We compared Prisma SD-WAN and Prisma Access across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Prisma SD-WAN provides deep application visibility, centralized control, and the option to utilize local breakouts for internet connections. Prisma Access stands out for its ease of use, advanced security features, and global performance.
Room for Improvement: Prisma SD-WAN has room for improvement in various areas such as routing behavior, alerts and monitoring, and event analysis. Prisma Access could benefit from enhancements in error handling, latency, and integration with other cloud architectures.
Ease of Deployment: Some users experienced issues with existing traffic paths while setting up Prisma SD-WAN, which required several hours or more to resolve. Similarly, the setup process for Prisma Access varied in complexity and duration based on the size and requirements of the organization. While some users found it straightforward, others mentioned the need for expertise and assistance.
Service and Support: The feedback about Prisma SD-WAN's customer service varies. Some customers appreciated the support team's expertise, while others have noticed a decrease in the quality. Prisma Access's customer service has received mixed reviews. Some customers expressed a desire for better technical support, while others have had positive experiences with prompt responses and knowledgeable engineers.
Pricing: Prisma SD-WAN is less expensive than some solutions like Cisco, but Zscaler is even cheaper. Prisma Access is a more expensive solution, but users say the price is justified by its quality and features.
ROI: Prisma SD-WAN reduces costs and downtime while helping customers meet audit requirements. Prisma Access excels in identifying security concerns, seamlessly integrating with various products, and delivering instant value.
Comparison Results: Prisma SD-WAN offers useful features like in-depth application visibility, centralized control, and flexibility in WAN management. It has room for improvement in terms of routing behavior, documentation, and device reliability. Prisma Access is praised for its strong security features and ease of administration. It faces challenges with its user interface, configuration, and geographic coverage. Prisma SD-WAN is considered more affordable than other solutions, while Prisma Access is seen as higher-priced but justifiable for its quality.
"The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade."
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"On the outside, the main differentiation is because Lookout ingest. They have ingested basically all of the apps for the last ten years and all the versions of all the apps, and we have that in a corporate database that allows us to do very large-scale machine learning and analysis on that data set. That's not something that any of the competitors really have the capability to do because they don't have access to the data set. A lot of the apps you can no longer get them because that version of the app is five or six years old, and it just doesn't exist anywhere anymore, except within our infrastructure. So, the ability to have that very rich dataset and learn from that dataset is a real differentiator."
"The solution is stable."
"It has predefined or preconfigured rules, which are getting periodically updated. They are providing continuous improvements and periodically updating all search queries that they are looking for. That is one thing that helps us to stay vigilant and focused. If we query our AWS account for any breaches or vulnerabilities with any of the cloud tests, and it alerts us based on these predefined rules. It also provides an option to configure our own rules, and based on these rules, it can query the cloud trail logs, pull the information, and trigger alerts in real-time. I haven't explored this feature much because there are multiple accounts, and we don't have enough time to explore this feature. It also provides multiple integrations. When vulnerabilities or breaches are happening, you should be aware of them immediately. It provides integration with tools such as Slack, PagerDuty so that you can get alerted as soon as the high severity stuff comes up. For example, you have a security group that has allowed public traffic on port 22. As TechOps, you should be aware of this immediately. You cannot scan each machine or look into all security groups to identify it. So, Prisma helps us and alerts us when this kind of high-priority stuff comes up. It has different statistics, analytics, and graphs for data. The description of alerts is also pretty good. They describe what are the possible causes for this and what are the solutions. From Prisma Cloud, you can directly go to the AWS account. When you click on an alert, a resource, or a resource ID, it takes you to the AWS console where you need to log in. If you are already logged in, it will take you to that instance directly, and you can fix the issue there. I have found this feature very useful."
"Security is absolutely spot-on, really top-notch. It's the result of all the components that come together, such as the HIP [Host Information Profile] and components like Forcepoint, providing end-user content inspection, and antivirus. It incorporates DLP features and that's fantastic because Prisma Access makes sure that all of the essential prerequisites are in place before a user can log in or can be tunneled into."
"I like it because it's very easy to use. You install the client and you have to know your gateway, but that's something we give to our users. Beyond that, it takes about three seconds to train them on how to use it. And it just works well. That's great for us because it means less administrative time."
"Prisma helped us build a moat around our production systems. It's now impossible to log into our production from a non-MDM laptop. Prisma Access provides decent security overall."
"The users can securely access any cloud data centers or cloud platforms. In terms of the features, it has all the features that Palo Alto Next-Generation Firewall has. It is also very stable and scalable."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to join your network and provide access through the VPN."
"The solution has all its capabilities in a single cloud delivery platform which is great and it provides overall good protection."
"The solution also provides traffic analysis, threat prevention, URL filtering, and segmentation. That combination is important because it enhances the protection and makes the traffic more secure. It also keeps things more up-to-date, enabling us to deal with more of the current threats."
"If the MPLS goes down, there is a really smooth transition for a branch site to take traffic over the Internet. It will advertise the routes of that site in a jiffy."
"Prisma SD-WAN is intuitive. We have a better idea of the different tools we can use and jump between the menus quickly."
"When it comes to supporting large, complex, network architectures, it's a very simple architecture. The main component is the fabric. It's very easy to troubleshoot if there is an issue happening in the underlying network."
"Prisma's analytics provide a lot of valuable data. I like the internet health chart that shows latency, dropped packets, MOS for data quality, etc. It also runs a continuous speed test in the background. I've used it multiple times to troubleshoot internet connections when the service provider has attempted to claim nothing is wrong with the circuit. It gives me data to send them showing we're not getting the speed we should, or there is constant packet loss."
"From the main controller, we can administer the customer's devices, QoS, network, and traffic. We can monitor it and we can change and create policies as well as upgrade the software. We can totally control a customer's network from one site, the Prisma SD-WAN portal."
"The security offered by the solution is pretty good."
"The gateway is available on the cloud which allows you access from anywhere and still connects to your home gateway."
"I like the link monitoring and analytics. These are the features that set Prisma apart from other products. Prisma works well with large, complex networks. One of my clients is a top bank in the United States, and Prisma has performed well for that customer."
"The stability depends on the service from where you access it. Because sometimes, the place you are in, you have Gateway. You don't have Gateway. The gateway is overutilized. At the end, you need to go through their gateways. And this is the key point here. You have a tracking point. If it's not well orchestrated, and it scales up as you add more to the existing team, you will suffer"
"We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products."
"The price can be reduced to make it more competitive."
"The solution’s stability could be improved."
"We've run into some challenges, having hit a lot of bugs over the past year in the deployment of GlobalProtect. We've had our fair share of issues that I haven't been happy with. We're working with the support organization to remediate them and waiting for updated releases. The response on getting the bugs fixed has not been what I would consider adequate for a product like this."
"When it comes to integration mechanisms, Prisma SaaS does not support reverse proxy type of integrations."
"Prisma would be a stronger solution if it could aggregate resources by project or by application. So say we have an application we've developed in AWS and five applications we've developed in Azure. The platform will group it according to those applications, but it's based on the tags we use in Azure, which means I have to rely on development teams to tag resources properly."
"It's not very easy to use. Sometimes it's buggy and there are problems when doing updates. The user interface is okay, but some configuration items are difficult. I would like it to be less buggy and easier to configure, to better streamline the user experience."
"I would like to see better pricing and an easier logging process. Also, if there was a way to log a global log, everything could go onto the system. It would be better if there was a third log, otherwise one would have to do everything manually."
"Palo Alto Prisma 10 came out over a year ago. Palo Alto added this identity management feature. The legacy way Palo Alto selected which user is sitting on an IP address it passes through has been clunky."
"I would also like to see improvement in the product training for customers. Palo Alto has not initiated very much training but they have to do so because this is a new product. If you have experience in a legacy environment, and you are moving to Prisma SD-WAN, you don't have a training framework. That is one of the disadvantages."
"Event correlation and analysis capabilities do not help minimize the number of alarms from a single event. That is the problem. We are getting a lot of incidents, and there is some issue with the correlation. That is still a drawback."
"Sometimes, during the product's initial setup phase, bypass pair or couple ports don't come up normally, and it requires an hour and a half to troubleshoot to reset the box from Prisma SD-WAN to factory default."
"The tool needs to work on price and complexity."
"Prisma SD-WAN should provide more flexibility and scalability on the hardware."
"The only con is the pricing because it's more premium."
"I'd like to see them move more towards CASB."
"Prisma SD-WAN's technical support should be improved."
More Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks Pricing and Cost Advice →
Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is ranked 1st in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) with 58 reviews while Prisma SD-WAN is ranked 10th in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) with 12 reviews. Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is rated 8.2, while Prisma SD-WAN is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks writes "Integration with Palo Alto platforms such as Cortex Data Lake and Autofocus gives us visibility into our attack surface". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Prisma SD-WAN writes "A stable tool that offers a good uptime and ensures a return on investment". Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is most compared with Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, Netskope , Cisco Umbrella, Zscaler Internet Access and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, whereas Prisma SD-WAN is most compared with Cisco SD-WAN, Meraki SD-WAN, Fortinet FortiGate, Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform and VMware SD-WAN. See our Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs. Prisma SD-WAN report.
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