Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Reviews

I am using five modules of Prisma Cloud, and I have expertise in CSPM. The use cases are related to securing our host container environment and multi-cloud environment.

We were looking to resolve issues related to host and container security in the Kubernetes environment, vulnerability management, and compliance management.

One of the benefits of using Prisma Cloud is that we can easily make our cloud environment compliant. We can make it vulnerability-free, helping coders or application users bring their applications to production without vulnerabilities or malicious packages.

We have gotten good reviews from our customers, saying that they have improved their security with Prisma Cloud for their cloud environments. That includes customers in finance and in the medical field. And the reporting we get from Prisma is excellent.

It has helped us reduce runtime alerts by 70 to 80 percent.

And because it's very transparent, we can directly investigate things. It has reduced investigation time by 100 percent. We can easily go to the dashboard and check what's happening when investigating. We have to be experts with our tools to investigate and do a deep dive into an incident.

The best feature of Prisma Cloud is that the various modules have different features. With the CSPM, we have compliance management, and we also have an auto-remediation module. In CWP, we can go with runtime, where one of the great features is blocking vulnerabilities or malicious activities from the pipelines or CI. All five modules are taking a preventative approach to the security of the cloud environment, from the network to the cloud, posture management and workload protection.

In CI/CD, we have the option to add a Prisma scan, which helps us remove the vulnerabilities and malicious parts of packages used to create an application. This option enables us to scan the images before running or building them and to get a vulnerability report.

Prisma scans things and shows all the vulnerabilities and packages that are vulnerable, and which layers, by default, have vulnerabilities. So developers can easily go into the package or a particular layer and make changes to their code. It's very transparent.

Reporting from Prisma Cloud is very straightforward. We can export reports in CSV format, or we can use the APIs in Prisma to fetch reports. Reporting is very easy and customizable.

It is also compatible with multi-cloud and hybrid environments. It gives the option to onboard with five clouds: AWS, Azure, Alibaba, Oracle, and GCP. Most of the companies we deal with use parts of various services from different clouds. To provide them with solutions, we need Prisma Cloud, as it helps manage multi-cloud environments.

A lot of automation capabilities are coming out with the updates, and they are growing day by day. The basic automation covers remediation of alerts, and in live applications we can block malicious activities in the files where the vulnerabilities come across.

In terms of cloud-native application comprehensiveness, we can integrate various cloud-native applications with Prisma Cloud. We can use Defender to protect workloads or Kubernetes in any native cloud like AWS EKS.

The CSPM provides the whole asset inventory, where we can see all the services in our cloud environment and how they are working, as well as how the assets are connected to each other and which network is connected. We can see the configuration.

We face some GUI issues related to new permissions for AWS. So far, we don't have any automation to complete them through the GUI. We have to manually update the permissions. Our customers have faced some issues with that.

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

The stability is a nine out of 10.

The scalability is a nine out of 10. We just need some of the automations to come around in Prisma.

With all the capabilities it has and how comprehensive it is, with CSPM, CWPP, and more, we get help from the technical team at Palo Alto. They help us to get into what Prisma Cloud is and all the capabilities it has.

Their technical support comes up with good solutions for every difficulty we face.

Positive

The initial deployment is very straightforward, with the help of the technical team and tech support. It's very easy to get into Prisma Cloud. It takes time, one to two weeks, to complete the deployment. Most of our customers are enterprise-level, although we also have small clients.

The maintenance is mostly handled by Palo Alto teams. The updates are scheduled so that we know at what time they will update and what the new features are. They are good when it comes to updates.

I'm on the technical side and not into sales, but Prisma Cloud is better than the native applications when it comes to pricing.

I suggest that my customers adopt Prisma for every module. It's the best security platform, where we can provide security for multiple clients without using the native security approach.

I highly recommend this solution.

We use Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks for architecture and design.

We found Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks very important in solving architecture and design problems within the company, and it improved our company because it showed us different ways of doing things and gave us a better understanding of an architectural entity.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks has helped our company progress.

From the time of deployment, it took a few months for our company to realize the benefits of the solution.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is a valuable solution. It is useful as it provides some security on multi and hybrid cloud environments, which is very important to my company.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is also a comprehensive solution that helps protect the full cloud-native stack and helps us secure the entire cloud-native development, which is another reason it is useful for the company.

The solution also has good security automation capabilities and is useful for helping my company take a preventive approach to cloud security.

It provides the visibility and control we need, and it helps a lot in giving us confidence in our security and compliance postures.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks also enabled the company to integrate security into our (CI/CD) pipeline.

We also found how seamless Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks touchpoints are to our DevOps processes, and we find them very helpful.

The solution even serves as a single tool to protect my company's cloud resources. It does not affect our operations.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks provides risk clarity at the runtime and across the entire pipeline. It shows us the issues, and the developers can correct them without affecting our operations.

The solution also helped in reducing runtime alerts very quickly. It also reduced our alert investigation time because it's all automated.

We had some teething issues with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, but overall, it did what we expected. It has some areas for improvement, but I cannot remember exactly off the top of my head.

I've worked with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks for four years.

I found Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks stable. I'm impressed by its stability. I cannot recall any downtime with the solution. I rate it as eight out of ten, stability-wise.

I found Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks scalable, and it's an eight out of ten for me, scalability-wise.

The technical support for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks was very good. I would rate its technical support eight out of ten.

Positive

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is what my company has. It's the solution my company wants to use.

I was involved in the deployment of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, and I found its initial setup straightforward. It took a few months to deploy the solution.

Our team deployed the solution.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks has helped the company save some money. Cost-wise, it's okay.

I advise others who may want to implement Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks to check it in a test environment first to ensure it does what they expect.

My rating for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, overall, is eight out of ten.

Our primary use case for this solution is for CWP, CSPM, and scanning for run time. We also use it for monitoring mode and pipeline integration.

This solution has helped our organization by allowing us to have all the products integrated with the service now. This solution helped us by allowing us to schedule and fix things. This is not an easy thing if you're managing 1,000 plus resources.

The most valuable feature for me is the CSPM.

I think Prisma Cloud could improve its preventive governance policy and CWP run time modules.

I have been using this solution for about three years. 

I would say that this solution provides security spending in multi and hybrid cloud environments.

Regarding the comprehensiveness of this solution for protecting the full cloud-native stack, I would say that CSPM is suitable for postal security management, but other than that, there are a lot of pros and cons. We cannot say for 100% that this works for everything on the cloud.

Regarding Prisma Cloud, I would say it has helped us take a preventive approach to cloud security and that it works quite well.

Prisma Cloud provides the visibility and control that we need in the network overall, but the levels of visibility and control vary depending on the module. We need to have the solution integrated with the different tolls, which is quite complex. Our confidence in security and compliance postures is good overall in terms of complaints.

Prisma Cloud has enabled us to integrate security into our Ci/CD pipeline and as touch points into existing DevOps processes. When it comes to the seamlessness of the dash points in our DevOps and touchpoints, there are pros and cons, but a lot of the things have to do with the vendor itself and that's where the challenge is. The integrations are critical because we need to have a lot of talks with Prisma to sort out all those issues.

When it comes to this solution providing us with a single tool to protect our cloud resources and applications without having to manage our security and the compliance report, I would say it's fine with the organization. We plan to move in the future when we move the workloads into the cloud more and more, and we will think about it when we see how it will behave with more workloads and that's when we will discuss it all.

Prisma Cloud provides risk clarity at runtime across the entire pipeline showing issues as they are discovered during the billing basis. But other tools have more capability than Prisma for governance policies. Our developers can correct Prism's governance policies using the tools they use to code and only once they have indicated the safety pipeline, they will get the others to make it a bit more visible and fix vulnerabilities before moving to production.

We are currently using almost all modules of this solution.

I would say that Prisma Cloud has helped us reduce runtime alerts.

I would say that Prisma Cloud has helped us save money because it allows us to have information on the threat before it happens.

I would rate this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The solution is reliable.

The solution is scalable.

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

Positive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten. 

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

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

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

My company provides solutions for Cisco customers and helps them secure their cloud environments. Most of our clients are adapting to the cloud, and we're trying to resolve vulnerabilities in their configurations. I use all of the Prisma Cloud modules but have expertise in the CSPM and CWP modules. We work with SMEs but also have some enterprise clients. 

Using Prisma Cloud has improved customer satisfaction. Our customers are happy with the solution and the level of security we can provide with this. Prisma can secure a cloud-native development cycle. We can configure Prisma to run a scan before we build the images. 

Prisma is known for its visibility and comprehensiveness. It provides insight into our entire inventory of assets and everything happening in our multi-cloud or hybrid environments. We want to know all the services working in our environment and who is accessing them. 

It provides a single tool for protecting all cloud resources without the need to reconcile compliance reports. All of our reports come into Prisma's CSPM module via the APIs. It's easy to get the reports coming into CSPM. We can get the inventory, asset, and alert reports containing all of the alert notifications coming into the CWPP and the reliability and compliance. It has enhanced our overall reporting experience. We can do a deep dive into alerts from various integrated third-party applications and get alerts sent via email or SMS text to keep track of any incidents in our environment.

My favorite feature is the CWPP module. We can define various kinds of rules for vulnerabilities, incidents, or suspicious activities. Prisma Cloud covers various cloud providers, including AWS and GCP. It covers every cloud on the market. 

Many customers in finance, healthcare, and other industries are adopting cloud or hybrid environments. Some of them are using GCP, AWS, and Azure services together, and Prisma is compatible with all of them.

Prisma's ability to protect a fully cloud-native stack is comprehensive. We benefit from Palo Alto's technical knowledge, training sessions, and learning programs to develop robust solutions for our customers. Prisma's automation features are helpful. We can set up automated remediation, messaging, and alerts. The CSPM module can be automated directly, and we can automate runtime rules in the CWP module. We can also automate some code scanning. 

Prisma is integrated into our CI/CD pipeline through the CWP module. We can load the images into Azure DevOps and scan them for vulnerabilities or compliance issues. We can block the vulnerabilities or disable the application so it cannot run with the vulnerabilities in place. 

Runtime alerts are among the best capabilities. In CWP, we have to block malicious or suspicious activities to stop the incoming attacks against our workloads. Using various templates, we can reduce our runtime alerts by 60 to 70 percent. 

I have some challenges customizing and personalizing some of the capabilities in the CSPM in terms of new policies and services. We have to reconfigure and rebuild the CSPM.

I have used Prisma Cloud for around three years. 

I rate Prisma Cloud nine out of 10 for stability. 

I rate Prisma Cloud nine out of 10 for scalability.

I rate Palo Alto support 10 out of 10. They come and help us a lot. 

Positive

Deploying Prisma Cloud is straightforward. We received some training from Palo Alto's technical team. The deployment time varies depending on the client and the modules you deploy. It may take a few weeks or a couple of months. After deployment, Palo Alto handles the maintenance. They notify us by text or email when there will be a scheduled maintenance window. 

I'm not involved on the financial side, but I know that Prisma Cloud isn't cheap. 

I've seen some other solutions with CSPM and CWP capabilities, but they do not have the same coverage of multi-cloud or hybrid environments. That's an area where Prisma stands out from its competitors. 

I rate Prisma Cloud 10 out of 10. 

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

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

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

The product provides very good network security.

The support has been very prompt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I've been using the solution for three years.

We've had no issues with the stability. 

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

We haven't had any issues with scaling. 

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

Positive

We did not use a different solution. 

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

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

Maintenance is required on a monthly basis.

We had a consultant help us with the implementation.

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

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

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

We're Prisma Cloud customers. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neutral

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The only module we are using is the compliance module.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One definite area for improvement is the auto-remediation or the CWP area. 

The second one is the RQL language. It is still not very flexible and does not cover a lot of use cases. The RQL language could be dramatically improved to add more options. The cloud is adding more and more complexity in terms of number of services or the number of options for each service, especially when it comes to security options like encryption at rest and encryption in transit. And there is the issue of the interlinking of these services. One cloud service uses another cloud service, like CloudFront in front of a load balancer. These interactions are creating numerous new combinations and the RQL language really needs enhancement to handle those queries. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Positive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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