Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users
reviewer1702776 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Security Engineer at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Provides excellent configuration monitoring and alerting, allowing us to respond to mistakes in real-time
Pros and Cons
  • "Configuration monitoring and alerting is the most valuable feature; it happens at the cloud's speed, allowing our development team to respond quickly. If a configuration goes against our security best practices, we're alerted promptly and can act to resolve the issue. As cloud security staff, we're not staring at the cloud all the time, and we want to let the developers do their jobs so that our company is protected and work is proceeding within our security controls."
  • "The UI could use some improvement; we usually find the information we're looking for, but what fields can be clicked on and what workflow to follow to get the required information is not always evident. Sometimes we're all over the place, clicking around to drill in and uncover the alert and investigation details we're looking for."

What is our primary use case?

We use the solution to monitor and manage our various cloud environments, providing complete visibility in a single platform. We also use it for configuration, network, and anomaly monitoring. On the compute side, that's for containers and Kubernetes, so we know when changes are made and whether those changes are approved or within our required security controls. 

The platform has yet to become part of our CICD pipeline; we mostly use it as a security tool for monitoring and remediation. 

Regarding modules, we use the CSP and the compute module. 

How has it helped my organization?

Prisma Cloud helps us take a preventative approach to cloud security. It raises awareness of particular threats. Although it's a reactive type platform in that alerts happen on events that have already occurred, it allows us to take a step back and consider our cloud infrastructure more thoroughly. In this sense, the solution enables us to maintain our posture and current programs. 

The product reduced our runtime alerts by approximately 25%.  

What is most valuable?

Configuration monitoring and alerting is the most valuable feature; it happens at the cloud's speed, allowing our development team to respond quickly. If a configuration goes against our security best practices, we're alerted promptly and can act to resolve the issue. As cloud security staff, we're not staring at the cloud all the time, and we want to let the developers do their jobs so that our company is protected and work is proceeding within our security controls.

The product provides efficient and comprehensive protection for the full cloud-native stack. It presents its findings in layman's terms; alerts are pretty straightforward as to what's going on and why, whether a configuration needs to be changed, and recommendations on how to remediate.  

We used the solution's security automation capabilities, so in the event of an alert, it can be resolved with the click of a button; we click remediate, and the configuration is changed to the recommended status, which is very helpful. However, we use automation sparingly, as we usually have to coordinate changes in the cloud with development teams or through change control. Our typical usage is for completely forbidden scenarios, such as publicly accessible storage containers. We fix that by clicking remediate, then follow up with the team to determine if that was intentional. Sometimes, although accurate, the recommendation may break something else if there is a compensating control in place. So, automation is helpful but not overly used. 

For the most part, the tool provides the visibility and control we need, regardless of how complex and distributed our cloud environments become. Sometimes the platform can be a little kludgy, but we can usually click around and figure it out. Regarding confidence in our security and compliance postures, I don't know how anyone could have a cloud presence without some form of CSP, and I'm delighted with Prisma.   

The solution provides risk clarity at runtime and across the entire pipeline, showing issues as they are discovered during the build phases. However, we still need to utilize this feature to 100%.  

What needs improvement?

The UI could use some improvement; we usually find the information we're looking for, but what fields can be clicked on and what workflow to follow to get the required information is not always evident. Sometimes we're all over the place, clicking around to drill in and uncover the alert and investigation details we're looking for.

Buyer's Guide
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
831,098 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using the solution almost continuously for around five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Prisma Cloud is pretty stable; it's a great product, and I'm happy with it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The platform constantly evolves regarding new features and functions, which can sometimes be a little overwhelming, but it's very scalable. It's just a matter of familiarizing myself with those functions and features. It's the type of tool that is constantly improving, and its scalability suits our environment well.

How are customer service and support?

The customer support is excellent and helped a lot during the deployment process. I rate them nine out of ten. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I demoed other solutions but never actually used or implemented one before Prisma.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is pretty straightforward, though some of the documentation is convoluted. The support is good, though, so getting someone on the phone or an engineer to respond via email or meeting is easy. The setup was straightforward, and the support was excellent. If I had the permissions to set up the cloud-side integrations, it would have taken a day, but I had to rely on the availability of other staff members, so it took about a week.

What was our ROI?

The platform is relatively new and expensive, so it's hard to put a number on it. However, the amount of man-hours saved by it easily uncovering some of the flaws in our security posture means it definitely saved us money. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The product is very expensive, but the cost is a necessary evil; I don't know how we could have any kind of cloud presence without this type of monitoring. The pricing is calculated by module and resource usage. Ultimately, it saves us money in the amount of time we would spend uncovering what it uncovers, and we might not make the required discoveries without it anyway. Prisma offers incredible value, though I wish it were cheaper.

People argue that there are native tools within the various cloud environments, but nothing that streamlines from a timing and comprehension perspective for small security teams. If you don't have a dedicated team of 20 staff, Prisma is the tool you need. I don't know any company that does what they do or how they do it.

Native tools may uncover a misconfiguration, but for a multi-cloud environment, you have to be proficient with multiple different tools, none of which tells the whole story. Prisma pulls in all the data and gives you everything you need to know in one platform. It also pulls in extra data, including network traffic, anomaly traffic, configuration data, and vulnerability data, so you can correlate that information and make an educated decision as to what's going on in the environment, and what needs to be changed or addressed.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I evaluated Lacework, Sysdig Secure, and Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation, though I see them more as Veracode than CSP competitors. I didn't find any products that compare to what Prisma Cloud does.

What other advice do I have?

I rate the product nine out of ten. 

My advice to those before implementing the platform is to do the integration yourself if you have the time, are IT savvy, and have the necessary permissions. It only requires a little time, a few days to a week at most, and there is great value in doing the integration yourself rather than paying for their support to do it. Onboarding the solution will provide an understanding of how it communicates with the cloud environment, how roles are associated and created, and how the remediate feature functions. It's important to go through those steps rather than paying someone else to do it; you'll save money and understand how the tool does what it does, which is essential in utilizing it.

Regarding the solution securing the entire cloud-native development lifecycle across build, deploy, and run, we have yet to use it that way, not to say that we won't. This feature is a relatively new part of Palo Alto's CICD deployment, so we haven't used it yet.

Prisma Cloud provides a single tool to protect all our cloud resources and applications, without managing and reconciling disparate security and compliance reports to about 70%. However, we have yet to utilize the tool to its full capacity.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Arun Balaji G - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Associate Consultant at Infosys
MSP
Enables us to automate and increase security without agents, but integrations with third-party vendors need work
Pros and Cons
  • "It also provides us with a single tool to manage our entire cloud architecture. In fact, we are using a multi-account strategy with our AWS organization. We use Prisma as a single source of truth to identify high- or medium-severity threats inside our organization."
  • "One of the main backlogs in their development is in the area of integration. For example, we have ServiceNow in place for ticket management and Prisma Cloud is supposed to send closure emails for incidents. But from time to time, it fails to do so. We have several other mismatches between Prisma Cloud and ServiceNow."

What is our primary use case?

It is pretty easy to onboard accounts with Prisma Cloud. We use Prisma Cloud Compute and Prisma Cloud policy management. The latter is our primary solution and we use Compute to manage our container security, including threats and vulnerabilities. But we primarily focus on managing the policies for our entire cloud configs, internal threats, and network patterns.

How has it helped my organization?

For our market requirements, we do need several other services to be maintained for the perfect security posture. For example, one of the primary resources that we are using in our cloud is EC2 instances. That does need some primary security features, like security groups with proper closures, and proper networking with our firewalls. To make sure all of these premade configs are working, Prisma Cloud helps us to identify whenever any deployments meet up with our cloud. It is helpful with our singular architecture.

Prisma Cloud is very helpful with a full native stack. We don't want to leverage any of the resources directly. Instead, Prisma provides us with the services to automate and increase security posture without any internal agents to run it. Other products have internal agents to run with our cloud to help with the security posture of that cloud, but Prisma does not do that. It has a very simple mechanism to onboard the accounts with their console, where we can use the IAM to scan all of the accounts and identify threats and config mismatches.

The solution has also been helpful when it comes to our investigation times because we have fully automated it with our ticketing system. We use ServiceNow and whenever there are any alerts from Prisma Cloud, we have it configured so that they go directly to ServiceNow. That means the user can identify their incident and can resolve it based on the priority of service level agreements. When they do remediate an issue, Prisma Cloud will resolve the alert within Prisma Cloud and ServiceNow will close it on behalf of the user.

Prisma Cloud saves a lot of manual effort that we had to do within our cloud organization.

What is most valuable?

Prisma Cloud policy management is more valuable than Prisma Cloud Compute. While we use Compute often, we are not leveraging container security as much. We have limited resources for the containers in our cloud environment. Sooner or later, we will launch multiple container features in our cloud, but right now, we don't have much scope so we haven't had a chance to explore the Compute side much.

The solution supports multi- and hybrid-cloud environments. It has multiple cloud strategies like GCP and Azure. It has policy fixes for those cloud environments. We leverage it for AWS and it's important that we can use it for that singular platform.

Prisma Cloud also has log retention periods for the alerts and policies that are triggered, for each account. For example, my account has a specific policy that is high severity. If I need to further investigate, I can do that investigation in the upcoming 30 days. After 30 days, the logs of the triggered alert are not retained by Prisma Cloud on the Palo Alto network.

It also provides us with a single tool to manage our entire cloud architecture. In fact, we are using a multi-account strategy with our AWS organization. We use Prisma as a single source of truth to identify high- or medium-severity threats inside our organization.

Another feature is the automation. It has certain types of policies that can identify network-based threats, such as unusual port or protocol activities. It has tremendous machine-learning capabilities to identify patterns.

What needs improvement?

When it comes to automation and machine learning, it still needs some more work because sometimes they can give false positives.

In addition, since cloud services are coming up with new features and solutions, Prisma should also keep up with the same level of security. For example, at the previous AWS Summit, numerous services were introduced. Our businesses wanted to develop some of the services with the features in our cloud, but Prisma hasn't come up with any new APIs. Prisma needs to keep up with quick changes as soon as any cloud platform comes up with a new invention.

And one of the main backlogs in their development is in the area of integration. For example, we have ServiceNow in place for ticket management, and Prisma Cloud is supposed to send closure emails for incidents. But from time to time, it fails to do so. We have several other mismatches between Prisma Cloud and ServiceNow. So we have had to focus on incident management.

Integrations with third-party vendors, such as ServiceNow, Slack, and other ticketing tools that Prisma supports have full automation, but there are still some bugs to fix. We see failures from time to time. When our team fixes vulnerabilities or threats, they still see the incidents in place, which makes them liable to pay for SLA failures. Those kinds of things can be avoided if we have fully fledged event management integration with those tools.

They also need to increase their log retention periods to allow further investigation. Sometimes it takes time to check with asset owners and do deep investigations. Because we have numerous accounts, it can take time for asset owners to investigate each and every alert. The log retention period is one of the cons. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks for more than a year. I started in my role as a cloud security engineer about two and a half years ago, and Prisma Cloud is one of the CSPM solutions that we use.

I use Prisma Cloud every day. It is one of the primary tools I need to monitor and manage the security of our cloud environment. I use it very extensively and my team members use it for identifying threats and managing them with the asset owners.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

In terms of performance, they have cloud releases of security features during the first week of every month. Whenever they release new policies, all of a sudden it starts to throw multiple alerts within our console. It is a bit annoying for the DevOps team, but from a security perspective, it is a useful process. But a pre-announcement or pre-testing of the alerts would be a better way for them to do this, instead of creating 50 or 100-plus alerts for our DevOps. We are suggesting better pre-testing of new policies.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is pretty scalable. When we deploy new AWS accounts within our organization, it applies the same security posture policies to those accounts as well. We can see the security postures it recommends whenever we onboard any new accounts with our organization. The scalability is very good with the management it provides for any accounts we onboard.

Palo Alto Networks is one of the fastest-growing security products in our organization.

How are customer service and support?

From time to time we experience delays in support for critical scenarios. They do have engineering teams at the backend that work with the policies. I understand that. But I'm expecting a more responsive service on their side because sometimes it can even take a week to get a response back from the engineering team.

When we go through the toll-free number to submit a case, they suggest that they are working on it, but sometimes they don't give solutions for such cases for some time.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used AWS native security, which is Security Hub. They have their own benchmarks which we leveraged. But we wanted to see more variables with the policies to have a stricter and more secure cloud environment so we moved to Prisma Cloud.

We have been customers of Palo Alto Networks for a very long time because they have several security products, including firewalls that we use in our organization.

How was the initial setup?

The deployment was very straightforward. We were able to onboard IAM policies from our AWS master account to our console with a few clicks. We were able to see that Prisma had started to onboard and ingest for alerts and asset variations within our inventory.

What about the implementation team?

We have a security architect and Palo Alto has a security architect. We deployed it together with the support of a Palo Alto engineer.

What other advice do I have?

When we started using Prima Cloud a year ago, we had 7,000-plus alerts. We went through many of the policies that resulted in numerous false positives and we went through the RQL (Resource Query Language) queries that were not applicable to our environment and that created false positives from their side. We reported them with the details via their case submission. They checked on them and they modified some of the alerts as a result of our request. They are progressing with their changes. We have reduced to 500-plus alerts in the past eight months and we are in good shape in terms of security posture.

Overall, I would rate Prisma Cloud at seven out of 10. It has the scalability and easy onboarding where we can onboard an organization with a few clicks and the integration part will take care of the rest. I appreciate that. But the log retention and integration with third-party solutions need improvement.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
831,098 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Aditya Sarkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Security architect at Accenture
Real User
It integrates well and enhances visibility for our clients, but the reporting has room for improvement
Pros and Cons
  • "Prisma Cloud offers robust runtime scanning capabilities, which is beneficial for security teams."
  • "Prisma Cloud's enterprise reporting needs significant improvement."

What is our primary use case?

I use Prisma Cloud for one of my clients to provide Cloud Workload Protection Platform, Cloud Security Posture Management, and Identity and User Controls services.

Prisma Cloud is the tool of choice for my client's container security and infrastructure-as-code security, including cloud security posture management.

We implemented Prisma Cloud primarily for its code-to-cloud feature. Recognizing the industry's emphasis on automated resource deployment, we developed a Terraform script to deploy resources on the Azure platform. We aim to maintain full security monitoring from the initial code to the cloud environment. By proactively identifying and addressing high-critical vulnerabilities in container images during the build process and enforcing compliance standards within Terraform scripts through policy-driven pipelines, Prisma Cloud helps us mitigate risks and ensure the security of our cloud infrastructure.

How has it helped my organization?

Prisma Cloud offers full integration with all major cloud platforms, making it a versatile choice for multi-cloud environments. I've successfully implemented it for both GCP and Azure, which provides consistent security coverage across both platforms. Its streamlined onboarding process for subscription or tenant-level agentless scanning and discovery is highly efficient. The platform's cloud discovery feature also offers valuable, cost-free, enhanced data for robust reporting. This, combined with informative labels, simplifies report generation at the product level, especially in organizations utilizing microservices and namespaces for application management. These capabilities make Prisma Cloud a vital asset for managing complex cloud infrastructures.

Prisma Cloud seamlessly integrates with popular DevOps tools like GitHub and Azure DevOps, which we commonly use for our clients. Automation is straightforward: incorporate a block into your workflow or pipeline to initiate scanning and other processes. Additionally, cloud account onboarding requires only adding a service as a key. This streamlined approach facilitates automated security guardrail implementation, eliminating the need for manual vulnerability remediation. Instead, scans are run directly within the pipeline, and critical vulnerabilities are flagged for immediate attention, enhancing overall security efficiency.

Shifting security left by ensuring only sanitized images are pushed to production for container use requires a dedicated team for twelve months to address all image vulnerabilities. Prisma Cloud automation significantly accelerates this process by remediating vulnerabilities automatically.

Prisma Cloud enhances visibility for our clients, enabling them to adopt a zero-trust model with monitoring at all entry and exit points. This full approach, coupled with a robust SOAR solution, effectively manages alerts from various tools and facilitates timely remediation efforts. The platform seamlessly integrates cloud security, application security, and threat detection, providing our client a unified view of their security posture.

Prisma Cloud offers comprehensive security across the entire cloud-native development lifecycle, covering all stages from code creation to cloud deployment, including the build, run, and deploy phases. Essentially, it provides security protection for every critical step within the development and production process.

Prisma Cloud offers a consolidated tool for cloud security, effectively covering CSPM, CNAP, CWPP, and ISE components. While their AppSec capabilities are still under development, I anticipate a comprehensive solution in the near future. Although Prisma Cloud is a strong standalone option, integrating a SOAR tool from another provider might be necessary for a truly end-to-end solution.

Prisma Cloud has proven effective in reducing runtime alerts by up to 20 percent, a significant benefit for our clients. While they are still verifying our adherence to proper procedures for this new solution, it's worth noting that Prisma Cloud offers a comprehensive set of policies, including those for detecting crypto mining and other threats.

What is most valuable?

Prisma Cloud is currently the market leader in runtime protection, enhanced by its ownership of Syslog and seamless integration. Its exceptional container security capabilities and an unmatched ability to address the MITRE ATT&CK framework distinguish it from other tools. This full suite of features positions Prisma Cloud as the optimal solution for our needs.

Prisma Cloud offers robust runtime scanning capabilities, which is beneficial for security teams. However, deploying additional security tools within existing infrastructure can be challenging due to resource consumption, potentially leading to application performance issues. Prisma Cloud's advantage lies in its minimal resource usage as it runs from ports, making it easier to convince stakeholders to implement runtime security measures and ensure ongoing application protection in production environments.

What needs improvement?

Prisma Cloud's security auditing capabilities are under development. Enterprise reporting could be improved, as the current data is insufficient for developers' needs, resulting in excessive noise. The platform currently lacks status information for deferred image vulnerabilities, such as specifying the version of an image vulnerability in reports. This functionality is being developed. Additionally, separating OS-level and application-level vulnerabilities is necessary to accommodate organizations focusing solely on cloud security. Prisma Cloud is already working on this feature.

Prisma Cloud's enterprise reporting needs significant improvement. We have already discussed this issue with them. The current reports are excessively noisy, making it impractical for developers to address the vast number of reported vulnerabilities. To streamline the process, we require a clear distinction between vulnerabilities originating from the application and those stemming from base images. While developers should address application vulnerabilities, base image issues necessitate using third-party base images and regular updates. Many organizations already have dedicated application security tools, so duplicating efforts is undesirable. A self-service portal allowing developers to onboard their own repositories would alleviate the need for admin intervention. Additionally, Prisma Cloud should provide a mechanism to defer vulnerabilities without known fixes, improving report clarity.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate the stability of Prisma Cloud seven out of ten. It has room for improvement.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Prisma Cloud is scalable. I would rate the scalability eight out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

All Prisma Cloud deployments are straightforward due to the comprehensive and improved documentation. Following the steps outlined, the tenant can be onboarded, and scanning can be initiated within approximately two days.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Prisma Cloud is cost-efficient, but the credits are on the higher end.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Prisma Cloud is the market leader in container security. While Microsoft Defender for Cloud also offers container security features, our comparison of Wiz, Defender for Cloud, and Prisma Cloud revealed that Wiz lacks enforcement capabilities, preventing us from blocking or denying actions. Additionally, Defender for Cloud's pricing model, based on virtual CPUs, becomes prohibitively expensive for container clusters, which often have thousands of them. Prisma Cloud's cost-effective, credit-based pricing and robust enforcement capabilities make it the right choice for our needs.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks seven out of ten.

I would not consider time to remediate a capability as it's dependent on the resource owner's actions. The alert will remain unresolved until they address the misconfiguration on machines X, Y, or Z. This is not solely a tool limitation; At the same time, full auto-remediation is an organizational goal, often hindered by specific needs and customizations. Consequently, without complete auto-remediation, achieving desired service-level agreements is challenging.

Our client is a medium retail enterprise business.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
Flag as inappropriate
PeerSpot user
Harsh_Vardhan - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud security architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Provides visibility and control that our customers need
Pros and Cons
  • "The UI is very good. We get all the things within a single UI."
  • "It does not provide runtime security or protection for Windows Server. It is currently lacking in terms of Windows environment."

What is our primary use case?

I am a cloud security architect. I assess the cloud infrastructure for customers and help implement security control. I use Prisma Cloud for assessment. After we have the visibility, we deploy security controls, such as perimeter firewall control, proxy control, and endpoint security control.

We have purchased the enterprise license that provides all the capabilities such as CSPM, CWP, and DSPM.

How has it helped my organization?

Prisma Cloud provides security spanning multi- and hybrid-cloud environments with Azure, GCP, and AWS clouds. It provides comprehensive security for all these CSPs.

By default, Prisma Cloud supports integration with ServiceNow and Remedy. There are a few more default integrations. Cortex is their own native solution, but in terms of overall automation, Prisma Cloud supports a lot of integrations. It is very helpful for organizations to be able to automate these daily tasks. Different organizations use different security tools. A few of them are directly integrated with Prisma Cloud and a few of them are not. However, most organizations use solutions like Remedy and ServiceNow, so these direct integrations are very helpful. They can save about 70% of the time.

Prisma Cloud provides comprehensive visibility into cloud-based resources. Most organizations are shifting their workloads from on-prem to the cloud. Nowadays, everyone is using the cloud infrastructure, and it is a very big challenge for every organization because, without a CNAPP solution, they do not have much visibility into their cloud resources. CNAPP solutions like Prisma Cloud provide visibility into any misconfigurations, threats, or anomalies. They are very good for code-to-cloud visibility.

Prisma Cloud provides code-to-cloud visibility for the application development cycle of an organization. Some organizations use SAST and some organizations use DAST. Prisma Cloud is a combination of both. You can integrate your GitHub or your IDE environment with Prisma Cloud. You can have a view of the vulnerabilities inside your IAC or application code. You also can integrate it with CI/CD. It is very comprehensive. Not many can leverage the complete benefit of Prisma Cloud. In my last organization, we only used it for runtime protection. We did not use it for CI/CD or code and build. In my current organization, we are using it end to end. It is a good tool. We have the complete capability. The first stage is code and build. The second stage is deployment, and the third stage is run time. It provides complete development life cycle protection.

The time to value is usually immediate. At times, the deployment can take some time, but as soon as the deployment is complete, you get the findings.

The visibility and control Prisma Cloud provides completely align with the customers' needs. At times, we have to create some custom policies. It is completely compatible with the needs of the customers.

It provides end-to-end visibility from development to deployment to production. It prevents the development teams from pushing vulnerable code to production. A lot of things can be prioritized and resolved before deployment. By fixing things beforehand, you save a lot of effort or workload later.

Prisma Cloud's findings help us to create policies. In our organization, the vulnerability reports go to the network team or cloud infrastructure team. They analyze the alerts and create organization-level policies. For example, if there is an instance that is using a public IP, based on that incident, they would create a policy at the org level so that in the future, no one assigns any public IP to an instance. It helps them to create better policies.

What is most valuable?

Different modules are valuable for different customers. We are leveraging CSPM. It is one of the best solutions for comprehensive visibility into cloud resource configurations and compliance. It has a lot of out-of-the-box policies, and the visibility that we are getting is impressive.

The DSPM module is valuable. This is the latest one that Palo Alto procured from Dig Security. No competitor provides this functionality in a single pane of glass. The support for Linux and container security is also very good. That is the beauty of Prisma Cloud. However, in terms of Windows security, Prisma Cloud is lacking because currently, there is no runtime protection available.

The UI is very good. We get all the things within a single UI. It is easy to use. A new user can easily understand it. It is very user-friendly.

What needs improvement?

It does not provide runtime security or protection for Windows Server. It is currently lacking in terms of Windows environment. They are integrating their Cortex solution with Prisma Cloud. Once they have a unified agent, I am sure that these challenges will go away.

DSPM is a bit limited in terms of data security and storage capabilities. It only supports a few databases or storage accounts. There is still a long list of services that they need to support.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Prisma Cloud for four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate it an eight out of ten for stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is working smoothly. There is no issue. Scalability also depends on the environment. It depends on how much credit you have purchased. If you go beyond that, they notify you. They will not allow you to onboard more accounts. It totally depends upon the credits that you have purchased, so scalability within the credit limit is good. It is 100%.

We have about 40 to 50 people using this solution.

How are customer service and support?

Their support is average. It is not too good and not too bad. For about 50% of the cases, they have to reach out to their engineering team. The engineering team takes a couple of days or weeks to revert. They are usually unable to provide support without the involvement of the engineering team.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have worked with CrowdStrike's CNAPP solution and Aqua Security. Prisma Cloud is the best in my opinion. It is a market leader. 

Prisma Cloud has more than 100 compliances built in. It supports almost all the services inside the CSPs, whereas other CNAPP solutions only support a few of the services or most commonly used services such as compute, databases, or networks. Prisma Cloud supports maximum services from the CSP side and more than 100 compliances. It has the capability of RQL, so you can create custom queries and get the required data.

How was the initial setup?

It is very easy if you have an understanding of the solution. If you are new to this field, you can face challenges during implementation. Without proper knowledge of the roles, IAMs, and infrastructure, you will face some challenges during the deployment.

I can deploy it within an hour, but before that, we have to fulfill some prerequisites. We have to create a role for Prisma Cloud. We have to create a service credential. Every organization has its own procedure. They might take a day or a week to create the required service credential and assign necessary permissions to that. Once we have all the prerequisites, within an hour, we can deploy it. After the deployment, it starts providing visibility. It takes approximately 24 hours.

Our environment is hybrid. We are using AWS, Azure, and GCP. We also have an on-prem environment for which we have deployed Defender for CWP capability. Prisma Cloud provides us with cloud-native security and visibility.

They are regularly implementing new features in Prisma Cloud. They are doing regular updates in the backend, and they keep us informed. Mostly, they are performing these kinds of activities at night so that there is minimal impact.

Maintenance-wise, there is not much. Everything runs smoothly. They take the feature requests and notify us when they implement those requests. They are regularly changing and updating it.

What was our ROI?

I do not have any metrics for cost savings, but it certainly helps with security and compliance. The visibility it provides helps to fix any vulnerabilities. A data or security breach can cost an organization a lot in terms of money and reputation.

What other advice do I have?

Prisma Cloud provides visibility into vulnerabilities, but it is an organization's responsibility to fix those vulnerabilities. Prisma Cloud only provides visibility. It is only an assessment tool. The team has to fix those vulnerabilities. The time taken to fix the vulnerabilities varies because different teams work on it. 

I have not explored all CNAPP solutions. Overall, I would rate Prisma Cloud an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Flag as inappropriate
PeerSpot user
Hardik Yagnik - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Delivery Manager at Accenture
Real User
Top 20
One solution can cover runtime for EC2 systems, containers, and Fargate
Pros and Cons
  • "We have standardized vendor process management, so we want to reduce multiple vendors. Prisma Cloud is part of Palo Alto. We use Palo Alto firewalls and other solutions. Prisma has many features that intelligently cover cloud security. One solution can cover runtime for EC2 systems, containers, and Fargate. We also have EKS/Kubernetes integration. So, whatever the cloud-native solution in Pfizer, we can use one solution to secure that."
  • "The Fargate security microservice that's running doesn't support blocking features, which would be helpful. Another issue is the lifecycle. It isn't easy to upgrade if we have a console in Fargate."

What is our primary use case?

We use Prisma Cloud for container security, serverless function security, and our Cloud Security Posture Management.

How has it helped my organization?

We realized the benefits of Prisma Cloud almost immediately. It can comprehensively secure the entire cloud-native development lifecycle, from build to deploy and run. It has that capability. We are using it in the build and run space, but we aren't using it for secure code review.

We are more dependent on another product for visibility. Prisma Cloud does not have a natural feel, so we use another tool. About 75 to 80 percent of our workloads are connected to one solution, but Prisma Cloud has limitations. It doesn't have agents for them, so we use other tools or other native security tools to protect them. 

When we started, many false positives and mismatched rules were not properly created. We created a more mature ruleset and now have a manageable set of alerts. It's not that much and has reduced over time.

We use different tools to achieve the same result, and consolidating that helps us save money. It has saved us, but it is a costly product. We are also saving some money on projects where there is competition. It's much cheaper, and they have the same or similar features.

What is most valuable?

We have standardized vendor process management, so we want to reduce multiple vendors. Prisma Cloud is part of Palo Alto. We use Palo Alto firewalls and other solutions. Prisma has many features that intelligently cover cloud security. One solution can cover runtime for EC2 systems, containers, and Fargate. We also have EKS/Kubernetes integration. So, whatever the cloud-native solution in Pfizer, we can use one solution to secure that.

What needs improvement?

The Fargate security microservice that's running doesn't support blocking features, which would be helpful. Another issue is the lifecycle. It isn't easy to upgrade if we have a console in Fargate. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We have used Prisma Cloud for nearly two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have had some issues, but they were mainly due to the environment. It did not crash as much after we set up the environment, but we had to build the system twice because of environmental issues. It took us a long time, but we have a learning curve on these deployments.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Prisma scales well if we're deploying on Kubernetes, but it doesn't scale that great on Fargate.

How are customer service and support?

I had an opportunity to work with technical support and presales. The technical support was good. They are deep into the technology, but the presales staff wasn't up to the mark.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have Aqua Security and many open-source tools. Prisma Cloud suits our needs, so it's good. 

How was the initial setup?

The deployment had a steep learning curve, and the support wasn't trained enough to work on the product. They were trying it out in their own lab. It's a new technology, so it takes time.

We deployed via a CICD integration, which took us around two months. We have two deployments: production and our lower environment. It took time because there were dependencies in the infrastructure. It took two to three months to get a stable working solution. I deployed it alone. 

We deployed in Fargate, so high availability and other things were not an issue. The issue was the upgrade process, which requires us to streamline the upgrade process in the target deployment. That requires maintenance. If there is a major upgrade, it requires a lot of planning and everything. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Prisma Cloud's pricing is a little higher than its competitors. It should come down. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate Prisma Cloud seven out of 10. 

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Integrator
Flag as inappropriate
PeerSpot user
Sanjog Chhetri - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Consultant at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 10
Provides security across multi and hybrid-cloud environments and covers the full cloud-native stack with a single pane of glass
Pros and Cons
  • "I find the CSPM area to be a more valuable and flexible feature."
  • "The security automation capabilities are average."

What is our primary use case?

We use the solution for three areas, CSPM, CWPP, and Cloud Security.

We use Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks mostly for CSPM. CSPM helps us identify and fix misconfigurations in our cloud environment. This can help us prevent security breaches and improve our overall cloud security posture.

Prisma Cloud also provides CWPP. CWPP helps us protect our cloud workloads from malware, ransomware, and other threats. This can help us keep our data safe and secure.

Prisma's Cloud security is something we are still working on.

The solution is deployed as SaaS.

How has it helped my organization?

The solution provides security across multi and hybrid-cloud environments. However, we are currently only using it for the public cloud. We do not use it for any hybrid solutions, and we are not running any on-premises solutions on it.

The solution covers the full cloud-native stack with a single pane of glass. If we need a holistic view of our security posture, Prisma Cloud is a good option. It provides a single pane of glass for managing our security across all of our CNCF workloads.

Overall, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is a very good product. I have been using it for the past four years, and I found it to be very effective in helping me to understand my cloud security posture. 

I will use the CNCF as an example. I really like the complete tool. When we first started to use the cloud, we didn't know what we were doing. Only the admins knew what they were doing wrong and what the threats were in the cloud. Cloud is a shared responsibility between us and the cloud provider. This is true for any cloud provider, such as GCP, Azure, or AWS. We don't have visibility into what admins are doing wrong or right, or how many admins keep our configuration secure. On-premises has parameters, but the cloud does not. The solution provides visibility into what is wrong in our environment, what has been done wrong, and what we can do to correct it. This is because of the configuration and the misconfiguration. From an architectural perspective, if we are doing the first step wrong, there is no point in going to the second step and making it correct. We should make our first step correct. Prisma Cloud provides visibility for us to do this.

Prisma Cloud's comprehensiveness for securing the entire cloud-native development lifecycle across build, deploy, and run is good. The solution provides a single pane of glass for everything, including core security, data security, CSP, CWPP, and EIM security. Other good options are available, but they do not offer a single pane of glass. Instead, they are individual products or modules that must be used separately. Prisma Cloud can improve IM and data security, but if we do not want to use multiple tools, Prisma Cloud is a good option because it offers a single pane of glass for all our security needs.       

Prisma Cloud provides the visibility and control we need, regardless of how complex or distributed our cloud environment becomes. We can see how many complaints and alerts we have, which gives us a sense of security. 

Prisma Cloud enabled us to integrate security into our CI/CD pipeline and add touchpoints into existing dev ops processes.

Prisma Cloud provides us with a single tool to protect all of our cloud resources and applications without having to manage and reconcile discrete security and compliance reports. For operations, the capability of CSPM works well.

Prisma Cloud provides risk clarity at runtime and across the entire pipeline, showing issues as they are discovered during the build phases. Our developers are able to correct issues using the tools they used to code. Some of the results are false positives but the majority are not.

Prisma Cloud helps reduce some of our runtime alerts by 40 percent.

Prisma Cloud helped reduce our investigation time by up to 60 percent. 

What is most valuable?

I find the CSPM area to be a more valuable and flexible feature. We have control in our hands, and we can do anything we want with our cloud security posture management.

What needs improvement?

Prisma covers all the CNCF areas. However, they are not the best in all of them. For example, their identity controls are not the best. They have modules for identity controls, but they are not the best in the market. The same is valid for data security. AWS and Azure have better native data security than Prisma. Individual modules, other than CSPM and CWPP, could be improved.

The security automation capabilities are average. They have a semi-automated remediation policy, but many tools on the market can automatically remediate based on the resource and desired outcome we need. Therefore, I think the automation of alerts could be improved.

The visibility of the reporting data for CI/CD can be improved in our console to make the output visible to management and developers.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Prisma Cloud is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Prisma Cloud is a scalable platform that releases new modules every six months.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward for an experienced person who follows the instructions. If we have all the necessary resources, the deployment can be completed in one day.

I first started with the CSPM, then the CSP medium, about a year before moving to computing. I then tried data security for native security and more outside and code security.

What about the implementation team?

We used Palo Alto Networks' Professional Service, which was included in our credit and license. They provided us with assistance with the initial implementation, and we were satisfied with their services.

What was our ROI?

We have seen a return on investment from using Prisma Cloud because it has improved our compliance and security posture.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing is reasonable. However, I think some modules need to be restructured, particularly those related to data security. The licensing model for data security should be compared to the native security offered by AWS and Azure.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Wiz and CrowdStrike. We initially started with CSPM, so Prisma Cloud was more flexible. The representative of the Prisma Cloud CSPM was better and more user-friendly. It gave us more permissions, more controls, and it wasn't complex. We could still do whatever we wanted if it was not given by Prisma out of the box. Therefore, we chose Prisma Cloud.

What other advice do I have?

I give Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks an eight out of ten.

If you are new to the cloud and you are not sure where to start, I would recommend using Prisma Cloud. It will give you a comprehensive view of your cloud security posture and help you to identify any areas where you may be vulnerable. You can also use Prisma Cloud to test and evaluate different security controls before you deploy them in your production environment.

Our entire company uses Prisma Cloud. Anything we deploy in the cloud is protected by the solution.

Prisma Cloud does not require maintenance from our end.

If someone is new to the cloud and looking for cloud security, I think the best place to start is Prisma Cloud. Prisma Cloud offers a comprehensive set of security capabilities, including CSPM, workload security, and cloud security. We can start by using the CSPM module to assess our cloud security posture and identify any potential vulnerabilities. Once we have addressed any critical vulnerabilities, we can then move on to the other modules.

Everything is a lesson because we started with no knowledge. We did not know that there would be many risks and offenses involved in our cloud security environment. We need to know all of the risks, and we can overcome them with Prisma Cloud.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2068830 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Security Consultant at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Centralizes security control of all your cloud providers, but not all providers are covered equally
Pros and Cons
  • "The first aspect that is important is the fact that Prisma Cloud is cloud-agnostic. It's actually available for the five top cloud providers: AWS, GCP, Azure, Oracle, and Alibaba Cloud. The second aspect is the fact that we can write our own rules to try to detect misconfigurations in those environments."
  • "There are hundreds of built-in policies for AWS and Azure, but GCP and Oracle are not covered as much as AWS. There is a lot of work to do on that part. There is, obviously, a tiny bit of favoritism towards AWS because it has the most market share."

What is our primary use case?

I'm using the main module of Prisma Cloud, which manages security at scale in cloud environments.

How has it helped my organization?

Prisma Cloud offers a very interactive UI that lets you work more effectively, faster, and more efficiently. It can also be used as a dashboard for querying the cloud provider since it integrates with most of the APIs of the cloud service providers. It's a very unique tool in the sense that it lets you centralize the security control of all your cloud providers.

What is most valuable?

The first aspect that is important is the fact that Prisma Cloud is cloud-agnostic. It's actually available for the five top cloud providers: AWS, GCP, Azure, Oracle, and Alibaba Cloud. 

The second aspect is the fact that we can write our own rules to try to detect misconfigurations in those environments.

And Prisma Cloud is a single tool that protects cloud resources and applications without having to manage and reconcile disparate security and compliance reports. That's the main purpose of the CSPM module of Prisma Cloud: You can manage every cloud platform, every cloud account, from a single place, which is the Prisma Cloud dashboard. It gives you a very high overview of every asset, a full site inventory. And you can see the context as well as the severity of the errors that have been raised on each service and asset that has been deployed in the cloud.

In my experience, Prisma Cloud is a valuable asset for enterprises that tend to have a lot of cloud-native applications and that wish to secure, and take control of the security posture of these applications. One of the most important considerations is that Prisma Cloud is a product from Palo Alto Networks, a company that invests heavily in cyber security. There are a lot of features that have come out over time. In the beginning, Prisma Cloud was known for its CSPM capabilities, but today, Prisma Cloud is doing a lot of things that are very beneficial for cloud-native applications.

What needs improvement?

There are a couple of things that can be enhanced. The first is the coverage that Prisma offers. Today, there are hundreds of built-in policies for AWS and Azure, but GCP and Oracle are not covered as much as AWS. There is a lot of work to do on that part. There is, obviously, a tiny bit of favoritism towards AWS because it has the most market share. It's logical, but the other cloud providers are not as well covered as AWS.

The second issue is the alerting process. Today, it does monitor the resources—and I'm only speaking on the CSPM side of things. Prisma Cloud scans the environment and checks if there are misconfigurations, but it lacks context. There is a real lack when it comes to taking into consideration how the application was designed. For example, you can have an application that is deployed with an open S3 bucket, which is one of the most basic services in AWS. Prisma will tell you that there is a high-severity alert because, with that bucket, there is a possibility of having your data extracted. But sometimes, the data inside those buckets is actually public. So, the process lacks some intelligence.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks for 10 months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I'm using the SaaS version which is running on Palo Alto's infrastructure, so I've never encountered instability. 

There is some patching behind Prisma Cloud when Palo Alto delivers new features so there are some "patch intervals," but most of the time, Palo Alto does notify you when something like that is coming up. It will say, "Hi. This Friday, the application will be unavailable from 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM." But it is not very disturbing at all.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Because I'm using the SaaS version, there is no issue with scalability. It all depends on the credits and the amount of money that you have put into the tool. Aside from that, you can use it to onboard any cloud account no matter how many resources are in it.

How are customer service and support?

I have contacted their tech support many times, and they are pretty quick. They are very invested and proficient. I get answers within a day or two, at most.

Sometimes, when an issue becomes pretty complicated, it can span a week because it is transferred to different people.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I did not use another solution before Palo Alto.

What was our ROI?

We have definitely seen ROI in that using Prisma Cloud is an eye-opener regarding cloud security. In general, Prisma Cloud helped us see a lot of blind spots that we left when designing applications. There were a lot of security misconfigurations that we wouldn't have been able to spot without Prisma. The return on value is in the securing of the applications that we are deploying, as well as through a better understanding of the types of issues in the type of environment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The cost is run by credits. You can allocate them as you wish, so there are no issues there. I believe the credits, licensing, et cetera, are based on the size of the enterprise that is buying the product.

There are no additional costs beyond the standard fees.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Wiz was one of the tools we looked at. I was not the only one who made the choice, but we went with Prisma because of its capabilities as well as the support. We are investing a lot in Palo Alto Networks, meaning we use a lot of their products, so we know the enterprise itself. We know the quality of their catalog of services.

What other advice do I have?

My advice is to take your time before going the CSPM route. Look at your environments and inventory everything in it. There is, obviously, no shadow IT in the cloud. It's very easy to get an inventory of the resources you are running on. Get an overview and see if having a powerful CSPM at your side is really a need. There are a lot of open-source solutions that can do the job for smaller environments.

From what I understand, Palo Alto is trying to push Prisma Cloud to become more than a simple CSP tool, since it offers the ability to cover the global environment of cloud applications, such as doing scanning and infrastructure-as-code, and managing IAM, rather than doing it directly in the cloud provider. They are trying to centralize things.

It can also be used to manage containerized applications. It can do runtime security in container-based managed services of cloud providers, such as EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) which is a service managed by AWS. You can rely on Prisma to put an agent in such environments to monitor and supervise the security. You can also use it to scan the container images that are stored in repositories, whether they are on-premises or in the cloud. I've heard that Palo Alto is doing a lot of things like this, but as of today, I'm only using the CSPM part.

And in terms of security automation capabilities, I've used Checkov, which is the tool they are using for scanning specialized code like Terraform. In its origins, Checkov is an open-source tool and I've been using it with my clients by deploying it in CI/CD chains to scan, automatically, the code that is pushed inside repos and deployed in the cloud. But I have never used the Chekhov that is built into Prisma Cloud.

Similarly, I know Prisma offers the possibility of auto-remediation, but I have not enabled this option. It could be a bit dangerous because there is the context and a lot of things to take into consideration before blocking something, before deployment or after deployment. So, I have not used its preventive actions.

The solution provides visibility into complex or distributed cloud environments, but I can think of a couple of scenarios where clients might not think the same. It supports the top five clouds, but if you are using another cloud provider, you won't be able to use Prisma Cloud for that instance. You would be able to use the Compute module, but it would be very hard to use the CSPM capabilities on such a cloud provider since their APIs are not working with Prisma. But if you are using the most commonly used clouds, Prisma Cloud is a very valuable asset.

Prisma Cloud is a very powerful tool and it can be used in various scenarios, but it doesn't cover everything. You might choose a cloud provider that is not supported or prioritized by Prisma. If you are using Oracle Cloud or Alibaba, you might want to get another solution, maybe one that comes with better policies and a better investment in those technologies.

Aside from that, Prisma Cloud is a good solution if you are using a mainstream cloud provider. Prisma Cloud can help enhance your security posture. Because it's a Palo Alto product, you can be sure that there is a lot of maintenance behind it. The product will be able to keep up with the market. They will keep the features coming and it will continue to be a better product over time.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1685487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Information Security Architecture at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Provides continuous compliance monitoring, good visibility from a single pane of glass, good support
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is the continuous cloud compliance monitoring and alerting."
  • "We would like to have the detections be more contemporaneous. For example, we've seen detections of an overprivileged user or whatever it might be in any of the hundreds of Prisma policies, where there are 50 minutes of latency between the event and the alert."

What is our primary use case?

We use Prisma Cloud in several ways and there are a lot of use cases. The first way that we use it is for inventory. It keeps a near real-time inventory of virtual compute storage and services. Second, we use it for monitoring and alerting of misconfigurations or other items of security significance. Next is compliance. We use it to monitor compliance with the centers for internet security (CIS) benchmarks.

How has it helped my organization?

Prisma provides security that spans multi/hybrid-cloud environments. We have it configured to watch for compliance in AWS, the Google Cloud Platform, and very soon, Azure as well. This is important to us because our risk management organization mandated the fact that we would maintain this overwatch capability in any of our clouds that have virtual compute storage or workloads.

Prisma's comprehensiveness for protecting the full cloud-native stack is excellent.

The comprehensiveness of the cloud-native development lifecycles is excellent. For us, the deploy functionality is not applicable but the build and run capabilities are. It positively affects our operations and gives us optics that we wouldn't otherwise have, at the speed of the cloud.

Prisma provides the visibility and control that we need, regardless of how complex our environments are. This very much boosts our confidence in our security and compliance postures. It's also been deemed acceptable as a sufficient presence and efficacy of control by our internal auditors and external regulators alike.

This solution has enabled us to integrate security into our CI/CD pipelines and add touchpoints as a control stop in the release chain. The touchpoints are seamless and very natural to our automation.

Prisma Cloud is a single tool that we can use to protect all of our cloud resources without having to manage and reconcile several security and compliance reports. It unifies and simplifies the overall operations.

Using this tool provides us with risk clarity across the entire pipeline because we use it as a pre-deployment control, ensuring that the run state is known and the risk posture is known at runtime. Our developers use this information to correct issues using our tools for YAML, JSON, CloudFormation templates, and Terraform.

Prisma does so much pre-screening that it limits the number of runtime alerts we get. This is because those pre-deployment code controls are known before the run state.

The investigations capabilities enhance our process and lower incident response and threat detection time. However, it is an enabler and it is run in parallel with our SIEM, which is Splunk. Most of what we're going to do, investigation-wise, is going to be in Splunk, simply because there's better domain knowledge about the use of that tool in Splunk's query language.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the continuous cloud compliance monitoring and alerting. The way Prisma works is that it has a tentacle from Palo Alto's AWS presence into ours. That tentacle is an application program interface, an API, a listener. That listener goes in and is entitled to look at all of the Amazon Web Services' logging facilities. It can then do event correlation, and it can tattletale on misconfigurations such as an S3 storage bucket made publicly available. We wouldn't otherwise be aware of that if Prisma didn't watch for it and alert on it.

Prisma provides cloud workload protection and cloud network security in a single pane of glass, and these items are very important to us. It also provides cloud infrastructure entitlement management but identity and access management is not something that we use Prisma for. We implemented a PoC but we opted to use another tool for that use case.

The security automation capabilities provided by this product are excellent and industry-leading. Palo Alto bought a company called Twistlock, which makes a pre-deployment code scanner. They added its functionality to the feature set of Prisma in the form of this compute module. Now, we're able to use the Twistlock capability in our automation, which includes our toolchains and pipelines.

This tool provides excellent features for preventative cloud security. We use all of the auto-remediation capabilities that Prisma offers out of the box. That "see something, do something" auto-remediation capability within Prisma keeps our human responders from having to do anything. It's automated, meaning that if it sees something, it will right the wrong because it has the entitlement to do that with its Prisma auto-remediation role. It's great labor savings and also closes off things much quicker than a human could.

Palo just keeps bolting on valuable features. They just show up in the console, and they have their little question mark, down in the lower right-hand corner, that shows what's new, and what's changed for August or September. They just keep pouring value into the tool and not charging us for it. We like that.

What needs improvement?

We would like to have the detections be more contemporaneous. For example, we've seen detections of an overprivileged user or whatever it might be in any of the hundreds of Prisma policies, where there are 50 minutes of latency between the event and the alert. We'd always want that to be as quick as possible, and this is going to be true for every customer.

The billing function, with the credits and the by-workload-licensing and billing, is something that is a little wonky and can be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

We began using Prisma Cloud in October or November 2018, when it was still known as RedLock.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability-wise, it has been perfect.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is excellent. Palo keeps adding cloud support, such as for Alibaba, Oracle, and others.

We have approximately 5,500 employees. Our deployment is all-encompassing overwatch to all of our AWS accounts, of which there are 66. We also have two or three different folders within GCP.

We do have plans to increase our usage. This includes using it for more of its capabilities. For example, there is a workload protection link that we haven't fully embraced. There are also some network security features and some dashboarding and geo-mapping capabilities that we could make better use of.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is excellent. We have premium support with Palo Alto and I never have any critique for the quality or speed of support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have used this solution from the outset of our cloud journey. It began with Evident.io, then it became RedLock, and then it became Prisma Cloud.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is very straightforward. We did it several times.

The first one was deployed to AWS, which probably took about an hour. Years later, as we adopted the Google Cloud, it was configured in probably half an hour.

Palo provides the necessary setup instructions and you can't go wrong, as long as you have the role entitlement set up for Prisma. The handshake only takes about an hour.

What about the implementation team?

Our deployment was done entirely in-house.

We have three people, full-time, who are responsible for the maintenance. Their roles are policy management, meaning these are the rule sets. It's called RQL, the RedLock query language, the out-of-the-box policies that are ever dynamic. When there's a new policy, we have to go in and rationalize that with our cyber organization.

We have to scrutinize the risk rating that's put on it by Palo. We have to realize when we're going to turn it on and turn it off. Also, we have to consider the resulting incident response procedures associated with the alert happening.

What was our ROI?

One metric that would be meaningful in this regard is that our company has had no cloud-based compromise. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

You can expect a premium price because it is a premium quality product by a leading supplier.

We are a strategic partner with Palo Alto, meaning that we use all of their solutions. For example, we use their NG firewalls, WildFire, Panorama, Prisma, and all of their stuff. Because Prisma was an add-on for us, we get good pricing on it.

There are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees. The credits consumption billing model is new and we're going to be using more of the features. As we embrace further and we start to use these workload security protections, those come at an incremental cost. So, I would say that our utilization, and thus the cost, would trend up as it has in the past.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated several other products such as DivvyCloud, Dome9, and a product by Sophos.

We did a full comparison matrix and rationalization of each of the capabilities. Our sister company was using DivvyCloud at the time and as we do from time to time, we conferred with them about what their likes and dislikes were. They were moderately pleased with it but ultimately, we ended up going with Palo Alto.

What other advice do I have?

My advice for anybody who is considering this product is to give it a good look. Give it a good cost-balance rationalization versus the cost of a compromise or breach, because it's your defense mechanism against exposure.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: January 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.