Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Varonis Platform comparison

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs. Varonis Platform

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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

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...

Ranking in Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

110

Ranking in other categories

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

Varonis Platform

Ranking in Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)

8th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (9th), Data Governance (6th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (5th), Compliance Management (8th), Ransomware Protection (8th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) category, the mindshare of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is 16.9%, down from 21.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Varonis Platform is 8.0%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)

Featured Reviews

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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Frederic Delos

Senior Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Offers the ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data

The most effective feature for me is its ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data, provided you have access, to determine whether it's a false positive or a true positive. That's the best thing for me, out of all of it. It's got everything, like other ones, but I like to be able to look at something if I'm doing forensics on the alert and say, "Okay, do I really need to do something with this?" For example, we don't want sensitive data in our OneDrive. So it identifies the sensitive data that's possibly in the OneDrive. And what I can do is look at it and identify whether it's actually sensitive data in Datalert or whether it looks like sensitive data, but I know it's a false positive. If it is a false positive, I can basically say ignore this pattern based on X, Y, and Z, you know, whether it's Redjax or keyword proximity. So I like that. With other tools, I gotta go through a whole process because it's a little bit more complex. Here, I can tag it and bag it in one shot. And the next good time I scan, it slips over it. So it helps in that.

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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

"The client wasn't using all of the features, but the one that stood out was infrastructure-as-code (IaC). I built IaC use cases and was trying to get them to use it. I also liked cloud workload protection. I worked with the vulnerability management team to develop a process. It's a manual process, so it can be challenging to remediate many image or container issues. It was nice that we could build out a reporting process and download the reports. The reports are solid."

"The initial setup is seamless."

"It provides good visibility and control regardless of the complexity."

"Prisma Cloud is quite simple to use. The web GUI is powerful. Prisma Cloud scans the overall architecture of the AWS network to identify open ports and other vulnerabilities, then highlights them."

"With the query language, we can analyze logs and find out which IPs are malicious. It also provides a graphical representation. It provides the overall visibility and how the traffic is flowing. We can see where the malicious IP is and whether it is an insider threat or an outsider threat."

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

"The most valuable feature is the option to add custom queries using the RQL language that they supply so that we can customize the compliance frameworks to what we need to look for."

"We haven't had an issue with the product for over a year."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pros

"The telemetry to capture everything and the reports are very easy to configure without having a developer degree."

"The analytics would have to be our most valuable feature."

"There's also a 90-day policy where if a user is not using the warehouse, it will automatically delete that username."

"On the Varonis side, technical support is phenomenal. Their ability to explain is very good, and they seem to be very knowledgeable. When I get an alert that doesn't quite make sense, they dive in there and kind of take me through it. That's very useful and very good. There are some false alerts, but it is better to have a false alert than no alert at all."

"Varonis Platform is transparent and captures everything in the environment without impacting the performance. The tool helps us unify data feeds into a single reporting system."

"Technical support from Varonis is rated as nine out of ten."

"The solution's classification engine is highly configurable and efficient."

"The most important feature is remediation. In remediation support, there is no group permission. We'll go ahead and remediate the access from the Dell folder to the parent folder."

More Varonis Platform pros

Cons

"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."

"Though Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks provides excellent security, is a pioneer in this space, and knows what it's doing, from a user perspective, it would have been better if it was a little easier to use."

"For some custom policies, we need more features."

"These tools have a set of signatures or rules that will alert you whenever something meets the criteria. In the future, they might include some machine learning or AI feature that allows you to ask questions about the context of the alert, and it will provide you answers based on the data that they have. Most vendors are doing it, and I believe they will do it in the future. The reporting bar could also use AI to add context based on the environment."

"We had some teething issues with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, but overall, it did what we expected."

"When it comes to protecting the full cloud-native stack, it has the right breadth. They're covering all the topics I would care about, like container, cloud configuration, and serverless. There's one gap. There could be a better set of features around identity management—native AWS—IAM roles, and service account management. The depth in each of those areas varies a little bit. While they may have the breadth, I think there's still work to do in flushing out each of those feature sets."

"The UX part of Prisma's user interface could be simplified and the metrics tool should be highlighted more."

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

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks cons

"The solution's interface is a little complicated with regard to setting up filters and reports."

"The product is very complicated."

"The solution's areas of improvement are the interface and the dependency on on-premises deployment for some components."

"The GUI should be more functional. There should be a process for connecting through Chrome, Internet Explorer, etc."

"I would like it to have cloud integration."

"There is one thing that if I add something manually, I get so many alerts. That's the biggest bad thing."

"Varonis requires more access permissions for its core functions compared to competitors, which can be a concern for companies about data safety."

"One area for improvement is the calculation engine. When applying rules in Varonis, especially for large datasets (terabytes of data), the calculations can be slow and require time to process. Speeding up this process would be beneficial."

More Varonis Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Prisma Cloud is remarkably expensive."

"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."

"Prisma Cloud licensing works on credits."

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

"Prisma Cloud's licensing system functions as expected with a solid licensing infrastructure."

"The cost depends on the pricing model. Compared to other solutions, the cost isn't that bad."

"The price for Prisma Cloud is reasonable."

"We are encountering some resistance in the African market regarding the cost of Prisma Cloud."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pricing and cost advice

"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."

"You could do a subscription, where you pay yearly, or you could purchase it outright. The licensing cost is based on the number of users on the system that you are monitoring."

"Licensing is on an annual basis. Maintenance and renewal fees are separate. Varonis Datalert is quite expensive."

"Varonis Platform wasn't certainly the cheapest solution."

"It's expensive, kind of, really expensive."

"The pricing is good. It neither expensive nor cheap. It is average."

"The platform is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."

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850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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 ...

What do you like most about Varonis Platform?

The solution has significantly improved data security and compliance posture by allowing us to track and monitor activities. We can see who accesses data and when files are created and understand w...

What needs improvement with Varonis Platform?

Varonis started as an on-premises solution and is transitioning to cloud. It hasn't fully moved yet, which is an area for improvement. Varonis requires more access permissions for its core function...

What is your primary use case for Varonis Platform?

The primary use case for Varonis Platform is data discovery, specifically for discovering sensitive data in our organization to protect it. We are looking for a solution that can scan our repositor...

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Product Reports

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

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Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

Varonis Platform

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Also Known As

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

No data available

Overview

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

Varonis Platform specializes in network security and data monitoring with modules for alerting, data classification, and access management, benefiting environments like Microsoft 365.

Varonis is designed to secure data by auditing and tracking data movement. It leverages data alert and classification modules to identify and manage sensitive information. The platform enhances network security by alerting users to unexpected data modifications and deletions, crucial for effective data loss prevention. It supports unstructured data management, ensuring proper data access and permission controls. Known for its 24/7 support, Varonis offers comprehensive analytics and unified reporting, helping prevent data overexposure and facilitating compliance efforts.

What are the key features of Varonis Platform?

24/7 Support: Provides round-the-clock assistance.
Data Monitoring: Tracks data activities efficiently.
Unified Reporting: Consolidates data access reports.
Data Classification: Identifies sensitive data effectively.
Permission Management: Simplifies managing access rights.
Behavior Analytics: Detects abnormal behavior patterns.

What benefits should be highlighted in user reviews?

Enhanced Security: Improves data protection measures.
Compliance Support: Assists in meeting compliance standards.
Data Transparency: Offers clarity in data access activities.
Access Control: Ensures proper access to data.
Centralized Remediation: Eases remediation procedures.

Varonis Platform is widely utilized in industries needing stringent data confidentiality and management, such as finance and healthcare, for tracking data modifications and unauthorized access. Enterprises deploy it to manage permissions within large datasets, benefiting Microsoft 365 environments. While Varonis requires enhancements in cloud integration, the current deployment is often based on-premises, with attention to addressing the security needs and effective data handling for critical infrastructure.

Varonis

Sample Customers

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

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Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs. Varonis Platform