Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pros and cons

Vendor: Palo Alto Networks

4.2 out of 5

108 reviews
98% willing to recommend

1,461 followers

Pros & Cons summary

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks offers dynamic workload identity creation and application dependency mapping for compliance in diverse environments. It provides cloud compliance monitoring and alerting for complex infrastructures, enhances security with API integrations, and includes valuable Cloud Security Posture Management. However, challenges with automation, integration, GCP support, and numerous false alerts hinder user experience. Improvements are needed in Linux hardening and cloud-native development security, especially at build time.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks provides dynamic workload identity creation and a comprehensive application dependency map for enhanced compliance and security management.

Users appreciate the powerful runtime mechanism, which offers excellent network mapping and container content data linking capabilities.

The integrated vulnerability scanning and real-time monitoring provide strong preventive security actions, ensuring visibility and managing configuration errors across various cloud environments.

The system's ability to customize policies and integrate seamlessly with other services, like Amazon Managed Services and Jira, offers flexibility and comprehensive security management.

Cloud Workload Protection and Cloud Security Posture Management are highlighted as valuable features, providing detailed insights and effective governance for multi-cloud environments.

CONS

More documentation with real-world use cases is needed.

The integration of the Compute function into cloud monitoring could use improvement.

There is limited support for GCP and other cloud providers beyond AWS and Azure.

More native integration with various cloud services and security checks is required.

Pricing and licensing clarity need improvement.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Pros review quotes

LL

Cloud Security Specialist at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Nov 3, 2020

You can also integrate with Amazon Managed Services. You can also get a snapshot in time, whether that's over a 24-hour period, seven days, or a month, to determine what the estate might look like at a certain point in time and generate reports from that for vulnerability management forums.

Read full review

reviewer1472745

Director, Cloud Engineering at Cerner Corporation

Dec 15, 2020

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

Read full review

Security Architect at a educational organization with 201-500 employees

Sep 3, 2021

The application visibility is amazing. For example, sometimes we don't know what a particular custom port is for and what is running on it. The visibility enables us to identify applications, what the protocol is, and what service is behind it. Within Azure, it is doing a great job of providing visibility. We know exactly what is passing through our network. If there is an issue of any sort we are able to quickly detect it and fix the problem.

Read full review

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Free Report: Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.

824,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.

DC

Sr. Security Operations Manager at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Oct 26, 2020

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

Read full review

Mindaugas Dailidonis

Security Solutions Architect - Cloud Security Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

Sep 3, 2024

The Cloud Workload Protection module is a very strong solution. I like the Cloud Workload Protection part. It is something I have not used for the banking client, but I had a chance to try it out for roughly a month on actual deployment of another customer. That part was really robust. Cloud Workload Protection would be the main feature that I enjoy the most.

Read full review

reviewer2268216

Senior Security Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Sep 7, 2023

The solution's dashboard looks very user-friendly.

Read full review

AJ

Information Security Manager at Cobalt.io

Feb 24, 2021

Prisma Cloud has enabled us to take a very strong preventive approach to cloud security. One of the hardest things with cloud is getting visibility into workloads. With Prisma Cloud, you can go in and get that visibility, then set up policies to alert on risky behavior, e.g., if there are security groups or firewall ports open up. So, it is very helpful in preventing configuration errors in the cloud by having visibility. If there are issues, then you can find them and fix them.

Read full review

HariharanManikumar

Cloud Presales & Solution Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jul 31, 2022

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

Read full review

reviewer1442412

Sr. Information Security Manager at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 26, 2020

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.

Read full review

reviewer1456956

Security Architect at Refinitiv

Nov 19, 2020

One of the main reasons we like Prisma Cloud so much is that they also provide an API. You can't expect to give someone an account on Prisma Cloud, or on any tool for that matter, and say, "Go find your things and fix them." It doesn't work like that... We pull down the information from the API that Prisma Cloud provides, which is multi-cloud, multi-account—hundreds and hundreds of different types of alerts graded by severity—and then we can clearly identify that these alerts belong to these people, and they're the people who must remediate them.

Read full review

Show 10 more reviews (out of 108)

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Cons review quotes

LL

Cloud Security Specialist at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Nov 3, 2020

It's not really on par with, or catering to, what other products are looking at in terms of SAST and DAST capabilities. For those, you'd probably go to the market and look at something like Veracode or WhiteHat.

Read full review

reviewer1472745

Director, Cloud Engineering at Cerner Corporation

Dec 15, 2020

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

Read full review

Security Architect at a educational organization with 201-500 employees

Sep 3, 2021

Getting new guys trained on using the solution requires some thought. If someone is already trained on Palo Alto then he's able to adapt quickly. But, if someone is coming from another platform such as Fortinet, or maybe he's from the system side, that is where we need some help. We need to find out if there is an online track or training that they can go to.

Read full review

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Free Report: Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.

824,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.

DC

Sr. Security Operations Manager at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Oct 26, 2020

The integration of the Compute function into the cloud monitoring function—because those are two different tools that are being combined together—could use some more work. It still feels a little bit disjointed.

Read full review

Mindaugas Dailidonis

Security Solutions Architect - Cloud Security Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

Sep 3, 2024

To see the full picture, at least when I last used it in April or May, you needed to switch between the modules. To see the cloud infrastructure and pipeline configuration, you need to switch to that module. To see the code security part, you need to switch to the Code Security module. It is the same story with CSPM. Two competitors of Prisma Cloud do it in a better way. They show the full view of a risk. Prisma Cloud unfortunately lacks in that area, but they are catching up.

Read full review

reviewer2268216

Senior Security Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Sep 7, 2023

The dashboard can be created at the user level instead of the cloud account level, which will help save time.

Read full review

AJ

Information Security Manager at Cobalt.io

Feb 24, 2021

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

Read full review

HariharanManikumar

Cloud Presales & Solution Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jul 31, 2022

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

Read full review

reviewer1442412

Sr. Information Security Manager at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 26, 2020

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.

Read full review

reviewer1456956

Security Architect at Refinitiv

Nov 19, 2020

Based on my experience, the customization—especially the interface and some of the product identification components—is not as customizable as it could be. But it makes up for that with the fact that we can access the API and then build our own systems to read the data and then process and parse it and hand it to our teams.

Read full review

Show 10 more reviews (out of 108)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Container Security

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)

Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)

Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Cloudflare vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Wiz vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Darktrace vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Tenable Security Center vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

AWS Security Hub vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

VMware Aria Automation vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Orca Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Skyhigh Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Lacework FortiCNAPP vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Trend Vision One - Cloud Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

See all alternatives

Product Categories

Product Categories

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Container Security

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)

Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)

Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Cloudflare vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Wiz vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Darktrace vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Tenable Security Center vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

AWS Security Hub vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

VMware Aria Automation vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Orca Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Skyhigh Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Lacework FortiCNAPP vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Trend Vision One - Cloud Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

See all alternatives

Related questions

243

What is the biggest difference between Aqua Security and Twistlock?

220

What do you think of Aqua Security vs Prisma Cloud?

280

How is Prisma Cloud vs Azure Security Center for security?

248

What are your best practices for Identity and Access Management (IAM) in the Cloud?

37

What is the minimum security features set required for Cloud Backup and Storage Software?

34

What are your best practices to achieve DevOps security in the cloud?

38

Is there a single tool to unify cloud compliance reporting?

16

What is Unified Cloud Security? Can you define the scope and use cases of the term?

385

What is an Application Security Posture Management (ASPM)?

1

Which solutions offer a preventive, proactive approach to cloud security posture management?