Flow Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks comparison

Flow Security and Palo Alto Networks are both solutions in the Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) category. Flow Security is ranked #11 with an average rating of 9.0, while Palo Alto Networks is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.6. Flow Security holds a 0.3% mindshare in DSPM, compared to Palo Alto Networks’s 15.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Flow Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of Palo Alto Networks users who would recommend it.

Flow Security

Read 1 Flow Security review

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71 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...

Read 110 Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks reviews

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49 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Flow Security

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 25, 2025

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and Flow Security compete in the cloud security market, both aiming to safeguard digital environments. Flow Security stands out with features that customers find compelling and worth the price, despite users being happier with Prisma Cloud's pricing and support.

Features: Prisma Cloud offers comprehensive security with strong threat prevention, compliance assurance, and access management. Flow Security provides robust automated threat detection and real-time incident response. Prisma Cloud is strong in management tools, while Flow Security's integration capabilities are highly valued.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Prisma Cloud deployment is streamlined with extensive support resources, providing a smooth onboarding experience. Flow Security deployment is flexible, catering to diverse infrastructure needs, with customer service focusing on personalized assistance. Prisma Cloud offers more immediate deployment, whereas Flow Security provides adaptability.

Pricing and ROI: Prisma Cloud offers competitive pricing with promising ROI through its extensive feature set and support. Flow Security might have higher setup costs, but customers find the value. Flow Security justifies the expense with innovative features, while Prisma Cloud remains appealing due to cost-effectiveness and reliability.

To learn more, read our detailed Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) Report (Updated: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)

May 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

Flow Security

Ranking in Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)

11th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Database Security (8th)

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...

Ranking in Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

110

Ranking in other categories

Web Application Firewall (WAF) (5th), Container Security (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) category, the mindshare of Flow Security is 0.3%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is 15.9%, down from 21.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)

Featured Reviews

reviewer2231631

Chief Information Security Officer at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

It gives us a risk report that helps us refine our process management by highlighting where we might be exposed

Flow's distinctive capability to analyze both data at rest and data in motion grants us the ability not only to get full visibility and classification of the data within our managed databases but also to visualize the data flows both within and beyond our environment. This enables us to achieve a comprehensive understanding of all our sensitive data, even as it traverses through applications, shadow databases, and external services such as third-party entities and SaaS applications. What we aspire to achieve with Flow is extended visibility into the external services themselves, which will allow us to see the data they contain.

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Before implementing Flow Security, we had no mechanism to alert us when third-party contractors were accessing sensitive data or moving it to locations with lower security. Now we know precisely where the data is stored and can assess the risk when someone wants to develop something. Flow Security lowers our risk of a data breach."

"Prisma was extremely comprehensive. It's easy to drill down to gather more information and keep going. It seemed like you could drill down forever to see what the vulnerability was linked to."

"Prisma scans things and shows all the vulnerabilities and packages that are vulnerable, and which layers, by default, have vulnerabilities. So developers can easily go into the package or a particular layer and make changes to their code. It's very transparent."

"Technical support is quite helpful."

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

"It helps to identify the misconfigurations by monitoring regularly which helps to secure the organization's cloud environment."

"The CVEs are valuable because we used to have a tool to scan CVEs, at the language level, for the dependencies that our developers had. What is good about Prisma Cloud is that the CVEs are not only from the software layer, but from all layers: the language, the base image, and you also have CVEs from the host. It covers the full base of security."

"We have standardized vendor process management, so we want to reduce multiple vendors. Prisma Cloud is part of Palo Alto. We use Palo Alto firewalls and other solutions. Prisma has many features that intelligently cover cloud security. One solution can cover runtime for EC2 systems, containers, and Fargate. We also have EKS/Kubernetes integration. So, whatever the cloud-native solution in Pfizer, we can use one solution to secure that."

"Cloud security posture management is the preferred feature among other vendors."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pros

Cons

"It provides a good overview of our infrastructure, but I need more end-to-end visibility, and SaaS is one of the gaps."

"The challenge that Palo Alto and Prisma have is that, at times, the instructions in an event are a little bit dated and they're not usable. That doesn't apply to all the instructions, but there are times where, for example, the Microsoft or the Amazon side has made some changes and Palo Alto or Prisma was not aware of them. So as we try to remediate an alert in such a case, the instructions absolutely do not work. Then we open up a ticket and they'll reply, "Oh yeah, the API for so-and-so vendor changed and we'll have to work with them on that." That area could be done a little better."

"The training documentation provided for the two-hour boot camps is notoriously poor and disorganized."

"When it comes to compliance, the issue is that when we are exporting the reports, there is only a single compliance option. If I need to report on multiple compliance requirements, that feature isn't available. For example, I made a single report for ISO 27000 but I can't correlate it with GDPR."

"The Palo Alto support needs to improve."

"We are encountering issues with the new permissions required for AWS integration with Prisma."

"The tool's UI is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."

"While the code security feature has undergone recent enhancements, there is room for improvement in terms of its cost module."

"Support is an area that needs improvement."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The pricing structure is easy to understand. Depending on the use case the pricing of the solution can be different. There are not any additional costs to the standard living fees."

"Prisma Cloud is quite scalable. In our current licensing model, we're able to heavily extend our cloud workload and onboard a lot of customers. It really helps, and it is on par with other solutions."

"The pricing and the licensing are both very fair... The biggest advice I would give in terms of costs would be to try to understand what the growth is going to look like. That's really been our biggest struggle, that we don't have an idea of what our future growth is going to be on the platform. We go from X number of licenses to Y number of licenses without a plan on how we're going to get from A to B, and a lot of that comes as a bit of a surprise. It can make budgeting a real challenge for it."

"The Prisma Cloud pricing is good."

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

"One thing we're very pleased about is how the licensing model for Prisma is based on work resources. You buy a certain amount of work resources and then, as they enable new capabilities within Prisma, it just takes those work resource units and applies them to new features. This enables us to test and use the new features without having to go back and ask for and procure a whole new product, which could require going through weeks, and maybe months, of a procurement process."

"The pricing is competitive. From what I have seen in the past, it is on par with the others."

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

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

26%

Financial Services Firm

13%

University

13%

Energy/Utilities Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Educational Organization

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Flow Security?

Before implementing Flow Security, we had no mechanism to alert us when third-party contractors were accessing sensitive data or moving it to locations with lower security. Now we know precisely wh...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Flow Security?

I rate Flow Security six out of 10 for affordability. It's a fixed expense and far from the cheapest solution. We had to delay our purchase because business was bad and our CFO didn't like the idea...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Flow Security?

I would like better visibility into all of our third-party providers. For example, we use one contractor to move data from one place to another. When the data leaves our service, we can see where i...

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

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Database Security

May 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

May 2025

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

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Also Known As

No data available

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

Overview

Flow is a data security platform that combines Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) together with real-time detection and response to data security violations. Flow is not just your cloud security tool with a data scanning utility. It is the only platform that analyzes both data at rest and data in motion. By also following and analyzing all data flows in runtime, the platform enables security teams to regain control over all their data, including shadow data stores and applications across all cloud, on-prem, and SaaS environments.

Flow’s deep analysis of the organization’s data journey from origin to destination allows security teams to automatically catalog all their sensitive data (e.g. PII, PHI, PCI); visualize data flows; detect and remediate data risks; and effectively respond in real-time to data violations by providing the full context: who, what, when, where and why.

Flow Security

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks delivers comprehensive security for cloud environments, focusing on workload protection, identity creation, and seamless AWS integration. Its cloud visibility and control, combined with thorough vulnerability scanning, help maintain robust security across multi-cloud platforms.

Prisma Cloud provides essential capabilities for cloud security posture management, container security, and compliance monitoring. Enterprises utilize it to secure cloud configurations, detect vulnerabilities, and ensure regulatory compliance, spanning AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Its runtime management, identity-based micro-segmentation, and threat detection enhance cybersecurity. Despite needing improvements in documentation, integration complexities, UI, and the need for role-based access control refinement, it remains pivotal for securing assets across cloud infrastructures, particularly with its capabilities for vulnerability scanning and CI/CD pipeline integration.

What are the key features?

Workload Identity Creation: Establishes identities for cloud workloads, enhancing security through precise access management.
Dynamic Workload Protection: Protects applications dynamically, securing resources during runtime.
Integration with AWS Products: Seamlessly integrates with AWS services, maximizing the efficiency of cloud operations.
Automated Forensics: Provides detailed insights through automated investigations and runtime mapping between containers.
Application Dependency Map: Enables compliance and asset management through comprehensive inventory functionality.

What benefits or ROI should users expect?

Proactive Threat Prevention: Enhances security measures with advanced threat detection and prevention.
Cloud Visibility and Control: Offers control across multi-cloud environments, ensuring users maintain a strong security posture.
Prevention Capabilities: Users value its ability to prevent vulnerabilities and threats effectively.
Integration Capabilities: Supports seamless integration into existing cloud infrastructures and CI/CD pipelines.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and retail, Prisma Cloud is implemented to strengthen cybersecurity measures, facilitate regulatory compliance, and enhance governance. Organizations leverage its features to secure sensitive data, monitor configurations, and integrate security processes within CI/CD workflows, ensuring robust protection across complex cloud infrastructures.

Palo Alto Networks

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

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

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May 2025

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