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Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks pros and cons

Vendor: Palo Alto Networks

4.2 out of 5

63 reviews
92% willing to recommend

1,345 followers

Pros & Cons summary

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks provides robust monitoring and zero-trust architecture for secure cloud usage and comprehensive network oversight. Despite its powerful end-to-end traffic analysis and threat prevention, integration with third-party solutions is limited, and users report challenges like high pricing and slow support. Frequent software bugs, documentation gaps, and compatibility issues hinder deployment in multi-vendor environments, causing frustration for technical buyers seeking efficient solutions.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks offers comprehensive security features such as URL filtering, application control, SSL, DLP, and more, providing complete security for cloud environments.

The scalability is excellent, with auto-scaling capabilities that adapt to varying user traffic demands, ensuring efficient performance.

GlobalProtect within Prisma Access delivers robust cloud security, supporting enterprises in hybrid environments and remote work situations, addressing latency issues effectively.

By utilizing features like ZTNA 2.0, CASB, Threat Prevention, and Autonomous Digital Experience Management, Prisma Access offers state-of-the-art security operations and user access capabilities.

Integration with tools like Slack and PagerDuty ensures immediate alerts for breaches, enhancing vigilance and proactive risk management.

CONS

Poor visibility and troubleshooting restrictions hinder users, necessitating technical support from Palo Alto.

Issues with integration and compatibility with other solutions, particularly in healthcare and third-party systems, pose challenges.

A cumbersome update process lacks sufficient communication, impacting production environments.

Pricing and licensing models are not competitive enough, with calls for more flexible options and reduced cost.

Documentation and support need improvement, particularly in offering guides and effective responses for Prisma Access issues.

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks Pros review quotes

Global Network Tech Lead at Thoughtworks

Dec 7, 2021

It protects all app traffic so that users can gain access to all apps. Unlike other solutions that only work from ports 80 and 443, which are predominantly for web traffic, Prisma Access covers all protocols and works on all traffic patterns... The most sophisticated attacks can arise from sources that are not behind 80/443.

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TJ

Principal Security Architect at Deloitte

Dec 5, 2021

It is geographically dispersed, and it sits on top of Google and AWS platforms. Therefore, you don't face the standard issues, such as latency or bandwidth issues, that you usually face in the case of on-prem data centers.

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Nikolay Dimitrov

Cyber Security Engineer at Paysafe / IBM

Nov 6, 2022

It supports auto-scaling for mobile users. It auto-scales depending on the mobile user traffic. For example, if 1,000 people are working from home today, and tomorrow, the number increases to 2,000, it is not going to be an issue.

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Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks

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Senior Service Delivery Engineer at Netdata Innovation Center

Jun 6, 2022

You have the ability to create your own expressions for your data. Palo Alto understands that DLP is not the same for all consumers. You might have a particular need to fulfill, and they give you the opportunity to create a custom expression to match the specific format that you have. For a confidential file property that you have in your files, you can add a metadata field. It gives you that opportunity to create that.

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MI

Associate Director at Cognizant

Sep 24, 2021

Security is absolutely spot-on, really top-notch. It's the result of all the components that come together, such as the HIP [Host Information Profile] and components like Forcepoint, providing end-user content inspection, and antivirus. It incorporates DLP features and that's fantastic because Prisma Access makes sure that all of the essential prerequisites are in place before a user can log in or can be tunneled into.

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TT

Senior Network / ITOps Engineer at a leisure / travel company with 201-500 employees

Aug 17, 2021

It's much faster and more secure than legacy solutions. It is also quite stable and scalable as well. We are able to see all the traffic in one place.

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MY

Senior Network Consultant at FIS

Jan 11, 2022

Being able to use the user ID or Active Directory Group is one of the great features for control and providing more flexibility without worrying about IP addresses.

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reviewer1702776

Senior Security Engineer at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 31, 2021

Prisma's most valuable feature would be its ability to identify bad or risky configurations.

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TA

Network Administrator Specialist at a government with 501-1,000 employees

Nov 30, 2021

I like it because it's very easy to use. You install the client and you have to know your gateway, but that's something we give to our users. Beyond that, it takes about three seconds to train them on how to use it. And it just works well. That's great for us because it means less administrative time.

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Senior Network Security Lead at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Mar 29, 2021

The scalability of the solution is excellent.

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Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks Cons review quotes

Global Network Tech Lead at Thoughtworks

Dec 7, 2021

While Palo Alto has understood the essence of building capabilities around cloud technology and have come up with a CASB offering, that is a very new product. There are other companies that have better offerings for understanding cloud applications and have more graceful controls. That's something that Palo Alto needs to work on.

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TJ

Principal Security Architect at Deloitte

Dec 5, 2021

It is a managed firewall. When you run into issues and have to troubleshoot, there is a fair amount of restriction. You run into a couple of restrictions where you don't have any visibility on what is happening on the Palo Alto managed infrastructure, and you need to get on a call to get technical assistance from Palo Alto's technical support. You have to get them to work with you to fix the problem. I would definitely like them to work on the visibility into what happens inside Palo Alto's infrastructure. It is not about getting our hands onto their infrastructure to do troubleshooting or fixing problems; it is just about getting more visibility. This will help us in guiding technical support folks to the area where they need to work.

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Nikolay Dimitrov

Cyber Security Engineer at Paysafe / IBM

Nov 6, 2022

Palo Alto needs to improve the GlobalProtect agent to work as a secure web gateway agent, not only as a VPN agent because some companies would want only a secure gateway. They wouldn't want a full VPN. So, Palo Alto has to make the VPN agent work as a secure web gateway agent for those customers who want only the secure web gateway solution.

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Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks

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Learn what your peers think about Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2025.

849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Senior Service Delivery Engineer at Netdata Innovation Center

Jun 6, 2022

They can add some new characteristics. For example, when an incident triggers, they can automatically send a template for a particular match that is related to the policy. We don't have that right now. It is something to improve. There could be more automation for certain actions. For example, for a particular group, it can send an administrator alert to their manager. It was one of the concerns of our customers.

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MI

Associate Director at Cognizant

Sep 24, 2021

It's not really Prisma's fault, but when you try to create exceptions you don't really have those abilities. You cannot say, on the management platform, "Hey, for these users I want to create these exceptions." That is one thing that I have gotten some complaints about, and we have faced some challenges there.

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TT

Senior Network / ITOps Engineer at a leisure / travel company with 201-500 employees

Aug 17, 2021

It would be nice to manage Prisma Access through the cloud instead of through Panorama. You can use the cloud version to monitor Prisma Access, but it doesn't have all the features yet, and it's not 100% done.

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MY

Senior Network Consultant at FIS

Jan 11, 2022

When we deploy firewall rules via Panorama, we find it's a little bit slow. We have a global environment and might have 100 gateways or VPNs in the cloud. When we deploy something, it tries to deploy it one-by-one, and that can be slow.

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reviewer1702776

Senior Security Engineer at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 31, 2021

Prisma would be a stronger solution if it could aggregate resources by project or by application. So say we have an application we've developed in AWS and five applications we've developed in Azure. The platform will group it according to those applications, but it's based on the tags we use in Azure, which means I have to rely on development teams to tag resources properly.

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TA

Network Administrator Specialist at a government with 501-1,000 employees

Nov 30, 2021

The one thing that I've been a little bit disappointed with is when we have had to open cases with Palo Alto about Prisma Access issues. Versus their other platforms, like their firewalls, where we tend to get really quick responses and very definitive answers, the few tickets I've had to open for Prisma Access have taken them longer to respond to. And they haven't necessarily given me the kind of answer I was looking for, meaning a fix to the problem.

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Senior Network Security Lead at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Mar 29, 2021

There is some particular traffic that the security team wants to filter out and apply their own policies and they cannot.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 62)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)

Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)

Enterprise Infrastructure VPN

ZTNA as a Service

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)

Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)

Enterprise Infrastructure VPN

ZTNA as a Service

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Cisco Umbrella vs Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks

Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform vs Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks

Lookout vs Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks

Cloudflare One vs Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks

iboss vs Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks

Netskope vs Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks

Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks

Check Point Harmony SASE (formerly Perimeter 81) vs Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks

VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN vs Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks

FortiSASE vs Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks

Skyhigh Security vs Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks

Appgate SDP vs Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks

Prisma SD-WAN vs Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks

Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform vs Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks

Axis Security vs Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks

See all alternatives

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