Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Reviews

We use this solution to detect misconfigurations in the cloud. It's a multi-cloud solution, so if you're running a multi-cloud environment like Azure, AWS, and GCP, you only need to deploy a single solution. It assists with improving the security posture of an organization.

I use CSPM and CWPP. The previous organization I worked for used both, but the company I work for now only uses CSPM. I've also worked with code security.

We recently acquired this solution, so it has slowly started gaining momentum in my organization.

This solution provides us with a single tool to protect all of our cloud resources and applications without having to manage and reconcile different security and compliance reports. It's a single solution for everything in a multi-cloud environment.

It enhances operations, but it's a pretty measurable tool. It provides comprehensive visibility.

It provides risk clarity at runtime across the entire pipeline and shows issues as they are discovered during the build phases. 

The modules in CSPM and CWPP are visibility, compliance governance, threat detection, data security, host security, container security, serverless security, web application, and API security. This is an additional cost, so I don't think any organization uses all of the modules.

I previously worked for a health organization that was using this solution. They were able to get certified in HITRUST using this product.

Our developers are able to correct issues using the tools they use to code.

The CSPM and CWPP functionalities are pretty good. It depends on what kind of data you have in your cloud, your workload, and some other factors. If you're doing a lot of containers, you need CWPP models. If you just do regular cloud contributions, then you can use CSPM.

It provides security spanning multi and hybrid-cloud environments. My current organization's goal is to migrate to the cloud eventually. If that's your organization's goal, you need to have some kind of security mechanism or protection in place to make sure that the resources you're building in the cloud are built for the best security practices and are free of misconfiguration vulnerabilities. 

When we deploy containers in any cloud, the runtime protection is really good. If a container is running any kind of application, it can detect a cryptomining attack. The solution also provides File Integrity Monitoring testing.

It has various models and provides comprehensive visibility. It shows us how our assets are performing in any of our clouds. It gives us a holistic view of our native cloud environment, and we can also fine-tune the policies for our architecture.

The modules help us take a preventative approach to cloud security. Flow Logs provide a real-time assessment of our network.

It recently integrated with another company called Checkov. It checks all the misconfigurations that a developer could make during the build phase. This means that whenever we're building any kind of application or deploying any application, it will detect it right away. We can integrate it into our CI/CD pipeline or with any other Jenkins plugins. I tested those use cases as well. The solution has improved since they integrated the product with Checkov.

It provides good visibility. In terms of controls, it depends on how you want to do it. Sometimes, you need to be specific in terms of controls. With runtime detection, it's going to be more powerful. We're confident that our assets are secure.

The solution is capable of integrating security into our CI/CD pipeline and adding touch points into existing DevOps processes. We don't have the option to leverage it, but I have tested it in my previous organization.

This solution is more AWS and Azure-centric. It needs to be more specific on the GCP side, which they are working on.

I have been using this solution for about two and a half years.

The solution is reliable.

The solution is scalable.

Technical support is very helpful. I would rate them a nine out of ten. We have a weekly cadence.

Positive

The setup was very easy and straightforward. We haven't set up the automation perspective. We're still testing it, so we haven't leveraged it yet.

The setup didn't take very long, but it will be different for every organization. If your cloud architect team is willing to deploy with you, it shouldn't take more than a week. It also depends on how large the organization is and how many subscriptions are in the cloud environment.

We don't need to maintain anything on the console side.

We used an integrator from Palo Alto. They were very good and offered great support.

The solution is pretty expensive. It all depends on the organization's goals and needs.

The cost depends on the pricing model. Compared to other solutions, the cost isn't that bad.

I compared the solution to other security products like Fortinet, Lacework, and Security Command Center.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten. 

Those who want to use this solution, need to understand the concept behind this product and get to know their own environment first. The solution will give you holistic visibility of your assets, which will show you what needs to be fixed. Security comes with an expense, so it depends on what you want to leverage and where.

I'm still testing the automation capabilities because my organization is specific to one cloud. They were more aggressive on Azure and AWS Prisma Cloud, but now they are considering GCP customers as well.

We're still in POC mode for continuous security that comes under runtime protection. I can't 100% guarantee that it reduces runtime alerts.

We primarily use the solution to ensure coverage of compliance. It's also used for security. It covers my workload, infrastructure, and applications.

It's improved the organization by providing vulnerability assessments. Having those assessment capabilities helps us assess the security vulnerabilities in cloud environments. Automation also helps us identify and remediate security weaknesses.

We have been using the solution to improve out posture management and network security, as well as identity security. This is important for us as these are the main pillars of our enterprise. It's ensuring everything we do remains seamless.

The product provides very good network security.

The support has been very prompt.

It provides security across multi-cloud and hybrid environments. The offering is very comprehensive. I'm able to have a strong security posture and it helps me take care of and protect my workloads. The network security is strong. It gives me complete traceability.

The automation depends on the technological stack, however, it helps with identifying vulnerabilities. If there is a violation happening, I can see it - plus it helps put in preventative measures. It helps me to identify issues in cloud deployments and also gives a prioritized list to help me maintain my operational efficiency. I can scan and assess weaknesses and have continuous monitoring and fixing with automation of remediation. We were able to realize benefits on day one using Prisma since we were able to see results immediately in terms of operational efficiency.

Prisma offers robust security features and seamless integration with AWS. It has complete capabilities, so I don't have to run my automated cloud resources while ensuring a proxy approach to cloud security.

The agent provides us with more security options. We can also easily integrate seamlessly with our CI/CD pipeline. It's simple. It's plug-and-play.  

Prisma offers a single tool to protect all of our cloud resources and applications without having to manage and reconcile security and compliance reports. It's complete. We have everything under one single entity while fulfilling our compliance needs. 

The solution provides risk clarity at runtime and across the entire pipeline, showing you issues as they are discovered. It can block according to our complex requirements.

With the increased operational efficiency, I am facing less downtime. It's reduced runtime alerts by two to three hours. It's also reduced alert investigation time. 

We've been able to save money. We're getting a good return on investment. We're saving about 20 hours of work a week.

It would be ideal if they could somehow reduce the deployment time. It also required a skilled person to implement. 

I've been using the solution for three years.

We've had no issues with the stability. 

We only use the solution in one location. About 400 people use it right now. 

We haven't had any issues with scaling. 

Support is prompt. We are pleased with the level of service. 

Positive

We did not use a different solution. 

It takes a while to deploy. It took us a week to deploy the solution.

Our goal was to ensure the minimum amount of downtime during the process. Two people were involved in the setup process. 

Maintenance is required on a monthly basis.

We had a consultant help us with the implementation.

We have witnessed an ROI with work savings of about 20 hours. 

I'm not sure of the exact cost of the solution. 

We have looked at other options on the market. We did look at Microsoft Defender and Sentinel One. They both lacked the features we needed. 

We're Prisma Cloud customers. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

It's a very good product if you look at the market right now. It offers all types of features, including cloud security, workflow protection, etc. It's all bundled together for convenience. 

From a business perspective, our clients use Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks to meet compliance and get more visibility into the cloud.

When people start their cloud journey, they do it per their business needs, but eventually, they reach a point where many infrastructures are created. Still, there aren't enough governance factors, so they buy Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks for compliance from a government perspective. They also want to know how much infrastructure has been created and their exact locations, including their vulnerabilities against threats, and get more visibility into those threats and vulnerabilities.

We work with all models of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, including data, container, and IM security.

Our clients are medium and enterprise clients, as the solution would take too much effort for small-sized businesses or clients.

What I found most valuable in Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is the VAS, such as the web application and API security, primarily because the solution goes in tandem with Kubernetes or the containers. This is why I feel that VAS adds a lot of value, mainly because it gives visibility through the application layer and threat detection features.

Another valuable feature of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is the CSPM, simply because it's essential to understand what threats you'll face when starting your cloud journey or in the middle of your cloud journey.

The VAS and the CSPM are the most valuable features because they work in tandem to provide users with the required visibility.

A third valuable functionality you can get from the solution is the ability to investigate and build the correlation between the network, IAM, and other configurations. I saw a new level of maturity in this aspect from Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, which I didn't see from other solutions or vendors.

The solution also provides security for multi and hybrid-cloud environments. You can do AWS, Azure, etc., and even on-premises; wherever Kubernetes is supported, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks could support it.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks also has a preventative approach to cloud security because it acts as a defense through prevention and banning.

I also saw that the solution is comprehensive in securing the entire development cycle, such as in building, deployment, and running, because it provides a dedicated CCS (Cloud Core Security) functionality, which is leverage.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks has done great at the identity or ID, filter, VAS, and CCS levels.

Many more aspects can be covered in the cloud, but not all of them are addressed by Prisma Cloud, which can be one area for improvement.

For example, Prisma Cloud covers computing, network layer, identity and access management, and configuration management. Still, if you're looking for other aspects, such as ones beyond the cloud, the solution may not cover those. It can cover host containers, serverless and embedded apps, and PaaS, or aspects under computing, network connectivity, and identity and configuration management. Data may also be covered, but there is no data governance here in India. Storage may also be included, such as self-service GCS, but I did see that the solution is not very comprehensive, though you may not need all other aspects. Currently, Prisma Cloud only focuses on compute networking, data governance, and IAM, which could be improved.

As for the security automation capabilities of the solution, it is good, but there's still room for improvement because, at times, the access itself is not very consistent. My company has faced certain issues where it would have been better if the whole process, hub, or tool were more straightforward.

I also mentioned that the data governance functionality is not supported here in India, but Palo Alto Networks did not give an explanation about it.

My company also utilized GCP, and it was simpler. However, it did not have the intelligence of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks. Though Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks provides excellent security, is a pioneer in this space, and knows what it's doing, from a user perspective, it would have been better if it was a little easier to use. Right now, my rating for the solution based on ease of use would be a four out of five or a nine out of ten.

In terms of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks providing visibility and control regardless of how complex or distributed cloud environments become, it does for complex and distributed environments in the networking aspect. However, this is not true in the identity aspect. The solution only manages Okta, Azure, and AD, but it does not support the most popular Google Workspace, so that is another downside of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks.

Prisma Cloud could also be improved by adding Google Workspace as an identity.

I also mentioned previously that the user experience in the solution could be better. It could be easier. For example, Elasticsearch and Chronicle both have SIEMs, and they made it easier for people, both cognitively and intuitively. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks talks about CWP, CSPM, SIEM, and DNS, for example. Still, if you look at its console, you won't find any of those terms mentioned, so a person who comes from the presentation to the theory to the practical world may not be able to find a correlation. If Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks has some diagram that explains and allows users to understand all these, it becomes easier. Otherwise, it'll be a little steep for somebody to start the journey with this solution. This also means you need some security knowledge before you can even begin using Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks.

The setup process for Defender in the solution also needs improvement as it takes a day or two, but that is not even mentioned in the portal, so many customers think that there is something wrong during the setup, only to eventually realize that it is normal and that it'll be okay in two to three days. Another example is setting up Auto-Defend in Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, where you'd think your AWS system was malfunctioning when the delay is caused by the logs not being updated faster. There should be documentation that explains the setup process and how many days it usually takes to complete the setup.

It's the same for onboarding, as it could take several days, so if the process could be made easier, that would help the customers. My company has received feedback that customers have generally found it challenging to start using Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, though it could still depend on the person.

We've worked with and used Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks for over two years.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks has mostly been stable. However, there were some instances when it was not as stable, particularly the Defender setup, where it did not work for three days, so my team had to escalate, and then it suddenly worked. The issues usually happen during implementation, but you will not have as many challenges after it is implemented.

Stability-wise, the solution is a six out of ten for me.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is scalable, mainly because it is cloud-based.

My rating for the technical support provided by Prisma Cloud is four out of ten because it takes two to three days before support replies to you, and sometimes, you do not even get a valid or contextual answer. Sometimes, the team does not respond, and you do not even know if you will get a response. The technical support team has not been very friendly.

These are why I cannot give Prisma Cloud support a high rating.

Neutral

The initial deployment process for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks could be straightforward. Still, it becomes complex because of missing documentation that explains what happens during implementation and onboarding. Not everyone understands what needs to be done, so the process might look complex when it's not very complex.

The process requires you to onboard your account, set up your defenders and applications, and update specs and costs, but the available data could be more intuitive.

Deploying Prisma Cloud could take more than a day because the logs already take one day, plus it also depends on the number of hosts and containers.

My company is a reseller for Palo Alto Networks, so it does the implementation, POC, and setup for customers.

In terms of Prisma Cloud reducing runtime alerts overall for clients, that would be up to the clients or customers. The solution is configured, so if you get a lot of alerts, you have to work towards burning down and making it contextual to your existing setup and what your business requires. From an implementation perspective, my company will set up the defaults, wait, and then work with the customer on how often they want to burn it down and contextualize it to their needs or requirements. Reducing runtime alerts is essentially up to the customers because if the customer gets a lot of alerts and does not spend time to make them contextual, then that customer will continue to get alerts. It is essential to make it contextual to your system if you want to reduce the alerts you receive.

Here is how I would rate Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks: as a pioneer solution, and as it is cloud-based, and considering the security perspective, the solution is an eight out of ten, so the rating is high. However, in terms of setting it up and implementing it from a customer's point of view, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks becomes a seven out of ten. Not all things often work, and you still have many features you need to explore as a customer. Support for partners or the portal could also be better, where it should give more information, so the rating becomes a five out of ten. Overall, my rating for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is a seven out of ten based on experience, but at this point, it could still be the market leader.

My company is a reseller, partner, and implementer of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks.

We use it for visibility, compliance, and governance. It is the official CSPM solution for our bank.

The only module we are using is the compliance module.

In Prisma Cloud, we were able to create frameworks using the RQL language, frameworks that are modeled after our Archer security baselines. Archer is the tool that we used to track all exceptions and security baselines. With Prisma Cloud we have been able to create custom baselines, based on the Archer framework that we have, and not just go off of CIS or NIST frameworks. 

We have also been able to generate reports for teams using the automated scripting tools that Prisma Cloud provides. On a weekly basis, we share those reports with the teams that are impacted. They go back and remediate their findings as needed, or we fine-tune the Prisma Cloud compliance language as needed if there is any ambiguity in there. 

Over the course of a few weeks, the teams remediate these issues and our compliance percentage goes up. Our compliance percentage for production environments was 95 percent. We then made some new acquisitions and they were at 40 or 50 percent, which was very bad. When we brought them under our company's umbrella, we gave them these reports, and they improved their compliance percentage. That has been helping us hugely.

Also, it does a good job of providing a view of our overall posture. Our confidence in our security and compliance posture was what I would describe as a "head in the sand" type of situation before. People would say, "Ah, we should be okay." But once we started digging into stuff and started putting our Archer baselines into the Prisma Cloud queries, that's when we realized that things looked poorer than we had imagined or assumed. This has been a wake-up call for our organization, and everybody has taken notice that we really have a hard job ahead of us.

In addition, with this solution we are seeing a single pane of glass to protect all of our cloud resources and appliances. We are seeing multiple occurrences with multiple platforms under one roof. That has really helped to simplify things.

Prisma Cloud does have some good investigation built into it. When an alert is generated, it does a good job at correlation, not the greatest in the world, but it gives you a good starting point. So it has helped us work on those alerts or investigate them more easily. It reduces our investigation time by 40 to 50 percent because it does all the initial investigation and puts all the findings together. You don't have to manually log into a lot of different accounts or tools to find out that information.

Financially, the only way I can think of that the solution has improved things is in our compliance structure. We spend less time after audits by putting in the effort beforehand. Recently, we have had a lot of good wins where audits have not been able to find a lot of issues. In the past, they used to find 15 or 16 findings, and now, they're able to find only one or two. When you have fewer audit findings, you have fewer man-hours dedicated to dealing with them. We are able to move those man-hours into our actual work rather than just audit work. We have been able to achieve some productivity there. I would estimate it has saved us 5 to 10 percent, in terms of money.

The most valuable feature is the option to add custom queries using the RQL language that they supply so that we can customize the compliance frameworks to what we need to look for.

The comprehensive view that it offers, the compliance percentage based on a framework for a particular account or a particular environment, is extremely useful. We can give those reports to the individual application teams so that they can remediate the findings. It also helps that we can give them read-only access, so we don't even get involved. They log in on their own and can pull a report, based on our instructions, and then do the remediation themselves. It helps us not be the middleman and not waste our time just generating reports for the application teams.

Also, Prisma Cloud provides security for multi and hybrid-cloud environments. We started off using it for our AWS environments, but now Azure and GCP are starting to come into play. We haven't started using those yet, we have just started initial discussions with them, but it has already been decided that Prisma Cloud would be the CSPM even for our Azure and GCP environments.

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 cloud is adding more and more complexity in terms of number of services or the number of options for each service, especially when it comes to security options like encryption at rest and encryption in transit. And there is the issue of the interlinking of these services. One cloud service uses another cloud service, like CloudFront in front of a load balancer. These interactions are creating numerous new combinations and the RQL language really needs enhancement to handle those queries. 

We ourselves have put in a lot of enhancement requests to Palo Alto, looking at these corner cases, so they can look into those and improve them.

I have been using Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks for about two years.

Prisma Cloud is a little slow, but it is fairly stable.

It is a scalable solution. No matter how many accounts you add, it still can scale. Even the reports that we set up run pretty quickly. They have done a good job of making their platform scalable.

We have been acquiring companies quite a bit recently so we will be using Prisma Cloud heavily. This is our only company-approved CSPM tool. Even though we have some of the native tools in use, like Security Hub from AWS, or Azure Security Center, now called Defender for Cloud in Azure, the official CSPM is Prisma Cloud. It is the center of attraction for us so it is being used by everybody. In the future, we will be adding more accounts as needed until a decision is made on Wiz. We still have a good amount of time left in our Prisma Cloud contract, so we are not looking to switch to Wiz anytime soon.

Technical support is excellent. We have a dedicated account manager from Prisma Cloud who has an office hours session every Monday, and he also attends our standup calls. If Prisma Cloud has any new improvements or any updates that we might be interested in, he brings them up on those calls. We also have a weekly knowledge-sharing session where Prisma Cloud's personnel come in and make a 30-minute presentation and address the enhancement requests that we put in. They'll tell us what updates have happened, what improvements have happened, et cetera.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward. It was done by one of our team leads, who is a cloud security fellow. He used to be a senior cyber security engineer. It took him three months of full-time work to set up those compliance frameworks, the custom RQL queries based on our Archer baseline, and then, import all the accounts. The importing of the accounts is pretty straightforward. They provide an API or you can even import manually. That's not at all a problem.

We have 10 to 15 users in the solution. Four or five of us are from cloud security proper, and we have administrative rights. Our cloud operations team, seven or eight people, looks at the alerts and investigates and resolves them. They engage us if they need any assistance because they're not very cloud aware yet. And we have a few pilot users who are from the application teams, and they have a read-only role. They generate a report for themselves. Many people still want spoon-feeding and say, "Can you generate a report for us or give us a screenshot of this and that?" We do that occasionally, but we are trying to move away from that process.

For maintenance, there are only two of us, and one of us is doing it full-time, more or less. The other one is more of a standby. We are documenting the procedures. We do weekly maintenance in Prisma Cloud, where we make sure the users are onboarded, there are no stale users, and take care of the general upkeep of the tool. The idea is that, in the future, we'll probably get a junior engineer for that role, while the senior engineer can perform enhancements or more advanced configurations.

When it comes to protecting the full cloud-native stack, Prisma Cloud is fairly okay. Compared to other tools out there, I don't think it is an extremely good product, but it's a reasonably okay product to work with. I've used Wiz in the past, and Wiz does a better job on full native-cloud security.

For example, there is the auto-remediation feature in Wiz, which Prisma Cloud eventually caught up to. Wiz also has agentless scanning that Prisma Cloud is, again, catching up to. There is also Terraform code scanning for CI/CD pipelines that Wiz came up with, ISC code scanning, et cetera. Those are some of the excellent features of Wiz.

Wiz also offers granular compliance frameworks in the sense that you could write your own compliance queries and make them part of a framework. Prisma Cloud's RQL is not that flexible. We are still running into some issues in some corner cases where there are no RQL queries available.

Prisma Cloud's security automation capabilities are very basic. Prisma Cloud is primarily a CSPM, not a CWPP. Even Wiz does not offer that many automation capabilities; they were coming out just at the end of the last year. But compared to other products that I have worked with, which are purely CWPP, Prisma Cloud would not even come close.

I would rate Prisma Cloud at about six out of 10 for helping to take a preventative approach to cloud security. It gets the job done. Our company has invested money in it, so we can't move away from it for another two or three years. But we are already piloting Wiz to see if we like it. Once the contract with Prisma Cloud is up, we will probably jump to Wiz. That's the idea within the company.

If I were to rate Prisma Cloud from one to 10, I would maybe rate it at six, while Wiz would be a nine.

We have started using some of the modules for securing the entire cloud-native development cycle across build, deploy, and run, but we have not really operationalized them. They're in the initial phases. It's not the maturity of Prisma Cloud that's in question, it's about the maturity of our company as a whole. Our company was not really tuned to CI/CD, secure DevOps, and the like, so we are slowly starting to integrate that. We haven't seen the results yet, but I would say it's very promising on that front at this time.

My advice would be to compare other products and understand what you want to do before you purchase or implement it.

Our use case for the solution is monitoring our cloud configurations for security. That use case, itself, is huge. We use the tool to monitor security configuration of our AWS and Azure clouds. Security configurations can include storage, networking, IAM, and monitoring of malicious traffic that it detects.

We have about 50 users and most of them use it to review their own resources.

If, for a certain environment, someone configures a connection to the internet, like Windows RDP, which is not allowed in our environment, we immediately get an alert that says, "Hey, there's been a configuration of Windows Remote Desktop Protocol, and it's connected directly to the internet." Because that violates our policy, and it's also not something we desire, we will immediately reach out to have that connection taken down.

We're also integrating it into our CI/CD pipeline. There are parts we've integrated already, but we haven't done so completely. For example, we've integrated container scanning into the CI/CD. When they build a container into the pipeline, it's automatically deployed and the results come back to our console where we're monitoring it. The beauty of it is that we give our developers access to this information. That way, as they build, they actually get near real-time alerting that says, "This configuration is good. This configuration is bad." We have found that very helpful because it provides instant feedback to the development team. Instead of doing a review later on where they find out, "Oh, this is not good," they already know: "Oh, we should not configure it this way, let's configure it more securely another way." They know because the alerts are in near real-time.

That's part of our strategy. We want to bring this information as close to the DevOps team as possible. That's where we feel the greatest benefit can be achieved. The near real-time feedback on what they're doing means they can correct it there, versus several days down the road when they've already forgotten what they did.

And where we have integrated it into our CI/CD pipeline, I am able to view vulnerabilities through our different stages of development.

It has enhanced collaboration between our DevOps and SecOps teams by being very transparent. Whatever we see, we want them to see. That's our strategy. Whatever we in security know, we want them to know, because it's a collaborative effort. We all need each other to get things fixed. If they're configuring something and it comes to us, we want them to see it. And our expectation is that, hopefully, they've fixed it by the time we contact them. Once they have fixed it, the alert goes away. Hopefully, it means that everyone has less to do.

We also use the solution's ability to filter alerts by levels of security. Within our cloud, we have accounts that are managed and certain groups are responsible. We're able to direct the learning and the reporting to the people who are managing those groups or those cloud accounts. The ability to filter alerts by levels of security definitely helps our team to understand which situations are the most critical. They're rated by high, medium, and low. Of course we go after the "highs" and tell them to fix them immediately, or as close to immediately as possible. We send the "mediums" and "lows" to tickets. In some instances, they've already fixed them because they've seen the issue and know we'll be knocking on the door. They realize, "Oh, we need to fix this or else we're going to get a ticket." They want to do it the right way and this gives them the information to enable them to make the proper configuration.

Prisma Cloud also provides the data needed to pinpoint root cause and prevent an issue from occurring again. When there's an alert and an issue, in the event it tells you how to fix it. It will say, "Go to this, click on this, do this, do that." It will tell you why you got the alert and how to fix it.

In addition, the solution’s ability to show issues as they are discovered during the build phases is really good. We have different environments. Our low environments are dev, QA, and integrations, environments that don't have any data. And then we have the upper environment which actually has production data. There's a gradual progression as we go from the lower environments and eventually, hopefully, they figure out what to do, and then go into the upper environment. We see the alerts come in and we see how they're configuring things. It gives us good feedback through the whole life cycle as they're developing a product. We see that in near real-time through the whole development cycle.

I don't know if the solution reduces runtime alerts, but its monitoring helps us to be more aware of vulnerabilities that come in the stack. Attackers may be using new vulnerabilities and Prisma Cloud has increased the visibility of any new runtime alerts.

It does reduce alert investigation times because of the information that the alerts give us. When we get an alert, it will tell us the source, where it comes from. We're able to identify things because it uses a protocol called a NetFlow. It tracks the network traffic for us and says, "This alert is generated because these attackers are generating alerts," or "It's coming internally from these devices," and it names them. For example, we run vulnerability scanning weekly in our environment to scan for weaknesses and report on them. At times, a vulnerability scanner may trigger an alert in Prisma. Prisma will say, "Oh yeah, something is scanning your environment." We're able to use this Prisma information to identify the resources that have been scanning our environment. We're able to identify that really quickly as our vulnerability scanner and we're able to dismiss it, based on the information that Prisma provides. Prisma also provides the name or ID of a particular service or user that may have triggered an alert. We are able to reach out to that individual to say, "Hey, is this you?" because of the information provided by Prisma, without having to look into tons of logs to identify who it was.

Per day, because Prisma gives us the information and we don't have to do individual research, it saves us at least one to two hours, easily and probably more. 

One of the most valuable features is monitoring of configurations for our cloud, because cloud configurations can be done in hundreds of ways. We use this tool to ensure that those configurations do not present a security risk by providing overly excessive rights or that they punch a hole that we're not aware of into the internet.

One of the strengths of this tool is because we, as a security team, are not configuring everything. We have a decentralized DevOps model, so we depend on individual groups to configure their environments for their development and product needs. That means we're not aware of exactly what they're doing because we're not there all the time. However, we are alerted to things such as if they open up a connection to the internet that's bringing traffic in. We can then ask questions, like, "Why do you need that? Did you secure it properly?" We have found it to be highly beneficial for monitoring those configurations across teams and our DevOps environment.

We're not only using the configuration, but also the containers, the container security, and the serverless function. Prisma will look to see that a configuration is done in a particular, secure pattern. When it's not done in that particular pattern, it gives us an alert that is either high, medium, or low. Based on those alerts, we then contact the owners of those environments and work with them on remediating the alerts. We also advise them on their weaker-than-desirable configuration and they fix it. We have people who are monitoring this on a regular basis and who reach out to the different DevOps groups.

It scans our containers in real time. Also, as they're built, it's looking into the container repository where the images are built, telling us ahead of time, "You have vulnerabilities here, and you should update this code before you deploy." And once it's deployed, it's scanning for vulnerabilities that are in production as the container is running. And we're also moving into serverless, where it runs off of codes, like Azure Functions and AWS Lambdas, which is a strip line of code. We're using Prisma for monitoring that too, making sure that the serverless is also configured correctly and that we don't have commands and functions in there that are overly permissive.

The challenge that Palo Alto and Prisma have is that, at times, the instructions in an event are a little bit dated and they're not usable. That doesn't apply to all the instructions, but there are times where, for example, the Microsoft or the Amazon side has made some changes and Palo Alto or Prisma was not aware of them. So as we try to remediate an alert in such a case, the instructions absolutely do not work. Then we open up a ticket and they'll reply, "Oh yeah, the API for so-and-so vendor changed and we'll have to work with them on that." That area could be done a little better.

One additional feature I'd like to see is more of a focus on API security. API security is an area that is definitely growing, because almost every web application has tons of APIs connecting to other web applications with tons of APIs. That's a huge area and I'd love to see a little bit more growth in that area. For example, when it comes to the monitoring of APIs within the clouded environment, who has access to the APIs? How old are the APIs' keys? How often are those APIs accessed? That would be good to know because they could be APIs that are never really accessed and maybe we should get rid of them. Also, what roles are attached to those APIs? And where are they connected to which resources? An audit and inventory of the use of APIs would be helpful.

I've been using Palo Alto Prisma for about a year and a half.

It's a stable solution.

The scalability is "average".

Palo Alto's technical support for this solution is okay.

We did not have a previous solution. It was the same solution called Redlock, which was then purchased by Palo Alto.

The initial setup took a day or two and was fairly straightforward.

As for our implementation strategy, it was 

• add in the cloud accounts
• set up alerting
• fine tune the alerts
  
• create process to respond to alerts
• edit the policies.

In terms of maintenance, one FTE would be preferable, but we do not have that.

We implemented it ourselves, with support from Prisma.

One thing we're very pleased about is how the licensing model for Prisma is based on work resources. You buy a certain amount of work resources and then, as they enable new capabilities within Prisma, it just takes those work resource units and applies them to new features. This enables us to test and use the new features without having to go back and ask for and procure a whole new product, which could require going through weeks, and maybe months, of a procurement process.

For example, when they brought in containers, we were able to utilize containers because it goes against our current allocation of work units. We were immediately able to do piloting on that. We're very appreciative of that kind of model. Traditionally, other models mean that they come out with a new product and we have to go through procurement and ask, "Can I have this?" You install it, or you put in the key, you activate it, and then you go through a whole process again. But this way, with Prisma, we're able to quickly assess the new capabilities and see if we want to use them or not. For containers, for example, we could just say, "Hey, this is not something we want to spend our work units on." And you just don't add anything to the containers. That's it.

The biggest lesson I have learned while using the solution is that you need to tune it well.

The Prisma tool offers a lot of functionality and a lot of configuration. It's a very powerful tool with a lot of features. For people who want to use this product, I would say it's definitely a good product to use. But please be aware also, that because it's so feature rich, to do it right and to use all the functionality, you need somebody with a dedicated amount of time to manage it. It's not complicated, but it will certainly take time for dedicated resources to fully utilize all that Prisma has to offer. Ideally, you should be prepared to assign someone as an SME to learn it and have that person teach others on the team.

I would rate Prisma Cloud at nine out of 10, compared to what's out there.

We use the GlobalProtect module within Prisma Cloud to ensure the security of our mobile users.

Prisma Cloud provides security spanning for multi and hybrid cloud environments.

It includes automation capabilities that we can deploy if the environment is suitable.

Prisma Cloud has enabled us to migrate from multiple vendors, creating a more user-friendly experience for everyone.

Prisma Cloud enhances the security of our cloud-native development lifecycle from start to finish.

One of the advantages of Prisma Cloud's GlobalProtect module is that it provides a centralized tool for monitoring applications, user connections, and latency. Additionally, it allows us to track the percentage of availability.

Prisma Cloud saves the equivalent time of one full-time employee.

The most valuable aspect of Prisma Cloud compared to other VPNs is its security and performance.

In the GlobalProtect module, we can easily guide users experiencing connection issues through the notification column. Within that column, we can submit and escalate notifications on host entries for troubleshooting purposes. Additionally, we can troubleshoot by collecting direct logs during user data connections. On the security front, we have a wide range of SaaS-based items at our disposal. Using Prisma Cloud, we can send internet-based reminders about the option to create a VPN tunnel internally.

Palo Alto needs to add more support staff to improve their response time.

I have been using Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks for two years.

I would rate the stability of Prisma Cloud ten out of ten.

I would rate the scalability of Prisma Cloud ten out of ten.

The support response time is slow, with resolutions sometimes taking up to two days.

Neutral

The initial deployment is straightforward. I have experience with two deployments. In my previous job, the deployment took six months to complete. Currently, we have 15 tenants to deploy and have successfully deployed ten within the first seven months.

The price for Prisma Cloud is reasonable.

I would rate Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks eight out of ten. However, the delay in support time negatively impacts my overall assessment.

We have 90,000 accounts and have already migrated 50,000 users over to GlobalProtect.

Palo Alto does the maintenance.

I recommend Prisma Cloud to others, as long as the solution meets their requirements for cost, support, and number of locations.

Our enterprise customers tend to use it for compliance. 

A big drive towards Prisma Cloud came during COVID-19 when many organizations were moving away from traditional VPNs. There was a drive to facilitate people working from home, and traditional VPNs were not the right solution for large customers who had a huge amount of staff working from home. Prisma Cloud offered multiple solutions that facilitated the ability to work securely from anywhere. That was one of the big things, and that continues to be a big thing today.

Prisma Cloud provides security spanning multi- and hybrid-cloud environments. That is what its big strength is.

It is one of the most comprehensive solutions available. If you compare it with the likes of Netskope and Skyhigh, Prisma Cloud is fairly similar in terms of features and depths of features. Automation capability is built in. It has got extensive logging. Automation is there, but it is not extensive. You can combine it with other tools like XO. The integration capability is already strong. That itself makes it a good contender.

Prisma Cloud takes away a lot of manual work for our clients. It has reduced costs by not having to work with pre-COVID-19 traditional networking scenarios. It has given them the ability to have staff working securely from anywhere on the globe. I do not have the metrics for cost savings, but all customers who bought the solution from us say that it has reduced their costs. Over the last three years, we have not had a customer who has not renewed, and it is based on the reduced costs.

As long as it is set up correctly and it is integrated correctly with the SOAR and the SIEM components, it provides very good visibility. It is a very good enterprise solution. No one toolset or platform can protect every single cloud resource, but it can cover a lot of cloud resources.

They claim to secure the entire cloud-native development lifecycle, across build, deploy, and run, but I am not 100% sure. It probably can do 80% of the job.

Visibility is a key feature. Integration with other technologies across the board, whether they are Palo Alto technologies, Windows technologies, or cloud technologies, is probably the biggest thing.

They can improve the integrations into the SDLC lifecycle.

Their support is good. I would rate the Palo Alto technical team an 8 out of 10.

Positive

It is not easy, and it has to be well-planned. You need good skills to deploy any of these tools, but that is the same for many solutions. These platforms are complex, and it is important to understand exactly what outcome you want when you are deploying any tool like this. 

The deployment duration depends on the size of the environment. It can take anywhere from two weeks to four or five months depending on the size of the environment and the complexity of the environment. Some customers have a very simple setup in Azure only or in AWS only. It is very quick to deploy. Other customers have complex hardware environments where they are in the process of migrating to the cloud. Those implementations typically take much longer. It depends on how many global offices they have.

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.

Overall, I would rate Prisma Cloud an 8 out of 10.

I primarily use the solution for vulnerability management, compliance management, and sometimes defense and access control. It has a sandbox. We can scan and manage CI pipeline security. 

The cloud solution as one platform can provide us with a lot of features and cover most of what customers care about. 

I have some clients that are moving from computing to a container environment. For cloud sets, customers need to increase the power of security over the DevOps environment. It doesn't create any bottlenecks when launching new products. From a business perspective, it's very helpful and supportive. It expedites go-to-market.

The runtime defense and API security are very good. It offers very good application security.

It's very comprehensive. It can cover the full cloud-native stack. There is a wide range of integrations, and the compatibility with various cloud providers is very useful.

It's perfect in terms of the security automation. We can do everything from the portal and choose a variety of policies. It can cover medium to large customers. 

We can take a preventative approach to cloud security. It's helpful.

They are constantly updating and adding new features and offering support for each of the updates. 

It is very comprehensive. It covers all aspects of the customer's cloud.

It provides good visibility and control regardless of the complexity. 

We can integrate into CI/CD pipelines. It's very efficient. They can integrate with whatever CI tools the customer uses, including Windows, Linux, and so forth. 

Modules can be added to cover additional items from the customer's side.

It reduced runtime alerts. We've saved more than 50% to 60% of our time.

We've reduced alert investigation times. With any incident that happens, we can do an investigation and correlate and normalize the incident quickly. We've saved more than 70% of the time typically taken.

They could improve more features for the enterprise version of the solution. They need to also have more features for on-premises versions for companies that cannot access the cloud version. 

I've been using the solution for around two years. 

The solution is stable. I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

We use the solution for one location. 

It's a scalable solution. I'd rate it nine out of ten. 

I was not involved in the deployment of the solution. 

There is maintenance, however, it is very minor. You just need one to two people to manage it. 

The ROI users get from the tool is very high. 

The pricing is a little bit high. It is not a cheap product. 

I'm a partner and reseller.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

I'd recommend the solution to others. The cloud-based version is very good. Users can rely on the product.