Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks Reviews

We use it for remote access VPN. When our users are working remotely, from home, they can use it to connect to our IT environment.

An important aspect is that Prisma Access provides all its capabilities in a single cloud-delivered platform. It would be very inconvenient for us if we had to go to multiple places. It gives us centralized operations, and centralized configuration and management that enable us to be more efficient. We don't have to reference or go to multiple places or systems to maintain things and operate.

It has also improved our remote access. We deployed it to replace an older remote-access VPN that we had been using. That is where the usefulness of the product is for us. It provides security and allows our remote users to connect to our environments.

Remote access is the most valuable feature, giving remote users secure access to our IT environment. That is the specific feature that we are using it for. Prisma Access provides secure access to the environment, including apps, and some non-apps systems, such as system administration. This ability is very important, almost a mandatory requirement for some of our systems.

It not only protects web-based apps, but non-web-based apps as well. Again, that's important, because for this kind of access, the traffic has to be protected and secure. The fact that it secures not just web-based apps but non-web apps indirectly reduces the risk of a data breach. If all the traffic can be seen it should help keep things from getting into the hands of hackers, helping prevent data from being compromised and preventing access to systems as well. We don't want our systems to be compromised, as they are critical to our services and to our customers.

The solution also provides traffic analysis, threat prevention, URL filtering, and segmentation. That combination is important because it enhances the protection and makes the traffic more secure. It also keeps things more up-to-date, enabling us to deal with more of the current threats.

In addition, Prisma Access provides security updates for threat prevention. Those updates are important in general, of course, for security reasons. The more up-to-date you are, the better you are protected.

It's not very easy to use. Sometimes it's buggy and there are problems when doing updates. The user interface is okay, but some configuration items are difficult. I would like it to be less buggy and easier to configure, to better streamline the user experience.

I have been using Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks for a little more than one and half years.

The stability is pretty good. There are certain portions that are not very stable, but the core is pretty good.

I think the scalability is pretty good too, although we are a small company so I don't know how big we can scale, but for us, it's pretty good.

We have about a dozen users on it and most of them are technical staff, such as engineers and software engineers. Outside of the IT personnel, even finance people use it because they need access to the systems and applications. We are using it for one part of our environment, but we plan to expand it from 1,000 users to about 5,000 users.

The technical support is pretty good, as is the post-sales support. They are both very good and very attentive. Although the software is buggy, and sometimes it's hard to fix, they do provide the appropriate support levels to help us through.

Positive

We have used Cisco VPN, and I have used Juniper and Meraki. We switched because we are standardized on Palo Alto firewalls, so we wanted to use the same vendor for more interoperability.

The initial setup of the solution was complex. The configuration is not easy to understand and requires a lot of expertise from the Palo Alto side. The terms that they use in the product require quite a bit of explanation and clarification.

We used a phased approach. The first deployment we did, as a milestone, took us at least six months. For the deployment, we needed at least two to three engineers: someone from security, someone from networking, and someone from the end-user side. All parties had to be involved.

We used a contractor to help us.

The return on investment is that it allows our remote users to access our environment.

The licensing model for this product is complicated and changes all the time, making it very hard for the user to comprehend the configuration.

My advice would be to directly test it before you purchase it to see if the user experience and the complexity of the networking component are things you are able to handle.

The biggest lesson we learned from using the solution is not specific to the solution: We needed to do more proper planning in the beginning. Because the process is complicated, without good planning, it becomes more difficult during the process. The configuration involves many templates. Without planning ahead, they are created in a messy and disorganized way, and that causes further problems when we need to grow and do more setups. Now, we have to go back and correct those messy configurations, and that is something we are still doing.

Overall, the security provided by Prisma Access is very good. It provides the authentication, protection, and encryption that we are looking for for our remote users.

We are basically using it for cloud governance. We have AWS as our public cloud service, and we have multiple cloud accounts that we manage. We're using Prisma SaaS for the cloud governance of these accounts. 

It has been very useful so far. We are a part of a small team, and we have almost 20 accounts. Therefore, it is difficult for us to log in to each account and look at cloud trail and other things. It is not possible to log in manually and check each of the vulnerabilities. Prisma has helped us a lot. It shows the alerts in real-time, and we are pretty happy with the service it offers. We now know how to categorize alerts, which ones need immediate attention, and on which ones can we act a bit later.

It has predefined or preconfigured rules, which are getting periodically updated. They are providing continuous improvements and periodically updating all search queries that they are looking for. That is one thing that helps us to stay vigilant and focused. If we query our AWS account for any breaches or vulnerabilities with any of the cloud tests, and it alerts us based on these predefined rules. It also provides an option to configure our own rules, and based on these rules, it can query the cloud trail logs, pull the information, and trigger alerts in real-time. I haven't explored this feature much because there are multiple accounts, and we don't have enough time to explore this feature. 

It also provides multiple integrations. When vulnerabilities or breaches are happening, you should be aware of them immediately. It provides integration with tools such as Slack, PagerDuty so that you can get alerted as soon as the high severity stuff comes up. For example, you have a security group that has allowed public traffic on port 22. As TechOps, you should be aware of this immediately. You cannot scan each machine or look into all security groups to identify it. So, Prisma helps us and alerts us when this kind of high-priority stuff comes up. 

It has different statistics, analytics, and graphs for data. The description of alerts is also pretty good. They describe what are the possible causes for this and what are the solutions. From Prisma Cloud, you can directly go to the AWS account. When you click on an alert, a resource, or a resource ID, it takes you to the AWS console where you need to log in. If you are already logged in, it will take you to that instance directly, and you can fix the issue there. I have found this feature very useful.

We are using the SaaS offering. We use our applications for microservices. We use Twistlock to scan containers, and it displays these results in Prisma, which is a good feature because we can see vulnerabilities with respect to these containers. We can see everything in a very detailed manner. However, when you have different environments for a single application, such as DEV, QA, PROD, and TEST, all these environments run multiple containers, which can lead to a very high number of containers. In such a scenario, it shows you the alerts for all those containers that have vulnerabilities. If you show the results of all the containers that share the same image, it is not going to add any value. Therefore, they should narrow down the alerts based on a container. It should show information for a single container. Otherwise, the person who is looking at the results gets the impression that he has to fix all these issues. This is something that they can improve.

I have been using this solution for two years.

Its stability has been great. 

I have used different tools previously. I have used Evident. Prisma is much better than Evident in terms of the information it provides for alerts. In Evident, they provide a little bit of information about the triggered alert, whereas Prisma provides in-depth details.

It is pretty straightforward. It is a two-step procedure. You need to create the roles and mention the role in the Prisma config. You have to create a role in the corresponding AWS account or Azure account and give that role information while configuring Prisma. So, you need to provide the account ID number, the role that you have created, and a short description of the account that you're using. You also need to enable a couple of other things, such as VPC flow logs and cloud trail for Prisma. If these are not configured, Prisma will still get configured, but it will alert you that you have not configured the flow logs, cloud trail, and all other events. After that, Prisma will immediately start scanning the account. 

It also has a provision for grouping your accounts into a particular group. If you have a project that has multiple accounts, you can group them together as a central group. If all those accounts are managed by a single team, you can enable alert notifications for that single team instead of each account. Everything is pretty good in terms of management activities.

Deployment hardly takes five to ten minutes. It is a SaaS offering. It is a managed service by Palo Alto. You don't have to configure anything at your site for Prisma. You don't have to create any sort of instances or deploy it. You just need to onboard the accounts.

It doesn't require any maintenance. It is managed by our corporate IT team. They have onboarded all the AWS accounts with respect to my organization. These AWS accounts belong to multiple groups of people. 

My department has around 30 people who use this solution as DevOps, and we have the access to the portal. We have enabled read-only access for certain groups so that they can go and look into the alerts and do the necessary things. We have created multiple read-only groups, and we have assigned a set of users to each read-only group.

It has definitely provided an ROI.

We looked into multiple options, and we chose Prisma considering the price and the features it offered.

We started off with AWS three years ago. As the number of accounts grew, we felt the need to use some sort of cloud governance tool because it is not possible for us to log in to each account and look for issues that may impact the organization. That's why we started to use Prisma. We are using multiple solutions from Palo Alto. We use Twistlock for container scanning and things like that.

I have positive feedback about this product. We are happy with this product and the features it offers for the price. 

I would rate Prisma SaaS an eight out of ten.

We are a solution provider and we work with our customers to provide them with cloud-based solutions. One of the categories we provide is in the security-related space, and Prisma SaaS is one that we are promoting.

One of the primary use cases is to create a more secure tunnel between home and office, allowing people to more securely work remotely from home.

We use the central monitoring tool from Palo Alto, which gives us good visibility on our network.

The performance is good.

The price can be reduced to make it more competitive.

We have been working with Prisma SaaS for the last six months.

Stability-wise, we have not had any problems.

We have had no issues with scalability.

We work with a variety of security vendors including Check Point and Fortinet. For cloud-based solutions, we work with Barracuda.

The suitability of a particular product or vendor will depend on the client's requirements, situation, and budget.

Compared to other products, the price is slightly high. In fact, sometimes there is a large pricing gap.

This is the best product that I have looked at, out of all of the competitors. We are still testing it, but from what I have seen, it is really good compared to the others.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

This is a CASB product that we use to protect data that is in the cloud. We work with our client to protect them from unknown threats, as well as known threats such as the inadvertent sharing of files. An example of this is the uploading of a file by an admin that contains sensitive data that was not intended to be shared with anyone who is external to the organization, such as a Gmail address. This solution offers protection from these kinds of problems.

From my client's perspective, I can say that they had no control over their cloud data that they needed to protect. They had solutions that can handle their on-premise DLP, such as determining whether a particular service is malware-free. When it was on the cloud, such as Google Cloud, Google Drive, ServiceNow, or others, they were not sure how to protect it. With this solution, they are able to protect themselves, and also with data at rest. It has helped to protect against the propagation of malware from the cloud to the premises.

There are two features that I find very good. This solution provides a DLP on the cloud and very few people have a scanning device for data at rest. The second feature that I really like about this solution is the notifications that it provides. It provides me with timely notifications so that I can consider things such as whether actions are trusted or untrusted and I can quarantine the data on the fly.

There are a lot of cloud-based applications that are supported, such as Box, Skype, Google Drive, and SharePoint, but there are many more than have not been totally integrated. They cannot use in-house apps because they are not generic services. I would like to see support for custom applications. 

There are also certain storage services that are not integrated, like AWS S3. If the services are created by the customer then it would be very nice to have those protected too.

Right now, this is a data at rest CASB, but it would be nice if it included features such as forward proxy or reverse proxy. It would be able to provide the OTP to those gateways and anyone who can integrate with Aperture can send the data to have it authenticated, via Aperture to the cloud, rather than just scanned. Essentially, if it can be made to act as an auth server, to automatically handle the forward proxy CASB, it would be good.

Six months.

It seems to be a pretty stable product. It has been six months and we haven't seen many problems yet.

Given that it is in the cloud, I don't think that there is an issue with the scalability. You can just add agents or perform more integration very easily and it will work. Unless the price model changes because it is already a bit pricey from the perspective of the end-user, it is not a problem.

The scalability is based on devices rather than users, but I can say that there are perhaps six cloud accounts with around ten or fifteen apps that they are trying to protect.

The technical support is very friendly. They are aware of the solution and they can definitely help you if you are stuck with a problem.

Our customer was not aware of how to protect their cloud data, and this is the first solution that they chose.

The initial setup is simple. You just need to log into the Aperture cloud with your user ID and password, apply the license and you are done. After this, you just need to know how to integrate, but they already have documentation that can help you out.

The time required for deployment depends on how complex you are making the environment. If it's a very simple one, such as a Box or a Google Drive, then it will take around a day or two, maximum a week.

I would say that a complex environment may take between three and four weeks. It depends on the use case. If you want to do a POC setup on VPC or Google Drive then it may take less time. On the other hand, if you are integrating more services then it will take longer because you have to learn the product from scratch. There are no similar services.

Once this solution is configured, there is very little that you have to do unless the customer requests something new. If you integrate it with WildFire and AutoFocus, it will automatically get the latest volume or latest signatures, and it will notify you whenever that happens. If somebody is properly trained then one person can handle the maintenance.

We deployed this solution for our customer. We also used agents, provided with Aperture, on the local devices so that they could be easily connected to the cloud.

The pricing for this solution is on the higher end. Our customer felt that the solution was a bit overpriced but they had nothing that offered them better protection.

The licensing fees are on a yearly basis, and there are no additional costs.

There are now more vendors doing this, such as Oracle, but when we started there were very few. This is one of the reasons for choosing this solution.

This is a fairly good product if you are looking for something to protect data at rest. There are alternatives, like Oracle and McAfee, that also provide similar solutions, but you should do a POC with them first. In fact, you should always start with a POC because everyone has different needs. 

If you take the training that is available then you will be able to handle the maintenance yourself. There can be challenges when there are compliance issues, like somebody putting a file into quarantine. It will have to be taken out manually, and if the user is untrained then they will require technical help for this.

I would rate this solution eight and a half out of ten.

My clients used Prisma Access essentially for security in the cloud. We integrated their SD-WAN into Prisma Access.

Palo Alto Firewall is one of the best firewalls in the world. It's very clear about the policies and all the security features they have. Also, the user integration works very well in Palo Alto. The WiFi, anti-threat, web filtering features and IT/OT separation are also good.

Though the monitoring is fine, the solution should improve its application graphs and interface monitoring. Additionally, the pricing could be improved.

I worked as a consultant on Prisma Access for one year for one integration project.

The product is very stable.

The product is scalable. Our clients are medium-sized businesses. There are 1,500 users worldwide.

The support is good. I rate the support an eight or nine out of ten.

Positive

The solution is not easy to implement. The first setup is a bit more difficult, but it gets better. The solution is easy to maintain.

A global partner did the setup.

I'm still comparing, but the solution is quite expensive.

I recommend people try the product out because it's really good. I rate Prisma Access an eight out of ten.

We are a system integrator and Prisma Access is one of the security products that we implement for our clients. We handle all products, from high-level to low-level, and we propose an end-to-end solution for each customer. I am a pre-sales architect and engineer.

Prisma Access is the name of the GlobalProtect Cloud Service.

Normally, it is sold to users who want to use a VPN agent.

The most valuable feature is the ability to join your network and provide access through the VPN.

It is integrated with the MDM solution but it is not a VPN, so this is something that can be improved. Better integration with the MDM solution would be useful.

We don't hear from customers for a long time when they have this solution, so I think that it is stable.

Scaling is easy because it is just a license that you extend.

Our clients for this solution are typically small to medium-sized companies.

We work with similar solutions from a number of vendors including Fortinet, F5, Trend Micro, and others.

We have an in-house team that is responsible for implementing products for our clients.

We also perform the required maintenance, as well as technical support.

This is not an expensive product and everything is included with one license. We normally sell GlobalProtect bundled with a firewall if the customer wants an endpoint solution.

We have to pitch it to smaller customers. When it comes to medium-sized organizations, they are almost dedicated to a VPN solution. This is a good solution and I can recommend it, although it would be improved with better MDM integration.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We use this solution to secure the network. We block unwanted traffic.

We had a government project. When I was there, they asked to open some kind of port. We just had to initiate that traffic. Then we checked what kind of ports were blocked. We gave them the ports and after that they asked to open the port for the traffic application. We did the work accordingly.

Monitoring is the most valuable feature because we can easily monitor all kinds of stuff coming over the network. We can check the dashboard and work accordingly.

Overall it is actually very good. I haven't yet had any issue at all. One thing that would help is if we could get a guide. With Cisco, for example, you can just type the problem regarding your Cisco product and you will easily get your solution. In Palo Alto, however, it's not easy to find the solutions.

Stability is good. 

Currently, our network security team is taking charge of the firewall but behind that, the users have to go through the firewall. Initially, we had three or four firewalls, so two or three engineers were enough for the deployment and maintenance. 

The initial setup was a bit complex. It took two or three months and we are still continually working on it.

The solution is actually very expensive. I don't know the particulars since the purchasing team dealt with it.

We just checked which firewall was top rated. We selected two such firewalls. One was Check Point and the other was Palo Alto. Both of them are comparatively good.

Ultimately, Palo Alto is a very advanced firewall. The firewall uses activation awareness. This firewall can easily identify what applications are running behind the network. This is a good solution to use.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for firewall technologies.

The interface is very good and the feature set is very good. The investigation options, for example, in the data are very useful.

The dependencies of applications sometimes are a bit confusing. All the dependencies you have between applications can be confusing when you fill in things. It's mostly the configuration with the different applications. Extra guidance in using applications and things like that might be helpful.

In terms of features, at the moment, the features we use are all in there. But we don't even use the full feature set at the moment. So I don't really have any need for anything else. For now, there's not really anything missing.

We've had no issue over the whole lifespan with any failures so we didn't have any problem with that. In terms of the scalability, supposedly the model you choose the scale goes up at the beginning. You can buy a firewall device and scalability is dependant on the model.

We used an integrator so we don't need to contact their technical support directly. 

The initial setup is very straightforward. With the standard deployment, I think it took a few days.

We used an integrator for the initial setup. They were very good.

I think that the Palo Alto solution is very good. The licensing in comparison to other competitors is not really an issue. The price is not low but you can't compare with all the premium firewalls in its range. The licensing cost is about 18,000 euros. 

I would recommend the solution. The solution really depends on your budget, of course. If you have a really low budget it's not a low budget solution, so it can really depend on the budget you have. But if you have a budget for enterprise or best of firewalls I think you should take this solution into consideration.

I would rate this solution at 8.5 or 9 out of 10. No product, of course, is totally perfect and a ten is something that I don't think that exists. I think maybe it needs a bit more ease of how applications and dependencies run. Because sometimes you push a firewall rule and you get lots of dependencies so that could be a more manageable thing. Extra guidance in using applications and things like that would be helpful.