Imperva Web Application Firewall vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks comparison

Imperva and Palo Alto Networks are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Imperva is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.9, while Palo Alto Networks is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.5. Additionally, 97% of Imperva users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of Palo Alto Networks users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 19, 2025

Imperva Web Application Firewall (WAF) and Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks compete in the web application security category. Based on feature strengths, Cortex Cloud has the upper hand due to its in-depth multi-cloud security features.

Features: Imperva WAF offers profiling policies, advanced bot protection, and inline transferring mode for seamless integration with other tools. It provides account takeover protection and employs threat intelligence. Cortex Cloud provides comprehensive multi-cloud security with features like automated forensics, robust runtime protection, and dynamic workload identity creation. It also manages cloud security posture and supports numerous integrations.

Room for Improvement: Imperva WAF could benefit from a more intuitive interface and better customization for reporting and alerts. Enhancements in bot protection and API security are needed. Cortex Cloud would improve from seamless integration among its components and better UI. Improvements in alert accuracy and API security, as well as enhanced automation in licensing and alert management, are recommended.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Imperva WAF offers flexible deployment models, including on-premises and hybrid cloud, but requires better support and streamlined deployment procedures. Its technical support is noted for responsiveness. Cortex Cloud focuses on cloud-based deployment but needs improved customer support and onboarding processes, as its support is slower with complex issues.

Pricing and ROI: Imperva WAF is considered expensive with complex licensing for WAF and DAM, yet offers significant ROI in sectors like banking. Cortex Cloud is also costly, beneficial for large enterprises due to its feature set. Its credit-based licensing model provides flexibility, though costs can be high for smaller organizations, with additional expenses for professional services.

To learn more, read our detailed Imperva Web Application Firewall vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Imperva Web Application Firewall vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

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

Cloudflare

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

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Abdullah Jin

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Offers bot protection and DDoS Protection and protects public-facing portals

Support is one thing I wish Imperva could improve. They follow the phone model and keep rotating you from one customer service person to another. The layer one support isn't very clear about the workings of the product. My feedback is primarily about Imperva Cloud, not on-premise. On-premise is a whole new story. Support is the issue for Imperva Cloud. It's also a bit pricey. It's a premium service and very expensive. The licensing model is not very straightforward. Every feature is priced separately, and to enjoy maximum protection, you'll have to spend a lot of money. The licensing model is a bit complex, and each feature is very pricey. For example, API security and web application protection are two separate license packages.

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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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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The UI is good."

"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."

"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."

"The technical support is good."

"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."

"It is a fast and secure DNS."

"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."

"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."

More Cloudflare pros

"The solution is scalable."

"The solution is stable."

"The solution is very scalable. It is one of the most important features. You can also expand resources and features as well."

"Imperva WAF's strongest features are the detection of web application threats and vulnerabilities in the source code."

"The solution is cloud-based and offers us good uptime. It has combined web and API security. Therefore, with one license, you access both application security and also API security."

"The solution can be configured in just a couple of minutes."

"Learning mode and custom policies are helpful features."

"It works right out of the box once you integrate the application."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pros

"The container and serverless security is most valuable. It is quite a new technology for this region. Even though containers have been there for a long time, the adoption of containers is very minimal in this region. When it comes to using Kubernetes containers in a complex architecture, there is a lack of security in the market. People aren't aware of the security controls or the process for governance. Container security provided by Prisma Cloud is quite good at filling that gap."

"The most valuable feature of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is the CSPM, which we use the most. Additionally, the investigation and alerts are useful, and the creation of queries."

"One feature we like is the amount of data Prisma gives us. Some infrastructure and platform vulnerabilities that in the cloud are hard to detect, and we were unaware of some of these. It's critical to shed light on these. For example, you create virtual machines and forget about them, but when you revisit them, some vulnerabilities may be detected."

"The most valuable feature is that the rule set is managed and that it can be run on a regularly scheduled basis."

"The CVEs are valuable because we used to have a tool to scan CVEs, at the language level, for the dependencies that our developers had. What is good about Prisma Cloud is that the CVEs are not only from the software layer, but from all layers: the language, the base image, and you also have CVEs from the host. It covers the full base of security."

"My favorite feature is the CWPP module. We can define various kinds of rules for vulnerabilities, incidents, or suspicious activities."

"The UI is very good. We get all the things within a single UI."

"The most valuable features are vulnerability monitoring, serverless access, container runtime features, and Defender."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pros

Cons

"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."

"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."

"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."

"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."

"If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better. I'm living in a remote area. I would like to connect to them without any kind of lag."

"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."

"DNS Management."

"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."

More Cloudflare cons

"Some of the features should be included in the next release is a file integrating monitoring tool. This feature should be improved."

"The tool needs to improve CPU and storage memory."

"There is nothing specific where the application firewall is falling short."

"The product's customization capabilities are a bit problematic, requiring support cases for backend modifications."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall is very expensive."

"An improvement for Imperva WAF would be to reduce the number of false positives and create more strong use cases based on AI/ML or behavioral analytics."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall can improve by adding more features to the dashboard. increasing the visibility of the real-time events, besides configuring the administration itself."

"Support is one thing I wish Imperva could improve."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall cons

"When it comes to compliance, the issue is that when we are exporting the reports, there is only a single compliance option. If I need to report on multiple compliance requirements, that feature isn't available. For example, I made a single report for ISO 27000 but I can't correlate it with GDPR."

"Some module customization might be needed and certain features like adding custom labels are currently unavailable unless we have administrator access."

"Support is an area that needs improvement."

"Areas like the deployment of their defenders and their central control need manual intervention. They should focus more on automation. They have a very generic case for small companies. However, for bigger companies to work, we have to do a lot of changes to our system to accommodate it. Therefore, they should change their system or deployment models so it can be easy to integrate into existing architectures."

"The access controls for our bank roles were not granular enough. We needed specific people to do particular actions, and we often had to give some people way too much access for them to be able to do what they needed in Prisma. They couldn't do their jobs if they didn't have that level of access, so other people had to do that part for them. It would help to have more granular role-based access controls."

"When it comes to protecting the full cloud-native stack, it has the right breadth. They're covering all the topics I would care about, like container, cloud configuration, and serverless. There's one gap. There could be a better set of features around identity management—native AWS—IAM roles, and service account management. The depth in each of those areas varies a little bit. While they may have the breadth, I think there's still work to do in flushing out each of those feature sets."

"They could improve more features for the enterprise version of the solution."

"We had some teething issues with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, but overall, it did what we expected."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version."

"A free version of the solution is available."

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

"We are using the free tier of the solution."

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."

"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is somewhat expensive. It is actually a huge investment when compared to other countries."

"The cost of this solution depends on the platform."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall is expensive."

"The tool is expensive."

"There are some licenses that you have to buy to use some features. Its price could be better. Price is always important because, at the end of the day, customers have a budget. If you can meet the budget, you can sell, and if you don't, you cannot sell."

"Imperva’s pricing is a bit higher in the market since it offers a full-blown WAF."

"There is a license for this solution and we purchase the license annually with no additional fees."

"It is a very affordable solution."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

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

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

"The licensing cost is a bit high on the compute side."

"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."

"The price is high. In the future, when there are more competitors at the same level with different clouds, maybe the position will be different."

"The cost was not on the higher side. Overall, the cost gets recovered with its implementation."

"Prisma Cloud is affordable."

"This solution is good for a company with at least 400 people that must be connected remotely. For smaller companies, it can be too expensive."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

21%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

13%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

17%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?

Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...

See all answers

What do you like most about Cloudflare?

Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.

See all answers

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

My recommendation is Imperva.

See all answers

Is Citrix ADC (formerly Netscaler) the best ADC to use and if not why?

For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you hav...

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DDoS solutions: Any other solutions to consider aside from Radware DDoS Protection Service and F5 Silverline DDoS Protection?

You can have a look to Imperva Cloud WAF, the anti-DDoS mitigation is under 1s and works very well. I observed a lot ...

See all answers

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...

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 valu...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

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Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 16% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 12% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 11% of the time

AWS WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 10% of the time

Radware Alteon vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 3% of the time

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Wiz vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 22% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 12% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 5% of the time

Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 5% of the time

AWS Security Hub vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

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Cloudflare

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Imperva Web Application Firewall

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

March 2025

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

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Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

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

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

Imperva Web Application Firewall is a versatile solution that protects web applications and databases from various attacks, including DDoS, cross-site scripting, and SQL injection attacks. It offers data security, availability, and access control and can be deployed on-premises or on the cloud.

The solution has good security against web attacks and offers advanced bot protection, API security, and mitigation features. Imperva WAF is easy to configure and deploy; it has good customer service and an excellent user interface.

Imperva

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks delivers comprehensive security for cloud environments, focusing on workload protection, identity creation, and seamless AWS integration. Its cloud visibility and control, combined with thorough vulnerability scanning, help maintain robust security across multi-cloud platforms.

Prisma Cloud provides essential capabilities for cloud security posture management, container security, and compliance monitoring. Enterprises utilize it to secure cloud configurations, detect vulnerabilities, and ensure regulatory compliance, spanning AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Its runtime management, identity-based micro-segmentation, and threat detection enhance cybersecurity. Despite needing improvements in documentation, integration complexities, UI, and the need for role-based access control refinement, it remains pivotal for securing assets across cloud infrastructures, particularly with its capabilities for vulnerability scanning and CI/CD pipeline integration.

What are the key features?

Workload Identity Creation: Establishes identities for cloud workloads, enhancing security through precise access management.
Dynamic Workload Protection: Protects applications dynamically, securing resources during runtime.
Integration with AWS Products: Seamlessly integrates with AWS services, maximizing the efficiency of cloud operations.
Automated Forensics: Provides detailed insights through automated investigations and runtime mapping between containers.
Application Dependency Map: Enables compliance and asset management through comprehensive inventory functionality.

What benefits or ROI should users expect?

Proactive Threat Prevention: Enhances security measures with advanced threat detection and prevention.
Cloud Visibility and Control: Offers control across multi-cloud environments, ensuring users maintain a strong security posture.
Prevention Capabilities: Users value its ability to prevent vulnerabilities and threats effectively.
Integration Capabilities: Supports seamless integration into existing cloud infrastructures and CI/CD pipelines.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and retail, Prisma Cloud is implemented to strengthen cybersecurity measures, facilitate regulatory compliance, and enhance governance. Organizations leverage its features to secure sensitive data, monitor configurations, and integrate security processes within CI/CD workflows, ensuring robust protection across complex cloud infrastructures.

Palo Alto Networks

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens

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

Buyer's Guide

Imperva Web Application Firewall vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

January 2025

Free Report: Imperva Web Application Firewall vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Find out what your peers are saying about Imperva Web Application Firewall vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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