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BMC Helix Cloud Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

SentinelOne Singularity Clo...
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Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
4th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.3
Number of Reviews
94
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (6th), Cloud and Data Center Security (5th), Container Security (3rd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (3rd), Compliance Management (3rd)
BMC Helix Cloud Security
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
24th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
31st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
1st
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
106
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (5th), Container Security (1st), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (1st), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Andrew W - PeerSpot reviewer
Tells us about vulnerabilities as well as their impact and helps to focus on real issues
Looking at all the different pieces, it has got everything we need. Some of the pieces we do not even use. For example, we do not have Kubernetes Security. We are not running any K8 clusters, so it is good for us. Overall, we find the solution to be fantastic. There can be additional education components. This may not be truly fair to them because of what the product is going for, but it would be great to see additional education for compliance. It is not a criticism of the tool per se, but anything to help non-development resources understand some of the complexities of the cloud is always appreciated. Any additional educational resources are always helpful for security teams, especially those without a development background.
GregoireSoukiassian - PeerSpot reviewer
Effectively addresses security concerns but could use enhancement in terms of integration
BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features. It currently consists of separate point solutions that don't flow together as seamlessly as they could. This lack of integration, unlike platforms like ServiceNow, may be due to historical factors. Enhancing this integration would make it a more compelling choice from a business perspective and offer a smoother user experience. In the next release of BMC Helix Cloud Security, I would like to see additional features, particularly AI integration, which has already been announced. AI integration could bring more precision to the platform, making it even more interesting and effective.
Mohammad Qaw - PeerSpot reviewer
It gives you one console to see all of your assets, review their configurations, and build your processes
Most customers use Prisma Cloud for visibility and compliance. Prisma has so many features, but many organizations do not use them. They primarily use the visibility part to connect all their cloud accounts and hosts for visibility to see if they are missing any security controls or if they have any misconfigurations. You can connect it to cloud environments such as Azure, AWS, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba, etc., or to an on-prem data center. Prisma Cloud gives you so many options to automate processes related to your daily operations. When it comes to cybersecurity, you can automate things with their existing APIs. They also have out-of-the-box integrations with many solutions. I have not seen any limitations. Everything is customizable. You can do whatever you want, defining the reporting and custom use cases. They recently updated the UI, so it's much better than before.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The user-friendly dashboard offers both convenience and security by providing quick access to solutions and keeping us informed of potential threats."
"PingSafe offers an intuitive user interface that lets us navigate quickly and easily."
"The most valuable features are automated threat response, AI detection, and static and dynamic detection."
"It is advantageous in terms of time-saving and cost reduction."
"With PingSafe, it's easy to onboard new accounts."
"The visibility PingSafe provides into the Cloud environment is a valuable feature."
"Cloud Native Security helps us discover vulnerabilities in a cloud environment like open ports that allow people to attack our environment. If someone unintentionally opens a port, we are exposed. Cloud Native Security alerts us so we can remediate the problem. We can also automate it so that Cloud Native Security will fix it."
"It is scalable, stable, and can detect any threat on a machine. It uses artificial intelligence and can lock down any virus."
"The features that I've found most valuable are its container security aspect. I also like its vulnerability management tools."
"The best feature is time to value. With very minimal effort, you are able to have a cohesive view into your security posture on one or multiple cloud accounts, particularly if you are dealing with multicloud. If you have Azure and AWS deployments, you might have multiple subscriptions in Azure and usually multiple accounts in AWS. You may even be doing some GCP work (around Google Cloud Platform). It's very difficult to manage a common set of policies, even less reporting, across multiple subscriptions, accounts, and cloud environments. What BMC Helix Cloud Security does is provide a unified view or single pane of glass as to your baseline. Then, it also facilitates the ability for Level 1 or 2 operations support to take action and report on security vulnerabilities."
"The most valuable aspects of BMC Helix Cloud Security are its security features and regulatory compliance capabilities."
"It's also multi-cloud. You can look at several cloud providers: AWS, Azure, or GCP."
"The cool feature of Helix Cloud Security is that you can do all that — understand and remediate issues — in one dashboard, based on the different policies that are available for security, out-of-the-box."
"Role-based security is a valuable feature."
"Visibility and control are the most utilized features. A dashboard is available to us where we can view different categories. We can see any IAM-related risks, any discovered vulnerabilities, any incidents, or any network-level issues."
"Prisma Cloud has enabled us to take a very strong preventive approach to cloud security. One of the hardest things with cloud is getting visibility into workloads. With Prisma Cloud, you can go in and get that visibility, then set up policies to alert on risky behavior, e.g., if there are security groups or firewall ports open up. So, it is very helpful in preventing configuration errors in the cloud by having visibility. If there are issues, then you can find them and fix them."
"Technical support is quite helpful."
"The most valuable feature is its cloud security posture management."
"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."
"The CWP module, runtime protection, and WAAS API are valuable."
"The most valuable features of the solution are areas like compliance and asset inventories, along with runtime protection."
"The solution gives us a lot of visibility across all of our cloud solutions."
 

Cons

"The application module focuses on the different codes and libraries that can be run on the machines. It is very important for Singularity EDR to detect what type of codes and what type of libraries can run in the machine. If they can implement a white list or a black list of codes or libraries that can be used in the machine, it would be very helpful. They can focus more on the application module."
"We are experiencing problems with Cloud Native Security reporting."
"I would like PingSafe's detections to be openly available online instead of only accessible through their portal. Other tools have detections that are openly available without going through the tool."
"There is room for improvement in the current active licensing model for PingSafe."
"The could improve their mean time to detect."
"In some cases, the rules are strictly enforced but do not align with real-world use cases."
"In terms of ease of use, initially, it is a bit confusing to navigate around, but once you get used to it, it becomes easier."
"Crafting customized policies can be tricky."
"BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features."
"We've had some with issues connectors. The connectors have seemed to have caused a little bit of trouble, perhaps with the APIs trying to scan the environment. The only time I've had to reach out to tech support was for that. It seems it may not have been scanning correctly or I wasn't seeing data within a specific time. But we've set up a couple of connectors in the past couple of weeks and they actually scanned the AWS environment and we had data within about 10 minutes. It's working a lot faster and I think they're making improvements as they go."
"I want the role-based security feature to be improved."
"Every organization out there doesn't rely on just one control body. They use FISMA control. They may use HIPAA, CIS, PCI, or SOX, then blend them. One of the things that is now in big demand for BMC Helix Cloud Security is content. That's the next journey in its lifespan, making it easier for the community to share and collaborate on content for security controls that can be measured and remediated."
"The UI could be more user-friendly."
"Prisma Cloud's enterprise reporting needs significant improvement."
"One definite area for improvement is the auto-remediation or the CWP area. The second one is the RQL language. It is still not very flexible and does not cover a lot of use cases. The RQL language could be dramatically improved to add more options."
"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."
"They need to improve the API gateway."
"These tools have a set of signatures or rules that will alert you whenever something meets the criteria. In the future, they might include some machine learning or AI feature that allows you to ask questions about the context of the alert, and it will provide you answers based on the data that they have. Most vendors are doing it, and I believe they will do it in the future. The reporting bar could also use AI to add context based on the environment."
"They could improve more features for the enterprise version of the solution."
"Prisma could improve the data quality. One challenge is that when an application is deployed on multiple virtual machines, we get an alert for each machine, but the biggest challenge is container flapping. When containers go up and down, we get 100 alerts on one day, but it reports 20 the next day. The numbers keep changing, and the app owners tell us, "You reported a hundred vulnerabilities from my app, and today, you report 20. I haven't made any changes in production, so is your data correct or not?""
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I wasn't sure what to expect from the pricing, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a little less than I thought."
"The tool is cost-effective."
"The pricing for PingSafe in India was more reasonable than other competitors."
"Singularity Cloud Workload Security's licensing and price were cheaper than the other solutions we looked at."
"SentinelOne provided competitive pricing compared to other vendors, and we are satisfied with the deal."
"I am personally not taking care of the pricing part, but when we moved from CrowdStrike to PingSafe, there were some savings. The price of CrowdStrike was quite high. Compared to that, the price of PingSafe was low. PingSafe is charging based on the subscription model. If I want to add an AWS subscription, I need to pay more. It should not be based on subscription. It should be based on the number of servers that I am scanning."
"PingSafe is less expensive than other options."
"PingSafe's pricing is good because it provides us with a solution."
"The pricing is based on an annual subscription, upfront, and it's based on cloud assets. Whether your assets are in Azure and AWS combined, the tool tells you how many assets are being scanned and that's the number used for pricing."
"It is a subscription model with term licensing that is usually yearly. This includes, not only the product, but support and maintenance. It is based on cloud assets. Therefore, if you have 100 cloud assets, those cloud assets are measured based on evaluation or transactions. For example, if I'm evaluating that cloud asset for CIS compliance, PCI compliance, and AWS best practices, that asset gets evaluated three times, as those are three transactions. However, the license model is based on peak asset usage. So, over a year, if you deploy 100, 1000, 500, and then 2000 assets, you will be charged for the 2000 peak of assets managed by Helix Cloud Security."
"Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is a highly expensive solution."
"The Prisma Cloud pricing is good."
"Prisma Cloud is more expensive than some other solutions, but when we consider all of its use cases, the cost averages out."
"If a competitor came along and said, "We'll give you half the price," that doesn't necessarily mean that's the right answer, at all. We wouldn't necessarily entertain it that way. Does it do what we need it to do? Does it work with the things that we want it to work with? That is the important part for us. Pricing wasn't the big consideration it might be in some organizations. We spend millions on public cloud. In that context, it would not make sense to worry about the small price differences that you get between the products."
"It is an expensive tool. It is not cheap technology. It is a serious investment for any customer. Customers typically buy it together with services. In my experience, customers buying Prisma Cloud are prepared to pay for the implementation and the tool itself."
"Prisma Cloud's licensing system functions as expected with a solid licensing infrastructure."
"Almost all the CSPM tools are pretty expensive."
"The cost depends on the pricing model. Compared to other solutions, the cost isn't that bad."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
19%
Real Estate/Law Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about PingSafe?
The dashboard gives me an overview of all the things happening in the product, making it one of the tool's best featu...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PingSafe?
SentinelOne provided competitive pricing compared to other vendors, and we are satisfied with the deal.
What needs improvement with PingSafe?
Sometimes, I am not able to see the flow when there is an issue. When anyone complains and I have to troubleshoot it,...
What do you like most about BMC Helix Cloud Security?
The most valuable aspects of BMC Helix Cloud Security are its security features and regulatory compliance capabilities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BMC Helix Cloud Security?
I would rate the price of BMC Helix Cloud Security as a seven in terms of costliness. It is not the cheapest option a...
What needs improvement with BMC Helix Cloud Security?
BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features. It currently consists...
What is your primary use case for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks ?
Prisma Cloud helps support DevSecOps methodologies, making those responsibilities easier to manage.
What Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform do you recommend?
We like Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, since it offers us incredible visibility into our entire cloud system. We...
What do you think of Aqua Security vs Prisma Cloud?
Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valu...
 

Also Known As

PingSafe
TrueSight Cloud Security, SecOps Policy Service
Palo Alto Networks Prisma Cloud, Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
NHS, Vodafone, Kansas City Life, SKY Italia, Cybera
Amgen, Genpact, Western Asset, Zipongo, Proofpoint, NerdWallet, Axfood, 21st Century Fox, Veeva Systems, Reinsurance Group of America
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Helix Cloud Security vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and other solutions. Updated: November 2024.
817,354 professionals have used our research since 2012.