I use Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks in our company for remote access, especially to help new users connect to corporate resources from over a distance, in other countries, or while they are not in the office.
Senior Manager Network Design at MEEZA, Managed IT Services Provider
Along with a straightforward setup phase, the tool also offers exceptionally high stability
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable features of the solution stem from the fact that it offers stability and scalability while being a very secure product."
- "The product's current price is an area of shortcoming where improvements are required."
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
I have seen some benefits from using the solution in our company since it offers mobility. My company has users around the world who connect to the resources remotely without any issues because of Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of the solution stem from the fact that it offers stability and scalability while being a very secure product.
What needs improvement?
Certain complications are related to the VPN part of the product, which can lead to a very deep and technical discussion. From an improvement perspective, I want the product to be integrated with SASE products.
Palo Alto Networks GlobalProtect or VPN in general with a cloud-based service would be a great improvement.
The product should be made more capable of offering more integration with the recent technologies introduced in the market. The product's integration capabilities with the already existing products in the market are good.
The product's current price is an area of shortcoming where improvements are required.
Buyer's Guide
Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks
October 2026
Learn what your peers think about Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2026.
921,749 professionals have used our research since 2012.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks for four years. As it is a security product, our company keeps it updated to the latest version.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a 100 percent stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a very scalable solution.
Around 800 people in my organization use Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks. The solution can be scaled up to fit around 3,000 users at a time.
Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is used extensively twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week in my organization since we operate in different time zones.
How are customer service and support?
The support offered by Palo Alto Networks is amazing. Whenever my company opens a ticket with the support team of Palo Alto Networks, we get amazing support. The support team of Palo Alto Networks is fast, customer-friendly, and knowledgeable.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have experience with Cisco and Fortinet. I have experience with Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client. The last time we used Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client in our company was three years ago, after which it was phased out from the set of standard solutions we use. Based on my experience with Fortinet and FortiClient, I can say that the support is not at the same level as the one offered by Palo Alto Networks. Fortinet's technical support team is not as strong as the technical team of Palo Alto Networks. Only the prices of Fortinet and FortiClient were good compared to Palo Alto Networks.
How was the initial setup?
The product's initial setup phase was very straightforward.
The deployment process involves identifying the user profiling and figuring out what exactly its users need, meaning there are some prerequisites involved in the deployment's preparation phase, and it is the most important process critical for the product's success.
The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.
The solution can be deployed in two days.
What about the implementation team?
The deployment can be carried out with the help of our company's in-house team.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is an expensive solution, especially when compared to other solutions like Cisco. There are no additional charges apart from the standard licensing costs attached to the solution.
What other advice do I have?
Those who plan to use the solution should ensure very good user profiling is carried out, after which they should link the product with the corporate security policy. Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is a very flexible solution, and you need to know exactly what you want out of the solution, which should align with the policies in your company as it is an area that differs from one corporate entity to another.
Considering the cost of the solution, I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Cloud Architect at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
I like the solution's usability and control because you can do many functions from a single dashboard
Pros and Cons
- "Prisma integrates well with Cortex XDR and Cortex Data Lake. My company has been also using Prisma Access in-house for nearly a year, and it integrates seamlessly."
- "The documentation is generally good, but they could provide a more detailed description of all the configuration steps. I have to search for information or call support. Palo Alto could add more knowledge base articles about configuration with screenshots and walkthroughs. That would be helpful. When configuring a product, you want to see examples of how it is done."
What is our primary use case?
I'm a cloud security architect, but I joined this project because one of my teammates left. My manager asked me to join because I have prior experience with Cisco Systems and Dell security.
Our client has 40 sites, and they used other products called Peruit and PescUmbrella. My colleague was helping them remove the products from their laptops and replace them with Cortex XDR and Prisma Access.
How has it helped my organization?
Prisma Access is a better product than our client's previous solution, and it helps organizations work differently. It saves time, but I'm not sure about money. I had never considered that aspect because I'm not involved in the financial side. The solution helps us to operate efficiently. Everything we want to do is in there, including DNS, web, and URL security.
Endpoint Protection is something I use on my corporate laptop, and it's doing a wonderful job. I don't experience latency. Prisma has a massive number of secure gateways compared to any other product. All these gateways reduce latency and provide better bandwidth because they use cloud platforms. The scalability and efficiency are excellent so far.
What is most valuable?
Prisma integrates well with Cortex XDR and Cortex Data Lake. My company has been also using Prisma Access in-house for nearly a year, and it integrates seamlessly.
Another aspect I like about Prisma is its usability and control. You can do many functions from a single dashboard. It has more features than Zscaler. The look and feel are better. Prisma is a one-stop shop that does many tasks, like logging and monitoring.
Having a cloud-based platform is essential because we're pushing all our customers to the cloud. Most of our customers will be using Prisma in the future. Prisma Access provides traffic analysis, threat prevention, URL filtering, and web filtering, which are critical features that our customers request. You don't need a separate administrator for each task. One admin with a little training can handle all of them on Prisma Access. The rest depends on how much you can play with the product.
What needs improvement?
The documentation is generally good, but they could provide a more detailed description of all the configuration steps. I have to search for information or call support. Palo Alto could add more knowledge base articles about configuration with screenshots and walkthroughs. That would be helpful. When configuring a product, you want to see examples of how it is done.
For how long have I used the solution?
I am using Prisma Access for two projects. I haven't been using it for more than six months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I haven't worked with Prisma for long, but my impression of the stability so far is good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Prisma Access is most suitable for large enterprises because it also includes posture management. It's comparable to Microsoft ESPM. Microsoft makes many of the tools I use as a cloud architect, so I see everything from that perspective.
I don't think smaller companies will have any issues with Prisma. My company has five offices in India and users in 55 countries. Prisma is excellent in terms of scalability, usability, readiness, and user experience. It also runs on older operating systems and new ones too. The laptop I initially got from the company was pretty old. It's a gen-three. I got a newer laptop, and it works on either.
How are customer service and support?
I rate Prisma Access support a nine out of ten. Their support is helpful. They have a large team of product managers, so they're always available to talk. The response times are excellent.
I'm impressed. Their technical teams are knowledgeable about the product, and they have global support. You can get support around the clock no matter which time zone you are in. One of my clients is in the US, and the other is in India. Both can access support without a problem.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I worked with Cisco Fire and AnyConnect, which combines security and VPN. AnyConnect is a popular Cisco product clients use remotely to connect their machines to their offices. That was the first product. Cisco acquired Sourcefire and rebranded it to Fire, which is again a client-based solution.
How was the initial setup?
The deployment is straightforward, and it's done via Prisma's console. I didn't find it to be tricky or have any difficulty finding what I needed. Everything is clearly labeled and intuitive. The more you play with that, the more comfortable you get.
It only takes a minute or two if you have everything configured and you simply need to push the config file. That also depends on how much configuration you push at once. A small configuration takes less than 30 seconds. A larger configuration like we've done in the past few days might take a minute or more.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Prisma Acess a nine out of ten. It's better than any other product in the market.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. partner
Buyer's Guide
Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks
October 2026
Learn what your peers think about Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2026.
921,749 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Global Network Tech Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Makes us part of a bigger security ecosystem with updates taken care of for us, but pricing and support need work
Pros and Cons
- "It protects all app traffic so that users can gain access to all apps. Unlike other solutions that only work from ports 80 and 443, which are predominantly for web traffic, Prisma Access covers all protocols and works on all traffic patterns... The most sophisticated attacks can arise from sources that are not behind 80/443."
- "We are quite happy with this feature and feel very confident that the Palo Alto security stack takes care of all of these things automatically."
- "While Palo Alto has understood the essence of building capabilities around cloud technology and have come up with a CASB offering, that is a very new product. There are other companies that have better offerings for understanding cloud applications and have more graceful controls. That's something that Palo Alto needs to work on."
- "When you sell a product by saying that it's cloud-native and that users can make all configuration changes on-the-fly, when those changes are made they should happen within a minute."
What is our primary use case?
We use Prisma Access, not only for our remote users, in a distributed workforce, but for our offices as well. Right now, because of COVID, there is a very limited footprint on the office side of it. But we would like to cover our offices so that when people are working in them and trying to access resources, whether those resources are hosted on public cloud, private cloud, in data centers, or on-prem, Prisma Access is involved.
Prisma Access is completely hosted on Google Cloud Platform. Palo Alto Panorama, which is the centralized management tool, is also hosted on a public cloud environment. So the entire solution lies in the cloud.
How has it helped my organization?
The fact that Prisma Access provides millions of security updates per day is really important because it takes care of the equivalent of preparing patches and pushing them to your environment, without the headaches of managing and maintaining those processes for your infrastructure. If you get security intelligence from different verticals and different alliances, or through some sort of open API integration where vulnerabilities arise at different times, it's going to be difficult to keep up. Subscribing to this service and having it take care of that is really phenomenal.
And the best part is that you know that you are part of a bigger ecosystem where this learning about security issues is happening, and things are made available to you on a scheduled basis every day. It automatically strengthens your security posture. We are quite happy with this feature and feel very confident that the Palo Alto security stack takes care of all of these things automatically. That is one of the salient features and was one of our evaluation parameters for choosing a solution.
Another benefit is that before, if we had to set up a restricted environment for a given project, the lead time was about a day to get everything functioning correctly and to get the go-ahead from the security team. Now, setting up these environments can literally happen in less than five minutes. It is already segmented. All you need to do is ensure the people who are part of the project are included in a single access-control list, which these days is based on GCP Identity-Aware. Based on that, it provides the right privileges required to access certain things. That is the building block of any SasS solution with zero cross-network access. And it is very easy now.
What is most valuable?
The Prisma Access remote side is pretty good with respect to the footprint that it covers. Because it is built on the Google platform, using the Google Premium Tier network, it is almost everywhere geographically. From wherever we initiate a connection, it connects with the nearest point of presence, which minimizes the latency. And we can access applications wherever they are hosted.
It protects all app traffic so that users can gain access to all apps. Unlike other solutions that only work from ports 80 and 443, which are predominantly for web traffic, Prisma Access covers all protocols and works on all traffic patterns. It is not only confined to web traffic. This is important because security is something that should always be baked in, rather than being an afterthought. The most sophisticated attacks can arise from sources that are not behind 80/443. They could come through bit-torrent traffic, which uses a non-standard port, altogether. We want to cover off those possibilities. We were very sure, from the start of our deployment when conducting PoCs, that the solution we picked should have coverage for all ports and protocols.
The fact that it secures not just web-based apps, but non-web apps as well, is important because the threat landscape is quite big. It not only includes public-facing applications that are accessible via web protocols, but it also includes many attacks that are being generated through non-standard protocols, like DNS tunneling and newly-registered domain control names. There are also a lot of critical applications being accessed on a point-to-point basis, and they might be vulnerable if those ports and protocols are not being inspected. You need to have the right security controls so that your data remains protected all the time.
In terms of the solution's ease-of-use, once you understand the way the various components stitch together, and once the effort of the initial configuration, setup, and rollout are done and you have set up the policies correctly, you're just monitoring certain things and you do not have to touch a lot of components. That makes it easy to manage a distributed workforce like ours in which there are 10,000-plus users. With all those users, we only have a handful of people, five to seven individuals, who are able to gracefully manage it, because the platform is easy to use. It does take considerable effort to get up to speed in configuring things during the initial deployment, but thereafter it is just a case of monitoring and it's very easy to manage.
In addition, whether traffic is destined for a public cloud environment, or for a private data center, or you are accessing east-west traffic, you can apply the same security policies and posture, and maintain the same sort of segmentation. Prisma Cloud offers threat prevention, URL filtering, and DNS protection, and east-west traffic segmentation. These features are the foundation of any security stack. There are two primary purposes for this kind of solution, in the big picture. One of them is handling the performance piece, providing ease of access for end-users, and the second is that it should handle security. All of these components are foundational to the security piece, not only to protect against insider threats but to protect things from the outside as well.
Prisma Access offers security on all ports and protocols. It covers the stack pretty well, leaving no stones unturned. The same unified protection is applied, irrespective of where you access things from or what you access. That also makes it a very compelling solution.
What needs improvement?
There are definitely a number of things that could be improved.
One of them is geographic coverage. China is still an issue because the solution does not operate there properly due to government regulations. I believe Palo Alto is trying pretty hard to get into partnerships with Alibaba and other cloud providers, but they do not have the same compelling offering in China that they have in the rest of the world. Businesses that are operating within China have to be very sure to evaluate the solution before making a buying decision. It is not an issue with Palo Alto, rather it is predominantly the result of government rules, but it's something that Palo Alto needs to work on.
There is also room for improvement when it comes to latency in a couple of regions, including India and South America. They might have to increase their presence in those locations and come up with more modern cloud architectures.
The third area is that, while Palo Alto has understood the essence of building capabilities around cloud technology and have come up with a CASB offering, that is a very new product. There are other companies that have better offerings for understanding cloud applications and have more graceful controls. That's something that Palo Alto needs to work on.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using Prisma Access by Palo Alto for two to three years. We started deploying Palo Alto gear back in 2015 and, along the way we have looked into multiple tools from them and invested them.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
On a scale of one to 10, I would give the stability a seven. There are a couple of reasons for that score. One is that when we make certain changes to configs, it takes about 14 to 15 minutes to populate. And there have been scenarios where it has taken about 45 minutes for the config changes to happen. When you sell a product by saying that it's cloud-native and that users can make all configuration changes on-the-fly, when those changes are made they should happen within a minute. They should not take that much time.
It might be that Palo Alto is still using a certain type of infrastructure in the backend that is causing these delays. If they pile on the cloud technologies, and work towards a more microservices-based architecture, I'm hopeful that they can bring this delay down to less than a minute.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Going from one user to 10,000 or 15,000 users, we haven't faced a lot of problems. However, for companies that are considering investing in this solution, if they have more than 50,000 end-users, a config change could take 10 to 15 minutes. In an environment where 50,000 people are expecting certain things to work, those things might not work for them. Such companies have to look at the solution very thoroughly in terms of the cloud piece, the integration piece. But from one to 15,000 or 20,000 end-users, it is flawless. We don't tend to see a lot of issues. But beyond, say, 25,000, I would suggest doing a deeper analysis before purchasing the product, because there are some glitches.
How are customer service and support?
Initially, Palo Alto technical support was okay around sales discussions and getting up to speed on doing a PoC. But one once we deployed and then raised queries, those lead times increased quite a bit. Unless you take their premium support, where there is an SLA associated with every issue that you raise, it becomes very difficult to get hold of engineers to work on a Prisma Access case. If you just take some sort of partner support, you cannot expect the same level of support on your day-to-day issues that you would get with premium support.
Fundamentally, when a company sells a product, whether you are taking the premium support or some other level of support, the support metrics should be more or less the same, because you are trying to address problems that people are facing. Their response should be more prompt. And if they can't join a call, they should at least be prompt in replying via email or chat or some other medium, so that the customer feels more comfortable about the product and the support. If it takes time to resolve certain problems, post business hours, it can be very difficult for people to justify why they have deployed this product.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
COVID was a surprise for us, just like for everyone else in the world. We had a solution from Palo Alto, but it was not a scalable one. We configured things in a more manual way because our requirements were not that high in terms of remote use cases. Post-COVID, the situation has completely changed for us and we have to think about a hybrid situation where we can still gracefully allow access to end-users in a more secure fashion. That led us to evaluate this solution from Palo Alto.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is not so straightforward. There is a learning curve involved because you need to understand which component fits where, with all of these modern, edge infrastructure secure-access services. You need to do capacity planning well, as well as a budgetary plan. You need to know the right elements for your business. Once you set that up, it is very simple to manage.
It took us about two to three months to deploy because we have a lot of geographical constraints. Different regions have different requirements. Accounting for all of those needs is why it took us that amount of time to set everything up.
What was our ROI?
We have to do an apples-to-apples comparison. If you had a very small set of people who had to create a dedicated setup like Prisma Access, and manage the infrastructure piece and the upgrading piece and the security piece, it would be a nightmare. Prisma Access offers that ease and flexibility so that even a handful of people, with the right knowledge, are still able to manage the configuration piece of it, because the infrastructure and other things are handled by Prisma Access. If you had to build that whole thing versus buying it, obviously Prisma offers a good ROI.
It all depends on your requirements. If your requirements enable you to do those things on a much smaller scale, then you need to be very cautious about which components of Prisma you actually pick for your use case. If you get all the components, you might not be getting the right ROI.
For our use case, we feel we are getting a return on investment, but it could be better.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The most pricey solution is Zscaler, followed by Prisma Access, and then Netskope.
The initial prices of Prisma Access were okay. But as soon as you start deploying Palo Alto gear, the support prices and the recurring prices, which are the major operational costs, tend to increase over time. For example, if you go ahead with a one-year subscription, just for testing purposes to see how the whole solution works, and you plan to renew for the next two or three years, you tend to see that the solution gets really costly.
We understand that when you purchase a hardware component, the cost goes up because you have a physical asset that depreciates over time. But when you are getting a subscription-based service, the cost should tend to be reduced over time. With Prisma Access, the cost is increasing and that is something beyond any kind of logic. This is something that Palo Alto needs to work on if they want to be competitive in the market.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated other options like Zscaler and Netskope. Prisma Access has more coverage for ports and protocols. It doesn't only inspect web protocols but all ports and protocols, and that's an advantage. Other solutions are still relying on web protocols.
The positive side of these other solutions, because they came along a little later, is that they have understood the demerits of a solution like Prisma Access. They are using more cloud-native components and microservices architectures. That makes these solutions faster. As I said, some config changes in Prisma Access take 14 to 15 minutes, but these other solutions literally take a minute to make the same config changes happen.
It's a constant race.
What other advice do I have?
Put your business requirements up against the solution to see how it pans out. Look at the stability of the product, and at how much time it takes to make configurations and apply them in practice. And if you have a distributed workforce, like us, try to run this solution in southern countries where there is a latency issue or known issues with ISPs. You may not get the same set results that you tend to get in northern countries around the world.
We don't have a subscription to Prisma Access' Autonomous Digital Experience Management features, but we have done some testing of it. It's pretty good because it can help ease the work of an office helpdesk person who constantly gets tickets but has no visibility for monitoring things. With everybody conducting their work from home, it gets very difficult to know the setup of the internal environment and how people are accessing things and where the bottlenecks are. The ADEM tools are going to help immensely in that regard, because without having knowledge of the underlying infrastructure at every individual's home location, you can still identify whether a problem is specific to their home office or to the application the user is accessing or to the network that is causing the problem. That information is absolutely at your fingertips. Analyzing those types of things becomes really easy.
ADEM will also help with the efficacy of troubleshooting and providing support to end-users. If there are certain applications that are critical to an organization, you could easily define a metric to see, out of all the people who are accessing those applications every day, how many of them are facing a problem. And if they're facing a problem, what the parameters of the problem are. Avoiding the problem could turn out to be something that people need to be educated about, or maybe there is something we can proactively tell users so that they can take precautionary measures to get a better experience. It is certainly going to help in enhancing the end-user experience.
Palo Alto's building blocks clearly illustrate an app-based model. It analyzes things based on an application so that we know what the controls are within an application. For example, if you want to block Facebook's chat but continue to allow basic Facebook to be browsed, that kind of understanding of the application would allow you to do so. That is way more graceful than completely blocking the end-user. It's not something that is specific to Palo Alto Prisma Access but it is a core component of Palo Alto.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Chief Information Security Officer at Prosol LLC
Integrates easily with cybersecurity solutions and has been very effective in securing our environment
Pros and Cons
- "Its frontend is user-friendly. It is easy to use for us."
- "Its integration with non-Palo Alto products can be improved. Currently, it is easy to integrate it with other Palo Alto products such as Cortex XDR. It integrates well with other Palo Alto products. A major part of our network is based on Palo Alto products, but for those companies that use multi-vendor products in their infrastructure, Palo Alto should optimize the integration of Prisma Access with the network devices from other vendors."
What is our primary use case?
We use this solution for container security. We use it in an environment with 200 developers.
We use its latest version and the version prior to the latest one.
How has it helped my organization?
It helps with container security. Month by month, developer accounts in the company are increasing. Prisma Access supported and helped us very effectively in securing their workstations and working environment.
Prisma Access is good for securing access and privileges. Our developers have a security background, and they have knowledge of cybersecurity. It gives us assurance that they would not be able to do anything as an insider cyber attacker. They would not be able to use their environment to jump to other servers because such functions are prevented by this solution.
Prisma Access can protect all app traffic, but we classify the apps inside the company and choose the critical and the medium-risk level apps. This protection is important security-wise. On the IT side, it is important. It is also important on the business side, but they are only concerned about the price. We tried to connect with Palo Alto to get a discount on the first and second years to make the company get the maximum benefit and see the benefit of this solution. After that, they can remove the discounts, and it will be the decision of the company whether to continue with this solution or not.
Prisma Access secures not just web-based apps but non-web apps as well. However, about 70% of our applications are web-based applications. If they do not get the discounts, we will only use them for critical web-based applications. Based on my experience, Prisma Access is good not only for web-based but also for non-web applications. It is effective.
Prisma Access provides traffic analysis. We are also using Cortex XDR. It is Palo Alto's XDR solution that also supports us for traffic analysis. By using both of them in one environment, we have an end-to-end, more holistic, and zero-trust approach.
Prisma Access provides millions of security updates per day. We are also from the cybersecurity side, so we understand that it is a new product. It has only been around for two or three years. In every new product, such updates are welcomed, but we hope that in the next few years, there will be fewer such updates and more targeted updates.
Prisma Access enables us to deliver better applications on the security side but not the business and IT side. We are now more confident that our applications are secure.
What is most valuable?
Its front end is user-friendly. It is easy to use for us. We are familiar with other Palo Alto products. Its interface is similar to other products of Palo Alto, so it is familiar and easy to use for us.
My experience with Prisma Access has been perfect. It is good considering the fact that our networks are mainly based on Palo Alto products. We are using Palo Alto's next-generation firewalls and Cortex XDR, so it is good to have Prisma Access in the infrastructure to get a fast network environment.
What needs improvement?
Its integration with non-Palo Alto products can be improved. Currently, it is easy to integrate it with other Palo Alto products such as Cortex XDR. It integrates well with other Palo Alto products. A major part of our network is based on Palo Alto products, but for those companies that use multi-vendor products in their infrastructure, Palo Alto should optimize the integration of Prisma Access with the network devices from other vendors.
They should also increase their support team. There is scope to optimize their support.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using this solution for about eight months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability depends on the company that has developed a solution. As a vendor, we see Palo Alto as a stable company. Their stock value has increased year by year. Based on our communication with the headquarters of Palo Alto, we see that they are investing more and more in their cybersecurity solutions in terms of financials, features, and talent. Therefore, it is one of the stable solutions.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is scalable for now. It has only been eight months since we have applied this solution in our environment.
On the client side, there are about 200 users. Overall, there are 500 users on the client side and our side. Most of them are developers and network security and IT security people. In our SOC center, they are monitoring this solution too.
It is being used on a daily basis. We have integrated this solution with the SIEM solution, and when an incident or a request comes, we focus on this. On a daily basis, we have some alerts and incidents coming.
How are customer service and support?
Their technical support is good, but in some cases, when we asked them some questions, they took several days or hours to discuss that internally and come up with the answers from their side. However, it is acceptable because we know that it is a new product.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did not have any solution for providing a secure environment on the developer's side. It is our first year, and it has been surprising and effective for us.
How was the initial setup?
The deployment of the key features of the product took about three months, but that was because of the delays from our side and the client's side.
It was a standard deployment. We took sample applications and tested it on them as a PoC. We became familiar with the security function of the product, and we realized its benefits. We then applied it part by part to other web applications and non-web applications.
It is deployed on the cloud. We use Google and other clouds.
What about the implementation team?
For the initial setup, we got support from the Palo Alto support team, so it was good. We are satisfied with them.
In our cyber team, we have around 40 experts. As a project team, they also engage. We use their support too.
For its deployment and maintenance, we have about 12 people who are actively engaged, but overall, there are 30 people engaged with this project.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
In terms of pricing, considering that it is a two or three years old solution, they should apply big discounts for the next two or three years. This approach will be better for them to capture the market.
There are no additional costs. After purchasing and acquiring this solution, we also got support.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated Cato Networks, Check Point, and Prisma Access. We went for Prisma Access because of its features and its integration with other cybersecurity solutions. Its integration is easy, and it takes less time to integrate it with other cybersecurity solutions.
There are also open-source applications. They are also good, but they need more tuning and more time to get to the level of solutions like Prisma Access. A benefit of these open-source solutions is that you can tune them according to your environment. They are also free, so there is a cost-benefit.
What other advice do I have?
It is one of the top solutions in the market. I hope that they will continue to tune and optimize their product based on the feedback that they get from the users. This way, it will keep its place among the top ten solutions in the global market.
Overall, I would rate Prisma Access an eight out of ten. It is good, but they should improve their support and its integration with non-Palo Alto solutions.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
System Administrator at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
Provides secure access and comes with flexible licensing and a single console
Pros and Cons
- "There is a system for monitoring the traffic. You can monitor the traffic of the connected people and point out any issues on the connection part."
- "The user interface could be better. They need to work a little bit on the console. It is similar to their firewalls but not exactly. They need to clean it up a bit."
What is our primary use case?
We need global connectivity because we are a software company, and we have a lot of contractors around the globe. We are using Prisma Access for them to be able to connect from anywhere and have access to our data center, which is on-premises. It is not in the cloud.
We are using its latest version. It is always up to date.
How has it helped my organization?
It provides zero trust security and access to our resources. It brings security and provides access. The security provided by Prisma Access is very good. I would rate it a nine out of ten in terms of security.
Prisma Access provides all its capabilities in a single, cloud-delivered platform, which is very good. Before choosing Prisma Access, we did extensive research. A single console was very important for us. If we had gone for Cisco, we would have had to combine three different products of Cisco, and we would have had three different consoles to manage, which is not what we wanted.
Prisma Access provides traffic analysis, which is very important for us because we want to know what is happening with the traffic, who is connected, how they are connected, and what is happening with the endpoint during this connection. We are working with the current information, and it is very important. For threat prevention, we are going to implement Palo Alto WildFire.
Prisma Access provides millions of security updates per day. It is very important because if we have zero-day or any other type of breach, it would not be good. There should be regular updates.
Prisma Access' ADEM was another feature that made us go for Prisma Access as compared to the other vendors. It provides real and synthetic traffic analysis, but it also depends on how you tune up ADEM. You need to make rules in order to maintain certain services. If you are doing it right, it will be able to show you where the weak point to the connection is. ADEM does not affect the digital experience for end-users. They do not even know that it is there.
Prisma Access does not enable us to deliver better applications, but it has had an impact. It is stopping some applications that our people are using.
What is most valuable?
It is easy. There are service connections that they are using for connecting from the cloud to your data center. It is simple.
There is a system for monitoring the traffic. You can monitor the traffic of the connected people and point out any issues on the connection part.
What needs improvement?
The user interface could be better. They need to work a little bit on the console. It is similar to their firewalls but not exactly. They need to clean it up a bit.
Prisma Access' ADEM is good when it comes to segment-wise insights across the entire service delivery path. The only minus is that it is not supporting Linux. It is only for Windows and macOS.
We are not able to manage firewalls from the cloud. They have promised to make this feature available in the future where we will be able to manage firewalls from the cloud. Currently, we can only use Panorama to manage firewalls.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for two months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is very stable. I would rate it a ten out of ten in terms of stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is very scalable. We have 200 users. I would rate it a ten out of ten in terms of scalability.
We use it very often. It has been okay so far.
How are customer service and support?
We take the help of the integrator who is helping us. We still have questions regarding the product. They have provided a service engineer, and we work with him. We are able to call him directly for any help.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did not use any other solution previously.
How was the initial setup?
It is straightforward because all the work is done by Palo Alto. They provide help for the initial setup to go without any issues or with minimum problems. They power up the machines, and they give us console access from there.
After Prisma Access was set up, it took us about a week to tune everything and connect our data centers to Prisma Access, etc.
We had two engineers for its setup. It does require maintenance. I am the only person handling the maintenance. It is not difficult to maintain.
What about the implementation team?
We use an integrator.
What was our ROI?
It is too early for that. We need a little bit more time to see the ROI.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is not cheap. It is expensive. The good thing is that you are able to pay for what you need, but overall, it is not cheap. The pricing is not based on packages. You pay based on the features. If you want DLP, you only pay for DLP. They are very flexible. It is not cheap, but the licensing is flexible. There are no additional costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.
I would advise starting with the lowest package or minimum services, and then you can upgrade based on your needs. The full package is not cheap, and you might not need all the features.
Their cloud access router could be a little bit cheaper.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated Cato Networks, Cisco Umbrella, and Zscaler. We also had presentations from Perimeter 81 and CloudFlare.
We went for Prisma Access because it is able to integrate with their firewalls. They have very good connectivity. Palo Alto is a leader in the next-generation firewall, which means their security is good.
What other advice do I have?
Prisma Access has a lot of features, but we have been using it for only two months. We have not fully used it yet. We have not used the whole functionality.
The good thing is that they are providing a proof of concept. You can do a proof of concept and see if it is suitable for you. If you are already using Palo Alto firewalls, it will be better for you. It will be much easier for you to use Prisma Access.
If you are familiar with Palo Alto in general, it is easy to use because it is very similar to their operating system of firewalls. If you have previous experience with Palo Alto, it is much easier. Otherwise, it will take a little bit of time, but it is easy. The only thing that can be a bit complicated is the service connection. In Prisma Access, you have two types of connections: service connection and network connection. They do almost the same thing. They can create confusion if you are not familiar with them.
Prisma Access can secure not just web-based apps but non-web apps as well, but we are not using this feature currently.
Overall, I would rate Prisma Access an eight out of ten. That is because we cannot manage firewalls from the cloud.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Sr systems eng at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The UI is buggy and not intuitive, but it provides decent security
Pros and Cons
- "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."
- "It applies commits to the firewalls slowly. There isn't an API you can use for anything. We've previously had trouble with the egress IP addresses though we expressed to engineering that those mustn't change. They changed several times without warning, causing a lot of headaches."
What is our primary use case?
We use Prisma Access to build an allowlist that we put into Socks App, so we can gate access to what we want based on whether someone is allowed onto the VPN. Prisma is a SaaS product. We have the cloud-managed version that we use to access a mixture of on-prem, public cloud, and SaaS tools.
We aren't using it extensively. There are only around six rules. I've had five hundred or a thousand rules in previous companies that used Palo Alto Networks. We have six, so we're not using the solution extensively. We're looking at various products for DNS filtering and security, so we will potentially get rid of Prisma Access in the future. It's a heavy-handed way of doing what we're trying to do.
How has it helped my organization?
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.
Prisma Access protects all app traffic so users can access all our apps, which is crucial because we want this to be as transparent as possible. The ability to secure web-based and other apps is also critical. We use this as a gateway into production or specific systems. That might be over 443, HTTPS, DB, or any other protocol.
What is most valuable?
Prisma Access offers features in one cloud-delivered platform, which is pretty important. Anything we can do to reduce the complexity of this is good. It will get messed up at some point if there are too many moving parts.
The traffic analysis, threat prevention, and URL filtering features are pretty critical. Prisma Access is our frontline defense for our production environments. On top of that, it protects the engineering staff's endpoints, so it needs to provide essential URL scanning and WildFire AV detection.
What needs improvement?
I've had a ton of issues with Prisma Access. The UI is horrible and not intuitive. For example, error handling when applying configuration changes is atrocious. The UI itself is buggy and lags. The sales staff tried to be helpful, but they sold us the wrong license SKU, which broke our environment, and it took two months for them to fix it. Two months is an eternity for something as critical as this.
It applies commits to the firewalls slowly. There isn't an API you can use for anything. We've previously had trouble with the egress IP addresses though we expressed to engineering that those mustn't change. They changed several times without warning, causing a lot of headaches.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used Prisma Access for a year and a half.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Prisma hasn't broken yet. There have been a lot of outages, but luckily only a handful have affected us.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Prisma is somewhat scalable. We want to use this as an allowlist for our external applications. However, other external tools don't allow you to add an arbitrary number of IPs. If we were going to put in the complete list of active and reserved IPs that we get from our seven points of presence, then that's roughly 41 IPs. That goes over the max of 40 that GKE and GCT use. We can't use it to gate Kubernetes pods because there are too many IPs.
We can't seem to remove them once they're added. I've opened several support cases, and we still have half. Half of this list is all reserved and unusable points of presence because they aren't assigned to anything. It is a bit cumbersome and not as agile or straightforward as I was led to believe.
How are customer service and support?
I rate Palo Alto's support a four out of ten. When I put in a ticket for a problem, they will send me a link to documentation that is either for the wrong product or something that doesn't apply to me. I usually get on a Zoom call with an engineer, show them the problem, and wait a week or two before I get a solution.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
Setting up Prisma Access was relatively straightforward for our use case. We deployed some firewalls in our system and used the IP addresses we got from those to inform and allow this. So it was very straightforward to get it to work, but tweaking it over time has been cumbersome.
I was the only person from our company working on the deployment. I designed and implemented the architecture, then deployed the tool to the endpoints internally. I'm responsible for educating the users and troubleshooting problems they find. I do things like telling a guy, "No, there isn't a problem with the VPN. You shouldn't use the web version of Spotify because only crazy people do that."
What about the implementation team?
We used CDW and Palo Alto professional services. It was fine. It wasn't the best engagement, but it wasn't the worst.
What was our ROI?
It's hard to say if we've seen an ROI. I imagine we have. We haven't been breached, so that's something.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
There's no reason not to buy the enterprise version that gives you unlimited PoPs, but you must understand the limitations you impose on yourself if you do that. If you go crazy, that allowlist will be too big for Kubernetes clusters.
The API that pulls the egress IPs allocated to you should be updated by the minute or as often as possible. There's no forewarning of impending changes. That should be built into your CI/CD system so no one needs to update anything manually. It should just flow through. However, you need notifications because it's a slippery slope. If you're adding and changing IPs all the time, who knows what's what anymore.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I did demos of around 16 different products that do something similar, including Zscaler, Netskope, Fortinet, Twingate, and Tailscale. Palo Alto was the only solution that could give us dedicated egress IPs.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Prisma Access a four out of ten. There are many tools out there that can do the same actions. This is not the best tool to use if you're only looking for an allowlist for production.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
Network Security Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
We can apply policies for URLs wherever our employees are working
Pros and Cons
- "The always-on feature is fantastic for the users. They don't have to think about it. When they go to a coffee shop to do work, there's no need to remember to toggle the VPN on. We'll protect them. URL filtering is the same at home as it is in the office."
- "They told us that this was the best thing we'd ever used."
- "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."
What is our primary use case?
We have about 2,000 users, and everybody started working from home when COVID hit, so they needed to use Prisma Access to do their work securely. They told us that this was the best thing we'd ever used. Employees said Prisma was a lot better than Juniper and the previous mode access solution we had.
We implemented it so that it's always on. A user doesn't need to do anything. It connects. Whether you're home or at the office, it cranks up, and you don't have to do anything.
How has it helped my organization?
The always-on feature is fantastic for the users. They don't have to think about it. When they go to a coffee shop to do work, there's no need to remember to toggle the VPN on. We'll protect them. URL filtering is the same at home as it is in the office. We can apply policies for URLs wherever our employees work. We see all their traffic and log everything they do as if they were in the office.
When COVID hit, we suddenly had 2,000 users that all needed to use a VPN solution. We had to abandon our previous VPN solution because Pulse couldn't accommodate such a large volume of users at one time. We stood up this cloud environment and switched everybody over to the Palo Alto Prisma Access, GlobalConnect, and GlobalProtect.
The user experience was so much better. Our executives were impressed. We got many compliments. Our senior team tends to worry about security, but they didn't need to fret over our VPN.
What is most valuable?
It's a full firewall, so I can apply firewall policies just as well for web-based apps as I can for offline apps. I definitely think that reduces the risk because I can write any policy I want.
Palo Alto has several other advanced threat protection features. In addition to the normal application and threat protection, it has DNS security, IPS, IDS, etc. I run their traffic through all of the impressions. It's not just URL filtering and decryption. Prisma Access offers a full firewall feature, and I take advantage of it.
Prisma Access is a Palo Alto firewall in the Cloud that works just like an on-prem firewall. I can manage it from the same platform I use to manage all my other firewalls. I write a policy in one place, and it goes into effect everywhere. It's extremely simple.
The security updates are definitely in there as well. I set it up to dynamically download and store the updates as soon as they're available. When Palo comes out with an extremely hot threat, I'm automatically blocking and protecting against it—not just on our internal corporate network, but for all remote VPN users.
That is an extremely important feature to have. You pay for those subscriptions, so why would you not take advantage of the people writing protections for you? Why aren't you installing them automatically?
I actually worked for a company that did not automatically install things. They thought we might break something. All the places where I had worked in the past automatically installed updates, and we never broke anything. It just worked. Palo Alto is really good about doing it right and protecting the customer.
What needs improvement?
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.
Prisma Access still cannot use that feature, and it's been out for a year. Until they upgrade the Prisma Access backbone to 10.1, that integration will not be there. It's a powerful feature, and it's much more than collecting user IDs. Hopefully, they will add it this month.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Palo Alto firewalls for about 10 years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
In the past two years, we've had no issues with the reliability of their cloud environment.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It scales up to thousands of users with no problem. We plan to go from 2,000 to 20,000 users. I don't need to do anything to scale up except buy more licenses.
How are customer service and support?
I rate Palo Alto support a nine out of ten. The presales and support teams are fantastic. They have a technologically proficient person to help you through issues. They can bring someone else in if they don't. We changed support groups. Initially, we were a mid-tier group, but they switched us to the large enterprise team.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used a Pulse VPN solution, and I also worked with Cisco AnyConnect in the past. In fact, that's probably what we're going to kick out the door in favor of GlobalProtect.
Pulse VPN used on-prem boxes. Our devices had reached the end of their usable lives, and I couldn't support them. It was going to cost a lot to buy new boxes. For that same amount of money, I could move everything to a virtual cloud environment. I don't need to maintain the hardware anymore. Instead of one box here in the United States, one in Europe, and one in China, I have 100 boxes worldwide.
How was the initial setup?
Setting up Prisma Access is somewhat complex. You must configure many little pieces ahead of time to build the entire portal and LAN. It's slightly painful to ensure everything is working correctly. Do you wrap the comprehensive policy around everything you're trying to do? Configuration is not straightforward.
The solution doesn't need care and feeding once it's set up. It is just like another firewall. Adding rules isn't any different from setting restrictions on a local on-prem firewall.
What about the implementation team?
I set up Prisma Access by myself with the help of Palo Alto's tech support and presales staff.
What was our ROI?
Prisma Access is worth what we pay for it, but it's hard to quantify. All of our senior staff would say it's worth the cost because it gives us peace of mind. They don't need to worry about security while they're on the road. We can protect all our remote users as well as our in-office users.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Palo Alto is the Cadillac solution, so their products are pretty expensive. That's just the way it is. Their solution surpasses anything else. Cisco AnyConnect, Zscaler, and all of the other products don't compare. Palo Alto is the market leader with the most features. It saves you work, and you don't have to worry about it.
The only license is GlobalProtect. That's the only part that you need to buy. The other features are all included.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I was already set on Palo Alto. We were doing a PoC with Palo Alto when COVID hit, and the codes did it for me. We had to get something stood up. Our hands were tied with Pulse because we couldn't support 2,000 users rushing in the door. The box would just tip over to that.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Prisma Access a nine out of ten. There are definitely things they need to fix. Most people are familiar with VPN technologies. You ensure that it's connected and running the antivirus, etc. All those vendors do pretty much the same thing in that regard.
You can force Cisco into always-on mode as well. It's just different. Palo Alto is integrated into one Palo Alto management platform. There's no need to switch between various consoles to manage remote access. Everything logs to the same place as well. It's a single pane of glass for my corporate and my remote user logs.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Principle Cloud Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Provides actionable insights, secures all applications, and has global coverage
Pros and Cons
- "It is geographically dispersed, and it sits on top of Google and AWS platforms. Therefore, you don't face the standard issues, such as latency or bandwidth issues, that you usually face in the case of on-prem data centers."
- "Prisma Access does everything beautifully."
- "It is a managed firewall. When you run into issues and have to troubleshoot, there is a fair amount of restriction. You run into a couple of restrictions where you don't have any visibility on what is happening on the Palo Alto managed infrastructure, and you need to get on a call to get technical assistance from Palo Alto's technical support. You have to get them to work with you to fix the problem. I would definitely like them to work on the visibility into what happens inside Palo Alto's infrastructure. It is not about getting our hands onto their infrastructure to do troubleshooting or fixing problems; it is just about getting more visibility. This will help us in guiding technical support folks to the area where they need to work."
- "It is a managed firewall. When you run into issues and have to troubleshoot, there is a fair amount of restriction."
What is our primary use case?
I recently worked on a huge project for a new entity of a major semiconductor company. We had a greenfield deployment where we were building everything from scratch. The primary use case was to build a solution that meets the following requirements:
- Provides Zero Trust Network Access for all remote users.
- Provides seamless performance.
- Avoids all bottlenecks that the traditional VPN concentrators have with regards to being a single point of failure by putting the entire global traffic to a particular VPN concentrator.
On the secondary front, we did a couple of integrations with Cisco Viptela. It is an SD-WAN solution for ensuring traffic optimization, traffic steering, branch-to-branch connectivity, and branch cloud connectivity. We had to ensure adequate performance and zero trust and have metrics and security compliance with all standard regulatory frameworks such as GDPR for the European region. This was a huge deployment with a budget of close to 2 million dollars.
The plugin version is 2.1.086 innovation, and the platform version is 2.1.
How has it helped my organization?
It protects all app traffic so that users can gain access to all apps. There are definitely a lot of integrations. Prisma Access also derives the App-ID capability from the Palo Alto Next-Gen firewalls, which is a USP of Palo Alto. So, it inherently has the capability to see and monitor all the traffic and understand all applications. If an application is being tunneled through different ports or protocols just to masquerade the traffic to bypass the traditional security controls, it won't work. Technically, you cannot bypass any of the security controls that Palo Alto has.
The Single Pass Parallel Processing (SP3) still works with Prisma Access. So, you can have all the integration that you want. It also integrates very well with Prisma SaaS, which is a new solution from Palo Alto.
It can build IPS tunnels with all vendors that you have. It could be a very small router or a firewall from any vendor. With regards to protocols, traditional IPS used to have a couple of restrictions in terms of inspection and other things, but Prisma Access understands every application and every packet. It can see the higher progress of a session. It is a great product to work with.
It secures both web-based and non-web-based apps. Traditionally, I used to have problems with web-based and non-web-based traffic. Prisma Access is a full tunnel, and it is fairly agnostic to the type of traffic. It recognizes everything such as a torrent, FTP, or UDP session. It recognizes web applications, non-web applications, or custom applications. We have a couple of applications that are Java-based, custom developed, and custom managed. It is capable of recognizing every application.
It understands all applications and all standard and custom signatures that you can configure. With regards to the data leaks, it has a network DLP functionality. So, you can potentially configure regex or something else to inspect the traffic and look for patterns, such as credit card numbers and social security numbers. You can define the patterns and put a monitor for notification.
It provides all capabilities in a single, cloud-delivered platform.
It provides traffic analysis, threat prevention, URL filtering, and segmentation. Its usage for segmentation is less because we are also using their firewalls. On the transport side, we are using SD-WAN. We cannot do away with any of these features simply because we expect this platform to provide Next-Gen filtering capabilities. URL filtering is definitely important because we don't want to buy another dedicated solution. Threat prevention is like antivirus and anti-spyware, and all IPS functionalities are absolutely mandatory for us. Technically, it does everything that a typical Next-Gen firewall is supposed to do, but it does that in the cloud. So, you get all the scalability and visibility. We absolutely want all these features, and that perhaps was one of the reasons why we went for Prisma Access instead of another product.
It provides millions of security updates per day, which is important to us. There is something called AutoFocus, which is their threat intel platform. We also get a lot of updates from Unit 42, which is their threat intel feed. We have incorporated that with our platform. It is absolutely essential for us to at least know all known threats so that we can take steps to fix them well in advance. There were recent attacks with regards to SolarWinds and other solutions, and we were able to get timely feeds and notifications from Palo Alto automatically through the signature updates. We also got proactive updates from the Palo Alto technical support. This is absolutely necessary for us, and it keeps all known threats at bay.
Our implementation is still in progress, and we use its Autonomous Digital Experience Management (ADEM) features for performance-based monitoring, checking the latency, and checking the end-user experience not only based upon a couple of traditional metrics but also based on the actual ones. We don't have a standard benchmark to compare it with, but we definitely have complete visibility of who is doing what and who is getting what type of end-user experience. If someone is working from Seattle and needs to connect to Oregon, we definitely don't want to have the traffic all the way to some data center and then take a zig-zag route. We want it to follow an optimal path. It does provide us actionable insights into what's happening, and we can take corrective measures in the long run.
ADEM provides real and synthetic traffic analysis. We do have a security operations team that tests and ingests into SIEM/SOAR platforms that do automatic remediation. This is quite crucial because if there is suboptimal routing, it totally destroys the end-user experience. We check for the concentration of the users. Especially at this time when most of the users are working from home or remotely, we need to have such insights so that we can enable all points of presence within Prisma Access to ensure a better end-user experience.
What is most valuable?
The model itself is great. It is a managed firewall. If you look at it purely from a technical standpoint, it is a globally distributed and managed firewall platform that sits on top of Google Cloud and AWS. It has a global presence, and that is one of the most important things because this particular client for whom I was building this design has a presence across the globe, including China, where there are few constraints. Its presence and performance are super awesome.
It is a natural transition from Palo Alto Next-Gen firewalls. Of course, people who would be managing this platform need some knowledge transfer and training, but it is not a huge leap. That's the beauty of it.
It is geographically dispersed, and it sits on top of Google and AWS platforms. Therefore, you don't face the standard issues, such as latency or bandwidth issues, that you usually face in the case of on-prem data centers.
It is fairly simple in terms of administration. It is derived from Palo Alto Next-Gen firewalls that have been in the market for more than a decade. It has evolved from Palo Alto Next-Gen firewalls, and there is only the difference of naming convention. The web interface and the way of managing things are fairly easy.
It does whatever they're promising about this particular product. It has all the features that they say. We are leveraging quite a few features, and there are not many features that we are not using. All the features work the way they say.
Whatever we've configured is working as promised in terms of security, and I'm fairly certain about the security that it provides. From the security aspect, I would rate it a 10 out of 10.
What needs improvement?
It is a managed firewall. When you run into issues and have to troubleshoot, there is a fair amount of restriction. You run into a couple of restrictions where you don't have any visibility on what is happening on the Palo Alto managed infrastructure, and you need to get on a call to get technical assistance from Palo Alto's technical support. You have to get them to work with you to fix the problem. I would definitely like them to work on the visibility into what happens inside Palo Alto's infrastructure. It is not about getting our hands onto their infrastructure to do troubleshooting or fixing problems; it is just about getting more visibility. This will help us in guiding technical support folks to the area where they need to work.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using this solution for about one and a half to two years. I've been extensively designing, implementing, troubleshooting, and working with Palo Alto for feature edits and update suggestions.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution itself is fairly stable. We never faced any outages because of the underlying platform. So, its stability has been good, but I would like more visibility into what is going on inside Palo Alto's infrastructure.
They have also been fine in terms of the maintenance that they have been doing outside the maintenance window.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is scalable. It sits on top of Google Cloud and Amazon AWS, so it is geographically distributed. The only place where we have connection issues is in China, but this is not because of Prisma Access. It is more related to the data privacy and regulatory restrictions that China has.
When we started, which was two months ago, we had about 5,500 users. We probably have more than 1,000 concurrent users. We have 15 or 16 sites. We're going up at quite a good pace, and we would have somewhere close to 30 sites.
How are customer service and support?
We have a premium/enterprise license. We never had any problems with getting support, especially on weekdays. Having a premium/enterprise license definitely adds a few points. I would rate them somewhere between a seven and an eight. That's because there is a lack of visibility into what happens inside the infrastructure, and because we can't pinpoint a specific area to them, they need some time to look at where things are wrong.
With regards to backend maintenance, they have their own schedule of maintenance for their infrastructure. They keep us updated about that well in advance. The preventative maintenance and the communication from them have been fairly smooth, and we never had any issues.
How was the initial setup?
It was fairly straightforward. We started with a couple of proof of concepts, and we've been adding things. We are gradually getting new locations, new sites, and new deployments, and we never faced any challenges in terms of the capabilities of the platform. It has been fairly smooth.
This was a huge implementation with a couple of dozen sites, and it involved designing, bill of materials, procurement, and implementation. The designing phase took about two months. The implementation took about a month.
The beauty of it is that we just have a team of five people managing the entire implementation. When it goes to the operation stage, we would definitely need more people because there are different pieces to it, but for the design implementation, we just have five people to manage everything.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented it ourselves.
What was our ROI?
This was a greenfield deployment, and we built it from scratch. So, there isn't much of a comparison between what used to happen in the past and what is happening now. However, because it is an OpEx-based or typical cloud-based model where you get charged for whatever you are using, it would potentially bring down the cost of consumption in terms of bandwidth. For example, if we have currently enabled all features, and tomorrow, we find a feature to be redundant and we don't want to use it for a particular location or data stream, we can do away with a couple of controls. We will only get charged for what we are using. It is security as a service and network as a service. As of now, I don't have the exact numbers for the savings that we are looking at, but down the line, it would definitely translate to huge savings in terms of OpEx and CapEx.
All such platforms require skilled professionals, and because it is derived from traditional Palo Alto firewalls, it is easy to learn. You don't need to spend a lot on training, and as of now, that's definitely a very important factor for us.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We created a bill of materials and passed it on to a third party. It probably was WWT, but it was sourced by the client itself.
Based on what I have heard from others, it is a pricey solution as compared to its peers, but I am not sure. However, considering the features that it offers, it is a break-even point. You get whatever they are promising.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We had used Zscaler for a proof of concept, but we wanted segmentation capabilities within the data center as well as for on-prem locations. We wanted to have local segmentation capabilities. We wanted a solution that scales inside the cloud but also on-prem. Zscaler didn't have that model in the past, so we went ahead with Prisma Access. That was the only PoC that we did in addition to Prisma Access.
With regards to other integrations, the integrations with Cisco SD-WAN still exist, but these are not a competitor of Prisma Access. These are just integrations.
What other advice do I have?
If it is a natural transition from a purely on-premises model to a hybrid model where you have a significant number of sites or you are moving towards Zero Trust Network Access for providing a decentralized VPN solution, you should definitely go for it. It provides the entire security stack, so you don't have to keep on adding different solutions and then try permutations to make them work together. Prisma Access does everything beautifully. You don't need a lot of training or develop a lot of skills to manage the solution because it has evolved from Palo Alto Next-Gen firewalls.
For DLP, we are not using Prisma Access because it is a network DLP. Being a semiconductor company, we needed a couple of controls to ensure that the entire flow of the communication is very well defined. Therefore, we are using different tools that auto-discover, and then we put controls. For example, we have endpoint DLP, network DLP, and email DLP. We don't want to rely on Prisma Access because it sits outside of our perimeter. We want to have as much close control over the source as we can.
It didn't enable us to deliver better applications because this implementation was done in a silo. This project was not done very sequentially. It has been quite sporadic. The way the solution was built, applications were not at the center. We built it with a top-down approach. It was our first cloud-deployment model, and we haven't faced any problems with any of the standard applications. All the custom apps that we are bringing from the original plan are working the way they're supposed to. So, we never faced any challenges with regards to the performance or the security after deploying these applications. The entire setup is fairly agnostic to the types of applications that we already have, and a couple of them are not standard applications like Office 365, Workday, etc. They are fairly custom apps that you use in your lab environment or manufacturing utilities, and it works with them.
I would rate it a nine out of 10. Except for the visibility part, it is great. I am taking a few other client projects that are for Fortune 100 companies, and I am doing a lot of refreshes for them. Prisma Access is definitely going to be at the top of my list. It is not because I know this product inside out; it is because of the experience that our clients are getting with it, the security it provides, and the proactive updates that Palo Alto is pushing for Prisma Access.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
Principal Cyber Security Technologist at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Enhanced security for remote and internal applications with integrated features
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature of Prisma Access is its ability to provide enterprise-class security for both Internet and internal application access."
- "The Prisma Access could improve in terms of adding more machine learning and AI capabilities to automate tasks such as incident response."
What is our primary use case?
Our primary use case of Prisma Access is to provide secure Internet access for users regardless of their location.
It is also used for secure access to internal applications and secure SaaS applications, ensuring the same level of security whether users are working from home, the office, or any other location.
How has it helped my organization?
Prisma Access has allowed us to reduce the number of agents from multiple to just one single agent. It integrates several components, such as IPS, DLP, remote VPN, and SWG, into a single console, which has helped reduce costs and improve the return on investment.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of Prisma Access is its ability to provide enterprise-class security for both Internet and internal application access. Unlike other OEMs that can only secure Internet access, Prisma Access can secure both internal and Internet-based application access.
What needs improvement?
The Prisma Access could improve in terms of adding more machine learning and AI capabilities to automate tasks such as incident response. This would enhance the overall security posture by enabling better and faster management of security threats.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Prisma Access for the last five-plus years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
In terms of scalability, Prisma Access has adapted well to our organization's growth needs. Most customers are either planning to move to SASE solutions or have already moved, making Prisma Access an excellent choice for scalability.
How are customer service and support?
I would rate their technical support a nine out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before using Prisma Access, we used multiple products for remote VPN, SWG from vendors like McAfee and Forcepoint Proxy, and other VPN clients from vendors like Pulse Secure VPN, Fortinet, and Palo Alto. We switched to Prisma Access for its integrated approach.
What was our ROI?
Prisma Access has significantly improved our ROI by combining multiple technologies into one single solution. It reduces the need for multiple agents and products, which brings down the overall cost for our customers.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The licensing cost of Prisma Access is calculated per unique user, with each user being able to connect up to eight devices. If a user is no longer active after thirty days, that license becomes free. There is flexibility in terms of exceeding the license count, as it operates on a trust-based license model.
What other advice do I have?
Prisma Access is best suited for enterprise and mid-level customers. It may not be the best fit for the SMB market due to higher pricing. I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
Cyber Security Analyst at Link3 Technologies
Offers good performance and reliability to users
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable features of the solution are in the areas of the secure remote access it provides while also being user-friendly."
- "From any improvement perspective, the product's compatibility issues with Linux need to be resolved."
What is our primary use case?
I use the solution in my company to work with the remote access VPN. With the tool, users connect their office network and data center networks with the infrastructure from outside places, like home and other sites, so our company can use the remote access of the tool.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of the solution are in the areas of the secure remote access it provides while also being user-friendly.
What needs improvement?
From any improvement perspective, the product's compatibility issues with Linux need to be resolved.
The response from the support team needs to be made faster.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks for three years. In my previous organization, I used the solution for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability of the product is good. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability features of the product are available in a package. GlobalProtect will serve even if you purchase a device with a capacity of two hundred users. You can't increase the capacity above two hundred users. Basically, with the device capabilities, you can include 200 users in GlobalProtect, so it all depends on your hardware model.
In my previous company, there were around 150 users of the tool with Linux. I feel that there were almost 200 users of the product.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support for the solution is good, but it is not like Cisco's support services. Sometimes, there is a delay in response from the support team's end, but during emergency cases, it is okay.
How was the initial setup?
The product's initial setup phase is neither straightforward nor complex, making it a process that lies in the middle. I will say that it is very easy to deploy.
The tool's configuration can be done in one day. In my previous organization, my colleague and I were the two people who deployed the product, tested it, and found the results, and then we delivered it to our clients.
As per my previous experience, after I gave the solution to the company's customer, I took care of one custom configuration for a particular purpose. I read the tool's documentation to see how to configure it and how to set up GlobalProtect on the client machines, after which I made a documentation explaining the way to deploy it and install GlobalProtect.
For deployment and maintenance purposes, one or two people are enough.
What was our ROI?
In terms of the ROI, the tool is secure for official data. If someone wants security, GlobalProtect SSL VPN is something that I would recommend. With the tool, it is not possible to count how much revenue it helped generate since it basically protects your data from home to your office network and communicates with lots of data. The tool is secure. From a security perspective, GlobalProtect is good.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
In comparison with GlobalProtect, there could be FortiClient. If some users cannot afford Palo Alto Networks, then they can choose FortiClient.
What other advice do I have?
My company didn't receive any support from Palo Alto to connect securely to our organization's branch offices. The tool is very easy to deploy. Another co-engineer and I in my company completed the deployment task for the solution. The deployment is not very difficult, especially if you have Palo Alto's Next-Generation Firewalls since with it, you can really get the VPN connection for Windows and other operating systems, but my company had faced some challenges with Linux, so we had to purchase another license only for it. For Windows and Mac devices, the tool is free. If I purchase Palo Alto's Next-Generation Firewalls, it is free for Windows and Mac, but a license is required to use Prisma Access on Linux.
I haven't used the cloud-based nature of Palo Alto Networks to simplify our company's network security management. I have only used the on-premises version in our company's infrastructure for GlobalProtect. I don't have any idea about the cloud Security in the product.
The performance and reliability of the product are good.
For the integration process, you first have to configure the firewall with the default management port IP, or alternatively, users can configure it through the console, which includes the CLI mode and GUI mode. Okay. After logging into the firewall from the CLI or GUI, you can configure GlobalProtect by taking into consideration the outside and inside zones, which we want to give access to via the tool. I am experienced with the tool's GUI mode. I configured it through the GUI mode. The first thing you have to learn about Palo Alto GUI mode is how to configure GlobalProtect.
In general, I rate the tool an eight and a half to nine out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
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Updated: October 2026
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Buyer's Guide
Download our free Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros
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Learn More: Questions:
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