Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs F5 Advanced WAF comparison

The compared Palo Alto Networks and F5 solutions aren't in the same category. F5 is ranked #2 in WAF , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 11.2% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Palo Alto Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of F5 users who would recommend it.

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto N...

Read 108 Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks reviews

98% willing to recommend

F5 Advanced WAF

Read 67 F5 Advanced WAF reviews

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98% willing to recommend

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto N...

F5 Advanced WAF

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 19, 2025

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and F5 Advanced WAF operate in the cybersecurity domain, both striving to protect cloud and web applications. Cortex Cloud has an edge with its advanced integration capabilities and flexible deployment, making it preferable for multi-cloud environments. However, F5 Advanced WAF excels in comprehensive web application protection, especially valued in enterprise contexts.

Features: Cortex Cloud offers advanced cloud-native security features like workload identity creation and integration with AWS, automated forensics, and strong cryptographic identity features. F5 Advanced WAF is renowned for its web application protection, threat intelligence, anti-bot measures, and load balancing.

Room for Improvement: Cortex Cloud could enhance its documentation with practical examples and improve its user experience and dashboard, plus address pricing complexities. F5 Advanced WAF might improve its analytics and reporting, refine its interface for user-friendliness, and simplify its pricing structure.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cortex Cloud provides deployment options across hybrid, on-premises, and public clouds with responsive support, though some regional expertise varies. F5 Advanced WAF is mainly deployed on-premises, noted for robust customer support but challenged by deployment complexity.

Pricing and ROI: Cortex Cloud's pricing is considered high but justified by its comprehensive security for large organizations with flexible usage-based pricing. F5 Advanced WAF is seen as costly, particularly for small businesses, but offers valuable features for enterprise-level security, leading to improved security posture and operational efficiency in both solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs. F5 Advanced WAF Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs. F5 Advanced WAF

January 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto N...

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

108

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (1st), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (1st)

F5 Advanced WAF

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Web Application Firewall (WAF) (2nd)

Featured Reviews

Mohammad Qaw

Senior Security Consultant at helpag

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.

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Richard Polyak

Sr. Architect at NBC Universal

Easy event identification, highly stable, and customizable

Generally, F5 Advanced WAF initial setup is straightforward. However, our environment was more complex and it took us a little more time to customize the solution to where we needed it to be. Additionally, the customization didn't rectify everything. We had to do customization to a certain event to prevent attacks that it wasn't catching, but that might not necessarily be the solutions' fault. It could be more of our setup than the solution's fault and not being able to run the latest version or the newer version could be more of a limitation on our ability to put it in the right place. The whole implementation to have the solution run at the level we wanted it to take approximately five months. Our company's environment is one that we can't put a canned solution in front of. Our environment, cannot have a canned solution that might fit everybody else because of how customized this environment is. It does need a lot of tuning to meet our environment's requirements. I rate the initial setup of F5 Advanced WAF a three out of five.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The first aspect that is important is the fact that Prisma Cloud is cloud-agnostic. It's actually available for the five top cloud providers: AWS, GCP, Azure, Oracle, and Alibaba Cloud. The second aspect is the fact that we can write our own rules to try to detect misconfigurations in those environments."

"Through Prisma Cloud, we can write Lambda functions, configure policies to check the security posture, and get reports. We can do a lot more."

"We found it to be easy and flexible. We could easily configure it for our needs, and we could spread the Prisma Cloud platform to 16 countries without encountering any kind of problem."

"Palo Alto enables us to know what security threats are happening in the background."

"The product is quite good for providing multi-clouds or cross-cloud security from a single-pane -of-glass."

"We are provided with a single tool to protect all of our cloud resources and applications without having to manage and reconcile compliance reports."

"Integration is very easy. And because it supports security that spans multi- and hybrid-cloud environments, it's very easy to use."

"It provides good visibility and control regardless of the complexity."

More Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pros

"F5 Advanced WAF has very good stability and scalability. Its initial setup was straightforward."

"The most valuable features of F5 Advanced WAF are the easy identification of events and customization. We can pinpoint our settings."

"There is no need to worry about updating signatures because WAF will automatically update the signatures for you."

"The most valuable features of F5 Advanced WAF are the overall capabilities, there is not a comparable solution on the market."

"The best solution for WAF."

"With F5 Advanced WAF, it was protection for online publications and for our customers that caused us to choose the platform."

"The most valuable features of F5 Advanced WAF are the security features and the protection."

"The support experience is better than average."

More F5 Advanced WAF pros

Cons

"The pricing for the solution needs improvement."

"The automation capabilities are growing each day, but the problem is that the updates are not that frequent. There are some services on Amazon that have come out with updates, and Azure is also getting up to date. But Prisma takes some time to follow. There's a time gap that Prisma inherits from these clouds. I understand why it takes some time, but that time should be reduced."

"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."

"The UI could use some improvement; we usually find the information we're looking for, but what fields can be clicked on and what workflow to follow to get the required information is not always evident. Sometimes we're all over the place, clicking around to drill in and uncover the alert and investigation details we're looking for."

"The innovation side of the solution could be more efficient and more detailed."

"Prisma Cloud supports generating CSV files, but I would also like it to generate PDF files for reporting."

"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."

"When an account is onboarded, if it is missing any permission, it should automatically be updated with the required permissions and policies."

More Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks cons

"More legacy protocols should be added to the solution."

"It's sometimes difficult to customize APIs with F5 Advanced WAF."

"I would like to see additional controls."

"It should be a little bit easy to deploy in terms of the overall deployment session. One of our customers is a bit unhappy about the reporting options. Currently, it automatically deletes event logs after some limit if a customer doesn't have any external Syslog server. It is a problem for those customers who want to review event logs after a week or so because they won't get proper reports or event logs. They should increase the duration to at least a month or two for storing the data on the device. F5 is not a leader in Gartner Quadrant, which affects us when we go and pitch this solution. Customers normally go and take a look at such annual reports, and because F5 is currently not there as a leader, the customers ask about it even though we are saying it is good in all things. F5 is not known for something totally different or unique. They were a major player in ADP, and they are just rebranding themselves into security. They should improve or increase their marketing as a security company now. They have already started to do that, but they should do it more so that when it comes to security, customers can easily remember F5. At the moment, if we say F5, load balancing comes to mind. With rebranding and marketing, all customers should get the idea that F5 is now mainly focusing on the security part of it, and it is a security company instead of load balancing. This is the first solution that should come to a customer's mind for a web application firewall."

"The interface is old-looking, it's not modern, which is why it's not always comfortable to use."

"The solution could improve by having an independent capture module. It has a built feature that you can deploy the capture on your published website. However, it's not very user-friendly. When you compare this feature to Google Capture or other enterprise captures, they are very simple. It needs a good connection to the F5 Advanced WAF sandbox. When you implement this feature in the data center, you may suffer some complications with connecting to the F5 Advanced WAF sandbox. This should be improved in the future."

"The product could be more user-friendly, particularly the user interface for administrators."

"F5 needs to improve API protection with a single F5 solution, without requiring additional modules."

More F5 Advanced WAF cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Prisma Cloud is remarkably expensive."

"Our licensing fees are $18,000 USD per year."

"Prisma Cloud's licensing system functions as expected with a solid licensing infrastructure."

"The pricing structure is easy to understand. Depending on the use case the pricing of the solution can be different. There are not any additional costs to the standard living fees."

"Prisma Cloud is a high-end enterprise solution, making it quite expensive."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"Prisma Cloud is more expensive than some other solutions, but when we consider all of its use cases, the cost averages out."

"Prisma Cloud is cost-efficient, but the credits are on the higher end."

More Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pricing and cost advice

"After buying the program, you just pay for the support every year."

"The pricing of F5 Advanced WAF is more expensive than other solutions like Radware and CD18, it is quite high."

"The cost is slightly above average."

"Pricing for this solution is higher than average."

"There is an annual subscription for this solution."

"There is a perpetual license that comes with your hardware. There is also an additional fee for support."

"I don't have any issue with the pricing of this solution."

"F5 Advanced WAF pricing structure should be adjusted to meet the need of small to medium-sized companies."

More F5 Advanced WAF pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

18%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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.

See all answers

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 are able to easily see where our container vulnerabilities lie and and where cl...

See all answers

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 valuable feature and their speed of integration is very good. The initial setup was ...

See all answers

What do you like most about F5 Advanced WAF?

It's a fairly easy-to-use and user-friendly tool. My administrators and team also like its ability to customize the rules per the requirements.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced WAF?

The setup cost is normal, yet not the best in terms of the commercial aspect. Other competitors like Fortinet are cheaper than F5.

See all answers

What needs improvement with F5 Advanced WAF?

One improvement for AOF could be focusing on enhancing its AI engine to make it more mature.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 12% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 5% of the time

Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 5% of the time

AWS Security Hub vs Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 4% of the time

More Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Competitors

Fortinet FortiWeb vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 22% of the time

AWS WAF vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 16% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 14% of the time

Imperva Web Application Firewall vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 7% of the time

Radware Alteon vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 3% of the time

More F5 Advanced WAF Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

February 2025

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

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Buyer's Guide

F5 Advanced WAF

February 2025

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Also Known As

Prisma Cloud, Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto

No data available

Overview

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks offers dynamic workload identity creation, application dependency mapping, and automated forensics. Its capabilities in multi-cloud environments, tight AWS integration, and compliance features enhance threat visibility and control.

Cortex Cloud integrates RedLock and Prisma Cloud to deliver inventory management, vulnerability scanning, and cloud configuration monitoring. These features enable strong security posture management while optimizing alert response times and operational costs. Users leverage it for container security and multi-cloud compliance, maximizing insights into security configurations and threat detection across AWS, Azure, and GCP.

What are the key features of Cortex Cloud?

Dynamic Workload Identity: Enhances security through automated identity creation.
Application Dependency Mapping: Offers clarity on application interdependencies.
Automated Forensics: Speeds up investigation processes.
Managed Rule Sets: Ensures updated security practices.
Runtime Mechanism: Protects applications during execution.
Network Mapping: Strengthens overall network security.

What benefits should users consider in reviews?

Enhanced Visibility: Provides comprehensive control across cloud environments.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces operational costs and alert investigation time.
Compliance Support: Assists in meeting industry benchmarks and regulations.
Cloud Integration: Seamlessly works with AWS, Azure, and GCP.

Cortex Cloud is widely used in industries prioritizing container security and compliance across multi-cloud frameworks. Companies implement it for real-time management, vulnerability detection, and threat remediation. The focus is on aligning security posture with industry benchmarks and achieving automated compliance, facilitating robust protection across platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

Palo Alto Networks

F5 Advanced WAF is a web application security solution for financial and government sectors, e-commerce, and public-facing websites. It offers protection against various attacks, including botnets, web scraping, and foreign entities. The solution can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud and is often used with other security tools. Its most valuable features include DDoS and DNS attack protection, SSL uploading, anomaly detection, and the ability to input custom rules.

F5 Advanced WAF has helped organizations to expose more services to the public while providing an extra layer of protection, preventing revenue loss, and securing connectivity.

Sample Customers

Amgen, Genpact, Western Asset, Zipongo, Proofpoint, NerdWallet, Axfood, 21st Century Fox, Veeva Systems, Reinsurance Group of America

MAXIMUS, Vivo, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office, City Bank

Buyer's Guide

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs. F5 Advanced WAF

January 2025

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