Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Reviews

We use Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks for our cloud security posture management.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks has multiple aspects that help protect the full cloud-native stack. We are not concerned with just one cloud at the enterprise level; we are focused on the multiple cloud environments we have. The solution provides us with a comprehensive dashboard and a comprehensive view of our cloud security posture. Furthermore, the solution not only covers the security posture but also informs us of our compliance with leading industry standards.

The solution does have security automation capabilities, but we do not use much of it in this case. We use automation for the alerts; if there are any misconfigurations, the alerts are automated. However, we do not mitigate any specific items using automation, as that is something we have not configured. We prefer to first look at the problem manually, and then take action against it.

There is no single comprehensive cloud security solution. We will need to use multiple tools, such as those offered by Palo Alto Networks and Check Point. Every security firm has a range of products, so if we consider all of them, we can have anti-virus, anti-malware, vulnerability assessment solutions, EDP software, and cloud security posture management. We need to evaluate each tool, and Prisma and Check Point both offer good solutions, including next-generation firewalls.

The solution provides the visibility and control we need, regardless of how complex or distributed our cloud environment becomes.

The solution can enable us to incorporate security into our CI/CD pipeline and add checkpoints to existing DevOps processes. From an automation standpoint, we enabled certain monitoring features. However, the remediation steps are still manual. This can be integrated into our DevOps pipeline, though some of the features are not being used as we prefer to keep it manual.

The solution provides us with a single tool to protect all of our cloud resources and applications, without having to manage and reconcile disparate security and compliance reports.

The solution reduced runtime alerts. We don't need to receive all the runtime alerts every time, as they will overwhelm us with messages. People often neglect this. Depending on the situation, generally, only very important alerts should be sent. I prefer that the solution be configured for when there is a major business impact. For minor alerts and notifications, we can still check the dashboard. Generally, we monitor the dashboards at certain times. We don't need to be alerted for everything, as this will defeat the purpose of this mechanism.

The solution significantly improved the time taken to investigate alerts by 40 percent with the alert monitoring and all its mechanisms, we receive our critical alerts quickly via email. We can even configure the remediation, although we have not done so yet. 

I appreciate the multi-cloud support that this solution provides; I can use it with AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. I find the ability to configure alerts and monitor misconfigurations in the cloud to be particularly useful, and we take advantage of this feature as well.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is an impressive solution. The solution continuously assesses our security posture, making it the ideal preventive measure. If any misconfigurations occur, I am immediately notified of any unnecessary ports that are open in my cloud. This alerting system allows me to take the necessary steps to secure it before any attack can occur, making it the best preventive measure for our cloud.

I now extensively use cloud security posture management. There needs to be a mechanism that allows me to manually configure compliance more easily. Currently, it requires programming knowledge, so if someone without hardware programming knowledge could customize certain features to their requirements, it would be very helpful.

I have been using the solution for five months.

The solution is stable because it is a SaaS offering.

Nowadays, all cloud solutions are scalable; scalability should be a given feature and does not need to be asked for.

A maximum of ten people have administrative-level access, which will be used by 50 to 60 Security Operations Center personnel. This personnel must log in with various role-based access rights. In total, we have around 70 people using the solution.

In my previous project, we had a dedicated team associated with the account, so we did not have to pay for support. This was beneficial because, most of the time, we would go to our account team instead of the technical support, and our issues would be resolved quickly.

Positive

The initial setup is seamless. We only need to integrate our API key and connect it.

The deployment took one hour.

I can see one return on investment due to continuous monitoring. Before, we had a few staff members who monitored our environment, but now the alerting and other processes happen automatically, so there is a good ROI in terms of resources. Additionally, the security posture of the environment is increased and fewer incidents occur, which improves our response time and resource efficiency. There are also indirect ROIs.

The pricing is competitive; for the most part, the security firms have similar prices. Therefore, I believe it is competitive and a good investment. The solution is good quality, so I would not hesitate to invest in Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

I absolutely recommend Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks at an enterprise level because the solution is an enterprise-grade product.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is a comprehensive cloud security platform that encompasses vulnerability management, container management, Kubernetes management, and serverless management. It utilizes modules, such as Cloud Workload Protection, to provide comprehensive cloud security. Before deploying any applications, Prisma Cloud performs cloud scans to identify and address vulnerabilities, minimizing potential threats. The solution provides visibility into our cloud environment, enabling us to effectively manage and monitor our infrastructure. This capability is particularly valuable in the financial industry, where hybrid multi-cloud environments are prevalent.

We use all the modules Prisma Cloud offers.

Prisma Cloud offers security scanning for multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments. This is crucial because managing multiple cloud accounts, such as AWS, GCP, and Azure, typically necessitates accessing each account individually to view the inventories of assets and services. Prisma Cloud eliminates this inconvenience by consolidating all of this information into a single unified interface, providing a comprehensive overview.

The comprehensiveness enhances threat protection by providing integrated and out-of-the-box policies, along with all the necessary components, to effectively secure cloud environments and achieve comprehensive visibility through Prisma's capabilities.

The security automation capabilities of Prisma Cloud are effective. We can automatically remediate some of the alerts using predefined policies. We utilize Defender to detect vulnerabilities in our containers, AKS, and GKE environments.

Prisma Cloud has benefited our organization in so many ways that we can't count them all on our fingers. The Cloud Security Posture Management module of Prisma provides a wide range of capabilities, including visibility, governance, compliance, auto-remediation, integration with hybrid cloud environments, vulnerability reporting, and blocking capabilities. It also offers compliance reports, integration with third-party tools for vulnerability and alert notifications, and Cloud Workload Protection capabilities for blocking, alerting, and specifying affected containers or servers. Additionally, it provides visibility into code security by monitoring the Infrastructure as a Code environment for unauthorized users.

It enables a proactive approach to cloud security, allowing us to prevent vulnerabilities, threats, and complications arising in cloud or hybrid cloud environments. We can easily investigate and obtain comprehensive reports.

We spent the first five months after implementing Prisma Cloud familiarizing ourselves with the solution and completing the training sessions provided by Palo Alto. During this time, we began to see the benefits that Prisma Cloud offered our organization.

Prisma Cloud works with the CIB. Therefore, when we build and deploy something, we can incorporate a Prisma scan, which assists us in scanning the images and gaining insights into the state of our environment. It provides us with comprehensive visibility and raises alerts or triggers notifications to inform us of any missing elements or potential issues. This is how Prisma can contribute to the build and deploy phases.

It provides deep visibility and control regardless of how complex our cloud environment becomes.

Prisma Cloud enables us to integrate security into our CI/CD pipeline and it provides us with a single tool to protect all of our cloud resources.

Prisma Cloud provides run-time risk clarity throughout the entire pipeline, revealing issues as they arise. This enables us to effectively block vulnerabilities and rectify identified problems.

We have reduced run-time alerts. The run-time protection has helped many of our clients protect their environments.

Prisma Cloud has significantly reduced our investigation time. The clear visibility it provides into our environment and the process flow has streamlined our investigations. Additionally, using Prisma to investigate issues rather than directly accessing our cloud accounts saves valuable time.

The most valuable features of Prisma Cloud are its cloud security posture management and cloud workload protection capabilities. Integrating Prisma Cloud with our cloud service providers provides a comprehensive view of our multiple cloud environments through a single dashboard. This enhanced visibility improves vulnerability management and compliance. With CWP, we can gain complete visibility into all workloads within our environment.

We are encountering issues with the new permissions required for AWS integration with Prisma. Specifically, we need a mechanism to automatically identify and integrate the missing configuration permissions that are introduced on a biweekly or monthly basis. We have requested the Palo Alto team to develop this automation, and we are eagerly awaiting its implementation. We appreciate the efforts of the engineering team for their contributions.

I have been using Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks for two years.

Prisma Cloud is a stable platform. The only downtime we experience is scheduled, and Palo Alto notifies us in advance of the scheduled outage and its duration.

I would rate the scalability of Prisma Cloud a nine out of ten. I have received positive feedback from our clients indicating that Prisma Cloud is an excellent fit for their environment.

We have repeatedly contacted technical support to address issues encountered by both ourselves and our clients. The support is helpful.

Positive

We previously used AWS GuardDuty for vulnerability management and compliance visibility, but it was not user-friendly due to the requirement to log into separate accounts to access reports.

When I first started using Prisma, I found it to be very easy to learn. Several of our engineers were already familiar with Prisma Cloud and were able to help me understand how it worked, including the UI, navigation, and integration with other tools. They also showed me how to make API calls and integrate Prisma with third-party tools. Additionally, the Prisma team was incredibly helpful whenever I contacted them for assistance. They were always willing to answer my questions and help me troubleshoot any issues I was having.

I completed the implementation myself after completing the training sessions with the Palo Alto team and attending a lab session for the Prisma Cloud deployment.

I don't have direct access to financial information, so I'm not fully aware of the overall costs. However, I do work with clients and solution teams to provide relevant solutions. I also collaborate with the research team to explain Prisma's capabilities and its comprehensive range of features. When I see the credits and other similar programs may make Prisma's licensing costs appear lower than those of competing tools, it's important to consider the overall cost when evaluating cloud security solutions. For example, when implementing cloud security measures for CSPs or CWPs, other tools may be required, potentially leading to higher overall costs than Prisma Cloud's comprehensive solution.

I would rate Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks nine out of ten.

Prisma Cloud necessitates maintenance for both weekly and monthly updates.

My advice to new users and researchers is to delve into Prisma Cloud's capabilities and potential. Understanding the full scope of what it can do is crucial for new users. It's not just about visibility or the GUI; it's about the underlying work that engineers do, such as runtime protection, virus detection, and code security. New users should have a clear understanding of these capabilities. They should participate in sessions, practices, and labs to gain hands-on experience.

We used a couple of modules, mostly WAFs. We use it for detection. 

We use it for our modern infrastructure, mostly run on the cloud. We use it to measure the security of cloud-native infrastructure and to calculate the risk of the applications we use and APIs we interact with. We also use it to meet compliance requirements. We have plenty of use cases for this product.

We really wanted to capture all of the information. To make something in-house would be too much engineering work for us. We don't have to bui;d something from scratch; this allows us to use something that is highly accurate.

We're a fintech company and we deal with a bank. Doing certain tasks manually, like logging every node, server, and container, can take six to nine months. However, if you can automate the process, you achieve the same results in a short time span to help ensure product security.

We were using common CBE for general identities.

I personally used the web application API security, WAF for in-line controls. It helps with implementing an additional layer of security to block the attacks and get alerts on vulnerabilities. I am just focusing on that side.

The support is excellent. They'll call us personally and keep us updated. It's some of the best support I've dealt with.

It's great for protecting the full cloud-native stack. Being a security engineer, I have the visibility of the solution on the infrastructure. The tool is doing a good job of automating this process and making it less time-consuming for me. I don't need to handle as many manual tasks.

There are various cloud configurations that can help you gain insights. If a threat is on the portal, it will give you insight into the cloud infrastructure to help you improve the configuration to make it more secure. In terms of threat detection, you can see different kinds of payloads coming to the API. It helps you consider fixes, like adding more validation.

It is very easy for us to generate reports and download the findings while working with the team to resolve issues.

It's good for build, deploy, and run, however, we still need to figure out how to better integrate it. We're still in the early stages of exploring this for CI/CD. 

The solution does provide the visibility and control we need regardless of how complex or distributed your cloud environment becomes. When we were using our core infrastructure previously, we didn't have the visibility, for example, on which APIs we had or were using. Now, there's a better understanding. It's helped us become more confident in our security and compliance posture. If someone comes tomorrow to audit, we can do a fast report and we can pass that over to show to compliance. It would show the risk factors and what we are monitoring. It's the first thing we would go to during an audit, to provide transparency. 

The solution provides a single tool to protect all of our cloud resources and applications without having to manage and reconcile disparate security and compliance details. It's mandatory to have a tool like this to run a fintech in India as we need to have an audit trail in order to be able to submit reports. Operationally, it's helping us stay compliant. 

We are able to enable alerts. We are using it more manually. We can see alerts on Slack. We can configure alerts as we like.

The UI is good, however, they could improve the experience. The animations on the dashboard could be better. They may already be working on an update to improve this.

We'd like to understand better how to automate between the pipeline and CI/CD. There's a bridge needed between DevOps and security. We need to understand the alerts. There seems to be a gap in DevOps that we need to reconcile. 

I've been using the solution for more than six months. 

While running the solution, we have no issues at all. 

We have Prisma installed on Google Cloud, across multiple accounts and environments. We also have data recovery in another region. I'm not sure if that is covered by Prisma. 

It's scalable. It's not difficult. In fact, it's easy. You just need to add agents to the nodes you want. 

Technical support is great. There are two teams. One is always available. Another is creating tickets and looking into issues. Both are quite good. They are eager to support the customer. 

Positive

We were using another product previously. It was called Lacework. The virtual business aspect was a reason we switched. We also wanted to have more functionality and more insight and control into APIs. The visibility was also better with Prisma. 

The deployment was handled by the DevOps team, not the security team, which is the team I am a part of. There was a requirement to install it on every node of the infrastructure. However, my understanding is it did not take too much time. My understanding is that it was easy to install and it was done within 30 minutes to an hour. It was deployed in a very short amount of time. One person was able to deploy it; we didn't need a team. 

There may be some maintenance required. 

I'm not sure of the licensing terms or the exact pricing. 

We did evaluate multiple tools. We knew what we needed the tools to do and we were comparing them all together. We realized that Prisma did a better job and decided to go with them. 

I am a customer and end-user. 

I'm not sure if the product is useful in a multi-cloud environment. I hope it is. We just have the one cloud environment we use it in. That said, we are using it in multiple staging environments. 

We have not enabled the Code Security module. We still need to integrate in that sense with Prisma. We did do the integration with cloud infrastructure. 

For any product you choose, it's good to consider security. I'd recommend Prisma as it offers good security. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. There isn't really anything missing in the product. However, there's always scope for improvement. 

From a business perspective, our clients use Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks to meet compliance and get more visibility into the cloud.

When people start their cloud journey, they do it per their business needs, but eventually, they reach a point where many infrastructures are created. Still, there aren't enough governance factors, so they buy Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks for compliance from a government perspective. They also want to know how much infrastructure has been created and their exact locations, including their vulnerabilities against threats, and get more visibility into those threats and vulnerabilities.

We work with all models of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, including data, container, and IM security.

Our clients are medium and enterprise clients, as the solution would take too much effort for small-sized businesses or clients.

What I found most valuable in Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is the VAS, such as the web application and API security, primarily because the solution goes in tandem with Kubernetes or the containers. This is why I feel that VAS adds a lot of value, mainly because it gives visibility through the application layer and threat detection features.

Another valuable feature of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is the CSPM, simply because it's essential to understand what threats you'll face when starting your cloud journey or in the middle of your cloud journey.

The VAS and the CSPM are the most valuable features because they work in tandem to provide users with the required visibility.

A third valuable functionality you can get from the solution is the ability to investigate and build the correlation between the network, IAM, and other configurations. I saw a new level of maturity in this aspect from Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, which I didn't see from other solutions or vendors.

The solution also provides security for multi and hybrid-cloud environments. You can do AWS, Azure, etc., and even on-premises; wherever Kubernetes is supported, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks could support it.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks also has a preventative approach to cloud security because it acts as a defense through prevention and banning.

I also saw that the solution is comprehensive in securing the entire development cycle, such as in building, deployment, and running, because it provides a dedicated CCS (Cloud Core Security) functionality, which is leverage.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks has done great at the identity or ID, filter, VAS, and CCS levels.

Many more aspects can be covered in the cloud, but not all of them are addressed by Prisma Cloud, which can be one area for improvement.

For example, Prisma Cloud covers computing, network layer, identity and access management, and configuration management. Still, if you're looking for other aspects, such as ones beyond the cloud, the solution may not cover those. It can cover host containers, serverless and embedded apps, and PaaS, or aspects under computing, network connectivity, and identity and configuration management. Data may also be covered, but there is no data governance here in India. Storage may also be included, such as self-service GCS, but I did see that the solution is not very comprehensive, though you may not need all other aspects. Currently, Prisma Cloud only focuses on compute networking, data governance, and IAM, which could be improved.

As for the security automation capabilities of the solution, it is good, but there's still room for improvement because, at times, the access itself is not very consistent. My company has faced certain issues where it would have been better if the whole process, hub, or tool were more straightforward.

I also mentioned that the data governance functionality is not supported here in India, but Palo Alto Networks did not give an explanation about it.

My company also utilized GCP, and it was simpler. However, it did not have the intelligence of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks. 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. Right now, my rating for the solution based on ease of use would be a four out of five or a nine out of ten.

In terms of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks providing visibility and control regardless of how complex or distributed cloud environments become, it does for complex and distributed environments in the networking aspect. However, this is not true in the identity aspect. The solution only manages Okta, Azure, and AD, but it does not support the most popular Google Workspace, so that is another downside of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks.

Prisma Cloud could also be improved by adding Google Workspace as an identity.

I also mentioned previously that the user experience in the solution could be better. It could be easier. For example, Elasticsearch and Chronicle both have SIEMs, and they made it easier for people, both cognitively and intuitively. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks talks about CWP, CSPM, SIEM, and DNS, for example. Still, if you look at its console, you won't find any of those terms mentioned, so a person who comes from the presentation to the theory to the practical world may not be able to find a correlation. If Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks has some diagram that explains and allows users to understand all these, it becomes easier. Otherwise, it'll be a little steep for somebody to start the journey with this solution. This also means you need some security knowledge before you can even begin using Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks.

The setup process for Defender in the solution also needs improvement as it takes a day or two, but that is not even mentioned in the portal, so many customers think that there is something wrong during the setup, only to eventually realize that it is normal and that it'll be okay in two to three days. Another example is setting up Auto-Defend in Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, where you'd think your AWS system was malfunctioning when the delay is caused by the logs not being updated faster. There should be documentation that explains the setup process and how many days it usually takes to complete the setup.

It's the same for onboarding, as it could take several days, so if the process could be made easier, that would help the customers. My company has received feedback that customers have generally found it challenging to start using Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, though it could still depend on the person.

We've worked with and used Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks for over two years.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks has mostly been stable. However, there were some instances when it was not as stable, particularly the Defender setup, where it did not work for three days, so my team had to escalate, and then it suddenly worked. The issues usually happen during implementation, but you will not have as many challenges after it is implemented.

Stability-wise, the solution is a six out of ten for me.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is scalable, mainly because it is cloud-based.

My rating for the technical support provided by Prisma Cloud is four out of ten because it takes two to three days before support replies to you, and sometimes, you do not even get a valid or contextual answer. Sometimes, the team does not respond, and you do not even know if you will get a response. The technical support team has not been very friendly.

These are why I cannot give Prisma Cloud support a high rating.

Neutral

The initial deployment process for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks could be straightforward. Still, it becomes complex because of missing documentation that explains what happens during implementation and onboarding. Not everyone understands what needs to be done, so the process might look complex when it's not very complex.

The process requires you to onboard your account, set up your defenders and applications, and update specs and costs, but the available data could be more intuitive.

Deploying Prisma Cloud could take more than a day because the logs already take one day, plus it also depends on the number of hosts and containers.

My company is a reseller for Palo Alto Networks, so it does the implementation, POC, and setup for customers.

In terms of Prisma Cloud reducing runtime alerts overall for clients, that would be up to the clients or customers. The solution is configured, so if you get a lot of alerts, you have to work towards burning down and making it contextual to your existing setup and what your business requires. From an implementation perspective, my company will set up the defaults, wait, and then work with the customer on how often they want to burn it down and contextualize it to their needs or requirements. Reducing runtime alerts is essentially up to the customers because if the customer gets a lot of alerts and does not spend time to make them contextual, then that customer will continue to get alerts. It is essential to make it contextual to your system if you want to reduce the alerts you receive.

Here is how I would rate Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks: as a pioneer solution, and as it is cloud-based, and considering the security perspective, the solution is an eight out of ten, so the rating is high. However, in terms of setting it up and implementing it from a customer's point of view, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks becomes a seven out of ten. Not all things often work, and you still have many features you need to explore as a customer. Support for partners or the portal could also be better, where it should give more information, so the rating becomes a five out of ten. Overall, my rating for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is a seven out of ten based on experience, but at this point, it could still be the market leader.

My company is a reseller, partner, and implementer of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks.

I do not personally use it in my organization. I am a consultant, and I support my clients. I understand the environment, and based on that, I suggest they implement Prisma Cloud. My job is to do a technical evaluation of the product and recommend it to my clients. I give my recommendation to the client as an advisor. I tell them about the features and capabilities of Prisma Cloud and how they can utilize it. I also do a price or cost-effectiveness comparison of different products, but in the end, my clients decide whether they want to choose the technology over the cost or vice versa.

There have been multiple use cases of Prisma Cloud. The use cases vary based on a client's requirements. It is not necessary to implement all the features and capabilities of Prisma Cloud, but generally, it is for continuous compliance monitoring. The Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) feature identifies vulnerabilities within your IT organization or ITOps environment. The main part is to ensure compliance with industry standards such as GDPR and CIS Benchmarks.  

Vulnerability scanning has been a major problem for clients. Nowadays, clients do not have just one cloud. They are not using just AWS or Azure. They have multiple clouds. For example, the primary site is on Oracle, the disaster recovery site is sitting on AWS, and some of their applications are on Azure, so there are three hybrid cloud environments. We try to identify the best solution that can seamlessly integrate with all three cloud providers. Our clients want a centralized Cloud Security Posture Management solution for monitoring vulnerabilities and threats. This is one of the major use cases for which we recommend the Prisma Cloud CSPM solution to our clients.

Prisma Cloud can seamlessly integrate with all clouds. When you go into a cloud, there are multiple landscapes. Some are Windows machines, and some are Linux machines. There are different APIs, different databases, and different types of environments with microservices, Kubernetes, etc. Prisma Cloud has the capability to integrate with all these. That is the beauty. This seamless integration is very critical in every product.

There are multiple CSPM products in the market. The key feature of Prisma Cloud is seamless integration. They have thousands of in-built APIs. You do not need to do much customization. It can seamlessly integrate with multiple clouds. It can integrate seamlessly with Azure, AWS, Oracle, Alibaba Cloud, etc. This is the main feature and the key selling point of Prisma Cloud. For example, today, the client is using only Azure Cloud, but tomorrow, the requirement might come for AWS or Oracle Cloud. It does not mean that they are going to buy a new product for CSPM. That is the beauty of Prisma Cloud, and this is where Prisma Cloud scores. It integrates seamlessly. It does not mean that other products cannot integrate. They can integrate, but they might not seamlessly integrate, or they might integrate only with AWS and Azure but not with Oracle or Alibaba Cloud. All of my client base is in the GCC region. I have clients in UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and Oman. Oman has Google Cloud. Saudi Arabia has Alibaba Cloud and Oracle Cloud. UAE has AWS Cloud and Azure Cloud. In Saudi Arabia, there are even private clouds. Prisma Cloud can even integrate with your private cloud. You can integrate your on-premise cloud.

Prisma Cloud can protect the full cloud-native stack. It is great, and it can solve your needs from a security point of view. The whole purpose of Prisma Cloud is to scan vulnerabilities.

Prisma Cloud's security automation capabilities are good. For example, you can define a policy for virtual machines. The policy hits an API and scans all your virtual machines. It can identify a virtual machine that is not supposed to have access to the Internet, but its ports are open. If you have set the rules, it can also remove the access of the port or the VM to access the Internet. This capability is definitely there, but it is based on the defined rules and policies and how you do the configuration.

Prisma Cloud provides good visibility. The dashboard or UI is user-friendly. You get a holistic view of your entire infrastructure. 

Prisma Cloud integrates security into our CI/CD pipeline at the resource,  component, and infrastructure levels, but at the application level, it is limited. For application-level security, you need to do something else. You need to have an additional capability or additional security solution.

It provides a single tool to protect all of our cloud resources and applications, without having to manage and reconcile disparate security and compliance reports.

It provides risk clarity at runtime and across the entire pipeline, showing issues as they are discovered during the build phases. It discovers issues at the scanning level. It also has the capability to rescan. For example, if you have discovered an issue or vulnerability, after resolving it, you can rescan the same resource to identify whether it has been mitigated or not.

Prisma Cloud has reduced runtime alerts by 60% to 70%. It has also reduced alert investigation time by 60% to 70%. With these time savings, you also save money. By preventing any vulnerabilities or threats, you also save your organization's reputation.

It has a feature for customized security policy. I implement it in banking, health insurance, and other sectors, and every organization has its own customized policies and procedures. In Prisma Cloud, you can customize policies, and based on that, you can do monitoring. 

It has multiple capabilities, such as threat detection and remediation. You can even orchestrate. For example, you can set a rule that a specific set of users need to have XYZ access. If any user is identified as having an additional level of privilege, which he or she is not supposed to have, Prisma Cloud can scan and identify it. If you have set the policy, it can also do mitigation. It can remove the access accordingly.

One major observation is that it is not possible to implement Prisma Cloud on-premises. This is the limitation. Prisma Cloud itself is on a cloud. It is sitting on AWS and Google Cloud. It is a SaaS solution, but some of my clients have a local regulatory requirement, and they want to install it locally on their premises. That capability is not there, but government entities and ministries want to have Prisma Cloud installed locally.

It is stable. It is a leading product.

It is a SaaS-based application, so we need not to worry about scalability. It is their responsibility. They have to ensure its scalability and high availability.

From what I know, their support is good enough. They meet the SLAs. They have been good so far. That could be because they are new in the GCC market, and someone from Europe or the UK might have different feedback. 

I did not use any similar solution previously.

We provide consultancy. We do the implementation but with the support of the vendor. It is not just about buying the product. It is about how you design and configure it. We ensure that the implementation is done as per the defined design.

The key point for a successful product implementation is how you configure it and what is your use case. Every client has different requirements and different use cases. It depends on how you drive it. You need to define the use cases, the policies, and the procedures, and you need to ensure they are aligned with your business objective. You may have the best product in the world, but if you do not know how to configure it based on your use cases and your environment, it will not work for you. You will have vulnerabilities in your environment even after you have invested millions.

The vendor takes care of the implementation, and we validate and guide them with the implementation.

In terms of maintenance, it is not a set-it-and-forget-it solution. It is based on your IT environment. Generally, small organizations do not use a CSPM solution. It is used by mid to large organizations. In such organizations, there are multiple changes in the IT resources. The environment is agile. Every day you add something or change something, and you need to ensure that it is integrated with Prisma Cloud. It is an ongoing operational activity.

We evaluated multiple products. Zscaler was one of them.

My clients are quite happy with this solution. Some of my clients are also based in the UK and Europe. So far, it has been good. It met their expectations. Their use cases are met, and they are able to monitor all their infrastructure. It has been good so far, and it worked for all the generic or standard use cases. That does not mean that it is going to solve all the use cases for all customers. If you want to go for a CSPM solution, you need to do a technical evaluation.

If you are looking into implementing a CSPM solution, I would advise first understanding your existing cloud landscape or your on-premise landscape. Understand your local regulatory requirements and local laws. After that, define the use cases. Define what exactly you are looking for and then go to market and evaluate different products. You can check whether there is an integration with AWS, Oracle, Alibaba, or any other cloud. If your regulatory requirements are that you cannot host your solution outside your country or you need to have it on-premises in your data center, not someone else's data center, you have to choose accordingly. You cannot go for Prisma Cloud. If you do not have any such regulatory requirements, you can go with Prisma Cloud or any other solution. 

You should also understand your future landscape in terms of:

• Over the next five or ten years, how do you want to grow? 
• What is your current IT strategy? 
• How are you evolving? 
• What would be your technology? 
• Would there be any major digital transformation? 
• How seamlessly can it integrate? 

You need to consider multiple parameters. It is also about money. It should also meet your financial budget.

Overall, I would rate Prisma Cloud a seven out of ten.

We are a Palo Alto Alliance partner and our clients are Fortune 500 companies. We utilize a multi-cloud network architecture, with the primary constraint being the inability to manage everything through a single interface. By implementing uniform guardrails, we address the issue of inconsistent security policies when using native cloud security controls. This is one of the key considerations. Additionally, we employ micro-segmentation using cloud network security modules of Prisma Cloud to minimize the attack surface for various workloads.

The primary use case that was lacking was a single pane of glass. Additionally, prior to implementing Prisma Cloud, we used to manually perform these tasks using AWS CloudFormation Templates or Azure Resource Manager Templates. However, Prisma Cloud helped us address this issue by providing a unified administration interface. One of the problems we faced was the inability to view vulnerabilities across different cloud workloads and compare risks across different platforms. These were the challenges we encountered before deploying Prisma Cloud. While we didn't completely solve all of them after implementing Prisma Cloud, we did make significant progress in that regard.

Prisma Cloud offers security scanning for various cloud environments. In some client environments, there is only a single cloud, so the fact that Prisma Cloud can scan multiple clouds doesn't make a significant difference. These clients have a limited presence in the cloud, with few workloads or resources deployed. Consequently, it doesn't provide substantial value in such cases. However, for large companies, manufacturing companies, or companies with significant IT intellectual property in the cloud, with multiple tenants and a widespread cloud presence across different regions and replication, deploying a solution like Prisma Cloud becomes necessary.

Prisma Cloud enables us to adopt a proactive approach to cloud security. It goes beyond providing visibility and monitoring capabilities by offering a wide range of auto-remediation features. It provides numerous security controls and the ability to enforce commonly configured guardrails, primarily in monitoring mode. It is a comprehensive product that caters not only to detection but also prevention.

Prisma Cloud has helped reduce the number of people required to support or manage these cloud platforms, especially in terms of security. So now, instead of needing three different individuals to manage three different clouds, it may be possible to use just one resource to handle all three clouds, particularly focusing on security. This approach facilitates resource reduction, which is especially beneficial for clients operating within tight budgets. Additionally, there's the advantage of having a single pane of glass, where we can access various informative graphs, charts, and reports. These resources assist in explaining technical matters to non-technical leadership, making it easier to articulate concepts and insights to executives and other non-technical individuals. Personally, this has been helpful for me and our organization. The benefits for clients vary depending on the size of the environment. Personally, when we started using Prisma Cloud as an offering, it took two and a half to three months, which was the rough estimate. However, back then, not all the modules that are available today existed. So those numbers might have changed if all the modules were available at that time.

Prisma Cloud offers the visibility and control we require, regardless of the complexity or distribution of our cloud environments. Since it is built on top of these existing clouds and utilizes many of the services provided by large-scale cloud platforms, there is typically no issue with visibility. Regardless of the complexity of the environment, we always achieve visibility. The way we store and analyze the data, as well as how we visualize information, depends on the operator of the tool. Prisma Cloud is a reliable tool that never fails.

Prisma Cloud enables us to integrate security into our CI/CD pipeline. We primarily use it for the container. We have integrated image scanning and registry scanning into our CI/CD pipelines, specifically Azure DevOps. The DevSecOps team is responsible for managing this process.

Prisma offers us a unified tool that safeguards all our cloud resources and applications, eliminating the need to handle and reconcile separate security and compliance reports, with the exception of billing costs and management. From a security perspective, we haven't encountered any other reports for the majority of our clients. While a few clients may have additional requirements, Prisma Cloud efficiently handles all of those as well.

Prisma has reduced runtime alerts.

Prisma has reduced the time required for alert investigation. We now have a comprehensive understanding of the entire lifecycle of where things went wrong or which part of the runtime or execution for a specific process went wrong, particularly in terms of security.

Prisma Cloud has saved us money by reducing resources. 

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

There is room for improvement on the logging and monitoring front because it's still not as holistic as I would want it to be. Especially in the sense that we have different modules within Prisma Cloud, but then the visibility that we get from the output of each of these modules cannot be stitched together. Perhaps we could deploy something like a SIEM or SOAR platform to get this telemetry. As of now, we are lacking that part. So now I'm sure that was not the primary intent for that. It would really make a difference if Palo Alto Networks improves this.

The identity-based micro-segmentation in our cloud-native services requires a significant improvement. It fails to address many of the problems that its predecessor used to solve. Previously, there was identity-based micro-segmentation, but it was phased out, reaching its end-of-life and end-of-support. Now, we have cloud network security, which lacks a crucial feature that IBM used to offer. This is something we strongly desire, as we have had multiple discussions with Palo Alto regarding this matter. I am uncertain if there is a roadmap for implementing this feature, but the cloud network security module requires a substantial upgrade.

I have never encountered any challenges regarding any modules. Occasionally, they do undergo planned maintenance outages, but those are well-communicated in advance. Therefore, I don't consider them to be challenging. Prisma Cloud is reliable, and I would rate its stability at nine out of ten.

I would rate the scalability of Prisma Cloud as an eight out of ten. The only concern lies not with Prisma itself, but rather with the existing client environment. Many clients have flawed infrastructures, making it challenging to achieve the level of optimization required to fully realize the benefits of Prisma Cloud. However, this issue cannot be attributed to Prisma.

We extensively contacted technical support because we used to experience numerous issues. However, our main purpose is to inquire about additional capabilities and make minor tweaks. The tech support provided by Palo Alto is excellent, without a doubt. This could be one of the reasons why Prisma Cloud is relatively expensive. 

We are an advanced partner, rather than an end user, which grants us easier access to technical support compared to clients. However, based on feedback from our clients, their technical support is exceptional.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. In the beginning, we used professional services for a couple of clients but now we do it all in-house. 

The implementation is completed in-house.

From a security standpoint, we have significantly enhanced our client's security posture by implementing Prisma Cloud. However, we still need to assess the return on investment. While we have achieved notable resource reduction, it remains uncertain whether it has yielded a better long-term ROI.

Prisma Cloud is remarkably expensive. Not everyone can afford it, without a doubt. Although we don't directly sell the product, we occasionally engage in reselling certain components, and it requires significant effort to make sales. There's no denying that it's expensive.

I evaluated Snyk, which is a competitively priced product. However, I personally am not very familiar with how it works or the benefits gained by the different clients I've worked with, as I haven't had much experience with it. I conducted a couple of use cases and found it to be quite similar to Prisma Cloud in terms of features, although the interface has a different look and feel. I have been informed that Snyk is considerably cheaper compared to Prisma Cloud.

I would rate Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks a seven out of ten, primarily due to the need for improvement in identity-based micro-segmentation and cloud network security. I appreciate the potential it offers for deployment, but the new module has yet to reach a point where we can effectively reduce risks.

All the cloud environments existed before Prisma Cloud came in. I don't believe we can build many things using Prisma Cloud, except for implementing guardrails. For instance, we can secure these workloads, but it will take time for them to be fully developed. The scanners, such as the infrastructure as code scanners that Prisma Cloud can certainly check, are capable of performing static and code analysis, among other tasks. However, I don't think Prisma Cloud is designed specifically for that purpose.

Prisma offers risk clarity from a core security perspective, but it does not cover the entire pipeline. To cover the entire pipeline, we would need to utilize a SaaS or DaaS tool. Prisma Cloud cannot serve as a substitute for those tools.

I used to primarily work with cloud-native services. So, I would leverage cognitive services across all three clouds. That was my main focus initially. However, now I have started using other tools such as Snyk and various reports. Additionally, I have also recently started using CSPM. I'm not entirely familiar with all of them yet, but I have been working on them since the beginning.

No maintenance is required from our end.

We are running multiple VMs on GCP and use Prisma Cloud to monitor the CICD pipeline for any issues. If there are issues, we raise tickets in Jira. 

Prisma Cloud keeps our servers secure in most cases. We get the most value from the alerts when we have security issues. The runtime protection is also a good thing. We're also exploring the possibility of automating the CICD pipeline. 

We realized the benefits immediately after we integrated or connected our account.  We used to get a lot of false positives, but we took steps to fix that. In most cases, we get help with that. It doesn't take much time to identify the problem.

Prisma covers the full development cycle and helps us a lot. We use it in the development phase and get a good value from it. We catch issues before the production stage.

Prisma Cloud's real-time detection and monitoring of our entire system is the most useful. We also value Prisma's runtime protection and security alerts.

We like Prisma's preventative approach to cloud security. It alerts us about security issues before they become a problem. If our cloud system has outages, our clients may switch to another competing platform. With the preventative approach, we can ensure our servers are always up. 

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

I have used Prisma Cloud for three months.

Prisma Cloud is stable. We haven't had any downtime, crashes or lag. 

Prisma Cloud is highly scalable. 

It was easy to deploy and integrate Prisma Cloud. We connected to our account and chose the platforms and environments we have. When we first deployed Prisma Cloud, we didn't know much about it, so it took 30 minutes to an hour. Deployment was a one-person job. It doesn't require any maintenance on our end because it's a cloud platform, so we just receive alerts. 

I rate Prisma Cloud 10 out of 10. The first thing a new user should do is check the documentation and the official YouTube videos. You can always contact their technical support if you have any issues. I don't think they will require technical support because the videos are useful and the documentation is also good. You can also easily integrate and see the reports on the UI. 

We have deployed Prisma Cloud for one of our client premises. And we are managing it internally. Although we do have support and other stuff for this solution, it has two kinds of modes. One is the detect and protect mode, and one is only for the monitoring purpose. There's different licensing. If you need protection from Prisma Cloud, then you will purchase a firewall kind of module with that. Otherwise, by default, it comes in monitoring mode.

It's deployed on all VMs and workloads. With the Prisma Cloud, you can have it on a cloud server or you can deploy it as a stand-alone. That said, the container should be persistent. Otherwise, if you restart the container, you will lose your configuration and everything.

We were doing a deployment for a telecom client, and they have two different application pipelines. One was based in India with the Oracle team. They were developing their own application, so we have also incurred it to the Prisma Cloud in their CI/CD pipeline.

The second use case was to monitor the OpenShift environment. The solution was basically bare metal. Then on top of that, there was OpenStack. It's an on-prem cloud service. We have deployed the Prisma Cloud solution, so it was on top of an open stack.

If there is a large infrastructure involved, you need to run continuous vulnerability assessments. You also need comprehensive reports and complete inventory details. Doing everything manually would cost a lot of human resources. And it can take a long time. This helps automate and control vulnerability scanning that's continuous. It also helps with compliance. If I have to scan something monthly or quarterly, I can do it, and it will run. What Prisma Cloud actually does is that it keeps on doing this activity for you without any required request from the operator side. Its agents are deployed on the infrastructure, on all the components, on all the applications, on all the operating system images, VMs, or the old private cloud environment or your work on nodes. If you spread your agents all over your infrastructure, it'll keep scanning and reporting, and you can see everything from your dashboard. 

We have integrated OpenStack, OpenShift, RH, et cetera. You don't need to integrate every individual part; you only need to integrate the worker node. And once you deploy it on the worker node, all the parts running on that worker node.

Prisma gives you full-fledged posture management. You get detailed insights into all your modules, how they are communicating, and on which ports they are communicating. If there is any unknown port or unknown address, et cetera,  Prisma Cloud can show you the configuration, and the ports. That way, as an architect or product manager, you know through your documentation which application should be communicating on which ports. If there is any deviation from that documentation, Prisma Cloud can see that, and you can get the details for that. 

With respect to virtual protection, it tells you which image, VM, physical server, worker node, or port has what kind of vulnerability. It gives you everything in real time. 

Monitoring mode is great if a company wants to know every single vulnerability and loophole in its infrastructure. It gives you a complete inventory list of VMs and devices within your infrastructure from the dashboard. You can add new policies or elements easily. You just integrate it within Prisma Cloud. That way your inventory automatically gets updated. 

Real-time continuous vulnerability assessment and reporting are key features. It's critical to most large-scale enterprises.

Prisma Cloud provides security scanning for multi and hybrid cloud environments. Sometimes, if we, for example, have some infrastructure on a public cloud, like AWS, then you need to monitor them continuously and you will require the inspector module of AWS. The inspector module is initially free of charge. And after two weeks, they'll start charging you. However, you can just put the credentials or access keys for AWS within the Prisma Cloud and assign the agent to that. It will start monitoring your cloud infrastructure as well with less overhead.

Prisma Cloud provides the needed visibility and control regardless of how complex and distributed the cloud environments become. What you do is you need to open the communication matrix. That communication matrix is the baseline or the product for the Prisma agent or CLIs, to communicate with the Prisma Cloud and share its findings directly. Whatever the agent finds on its local host, it will respond and share it with the Prisma Cloud. 

Prisma Cloud has two types of interfaces. One is towards the Internet to the main Palo Alto cloud environment. The second interface is towards the infrastructure or architecture. Most of the time, the operators focus on the corporate side since their responsibilities are related to that scope. The other side should be automatically updated, similar to how Microsoft. They simply tell you updates have been downloaded and installed, and you need to restart your system. The update processes are transparent. There is nothing manual to worry about.
There are a lot of compliance rules that you can configure. If the product manager knows that there's a new compliance rule, they ensure that the new compliance rule is compatible with their product. Compliance is not an issue, however, rules should be configured. It's just like any other compliance activity. 

Prisma Cloud enabled our customers to integrate security into their CI/CD pipeline. Our client was developing a large-scale application for billing purposes. And Oracle India was involved in that, and there was a DevOps pipeline. We have integrated the Prisma routes to the CLI within their pipeline; it was being handled through Prisma Cloud automatically within different DevOps gateways. It's seamless. Once you integrate it, then it's part of the pipeline, and it's being done automatically just like any other pipeline gate.

Having a single tool to monitor cloud sources has had a positive impact on our customers. Tasks that were headaches have become easier. It's easier to assess vulnerabilities and compliance thanks to automation. 

Prisma Cloud provides risk clarity at runtime and across the entire pipeline showing issues as they are discovered in the build phases. The vulnerability will stay on the dashboard until you fix it as well. It will keep showing you the issue until it is resolved. Vulnerabilities that are identified are documented and stored in the vulnerability management system.

Prisma Cloud has reduced alert investigation times thanks to the comprehensive dashboard. You can directly search for any host you are targeting or go through the entire list and check everything. 

It's helped customers save money in that it's helped them catch vulnerabilities thanks to 24/7 scanning. That helps you fix the issue earlier. If a vulnerability gets through and the company is breached, they can lose their reputation. The same is true if their service goes down - especially in a banking scenario. It can lead to a big financial loss. Having proper security controls and monitors in place mitigates this. 

They have very rich documentation, and everything is very clear with respect to integration and configuration.

It provides a lot of compliance rules. It provides us with around 160 different rules. That way, you can define everything during scanning and the system will keep checking for compliance, which is automated.

One single drawback is that updates are not directly based on push notifications. There is a lot of software that gets updated automatically. Since this is a security product, this product should be automatically updated. Right now, it must be manually updated. I should be able to focus on vulnerabilities and security, not updating.

Delays can be very costly. Even with a minute delay in updating, if an attack is successful, when you have this corrupted million-dollar product, it's useless to you then. That's why updates should be automatically done. 

It doesn't patch your products; it only provides insights into vulnerabilities. It's merely a value-added service for your overall security posture. 

They are missing some compatibility details in their documentation. If I am choosing a product, the first thing I look at before recommending it to my organization, is the documentation, including how it is organized, if their documentation is informative, what information they are providing, et cetera. Prisma Cloud has one issue within its documentation, and that is that it does not provide exact details of every single plugin. I was very concerned about which version of Prisma Cloud was compatible with which version of the solutions we had in our CI/CD pipeline. They need to be more clear. 

The solution is stable and is capable of covering large enterprises. I've never faced issues once I've deployed it. However, if you will be holding the data for the long run, you need to think about storage. That's it.

It's scalable. You can scale horizontally or vertically. 

Their support is not very good.

Negative

I've deployed it from scratch in a containerized environment. I am running a persistent container for Prisma Cloud.

The setup is very straightforward, thanks to their documentation. It's rich and comprehensive. They just don't provide version compatibility.

We deployed the solution in a day.

There is no other complexity in the implementation. It can be anywhere in the VM or any other component of your infrastructure. The agent should be able to ping its Prisma Cloud server. Once that is done, there is no other complexity. You just deploy the agent. The agent will keep updating automatically via the Prisma Cloud, and it will start finding new vulnerabilities. That's it. There are no such complex issues with the Prisma cloud deployment.

The implementation strategy was that we knew for which kind of infrastructure we were going to deploy it. 

There isn't much maintenance needed. The only thing is that sometimes you integrate Prisma Cloud with something that is not supported by Prisma Cloud or documentation does not explain it. In that case, you need to engage their support team. Their support is not very good. 

The solution is very expensive. They must have decided internally not to go after SMEs or startups. They are targeting multi-million or trillion-dollar organizations. Those are the companies that can afford their products. 

We're an MSP; we provide this product to customers. We provide security as a service.

We wouldn't recommend the solution for SMEs or startups. This is for larger corporate enterprises like large banks, fintechs, or telcos. It's good for larger infrastructures that might have legacy controls or devices.

Prisma is not the only solution in the market; there are others as well. It offers good core functionality, and it covers your whole cloud environment. It's a fully-fledged package that can help provide insights into security threats in any kind of development environment, from production to staging.  

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

If you are interested in Prisma Cloud, look at your business cases first. If you have a massive, large-scale infrastructure, they should not go into new products blindly.