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 14.8% 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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408 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...

Read 111 Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks reviews

25,382 Views
9,391 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Flow Security

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2025

Prisma Cloud and Flow Security are competitors in the cybersecurity sector offering cloud security solutions. Prisma Cloud has an advantage in support and integration, while Flow Security is noted for its feature richness and ROI potential.

Features: Prisma Cloud includes integrated security solutions, threat prevention, and extensive integration capabilities. Flow Security offers advanced data protection, risk management, and a focus on data-centric security.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Prisma Cloud provides an easy deployment process and comprehensive customer support. Flow Security has a slightly more complex deployment but compensates with responsive customer service and detailed implementation guidance.

Pricing and ROI: Prisma Cloud generally requires a lower initial cost, appealing to budget-conscious businesses while still offering good ROI. Flow Security may have higher upfront costs but provides long-term value for data-sensitive businesses with its specialized features.

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

Buyer's Guide

Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)

July 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 (7th)

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

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)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) category, the mindshare of Flow Security is 0.3%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is 14.8%, down from 20.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks	14.8%
Flow Security	0.3%
Other	84.9%

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."

"It has improved the overall collaboration between SecOps and DevOps. Now, instead of asking people to do something, it is a default offering in the CI/CD. There is less manual intervention and more seamless integration. It is why we don't have many dependencies across many teams, which is definitely a better state."

"The container and serverless security is most valuable. It is quite a new technology for this region. Even though containers have been there for a long time, the adoption of containers is very minimal in this region. When it comes to using Kubernetes containers in a complex architecture, there is a lack of security in the market. People aren't aware of the security controls or the process for governance. Container security provided by Prisma Cloud is quite good at filling that gap."

"Prisma Cloud helped us with compliance. Most of my deployments have been greenfield, so I don't have a benchmark to compare how the security posture has improved. I've always used this from day zero of the configuration. However, I can say that the compliance checks for PCI, DSS, HIPAA, etc., made my life simpler. I don't need to look at each of these standards and compare the rules I have in place."

"The dynamic workload identity creation, attestation, and assignment is the best feature. In addition, the application dependency map across heterogeneous environments for compliance is a striking feature."

"Prisma Cloud also provides the visibility and control you need, regardless of how complex or distributed your cloud environments become. It helps to simplify that complexity. Now we know what the best practices are, and if something is missing we know."

"The product provides very good network security."

"The most valuable features of Prisma Cloud are its cloud security posture management and cloud workload protection capabilities."

"Visibility is a key feature. Integration with other technologies across the board, whether they are Palo Alto technologies, Windows technologies, or cloud technologies, is probably the biggest thing."

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 Palo Alto support needs to improve."

"A couple of exporting functionalities should be more user-friendly because if I want to export something, I can get a lot of data visible to that particular CSV."

"Sometimes, when you assign subnets to regions, the IP address will jump from one location to another because it will automatically change substantially. Then, we need to add those IP subnets to our firewall for existing access. The need to update those subnets potentially causes maintenance or access issues. So far, we can only provide bigger customers with six subnets, and a small company may not be able to access those services."

"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."

"While Prisma provides a lot of visibility, it also creates a ton of work. Most customers that implement Prisma Cloud have thousands of alerts that are urgent."

"Palo Alto should work on ease-of-use and the user-friendliness to be more competitive with some competing products."

"The integration of the Compute function into the cloud monitoring function—because those are two different tools that are being combined together—could use some more work. It still feels a little bit disjointed."

"I would like Prisma Cloud to improve its mapping feature to increase usability."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"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."

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

"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."

"The licensing cost is a bit high on the compute side."

"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."

"This solution is good for a company with at least 400 people that must be connected remotely. For smaller companies, it can be too expensive."

"I don't know a better way to do it, but their licensing is a little confusing. That's due to the breadth of different types of technologies they are trying to cover. The way you license depends on where you're securing. When they were Twistlock it was a simple licensing scheme and you could tell what you were doing. Now that they've changed that scheme with Palo Alto, it is quite confusing. It's very difficult to predict what your costs are going to be as you try to expand coverage."

"Its price is reasonable as compared to other products. The main challenge is explaining the licensing model to customers. It isn't a problem related to Palo Alto. Commonly, people don't understand cloud licensing or security licensing. When they have fixed virtual machines, they know what they are going to be charged, but when it comes to cloud automation, it is hard for them to get clarity in case of high workloads or when they have enabled auto-scaling, etc. It would be helpful if Palo Alto can educate people on their licensing programs."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

21%

Financial Services Firm

12%

University

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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

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...

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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...

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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.

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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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 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

Information Not Available

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

Buyer's Guide

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July 2025

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