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

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

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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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VISHWJEET GAIKWAD

Cloud Security Delivery Associate Manager at Accenture

Works very well for multi-cloud environments and is more cost-effective than cloud-native tools

Some of the clients onboard individual cloud accounts into Prisma Cloud. When any new service comes into the AWS, Azure, or any other cloud, Prisma Cloud generates a warning about the new service and any missing permissions to be able to ingest the logs. We then manually run a Terraform template for Azure or a CFT template for AWS. It is a manual task that we have to do as and when needed. It is a repetitive and manual task. They should find a way to automatically update the role with the CFT or Terraform template. It would be best if this task is automated. When an account is onboarded, if it is missing any permission, it should automatically be updated with the required permissions and policies. If they can do something from the AI security perspective, it will be helpful. I am not sure if it has any AI capabilities, but it would be helpful to have AI integration for finding out issues and remediating alerts.

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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

"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."

"Cloudflare has many features."

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

"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."

"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."

"The UI is good."

"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"

"Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance."

More Cloudflare pros

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

"The compliance is the most valuable aspect."

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

"Protection is the best solution since it has profile functionality."

"Its inline transferring mode is the most valuable because it is 100% transparent. When you change the IP, there is no change on the network side. If you can't and want to try to reach an IP, you can reach the server IP. There are many other advanced security features in it. The smallest appliances of Imperva can handle the highest traffic at a customer site. For example, a smaller appliance from Imperva can provide you the same security as an F5 product."

"Imperva monitors all traffic, even customer access, to the web application. Then, Imperva uses features like signatures to identify attacks like cross-site scripting or SQL injection."

"The most valuable features of Imperva Web Application Firewall are the monitoring of databases and the dashboards are easy to understand."

"The features I have found most valuable with Imperva Web Application Firewall are account takeover protection, advanced bot protection, and API security."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pros

"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."

"We haven't had an issue with the product for over a year."

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

"The ability to monitor the artifact repository is one of the most valuable features because we have a disparate set of development processes, but everything tends to land in a common set of artifact repositories. The solution gives us a single point where we can apply security control for monitoring. That's really helpful."

"The most valuable feature is the continuous cloud compliance monitoring and alerting."

"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."

"In the GlobalProtect module, we can easily guide users experiencing connection issues through the notification column."

"The policies that come prepackaged in the tool have been very valuable to us. They're accurate and they provide good guidance as to why the policy was created, as well as how to remediate anything that violates the policy."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pros

Cons

"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."

"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."

"Technical support is lacking."

"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."

"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."

"It would be beneficial for us if Cloudflare could offer a scrubbing solution. This would involve taking a snapshot of my website and keeping it live during a DDoS attack, ensuring uninterrupted service for our users. DDoS attacks are typically short in duration, and having Cloudflare maintain the site's availability from its secure network would enhance the overall user experience. I would appreciate it if Cloudflare could consider implementing this feature. Many organizations already utilize similar capabilities in their CDN platforms, where a static snapshot of the web page is displayed during DDoS attacks. In terms of features, Cloudflare needs to enhance its resilience and stay more focused on adopting new technologies. For instance, solutions like F5 XC Box, Access Solution, and Distributed Cloud Solution have impressive features, and Cloudflare should strive to match and exceed those capabilities. There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features. Cloudflare should prioritize enhancements in areas such as behavioral DDoS and protection against SQL injection attacks, considering the prevalent trend of public exposure to the internet for business reasons. Overall, Cloudflare needs to invest more in advancing its feature set."

"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."

"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."

More Cloudflare cons

"The reporting is missing some features, such as: only two export formats, and the time period does not include the last day, week, year."

"The UI interface needs improvement."

"The user interface could be better."

"Their portal is very limited and needs improvement."

"The tool's UI is complicated. It would be best to have a more accessible UI dashboard to make the job easier."

"It would be helpful to have a "recommended deployment", or even a list of basic features that should either be used or turned on by default."

"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."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall cons

"Prisma Cloud lags behind in terms of security automation capabilities."

"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."

"We have discovered that Prisma is not functioning properly with GCP."

"The area for improvement is less about the product and more about the upsell. If we've already agreed that we'd like your product x, y, or z, don't try to add fries to my burger. I don't need it."

"In terms of securing cloud-native development at build time, a lot of improvement is needed. Currently, it's more a runtime solution than a build-time solution. For runtime, I would rate it at seven out of 10, but for build-time there is a lot of work to be done."

"Some of the usability within the Compute functionality needs improvement. I think when Palo Alto added on the Twistlock functionality, they added a Compute tab on the left side of the navigation. Some of the navigation is just a little dense. There is a lot of navigation where there is a tab and dropdowns. So, just improving some of the navigation where there is just a very dense amount of buttons and drop-down menus, that is probably the only thing, which comes from having a lot of features. Because there are a lot of buttons, just navigating around the platform can be a little challenging for new users."

"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."

"We identified two things that we felt would be great to have, but they are under NDA. So, I can't disclose them. Other than those two things, we identified a generic bug in the secret key management service on AWS that needs to be fixed. We reported it to them, and we want them to fix it."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."

"I give the price a five out of ten."

"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."

"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."

"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"We don't have any issues with the price."

"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"Make sure you understand the way that Imperva charges. It's very affordable. However, I would like to see a package with the Virtual Patching included. You get to do patching separately."

"There are a couple of different licensing models."

"Licensing can range from one to twenty thousand dollars annually. Additionally, some features, including software support, require an annual subscription as well."

"It's an excellent product, but it can be very costly."

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

"The price is high compared to other solutions like FortiWeb."

"It is very costly, but the return on investment is very high. Its cost was around $70,000, and we got it back in just six months."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall's pricing is expensive."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"Almost all the CSPM tools are pretty expensive."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pricing and cost advice

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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

25%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Educational Organization

17%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

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...

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...

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.

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

My recommendation is Imperva.

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...

DDoS solutions: Any other solutions to consider aside from Radware DefensePro 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 ...

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...

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 49% of the time

Compared 4% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 17% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 15% of the time

AWS WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 13% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 11% of the time

NetScaler vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 2% of the time

More Imperva Web Application Firewall Competitors

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

Cloudflare

Download Cloudflare product report

Imperva Web Application Firewall

Download Imperva Web Application Firewall product report

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

December 2024

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

Download Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Palo Alto Networks Prisma Cloud, Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto

Learn More

Cloudflare

Imperva

Palo Alto Networks

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

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.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is used for managing cloud security posture, container security, and compliance monitoring in multi-cloud environments.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks provides tools for vulnerability management, misconfiguration detection, and compliance with standards like HIPAA and CIS. It offers near real-time inventory and alerting, enhancing cloud configuration audits and security across AWS, Azure, and GCP. Its automated security features offer real-time protection and integration into CI/CD pipelines, optimizing visibility, control, and risk identification without manual steps. Despite its capabilities, improvement areas include documentation, pricing clarity, usability, security automation, dashboard customization, and API functionality. Slow support and integration challenges with AWS and third-party tools are noted.

What are the key features of Prisma Cloud?

Dynamic Workload Identity: Automates identity creation for workloads, enhancing security.
Automated Forensics: Provides swift incident analysis to prevent future vulnerabilities.
Comprehensive Compliance Monitoring: Monitors compliance with industry standards effortlessly.
Cloud Security Posture Management: Manages security posture effectively across environments.
Vulnerability Scanning: Identifies vulnerabilities across multi-cloud setups.
Identity-Based Micro-Segmentation: Limits access to sensitive data via segmentation.
Single-Pane Management: Offers streamlined management across cloud platforms.

What benefits and ROI should users consider?

Increased Productivity: Streamlined processes reduce time spent on manual tasks.
Enhanced Security: Real-time threat detection mitigates potential breaches.
Compliance Assurance: Ensures adherence to necessary industry standards.
Cost Efficiency: Automated features lower operational costs.
Improved Integration: Smooth integration into existing CI/CD pipelines.

In industries such as healthcare and finance, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks enhances security by aligning with strict compliance standards and safeguarding sensitive data. Its tools adapt to rapid cloud service updates and enable secure deployment across diverse cloud infrastructures.

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

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