security Management (6th)
 

Featured Reviews

Reviewer6233 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal
While Zafran Security is already a powerful tool, there are areas where it could be further improved to provide even greater value. One key area for enhancement is the searching capabilities within its vulnerabilities module. By incorporating the ability to create Boolean searches, users would gain the ability to apply more complex filters and customize their search criteria. This would greatly enhance the precision and efficiency with which security teams can identify and prioritize vulnerabilities. Having such tailored search capabilities would save time and resources by narrowing down vast lists of vulnerabilities to those that meet specific parameters relevant to our unique risk environment. Additionally, integrating more robust reporting and visualization tools would be advantageous. Enhanced dashboards that offer customizable visual representations of risk configurations and threat landscapes would facilitate better communication with stakeholders, making it easier to explain vulnerabilities and the rationale behind certain security measures. This would also aid in demonstrating the improvements and value derived from existing security investments to leadership and non-technical team members.
Nuno-Santos - PeerSpot reviewer
Cybersecurity Analyst at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Has improved real-time threat detection and unified cloud protection through AI and automation
Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is creating some confusion in terms of names because this is recent. They changed the names of the products and are now clarifying their offer. The family of the products is not easy to follow because it's very recent. Regarding the generative AI security tool, I know for sure it's Agentic. Based on my experience with Palo Alto, I can suggest what Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks could make better or what additional functions could be added. This is the best tool in the market. It's not the time to tell what they could do better because it's a recent tool. The market is now adopting it. Our experience doesn't show that they need to do more.
reviewer2697804 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Tool identifies vulnerabilities and monitors connectivity effectively
Skybox Security Suite was a very good tool for my organization. I used it for monitoring connectivity between internal and external sites, monitoring our AWS instances, and ensuring workstations and Layer 3 devices met security specifications. The tool successfully helped in preventing vulnerabilities and breaches, but unfortunately, operations ceased before completing a migration to SaaS.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Zafran is an excellent tool."
"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."
"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."
"Overall, we have seen about eighty-seven percent reduction of the number of vulnerabilities that require urgency to remediate, specifically the number of criticals."
"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."
"With Zafran Security, it integrates with your security controls, allowing you to take that risk score and reduce it based on the controls in place or increase the risk based on different factors, such as if the issue is internet reachable or if there's an exploit in the wild."
"Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks has impacted our organization positively by keeping our machines secure and our team using the dashboard to find issues quickly."
"I have seen several benefits from using Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks: It was easy to use and easy to migrate from the IBM platform."
"Overall, Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is a technically strong product, and I rate it ten out of ten."
"The AI and automation features in detecting and responding to high-risk threats are impressive; it's one of the best tools regarding AI technology and unifies security in one platform in real-time, improving vulnerability analysis, incident response, and compliance reporting."
"I have absolutely seen improvements in our incident close rates, with mean time to detect and respond reduced significantly, sometimes by at least forty to fifty percent."
"The ability to appropriately prioritize vulnerabilities inside the environment, and then to have visibility into the traffic and rule sets of an organization, are two of the top capabilities that I recommend. Skybox is the only one that does both of those in a single platform."
"It's very supportive and very user-friendly."
"It's given us more visibility in terms of what are the kinds of configurations that are on these devices, and how many of these are stale rules. So it's helped greatly in terms of cleaning up of rules, for sure. And it has definitely given us a more secure way of backing up the configuration on these devices."
"Skybox deployment is simple, and it's very useful."
"The product's most valuable feature is vulnerability management."
"The most valuable features are the rule compliance and the OS vulnerability checks."
"The most valuable features are Firewall Assurance and Vulnerability Control."
"We use Network Assurance for network visualisation and troubleshooting."
 

Cons

"I think the ability to have some enhanced reporting capabilities is something they can improve on, as they have good reports but we have asked for some specific reporting enhancements."
"Initially, we were somewhat concerned about the scalability of Zafran due to our large asset count and the substantial amount of information we needed to process."
"The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvements."
"The pricing is high, making ROI challenging to justify, especially during transitions between solutions."
"Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is creating some confusion in terms of names because this is recent."
"Overall, I rate Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks as an eight out of ten. I think that it could improve on price, as I know that the Google solution has the best price, and this is one of the conditions."
"Some aspects of the GUI can be confusing and make it difficult for me to find certain options or navigate where needed."
"The only place where Skybox has room for improvement, and they're working on releasing this, it's just a slow-go, is the UI. The user interface has historically been via a locally installed thick client. They are moving to a web-based console and it's slowly coming out."
"The cloud site could be better. They should provide some use cases to help users."
"The features that I appreciated the most in Skybox Security Suite were not comparable with Tufin, as Tufin was far ahead in terms of the technology and the user interface."
"The company made bad business decisions impacting many clients and their own staff. Reporting could have been improved, and feature requests often were not implemented."
"The initial setup with Skybox Security is hard. You need one or two strong security engineers on your team."
"During implementation, we realised approximately 30 devices were not supported by the Skybox platform​."
"They are not satisfied with the complexity of the solution and the price."
"The solution needs improvement in firewall configuration checks. I would also like to see more configuration checks for Forcepoint and for other non-supported firewalls."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
Information not available
"The software is expensive. I rate its pricing an eight out of ten."
"I've seen the pricing of every solution on the market. When you compare apples to apples, where Skybox becomes exceedingly expensive is if you look at it compared to something like FireMon that only does a fraction of what Skybox does. But if you include everything that Skybox does, it becomes way more expensive than the competition, but you're also not comparing apples to apples. If you look at FireMon, and you look at like just the firewall assurance piece, they are fairly comparable and, actually, Skybox comes in a little bit cheaper in some cases, depending on which product you're looking at."
"With licensing, the number of network nodes becomes very expensive to the point where you have to rationalize if the tools are warranted anymore."
"Currently, the licensing costs me about $300 USD for the year. This is a huge amount for my environment."
"The pricing is high, and the licensing model needs more flexibility."
"When compared with other companies, the license is more costly."
"I think for the cost, what we got definitely is worth it. The only caution I would give is that whenever you license for Firewall Assurance at the same time, for some weird reason, you have to get one Network Assurance license, just to manage one firewall. That's a little bit of overkill. But otherwise, in general, the pricing is fairly okay."
"The price is not expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Vulnerability Management solutions are best for your needs.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Performing Arts
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zafran Security?
Since we stood Zafran Security up in our private cloud, we handle the maintenance on our side. As we opted not to use...
What needs improvement with Zafran Security?
In terms of areas for improvement, Zafran Security is doing a really great job as a new and emerging company. Oftenti...
What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?
My use cases for Zafran Security revolve around two primary areas. One is around vulnerability management and priorit...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?
The solution is costly, with high-end capabilities suitable for enterprises. It is less affordable for startups or sm...
What needs improvement with Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?
Regarding areas for improvement, the tool performs its functions well, but frequent name changes across Palo Alto Net...
What is your primary use case for Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?
Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks serves as our primary tool for understanding our assets and performing API integra...
What do you like most about Skybox Security Suite?
Overall, the tool has helped us reduce risks. If any step is missing, it's easier for my team or engineers to identif...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Skybox Security Suite?
From a commercial perspective, AlgoSec is more expensive compared to Skybox Security Suite. Skybox Security Suite is ...
What needs improvement with Skybox Security Suite?
The features that I appreciated the most in Skybox Security Suite were not comparable with Tufin, as Tufin was far ah...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Information Not Available
ADP, Blue Cross Blue Shield, BT, USAID, Delta Dental, EDF Energy, EMC, HSBC, Johnson & Johnson
Find out what your peers are saying about Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs. Skybox Security Suite and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.