No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.
reviewer1949472 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Sep 20, 2022
Before implementing the solution, we didn't have any visibility into workspaces like Kubernetes and the underlying network of containers
Pros and Cons
  • "I found the network queue sets useful. I also liked the Workload Protection Module, the vulnerability findings, and how the rule sets handle the vulnerabilities based on severity."
  • "Before implementing Prisma Cloud, we didn't have any visibility into workspaces like Kubernetes and the underlying network of containers, but now we have a better understanding of the resources interacting with Kubernetes and can identify vulnerabilities across the organization."
  • "The deployment and onboarding are plug-and-play, but somewhat hard to handle in terms of integration with external operations tools. The product design isn't up to the current standard. I would recommend having higher standards in terms of integration with other tools, especially operationalized tools."
  • "Prisma's notifications aren't up to industry standards."

What is our primary use case?

Prisma protects our workloads and provides network security for our containers. Our infrastructure is mostly Azure-based and entirely on the cloud. We use the Prisma Compute and Prisma Network Security modules.

We have multiple security tools like Prisma, but not the same use cases. Prisma has its own unit use cases like image scanning, repository scanning, or container scanning. We have other tools as well, but they have different use cases.

We have about 15 users. Some are DevOps, infrastructure, and security engineers. There are also a few SOC analysts. I believe we'll expand usage in the coming years if everything goes well with other customers.

How has it helped my organization?

Before implementing Prisma Cloud, we didn't have any visibility into workspaces like Kubernetes and the underlying network of containers. Now, we have a better understanding of the resources interacting with Kubernetes and can identify vulnerabilities across the organization. In the past, we had limited information to take action on those resources, but now we can better understand the risks.

The solution has had a significant impact on our organization, especially our governance team. Once we get reports on non-compliant resources, we must take action before going live. We need to implement a risk-based approach to handle those non-compliant resources. Prisma offers a better understanding of whether the resources comply with regulations.

Prisma reduced runtime alerts by about 500 or something. We still get those because we're in the operational stage, but it's only a few. It has cut our average alert investigation times by about two days. Prisma probably saves us eight to ten hours total each week. 

What is most valuable?

I found the network queue sets useful. I also liked the Workload Protection Module, the vulnerability findings, and how the rule sets handle the vulnerabilities based on severity.

Prisma was easy to adopt in our CI/CD pipeline, but we only use it to scan the images for the last push in the CI. On the CD side, we use it for the assessment, like the pull and push. 

What needs improvement?

Prisma's notifications aren't up to industry standards. Also, Prisma is a bit harder to integrate than other tools. The deployment and onboarding are plug-and-play, but somewhat hard to handle in terms of integration with external operations tools. The product design isn't up to the current standard. I would recommend having higher standards in terms of integration with other tools, especially operationalized tools.

The product could better integrate business logs and runtime notifications from Enforcer and Network Security Module. I would recommend better visibility and integration for any violations.

Buyer's Guide
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks
September 2026
Learn what your peers think about Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: September 2026.
914,262 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Prisma for a year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Prisma is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We haven't used Prisma at scale. It hasn't grown since we deployed. We have four clusters but haven't added anything. We still keep the four clusters. We didn't add anything. In the coming months, we'll replicate this with other customers once we see that the solution is stable. 

How are customer service and support?

Prisma's support was helpful. I rate them nine out of ten. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We've never had another solution for this specific use case. This is the first. 

How was the initial setup?

Some modules are straightforward to deploy, but others are a bit complex. End-to-end deployment of the modules and the whole network took approximately four months.

What about the implementation team?

The Prisma team helped us in this deployment. The team helped us learn while implementing it. 

What was our ROI?

We've seen a return by reducing risks from cyberattacks and compliance issues. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I recommend knowing the number of licenses you need for your operations and your expected workloads before signing a license agreement. There are no hidden costs as far as I know.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at some solutions to improve security posture and risk management. Prisma was the product that had the capabilities we need in our price range.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Prisma Cloud seven out of ten. Before you implement Prisma or any other solution, you need to ensure you have all the tools you need in place and know if it will fit into your current environment.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
reviewer2268216 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Security Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Sep 7, 2023
Great for identifying misconfigurations and vulnerabilities with excellent technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "It helps to identify the misconfigurations by monitoring regularly which helps to secure the organization's cloud environment."
  • "For some custom policies, we need more features."

What is our primary use case?

In my organization, we use Prisma Cloud to Protect the cloud environment to identify misconfigurations and send the reports to the cloud account owners. We can use Prisma Cloud based on location or based on cloud accounts. 

The policies that we are using in our organization help us to work more effectively to identify misconfigurations based on severity and the dashboard is very user-friendly to work with. 

I am very happy to use this product and find it to be highly impressive.

How has it helped my organization?

Prisma improved our cloud environment. It helps to identify the misconfigurations by monitoring regularly which helps to secure the organization's cloud environment. 

This product helps our organization in various ways, including identifying account-level misconfigurations. It will protect the environment in many ways. With this, we can avoid data leakage and avoid/identify public and internal cloud-level misconfigurations will be identified.

What is most valuable?

Identifying misconfigurations and vulnerabilities from the cloud account level as well as the development and operational level helps to secure everything effectively. 

Vulnerabilities can be identified before deployment - which helps our DevOps team to minimize or reduce time in an effective way. 

Identifying misconfigurations and vulnerabilities at the first stage itself will help the organization save time and money - which is highly appreciated. 

What needs improvement?

For some custom policies, we need more features. For example, at the investigation tab level, while adding columns for required fields, you can't have more than three or four custom fields. New cloud policies can be added in the next release to address severity changes for the cloned policies. It would be nice to have alerts at the dashboard level. For example, if five members are working with 50 different policies, based on the user name, policies should be assigned with alerts that can be displayed either in a graphical or listed way.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I'd rate the stability 4.5 out of five. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I am highly impressed with the product's scalability. Whenever I have issues with the solution, I will get an immediate response from the product team. They will try to close the issue as soon as possible - which is highly impressive.

How are customer service and support?

I am very happy with the customer service. Whenever I have issues with the solution, I will get an immediate response from the product team and they will try to close the issue as soon as possible. This level of service is highly impressive.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

This is my first solution. I did not previously use anything else. 

How was the initial setup?

The product team helped us when the Initial setup happened.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented through a vendor team and I'd rate the service five out of five. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

When compared to other products, Prisma Cloud is high in pricing and licensing. However, when there is high security it can be expensive. Smaller organizations can't afford Prisma Cloud.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

As this is my first solution, I didn't choose any other product other than Prisma Cloud.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Our Organization using this Product since last 3+ years and regular vendor meeting will be held to discuss more on how to secure the Cloud Enviroment and I am the Admin for this Product from our Organization.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks
September 2026
Learn what your peers think about Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: September 2026.
914,262 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Senior Network Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Aug 25, 2023
I like automated tool for migrating user data from other systems
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is the closed VPN connection, which provides better performance than traditional VPN boxes. For example, let's say a user in New York State normally connects in the East, but if they travel to the UK, they can connect to the same portal, which automatically redirects to any VPN gateway. We can control traffic based on Active Directory groups instead of the user's IP. That means a user in New York can access his application based on his user ID and AD group access when he travels to the UK or anywhere else."
  • "Sometimes, when you assign subnets to regions, the IP address will jump from one location to another because it will automatically change substantially. Then, we need to add those IP subnets to our firewall for existing access. The need to update those subnets potentially causes maintenance or access issues. So far, we can only provide bigger customers with six subnets, and a small company may not be able to access those services."

What is our primary use case?

Financial companies want to restrict user access, which means the users need to go through a subnet to access their services. When the user connects to the internet via the Prisma Cloud VPN, they can use different types of IP addresses globally. The changing IP addresses can be pretty complex. It costs a lot for the application site to apply for access.  

We negotiated with Palo Alto to get 20 servers, and the customers will be added to those 20 subnets. On the Spectrum Access side, we only need a white list of those twenty subnets, and we won't have issues in the future. 

The solution is managed by Palo Alto. We're using Panorama, a popular management tool, for managing the connection between the physical portal, firewall, and VPN, as well as Prisma Cloud.

How has it helped my organization?

The user experience is better than our previous solution. It gives us visibility into all the traffic. 

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the closed VPN connection, which provides better performance than traditional VPN boxes. For example,  let's say a user in New York State normally connects in the East, but if they travel to the UK, they can connect to the same portal, which automatically redirects to any VPN gateway. We can control traffic based on Active Directory groups instead of the user's IP. That means a user in New York can access his application based on his user ID and AD group access when he travels to the UK or anywhere else.

Prisma Cloud can provide decent security across cloud environments, depending on how each company sets security policies. Prisma Cloud makes adding new users and managing access more flexible.  

I like Palo Alto's automated tool for migrating user data from other systems. We previously did this manually most of the time, but now we can update twice hourly automatically. 

What needs improvement?

During deployment, we created a tunnel from the cloud to our gateway in the data center because the users need some way to connect with the resources there, but all other traffic goes directly to the Palo Alto cloud. When the traffic goes to the Internet, sometimes it will come up with different IPs, causing some financial websites to be blocked. We needed to work with Palo Alto closely to solve this problem. 

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

How are customer service and support?

I rate Palo Alto customer service 10 out of 10. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The migration takes time because we're typically not starting from scratch. We need to migrate everything from the existing VPN. I've used Prisma Cloud for a large financial enterprise with a complex infrastructure, and we worked on that for almost two years. It's less complicated for a mid-sized company, but the migration might take six to nine months.

What was our ROI?

It's hard to tell if there is an ROI in the short term. It may take a long time before you realize a return because there is a substantial initial investment. You can see a significant improvement in performance, but it may not necessarily save money. However, you'll ultimately improve service.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Prisma Cloud nine out of 10. We would recommend it to any large global enterprise because it improves performance and offers a better user experience. It also gives you application-level control instead of regular IP address control. The latest version has many new features. So they can use the in-app Application ID and point to MAC applications instead of regular TCP/IP ports.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1862622 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Specialist at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Jun 20, 2023
Offers the visibility and control we require, regardless of the complexity or distribution of our cloud environments
Pros and Cons
  • "Due to the maturity of most companies, security posture management is the most valuable feature."
  • "The solution does not currently support servers for GCP."

What is our primary use case?

We utilize all the modules of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, and it is fully integrated into the host control manager on GitHub. We employ this solution to achieve complete visibility from the moment we write our ISE to the actual management of the cloud environment. This approach offers a clear view of our security posture, and the container security component provides valuable insights to assist us in our architectural process.

Our security team is the primary user of the solution, followed by SREs and developers.

How has it helped my organization?

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks offers security that covers various environments. This is crucial as it provides visibility into running processes, allowing for a better assessment of the current security status and giving our knowledge center peace of mind. Moreover, it enables us to leverage all the available modules.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is highly comprehensive, and I would recommend this solution to anyone due to its complete visibility into the cloud and its efficient deployment process, which makes the solution worth the cost.

The solution's security automation capabilities, if configured correctly using various playbooks, can introduce different security gates. This automated playbook has the potential to save us 70 percent of the work.

I would rate Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks a nine out of ten for its proactive approach to cloud security.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks has significantly enhanced the functioning of our organization. Through CIM, we can examine IIM posture to determine the permissions granted to users and the status of all shared entities. Additionally, CSPM provides an accurate inventory of all running elements, which we utilize to bolster our security posture. This allows us to effectively identify various threat levels and obtain a precise overview of the environment.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is one of the most comprehensive solutions for securing the entire cloud-native development lifecycle, including the build, deploy, and run phases. By integrating with various components within my development cycle, I can access data from different data centers and formulate a security strategy to ensure ongoing protection.

The solution offers the visibility and control we require, regardless of the complexity or distribution of our cloud environments. This visibility enables us to enhance our security and compliance posture by adhering to the recommendations.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks enables us to integrate security into our CI/CD pipeline and add touchpoints to existing DevOps processes by integrating with the infrastructure code. This allows us to enhance security at various stages of the deployment process. The touchpoints in our DevOps processes are seamless. 

The solution provides us with a single tool to protect all our cloud resources and applications without the need to manage and reconcile multiple security and compliance reports. It allows us to have a better understanding of our environment, from the infrastructure code to the cloud, providing a more comprehensive picture.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks provides risk clarity at the run and across the entire pipeline showing issues as they are discovered during the build phases. This makes it much easier for our developers to actually take into consideration some of the recommendations that are given.

The solution has helped us reduce run time alerts and shave down a few issues by 40 percent.

The solution has reduced alert investigation times because we can gather all the necessary information for investigation in one place.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks has saved us approximately 20 million shillings.

What is most valuable?

Due to the maturity of most companies, security posture management is the most valuable feature.

What needs improvement?

The data container component can be improved since it lacks intuitiveness. Therefore, we need to thoroughly comprehend the tool in order to utilize it effectively.

The number of cloud providers in terms of data security needs improvement. The solution does not currently support servers for GCP.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is stable. Any issues we have are usually resolved within a few hours.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is scalable.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We transitioned from using EDR solutions, and after testing several options that necessitated extensive configuration, we ultimately switched to Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, which provided a balanced solution.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward. The first time I deployed the solution, it took around three hours, but now I can do it in under an hour. The deployment is usually done through APIs, and we can also employ the production code to deploy containers.

What about the implementation team?

The implementations are completed in-house.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The licensing structure is highly comprehensive. Although the cost can be high, the value is worth the price tag.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Wiz.

What other advice do I have?

I give Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks a nine out of ten for its ease of use, value, and support.

One Prisma engineer or security person with training is able to maintain the solution. For our mature organization, we utilize all of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks tools.

I recommend Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks. The solution is easy to use and intuitive for the most part. The licensing is comprehensive and straightforward, and the modules can be easily integrated to improve our development.

In Africa, many people do not typically associate the cloud with security due to the prevalence of on-premises security solutions. However, upon utilizing Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, we have come to realize that it is an excellent and secure tool.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
PeerSpot user
Akshay Karoo - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Specialist - Cloud Security at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
May 23, 2023
Provides security scanning in multi and hybrid cloud environments and the visibility and control we need
Pros and Cons
  • "Prisma Cloud's most important feature is its auto-remediation."
  • "Prisma Cloud lags behind in terms of security automation capabilities."

What is our primary use case?

We use Prisma Cloud for the banking sector to check the policies as required.

How has it helped my organization?

Prisma Cloud provides security scanning in multi and hybrid cloud environments. This is important because customers often ask if they need certain services, such as detection, auto-remediation, and policies. AWS has all of these features, but why would a customer use anything else? The answer is that Prisma Cloud is multi-cloud, so it can monitor multiple clouds as well as on-premise networks. This is often a key requirement for customers.

Prisma Cloud can help us take a preventative approach to cloud security. It is built for developers and provides a range of features, including RQL, multi-cloud support, and endpoint detection.

Prisma Cloud provides the visibility and control we need. It properly manages all cloud assets and provides information about assets in our cloud.

Prisma Cloud provides us with a single tool to protect all our cloud resources and applications, eliminating the need to manage and reconcile disparate security and compliance reports.

Prisma Cloud provides risk clarity at runtime and throughout the entire pipeline. It also shows issues as they are discovered during the build phases.

The developers are able to correct issues using the tools they used to code.

The alert investigation time has been reduced by half an hour.

What is most valuable?

Prisma Cloud's most important feature is its auto-remediation. This feature automatically fixes security vulnerabilities in our cloud or on-premises environment. This can help us to improve our security posture and reduce our risk of a security breach.

What needs improvement?

Prisma Cloud lags behind in terms of security automation capabilities. Specifically, the investigation feature is not fully automated and requires users to know the RQL language. This can be a barrier for new users.

Prisma Cloud is not updating the real-time information on the UI for our cloud assets. It takes approximately two to three hours for the information to be updated.

I would like Palo Alto to provide a three-month free trial for Prisma Cloud.

The stability has room for improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Prisma Cloud is not stable except for our AWS clients.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Prisma Cloud is scalable.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment can take anywhere from two days to 15 days. We deploy based on the customer's requirements. 

What about the implementation team?

We implement the solution for our clients.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Prisma Cloud is more expensive than Check Point CloudGuard.

What other advice do I have?

I give Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks an eight out of ten.

Based on an organization's basic requirements for auditing and detection, I would recommend Prisma Cloud.

The best thing I have learned about Prisma Cloud is that it is a single platform, like SIEM. This is beneficial for network engineers because it reduces the complexity of finding the cause of an issue. With Prisma Cloud, everything can be found in one place.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1774512 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
May 11, 2023
It helped our governance evolve, enabling us to build more policies and determine where we needed exceptions
Pros and Cons
  • "The client wasn't using all of the features, but the one that stood out was infrastructure-as-code (IaC). I built IaC use cases and was trying to get them to use it. I also liked cloud workload protection. I worked with the vulnerability management team to develop a process. It's a manual process, so it can be challenging to remediate many image or container issues. It was nice that we could build out a reporting process and download the reports. The reports are solid."
  • "Prisma is good about compliance, and their support is excellent, but they struggle with automation and integration. They need to stay on top of the newest types of connectors. How can you connect other applications and other tools in order for this to work cohesively? That's a challenge."

What is our primary use case?

I was managing Prisma Cloud for a client. They were scanning container images for vulnerabilities and remediation.

How has it helped my organization?

Prisma Cloud is a terrific resource for preventing security concerns, from breaches to malware. They provide a compliance index, which is an excellent feature. Prisma Cloud provides visibility into and control over complex cloud environments. It could provide more awareness about the need to implement different types of benchmarks. Prisma helped our governance evolve. It enabled us to build more policies and determine where we needed exceptions.

We could use Prisma to integrate security into our client's CI/CD pipeline and add touchpoints to existing DevOps processes. However, the touchpoints weren't as seamless as we would've liked. It was a little tricky because they were moving to two different types of cloud accounts. They had to decide whether to use Prisma Cloud or another tool for those new cloud accounts. It's a difficult question because they were doing a lot of cleanup for PTS and moving to the more recent version of AKS. It depends on the strategy.

What is most valuable?

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

Prisma Cloud provides security across multi-cloud and hybrid environments. My client was migrating to Azure, but it's great for anyone with a hybrid environment. Prisma offers visibility to developers and high-level leadership because the dashboard is excellent and the alerts are comprehensive. You can understand it even if you don't know all the technical terms. For example, when I wanted them to use another feature that would've been beneficial, I could demonstrate it to them visually so they could understand. 

The automation is a mixed bag. Sometimes you'll run into issues while mitigating various vulnerabilities, and it's still a manual process. You can automate with an API, but it depends on the corporate policies for containers. You have the option. However, it's still a struggle, but that's not necessarily due to Prisma Cloud. You have many workloads in the pipeline, and things are constantly being repaved. The containers are up and down, and the environment changes continuously, so many things are hard to automate. It's possible if you put the work into it.

Prisma can comprehensively protect a cloud-native development environment. You must also consider cloud security posture management. That's where infrastructure-as-code comes into play. You must ensure that you're utilizing the alert feature in the dashboard for the analytics. If you're not, then you need to integrate something else. The client wasn't using CSPM, but it was on the roadmap. They didn't because they're moving to an Azure environment. 

What needs improvement?

Prisma is good about compliance, and their support is excellent, but they struggle with automation and integration. They need to stay on top of the newest types of connectors. How can you connect other applications and other tools in order for this to work cohesively? That's a challenge.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been managing that solution for a year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Prisma Cloud is solid. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Prisma Cloud is highly scalable. 

How are customer service and support?

I rate Palo Alto's support an eight out of ten. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I don't think Prisma saved this organization any money, but it could have. They didn't know how to optimize Prisma Cloud. I was trying to help them do that, but they had other high-level projects that got in the way. They needed to consider their budgets and which Prisma features they wanted to use.

If they were to build out those use cases and map out anything involving governance and compliance, they would find that this tool could save them lots of money. If Prisma Cloud is optimized, it's an excellent tool that isn't as costly as some think. You need to invest time and effort to determine the number of cloud accounts you're connecting and how many containers you expect to stand up.

Once you're more aware of how to optimize Prisma, you can determine how many credits you need. It's all based on credits, which will be expensive if you purchase too many credits. This client bought more credits than they needed. I told them it was unnecessary because somebody in the DevOps team decided they were going to push everything to the dev environment needlessly. They crossed a threshold that didn't need to happen and panicked. A strategy to optimize costs will save you money.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Prisma Cloud a nine out of ten. Before implementing Prisma, research the different features and look at your current tools to identify the gaps. What is not meeting your compliance needs? What policies do you have, and how can Prisma align with the strategy?

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Tejas Jain - PeerSpot reviewer
Principle Cloud Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Sep 20, 2022
Provides a single pane of glass for all our cloud resources to control all these different functionalities from various menus
Pros and Cons
  • "Prisma Cloud helped us with compliance. Most of my deployments have been greenfield, so I don't have a benchmark to compare how the security posture has improved. I've always used this from day zero of the configuration. However, I can say that the compliance checks for PCI, DSS, HIPAA, etc., made my life simpler. I don't need to look at each of these standards and compare the rules I have in place."
  • "Prisma's identity-based micro-segmentation is better than all its competitors."
  • "A better correlation between the multiple products Prisma Cloud contains would be crucial. It would reduce the time spent looking at reports and enable you to get all the actionable insights across products. I think that Palo Alto is working on it, but they need to work faster because it doesn't make sense to have all these products in a single pane of glass without any correlation between them."
  • "Prisma is the result of multiple Palo Alto acquisitions, like CWPP, Twistlock, and Aporeto. Though they are part of a single pane of glass, there is no correlation between the solutions."

What is our primary use case?

We use Prisma Cloud primarily for clients with a multi-cloud environment who require all these posture checks to be done uniformly from a single pane of glass to ensure they are in compliance. They have regulatory policies that require integration with the SIEM to generate alerts and reports. That's the primary use case for a CSPM solution. For cloud workload protection, we need vulnerability management, runtime defense, as well as image, container,  and registry scanning.

In terms of modules, we started with Redlock, the cloud security posture management component, and followed with Twistlock for cloud workload protection. Lately, I've been using Aporeto for identity-based micro-segmentation and BridgeCrew for cloud security.

Identity-based micro-segmentation allows you to create microparameters across workloads on the cloud and on-premises. You can enforce a pure wireless model through whitelisting flows in various workloads. Cloud security is primarily for core security, including SaaS and PaaS tools for scanning container images and core infrastructure. We have Terraforms, which we need to scan if we forget to remove any passwords or if there is some consideration drift between what you've configured in the IaC and what has materialized into the cloud infrastructure. 

I don't think we have had more than four or five admins for any project. We provide read-only access to the monitoring guys and custom authentication authorization privileges to a couple of users. The number of authorized users varies from plan to plan. Lots of people don't need to have access to the solution. 

How has it helped my organization?

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

It also enabled us to adopt a preventative approach to security. It gives us an option to monitor and remediate, so I don't think there is any challenge. If we see something going wrong, the solution offers a way to implement preventative controls. 

You can incorporate Prisma into DevSecOps and put it into any of the pipelines, like Jenkins and Azure DevOps. I don't think there are any challenges. You have all the ready-made plugins on these CI/CD tools, so you don't need to do or write a custom script plugin or anything. It's already available. It takes care of your end-to-end security from build to deployment and runs.

The cloud workload protection module Twistlock has ready-made plugins. Still, I don't think there was a plunging for identity-based micro-segmentation sites in the past, so we had to build a pipeline manually, I think they released a plugin for IBMS, but I never worked on it.

Prisma provides a single pane of glass for all our cloud resources to control all these different functionalities from various menus. It also helps us assess risk at runtime and throughout the whole pipeline. I have never compared Prisma with other tools, like Qualys or Tenable, so I cannot say which gives better results regarding runtime. However, I get a lot of actionable insights and suggestions from the tool about the next steps to follow.

The solution provides excellent security coverage of multi-cloud and hybrid environments. Without it, I would need to create a manual playbook for each cloud. There is a lot to maintain for each cloud, and you can't monitor from a single pane of glass. That's an administrative nightmare because you can't pull compatible reports. If I identify some compliance issues on AWS, I don't have a similar set of parameters to compare those for Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure. I definitely need this for a multi-cloud environment. 

I can get a relatively good amount of end-to-end security within the cloud. All these pieces fit together to address all my cloud needs. Of course, I don't think any vendors target security within the microservices, analytics, or data warehouse. I'm unsure because I haven't done it, but I don't think anything is missing.

It gives developers the tools they need to correct issues so they do not have to write their own scripts. Sometimes, I need an administrator to work with these developers, so it's not fully automated. Maybe I didn't find the best way to do it. Perhaps I need to find a linter or something, but there were many instances where I needed to involve someone to work with the developer. I don't think we are doing everything from the developer's end. 

Prisma also substantially reduced alert investigation times because we previously did everything by hand. We used to scan it manually, so it depended on the periodicity of scans. Earlier, we used to run scans for a couple of customers about every 15 days, and then we did the remediation. Now, all these scans run every minute or 15 minutes, so it's faster.  

What is most valuable?

Prisma's identity-based micro-segmentation is better than all its competitors. I've already evaluated Guardicore and Illumio, but Prisma stands out for the ease of configuring rules and how seamlessly it works with your cloud workloads and container environments. I used it for Kubernetes as well as K3s. I prefer Prisma's identity-based micro-segmentation. I can't think of any competitors doing this as well as Prisma Cloud.

We integrated this solution as a part of DevSecOps, so we have a dedicated pipeline for cloud workload protection. That works brilliantly. You don't need to log in to the control unless you want to do some management or full reports. I can bake in all these functionalities within the pipeline, and I can do the same for IBMS. 

As part of application security or whatever my developers are working on, I can have them bake all the configurations they need to do, like listening and patching remediation. I think it's relatively automatic, but I would consider it to be more of a DevSecOps functionality.

What needs improvement?

Prisma is the result of multiple Palo Alto acquisitions, like CWPP, Twistlock, and Aporeto. Though they are part of a single pane of glass, there is no correlation between the solutions. I don't see vulnerability scans done for tools that have been micro-segmented. 

A better correlation between the multiple products Prisma Cloud contains would be crucial. It would reduce the time spent looking at reports and enable you to get all the actionable insights across products. I think that Palo Alto is working on it, but they need to work faster because it doesn't make sense to have all these products in a single pane of glass without any correlation between them. 

At some point, things get a bit unwieldy when working with complex environments, but I don't think that challenge is unique to Prisma Cloud. It's an issue for any solution deployed in massive and complex environments. Let's say you have an enterprise with 30,000 workloads in the cloud, so it's unwieldy to have it configured for a single instance of Prisma Cloud. In that case, it would be better to segregate it across multiple tenants.

In the future, I'd like to see Palo Alto create a single consolidated agent software for workload production and identity-based micro-segmentation. Currently, I need to install two agents for the same platform to get two different functionalities. The second is maybe ease of licensing. That would also be helpful.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Prisma Cloud for nearly three and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I never faced any challenges because of internal hardware issues or the agent. Because I've always worked on the cloud-managed version, we have never faced any problems with the functionality. We did have a couple of hangups with the user and administrator onboarding and privileges, but I don't think that affects the functionality of the overall product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The product itself is scalable, but it can become unwieldy from the administrative side of things. I can push Prisma Cloud out for 10,000 workloads, but the reporting and management would be a bit difficult. I prefer to have it segmented across multiple tenants, but it's somewhat complicated. 

How are customer service and support?

I rate Palo Alto support a nine out of ten. My company is a CPSP partner with premium support, so I can't speak to the typical support experience. Even if we don't raise a ticket, we have an internal account manager to take care of all this. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Redlock was the original company doing CSPM, so I got into Prisma Cloud because they acquired Redlock. I previously used  Qualys and Tenable for vulnerability management. I thought putting the CSPM and cloud workload protection pieces of Prisma Cloud under one roof would simplify my life.

Also, all these are cloud-managed and take care of the end-to-end requirements for cloud workloads. Qualys and Tenable have all these vulnerability management capabilities, but they might lack some native remediation capabilities. It's not that the other products are falling short, but I need that consolidated single pane of glass for cloud security. 

How was the initial setup?

Setting up Prisma Cloud is straightforward. You get an activation email and deploy a couple of scripts. I work for a consulting firm that is a CPSP partner. All I needed to do is email Palo Alto with a bill of material describing our environment and the components, and then we get the activation email. After that, I followed the self-service enrollment steps, and it's running. Depending on your environment, you need to install all these applications. It's a seamless onboarding experience.

The total deployment time varies depending on the client because some of them have restrictions. One mid-sized company with around 700 workloads took less than three weeks. However, we needed to do a step-by-step approach for some, moving from the on-premises environment to the cloud and from dev to production. Those deployments took a couple of months.

Usually, the deployment requires no more than two or three people, but it depends on the approach. One should be enough if it's a batch approach. I've been doing this alone for a lot of my clients. In some situations, if you may need some help troubleshooting an app that isn't working, or the client may need someone with specialized expertise. It also depends on the client's size. At most, you'll need a half-dozen.

What was our ROI?

It's a costly solution, so we spend a lot on the licenses. At the same time, we can perform compliance checks, external audits, etc., faster because we have all the right pieces in place. That definitely helped, but I've never calculated the total cost of ownership or return on investment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Prisma Cloud Enterprise is a costly solution. You need a license for all the components. At the same time, you have everything under one roof, so I think it's still justified. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate Prisma Cloud an eight out of ten. I deduct a couple of points because I would still like to see all the products in the platform correlated. They should also do away with the need to install multiple agents for various functionalities or burn it all down into a single agent that takes care of it.

My advice is to start early if you are moving from on-premises to a hybrid or cloud environment. Implement Prisma Cloud as soon as possible, especially for greenfield deployments. This isn't a problem with Prisma Access, but it's usually a challenge. You need time to customize your rules and tailor them to your setup. 

The second recommendation I have is for Prisma Cloud Compute, the cloud workload protection piece. It's available in self-managed and cloud versions. You should opt for the cloud-managed version because you can get two single-cloud platforms. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
PeerSpot user
it_user1685487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Information Security Architecture at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Oct 26, 2021
Provides continuous compliance monitoring, good visibility from a single pane of glass, good support
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is the continuous cloud compliance monitoring and alerting."
  • "Prisma Cloud is a single tool that we can use to protect all of our cloud resources without having to manage and reconcile several security and compliance reports."
  • "We would like to have the detections be more contemporaneous. For example, we've seen detections of an overprivileged user or whatever it might be in any of the hundreds of Prisma policies, where there are 50 minutes of latency between the event and the alert."

What is our primary use case?

We use Prisma Cloud in several ways and there are a lot of use cases. The first way that we use it is for inventory. It keeps a near real-time inventory of virtual compute storage and services. Second, we use it for monitoring and alerting of misconfigurations or other items of security significance. Next is compliance. We use it to monitor compliance with the centers for internet security (CIS) benchmarks.

How has it helped my organization?

Prisma provides security that spans multi/hybrid-cloud environments. We have it configured to watch for compliance in AWS, the Google Cloud Platform, and very soon, Azure as well. This is important to us because our risk management organization mandated the fact that we would maintain this overwatch capability in any of our clouds that have virtual compute storage or workloads.

Prisma's comprehensiveness for protecting the full cloud-native stack is excellent.

The comprehensiveness of the cloud-native development lifecycles is excellent. For us, the deploy functionality is not applicable but the build and run capabilities are. It positively affects our operations and gives us optics that we wouldn't otherwise have, at the speed of the cloud.

Prisma provides the visibility and control that we need, regardless of how complex our environments are. This very much boosts our confidence in our security and compliance postures. It's also been deemed acceptable as a sufficient presence and efficacy of control by our internal auditors and external regulators alike.

This solution has enabled us to integrate security into our CI/CD pipelines and add touchpoints as a control stop in the release chain. The touchpoints are seamless and very natural to our automation.

Prisma Cloud is a single tool that we can use to protect all of our cloud resources without having to manage and reconcile several security and compliance reports. It unifies and simplifies the overall operations.

Using this tool provides us with risk clarity across the entire pipeline because we use it as a pre-deployment control, ensuring that the run state is known and the risk posture is known at runtime. Our developers use this information to correct issues using our tools for YAML, JSON, CloudFormation templates, and Terraform.

Prisma does so much pre-screening that it limits the number of runtime alerts we get. This is because those pre-deployment code controls are known before the run state.

The investigations capabilities enhance our process and lower incident response and threat detection time. However, it is an enabler and it is run in parallel with our SIEM, which is Splunk. Most of what we're going to do, investigation-wise, is going to be in Splunk, simply because there's better domain knowledge about the use of that tool in Splunk's query language.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the continuous cloud compliance monitoring and alerting. The way Prisma works is that it has a tentacle from Palo Alto's AWS presence into ours. That tentacle is an application program interface, an API, a listener. That listener goes in and is entitled to look at all of the Amazon Web Services' logging facilities. It can then do event correlation, and it can tattletale on misconfigurations such as an S3 storage bucket made publicly available. We wouldn't otherwise be aware of that if Prisma didn't watch for it and alert on it.

Prisma provides cloud workload protection and cloud network security in a single pane of glass, and these items are very important to us. It also provides cloud infrastructure entitlement management but identity and access management is not something that we use Prisma for. We implemented a PoC but we opted to use another tool for that use case.

The security automation capabilities provided by this product are excellent and industry-leading. Palo Alto bought a company called Twistlock, which makes a pre-deployment code scanner. They added its functionality to the feature set of Prisma in the form of this compute module. Now, we're able to use the Twistlock capability in our automation, which includes our toolchains and pipelines.

This tool provides excellent features for preventative cloud security. We use all of the auto-remediation capabilities that Prisma offers out of the box. That "see something, do something" auto-remediation capability within Prisma keeps our human responders from having to do anything. It's automated, meaning that if it sees something, it will right the wrong because it has the entitlement to do that with its Prisma auto-remediation role. It's great labor savings and also closes off things much quicker than a human could.

Palo just keeps bolting on valuable features. They just show up in the console, and they have their little question mark, down in the lower right-hand corner, that shows what's new, and what's changed for August or September. They just keep pouring value into the tool and not charging us for it. We like that.

What needs improvement?

We would like to have the detections be more contemporaneous. For example, we've seen detections of an overprivileged user or whatever it might be in any of the hundreds of Prisma policies, where there are 50 minutes of latency between the event and the alert. We'd always want that to be as quick as possible, and this is going to be true for every customer.

The billing function, with the credits and the by-workload-licensing and billing, is something that is a little wonky and can be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

We began using Prisma Cloud in October or November 2018, when it was still known as RedLock.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability-wise, it has been perfect.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is excellent. Palo keeps adding cloud support, such as for Alibaba, Oracle, and others.

We have approximately 5,500 employees. Our deployment is all-encompassing overwatch to all of our AWS accounts, of which there are 66. We also have two or three different folders within GCP.

We do have plans to increase our usage. This includes using it for more of its capabilities. For example, there is a workload protection link that we haven't fully embraced. There are also some network security features and some dashboarding and geo-mapping capabilities that we could make better use of.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is excellent. We have premium support with Palo Alto and I never have any critique for the quality or speed of support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have used this solution from the outset of our cloud journey. It began with Evident.io, then it became RedLock, and then it became Prisma Cloud.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is very straightforward. We did it several times.

The first one was deployed to AWS, which probably took about an hour. Years later, as we adopted the Google Cloud, it was configured in probably half an hour.

Palo provides the necessary setup instructions and you can't go wrong, as long as you have the role entitlement set up for Prisma. The handshake only takes about an hour.

What about the implementation team?

Our deployment was done entirely in-house.

We have three people, full-time, who are responsible for the maintenance. Their roles are policy management, meaning these are the rule sets. It's called RQL, the RedLock query language, the out-of-the-box policies that are ever dynamic. When there's a new policy, we have to go in and rationalize that with our cyber organization.

We have to scrutinize the risk rating that's put on it by Palo. We have to realize when we're going to turn it on and turn it off. Also, we have to consider the resulting incident response procedures associated with the alert happening.

What was our ROI?

One metric that would be meaningful in this regard is that our company has had no cloud-based compromise. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

You can expect a premium price because it is a premium quality product by a leading supplier.

We are a strategic partner with Palo Alto, meaning that we use all of their solutions. For example, we use their NG firewalls, WildFire, Panorama, Prisma, and all of their stuff. Because Prisma was an add-on for us, we get good pricing on it.

There are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees. The credits consumption billing model is new and we're going to be using more of the features. As we embrace further and we start to use these workload security protections, those come at an incremental cost. So, I would say that our utilization, and thus the cost, would trend up as it has in the past.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated several other products such as DivvyCloud, Dome9, and a product by Sophos.

We did a full comparison matrix and rationalization of each of the capabilities. Our sister company was using DivvyCloud at the time and as we do from time to time, we conferred with them about what their likes and dislikes were. They were moderately pleased with it but ultimately, we ended up going with Palo Alto.

What other advice do I have?

My advice for anybody who is considering this product is to give it a good look. Give it a good cost-balance rationalization versus the cost of a compromise or breach, because it's your defense mechanism against exposure.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Ali Mohiuddin - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Architect at a educational organization with 201-500 employees
Real User
Oct 3, 2021
The magic happens with traffic passing through multiple zones and our data center, as we can quickly troubleshoot problems
Pros and Cons
  • "The application visibility is amazing. For example, sometimes we don't know what a particular custom port is for and what is running on it. The visibility enables us to identify applications, what the protocol is, and what service is behind it. Within Azure, it is doing a great job of providing visibility. We know exactly what is passing through our network. If there is an issue of any sort we are able to quickly detect it and fix the problem."
  • "Overall, the Palo Alto solution is extremely good for helping us take a preventative approach to cloud security."
  • "Getting new guys trained on using the solution requires some thought. If someone is already trained on Palo Alto then he's able to adapt quickly. But, if someone is coming from another platform such as Fortinet, or maybe he's from the system side, that is where we need some help. We need to find out if there is an online track or training that they can go to."

What is our primary use case?

We had an internal debate regarding our firewall solution for the cloud. Initially we had a vendor that suggested we could build a whole environment using the Azure firewall, but we had requirements for Zero Trust architecture. We are essentially like a bank. We were planning to host some PCI services in the cloud and we were planning to create all the zones. When we looked at the feature set of Azure, we were not able to find Layer 7 visibility, which we had on our firewalls, and that is where the debate started. We thought it was better to go with a solution that gives us that level of visibility. Our team was comfortable with Palo Alto as a data center firewall, so we went for Prisma Cloud.

How has it helped my organization?

The comprehensiveness of the solution for protecting the full cloud-native stack is pretty good. It is doing a good job in three areas: identification, detection, and the response part is also very clear. We are able to see what is wrong, what is happening, and what we allowed, even for troubleshooting. If something goes bad, we need to check where it went bad and where it started. For example, if there is an issue that seems to be performance-related, we are able to look at the logs and the traffic flow and identify if the issue really is performance-related or if it is a security issue. Because we are new to the cloud, we are using a combination of different features to understand what is going on, if the application owner does not know what is wrong. We use the traffic analysis to find out what it was like yesterday or the day before and what is missing. Perhaps it is an authentication issue. We use it a lot for troubleshooting.

We have implemented Palo Alto's SOAR solution, Demisto, and have automated some of the things that our SOC team identified, related to spam and phishing. Those workflows are working very well. Things that would take an analyst between three and six hours to do can now be achieved in five to eight minutes because of the automation capabilities.

Overall, the Palo Alto solution is extremely good for helping us take a preventative approach to cloud security. One of the problems that we had was that, in the cloud, networking is different from standard networking. Although only a portion of our teams is trained on the cloud part, because we had engineers who were using the platform, they were able to quickly adapt. We were able to use our own engineers who were trained in the data center to very quickly be able to work on Prisma Cloud. But when we initially tried to do that with Azure itself, we had a lot of difficulty because they did not have the background in how Azure cloud works.

Also, when you have a hybrid cloud deployment, you will have something on-prem. Maybe your authentication or certain applications are still running on-prem and you are using your gateway to communicate with the cloud. A lot of troubleshooting happens in both the data centers. When we initially deployed, we had separate people for the cloud and for the local data centers. This is where the complication occurred. Both teams would argue about a lot of things. Having a single solution, we're able to troubleshoot very quickly. The same people who work on our Palo Alto data center firewalls are able to use Prisma Cloud to search and find out what went wrong, even though it's a part of the Azure infrastructure. That has been very good for us. They were easily able to adapt and, without much training, they were able to understand how to use Prisma Cloud to see what is happening, where things are getting blocked, and where we need to troubleshoot.

The solution provides the visibility and control we need, regardless of how complex or distributed the cloud environments become. If you have traffic passing through multiple zones and you have your own data center as well, that is where it does the magic. Using Prisma Cloud, we're able to quickly troubleshoot and identify where the problem is. Suppose that a particular feature in Office 365 is not working. The packet capture capability really helps us. In certain cases, we have seen where Microsoft has had bugs and that is one area where this solution has really helped us. We have been able to use the packet capture capability to find out why it was not working. That would not have been possible in a normal solution. We are using it extensively for troubleshooting. We are capturing the data and then going back to the service provider with the required logs and showing them the expected response and what we are getting. We can show them that the issue is on their side.

When it comes to Zero Trust architecture, it's extremely good for compliance. In our data center, we did a massive project on NSX wherein we had seven PCI requirements. We needed to ensure that all the PCI apps pass through the firewall and that they only communicate with the required resources and that there was no unexpected communication. We used Prisma Cloud to implement Zero Trust architecture in the cloud. Even in between the subnets, there is no communication allowed. Only what we allowed is passing through the firewall. The rest is getting blocked, which is very good for compliance.

If I have to generate a report for the PCI auditor, it is very simple. I can show him that we have the firewall with the vulnerability and IPS capabilities turned on, and very quickly provide evidence to him for the certification part. This is exactly what we wanted and is one of the ways in which the solution is helping us.

Another of the great things about Prisma Cloud is that the management console is hosted. That means we are not managing the backend. We just use Prisma Cloud to find out where an issue is. We can go back in time and it is much faster. If you have an appliance, the administration and support of it are also part of your job. But when you have Prisma Cloud, you don't care about those things. You just focus on the issues and manage the cloud appliances. This is something that is new for us and extremely good. Even though we have a lot of traffic, the search and capabilities are very fast, making them extremely good for troubleshooting.

Because the response is much faster, we're able to quickly find problems, and even things that are not related to networking but that are related to an application. We are able to help the developers by telling them that this is where the reset packet is coming from and what is expected.

We are using the new Prisma Cloud 2.0 Cloud Security Posture Management features. For example, there are some pre-built checklists that we utilize. It really helps us identify things, compared to Panorama, which is the on-prem solution. There are a lot of elements that are way better than Panorama. For instance, it helps us know which things we really need to work on, identifying issues that are of high importance. The dashboards and the console are quite good compared to Panorama.

If one of our teams is talking about slowness, we are able to find out where this slowness is coming from, what is not responding. If there is a lock on the database, and issues are constantly being reported, we are able to know exactly what is causing the issue in the backend application.

What is most valuable?

The main feature is the management console which gives us a single place to manage all our requirements. We have multiple zones and, using UDR [user-defined routing] we are sending the traffic back to Palo Alto. From there we are defining the rules for each application. What we like about it is the ease of use and the visibility.

The application visibility is amazing. For example, sometimes we don't know what a particular custom port is for and what is running on it. The visibility enables us to identify applications, what the protocol is, and what service is behind it. Within Azure, it is doing a great job of providing visibility. We know exactly what is passing through our network. If there is an issue of any sort we are able to quickly detect it and fix the problem.

The solution provides Cloud Security Posture Management, Cloud Workload Protection, Cloud Network Security, and Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management in a single pane of glass. When it comes to anomaly detection, because we have Layer 7 visibility, if there is something suspicious, even though it is allowed, we are able to identify it using the anomaly detection feature. We also wanted something where we could go back in time, in terms of visibility. Suppose something happened two hours back. Because of the console, we are able to search things like that, two hours back, easily, and see what happened, what change might have happened, and where the traffic was coming from. These features are very good for us in terms of investigation.

In addition, there are some forensic features we are utilizing within the solution, plus data security features. For example, if we have something related to financial information, we can scan it using Prisma Cloud. We are using a mixture of everything it offers, including network traffic analysis, user activity, and vulnerability detection. All these things are in one place, which is something we really like.

Also, if we are not aware of what the port requirements are for an application, which is a huge issue for us, we can put it into learning mode and use the solution to detect what the exact port requirements are. We can then meet to discuss which ones we'll allow and which ones are probably not required.

What needs improvement?

The only part that is actually tough for us is that we have a professional services resource from Palo Alto working with us on customization. One of the things that we are thinking about is that if we have similar requirements in the future, how can we get his capability in-house? The professional services person is a developer and he takes our requirements and writes the code for the APIs or whatever he needs to access. We will likely be looking for a resource for the Demisto platform.

The automation also took us time, more than we thought it would take. We had some challenges because Demisto was a third-party product. Initially, the engineer who is with us thought that everything was possible, but later on, when he tried to do everything, he was not able to do some things. We had to change the strategy multiple times. But we have now reached a point where we are in a comfort zone and we have been able to achieve what we wanted to do.

Also, getting new guys trained on using the solution requires some thought. If someone is already trained on Palo Alto then he's able to adapt quickly. But, if someone is coming from another platform such as Fortinet, or maybe he's from the system side, that is where we need some help. We need to find out if there is an online track or training that they can go to.

Related to training is the fact that changes made in the solution are reflected directly in the production environment. As of now, we are not aware of any method for creating a demo environment where we can train new people. These are the challenges we have.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks for about eight months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have not had many issues with the solution's stability, and whatever challenges we have had have been in the public cloud. But with the solution itself there has only been one issue we got stuck on and that was NAT-ing. It was resolved later. We ran into some issues with our design because public internet access was an issue, and that took us some time. But it was only the NAT-ing part where we got stuck. The rest has all been smooth.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

As of now, we have not put a load on the system, so we will only know about how it handles that when we start migrating our services. For now, we've just built the landing zones and only very few services are there. It will take like a year or so before we know how it will handle our load.

This is our main firewall solution. We are not relying on the cloud-based firewall as of now. All our traffic is going through Prisma Cloud. Once we add our workloads, we will be using the full capacity of the solution.

How are customer service and support?

We have not had any issues up to now.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We initially tried to use the Azure firewall and the VPC that is available in Azure, but we had very limited capabilities that way. It was just a packet filtering solution with a lot of limitations and we ended up going back to Palo Alto.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward. There was an engineer who really helped us and we worked with them directly. We did not have any challenges.

The initial deployment took us about 15 days and whatever challenges we had were actually from the design side. We wanted to do certain things in a different way and we made a few changes later on, but from the deployment and onboarding perspectives, it was straightforward.

We have a team of about 12 individuals who are using Prisma Cloud, all from the network side, who are involved in the design. On the security side, three people use it. We want to increase that number, but as I mentioned earlier, there is the issue of how we can train people. For maintenance, we have a 24/7 setup and we have at least six to eight engineers, three per shift. Most of them are from the network security side, senior network security engineers, who mainly handle proxy and firewall.

What about the implementation team?

Our implementation strategy included using a third-party vendor, Crayon, who actually set up the basic design for us. Once the design was ready, we consulted with the Palo Alto team telling them that this was what we wanted to implement: We will have this many zones and these are the subnets. It didn't take much time because we knew exactly what our subnets were but also because the team that was helping us had already had experience with deployment.

Our experience with Crayon went well. Our timeline was extremely short and in the time that was available they did an excellent job. We reached a point where the landing zones were ready and whatever issues we had were resolved.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I can't say much about the pricing because we still have not started using the solution to its full capabilities. As of now, we don't have any issues. Whatever we have asked for has been delivered.

If you pay for three years of Palo Alto, it's better. If you're planning on doing this, it's obviously not going to be for one year, so it's better if you go with a three-year license.

The only challenge we have is with the public cloud vendor pricing. The biggest lesson I have learned is around the issues related to pricing for public cloud. So when you are doing your segmentation and design, it is extremely important that you work with someone who knows and understands what kinds of needs you will have in the future and how what you are doing will affect you in terms of costs. If you have multiple firewalls, the public cloud vendor will also charge you. There are a lot of hidden costs.

Every decision you make will have certain cost implications. It is better that you try to foresee and forecast how these decisions are going to affect you. The more data that passes through, the more the public cloud will charge you. If, right now, you're doing five applications, try to think about what 100 or 250 applications will cost you later.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

If we had gone with the regular Azure solution, some of the concerns were the logging, monitoring, and search capabilities. If something was getting blocked how would we detect that? The troubleshooting was very complicated. That is why we went with Prisma Cloud, for the troubleshooting.

Microsoft is not up to where Palo Alto is, right now. Maybe in six months or a year, they will have some comparable capabilities, but as of now, there is no competitor.

Before choosing the Palo Alto product we checked Cisco and Fortinet. In my experience, it seemed that Cisco and Forinet were still building their products. They were not ready. We were lucky that when we went to Palo Alto they already had done some deployments. They already had a solution ready on the marketplace. They were quickly able to provide us the demo license and walk us through the capabilities and our requirements. The other vendors, when we started a year ago, were not ready.

What other advice do I have?

If you have compliance requirements such as PCI or ISO, going with Palo Alto would be a good option. It will make your life much easier. If you do not have Layer 7 visibility requirements and you do not have auditing and related requirements, then you could probably survive by going with a traditional firewall. But if you are a midsize or enterprise company, you will need something that has the capabilities of Prisma Cloud. Otherwise, you will have issues. It is very difficult to work with the typical solution where there is no log and you don't know exactly what happened and there is too much trial and error.

Instead of allowing everything and then trying to limit things from there, if you go with a proper solution, you will know exactly what is blocked, where it is blocked, and what to allow and what not to allow. In terms of visibility, Prisma Cloud is very good.

One thing to be aware of is that we have a debate in our environment wherein some engineers from the cloud division say that if we had an Azure-based product, the same engineer who is handling the cloud, who is the global administrator, would have visibility into where a problem is and could handle that part. But because we are using Palo Alto, which has its own administrators, we still have this discussion going on.

Prisma Cloud also provides security spanning multi- and hybrid-cloud environments, which is very good for us. We do not have hybrid cloud as of now, but we are planning, in the future , to be hosting infrastructure on different cloud providers. As of now we only have Azure.

Because Zero Trust is something new for us, we have actually seen a significant increase in alerts. Previously, we only had intra-zone traffic. Now we have inter-zone traffic. Zero Trust deployments are very different from traditional deployments. It's something we have to work on. However, because of the increased security, we know that a given computer tried to scan something during office hours, or who was trying to make certain changes. So alerts have increased because of the features that we have turned on.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
it_user1680549 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead- Information Security Analyst at archan.fiem.it@gmail.com
Real User
Sep 30, 2021
Easy to use, provides good visibility but interface isn't customizable
Pros and Cons
  • "Prisma Cloud is quite simple to use. The web GUI is powerful. Prisma Cloud scans the overall architecture of the AWS network to identify open ports and other vulnerabilities, then highlights them."
  • "We feel like we have power in our hands, with full visibility into what is happening at the endpoint level."
  • "Prisma Cloud's dashboards should be customizable. That's very important. Other similar solutions are more elastic so you have the power to create customized dashboards. In Prisma Cloud, you cannot do that."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use Prisma Cloud as a cloud security posture management (CSPM) module. Prisma Cloud is designed to catch vulnerabilities at the config level and capture everything on a cloud workload, so we mainly use it to identify any posture management issues that we are having in our cloud workloads. We also use it as an enterprise antivirus solution, so it's a kind of endpoint security solution.

Our setup is hybrid. We use SaaS also. We mostly work in AWS but we have customers who work with GCP and Azure as well. About 60 percent of our customers use AWS, 30 percent use Azure, and the remaining 10 percent are on GCP. Prisma Cloud covers the full scope. And for XDR, we have an info technology solution that we use for the Gulf cloud. So we have the EDF solution rolled out to approximately around 500 instances right now.  

Prisma Cloud is used heavily in our all production teams. Some might not be directly using the product since our team is the service owner and we manage Prisma. Our team has around 10 members teams, and they are the primary users. From an engineering aspect, there are another 10 team members who use it basically. Those are the actual people who work hands-on with Prisma Cloud. Aside from that, there are some product teams that use Prisma indirectly. If we detect something wrong with their products, we take care of it, but I don't think they have an active account on Prisma Cloud.

How has it helped my organization?

Prisma Cloud has been helpful from a security operations perspective. When a new product is getting onboarded or we are creating a new product — specifically when we need to create a new peripheral— it's inevitable that there will be a kind of vulnerability due to posture management. Everything we produce goes through via CICD, and it's kind of automated. Still, there are some scenarios where we see some gaps. So we can discover where those gaps exist, like if someone left an open port or an instance got compromised. 

These kinds of situations are really crucial for us,  and Prisma Cloud handles them really well. We know ahead of time if a particular posture is bad and we have several accounts in the same posture. Prisma gives us a deep dive with statistics and metrics, so we know which accounts are doing bad in terms of posture, how many accounts are out of alignment with the policy strategy, how many are not compliant. Also, it helps us identify who might be doing something shady. 

So we get some good functionality overall in that dashboard. Their dashboard is not customizable, however, so that's a feature we'd like to say. At the same time, what they do provide on their dashboard is pretty helpful. It enables us to make the posture management more mature. We're able to protect against or eliminate some potential incidents that could have happened if we didn't have Prisma. 

What is most valuable?

Prisma Cloud is quite simple to use. The web GUI is powerful. Prisma Cloud scans the overall architecture of the AWS network to identify open ports and other vulnerabilities, then highlights them. It's really good at managing compliance. We get out-of-the-box policies for SOC 2, Fedramp, and other compliance solutions, so we do not need to tune most of the rules because they are quite compliant, useful, and don't get too many false positives. 

And in terms of Prisma Cloud's XDR solution, we do not have anything at scope at present that can give us the same in-depth visibility on the endpoint level. So if something goes bad on the endpoint, Prisma's XDR solutions can really go deep down to identify which process is doing malicious activity, what was the network connection, how many times it has been opened, and who is using that kind of solution or that kind of process. So it's a long chain and its graphical representation is also very good. We feel like we have power in our hands. We have full visibility about what is happening on an endpoint level. 

When it comes to securing new SaaS applications, Prism Cloud is good. If I had to rate it, I would say seven out of 10. It gives us really good visibility. In the cloud, if you do not know what you are working with or you do not have full visibility, you cannot protect it. It's a good solution at least to cover CSPM. We have other tools also like Qualys that take care of the vulnerability management on the A-level staff — in the operating system working staff — but when it comes to the configuration level, Prisma is the best fit for us. 

What needs improvement?

Prisma Cloud's dashboards should be customizable. That's very important. Other similar solutions are more elastic so you have the power to create customized dashboards. In Prisma Cloud, you cannot do that. Prisma also should allow users to fully automate the workflow of an identified set. Right now, it can give us a hint about what has happened and there is an option to remediate that, but for some reason, that doesn't work. 

Another pain point is integration with ticketing solutions. We need bidirectional integration of Prisma Cloud and our ticketing tool. Currently, we only have one-way integration. When an alert appears in Prisma Cloud, it shows up in our ticketing tool as well. But if someone closes that ticket in our ticketing tool, that alert doesn't resolve in Prisma Cloud. We have to do it manually each time, which is a waste of time. 

 I am not sure how much Prisma Cloud protects against zero-day threats. Those kinds of threats really work in different kinds of patterns, like identify some kind of CBE, that kind of stuff. But considering the way it works for us, I don't think it'll be able to capture a zero-day threat if it is a vulnerability because Prisma Cloud actually doesn't capture vulnerability. It captures errors in posture management. That's a different thing. I don't know if there is any zero-day that Prisma can identify in AWS instantly. Probably, we can ask them to create a custom policy, but that generally takes time. We haven't seen that kind of scenario where we actually have to handle a zero-day threat with Prisma Cloud, because that gets covered mostly by Qualys.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Prisma Cloud for almost two years now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Prisma Cloud is quite stable. At times, it goes down, but that's very rare. We have some tickets with them, but when we see some issues, they sort it out in no time. We do not have a lot of unplanned downtime. It happens rarely. So I think in the last year, we haven't seen anything like that.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Prisma Cloud is quite scalable. In our current licensing model, we're able to heavily extend our cloud workload and onboard a lot of customers. It really helps, and it is on par with other solutions.

How are customer service and support?

I think Prisma Cloud's support is quite good. I would rate them seven out of 10 overall. They have changed their teams. The last team was comparatively not as good as the one we have right now. I would rate them five out of 10, but they have improved a lot. The new team is quite helpful. When we have an issue, they take care of it personally if we do not get an answer within the terms of the SLA. We tend to escalate to them and get a prompt answer. The relationship between our management and their team is quite good as well. .

We have a biweekly or weekly call with their tech support team. We are in constant communication about issues and operating problems with them. It's kind of a collab call with their tech support team, and we have, I think, a monthly call with them as well. So whenever we have issues, we have direct access to their support portal. We create tickets and discuss issues on the call weekly.

Transitioning to the new support team was relatively easy. They switched because of the internal structure and the way they work. Most of the engineering folks work out of Dublin and we are in India. The previous team was from the western time zone. That complicated things in terms of scheduling. So I think the current team is right now in Ireland and it's in the UK time zone. That works best for us. 

How was the initial setup?

We have an engineering team that does the implementation for us, and our team specifically handles the operations once that product is set up for us. And then that product is handed over to us for the daily BA stuff accessing the security, the CSPM kind of module. We are not involved directly. When the product gets onboarded, it's handed over to us. We handle the management side, like if you need to create a new rule or you need to find teams for the rule. But the initial implementation is handled by our engineers.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Prisma Cloud six out 10. I would recommend it if you are using AWS or anything like that. It's quite a tool and I'm impressed with how they have been improving and onboarding new features in the past one and a half years. If you have the proper logging system and can implement it properly within your architecture, it can work really well.

If you are weighing Prisma Cloud versus some CASB solution, I would say that it depends on your use case. CASBs are a different kind of approach. When someone is already using a CASB solution, that's quite a mature setup while CSPM is another side of handling security. So if someone has CASB in place and feels they don't need CSPM, then that might be true for a particular use case at a particular point in time. But also we need to think of the current use case and the level of maturity at a given point in time and consider whether the security is enough.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: September 2026
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.