We compared Prisma SD-WAN and Prisma Access across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Prisma SD-WAN provides deep application visibility, centralized control, and the option to utilize local breakouts for internet connections. Prisma Access stands out for its ease of use, advanced security features, and global performance.
Room for Improvement: Prisma SD-WAN has room for improvement in various areas such as routing behavior, alerts and monitoring, and event analysis. Prisma Access could benefit from enhancements in error handling, latency, and integration with other cloud architectures.
Ease of Deployment: Some users experienced issues with existing traffic paths while setting up Prisma SD-WAN, which required several hours or more to resolve. Similarly, the setup process for Prisma Access varied in complexity and duration based on the size and requirements of the organization. While some users found it straightforward, others mentioned the need for expertise and assistance.
Service and Support: The feedback about Prisma SD-WAN's customer service varies. Some customers appreciated the support team's expertise, while others have noticed a decrease in the quality. Prisma Access's customer service has received mixed reviews. Some customers expressed a desire for better technical support, while others have had positive experiences with prompt responses and knowledgeable engineers.
Pricing: Prisma SD-WAN is less expensive than some solutions like Cisco, but Zscaler is even cheaper. Prisma Access is a more expensive solution, but users say the price is justified by its quality and features.
ROI: Prisma SD-WAN reduces costs and downtime while helping customers meet audit requirements. Prisma Access excels in identifying security concerns, seamlessly integrating with various products, and delivering instant value.
Comparison Results: Prisma SD-WAN offers useful features like in-depth application visibility, centralized control, and flexibility in WAN management. It has room for improvement in terms of routing behavior, documentation, and device reliability. Prisma Access is praised for its strong security features and ease of administration. It faces challenges with its user interface, configuration, and geographic coverage. Prisma SD-WAN is considered more affordable than other solutions, while Prisma Access is seen as higher-priced but justifiable for its quality.
"The solution is stable."
"The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade."
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"On the outside, the main differentiation is because Lookout ingest. They have ingested basically all of the apps for the last ten years and all the versions of all the apps, and we have that in a corporate database that allows us to do very large-scale machine learning and analysis on that data set. That's not something that any of the competitors really have the capability to do because they don't have access to the data set. A lot of the apps you can no longer get them because that version of the app is five or six years old, and it just doesn't exist anywhere anymore, except within our infrastructure. So, the ability to have that very rich dataset and learn from that dataset is a real differentiator."
"The protection for web-based applications was helpful for my colleagues who didn't want a particular application on their devices. And the non-web access protection was more for our developers because they were writing and building code on their computers. Prisma Access was able to protect them."
"The remediation process is easy compared to other platforms."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to change the gateway. For example, if there's a problem with a specific region or vendor, we can make modifications. The solution is scalable, and there are different gateways that can be created depending on the demand."
"It has predefined or preconfigured rules, which are getting periodically updated. They are providing continuous improvements and periodically updating all search queries that they are looking for. That is one thing that helps us to stay vigilant and focused. If we query our AWS account for any breaches or vulnerabilities with any of the cloud tests, and it alerts us based on these predefined rules. It also provides an option to configure our own rules, and based on these rules, it can query the cloud trail logs, pull the information, and trigger alerts in real-time. I haven't explored this feature much because there are multiple accounts, and we don't have enough time to explore this feature. It also provides multiple integrations. When vulnerabilities or breaches are happening, you should be aware of them immediately. It provides integration with tools such as Slack, PagerDuty so that you can get alerted as soon as the high severity stuff comes up. For example, you have a security group that has allowed public traffic on port 22. As TechOps, you should be aware of this immediately. You cannot scan each machine or look into all security groups to identify it. So, Prisma helps us and alerts us when this kind of high-priority stuff comes up. It has different statistics, analytics, and graphs for data. The description of alerts is also pretty good. They describe what are the possible causes for this and what are the solutions. From Prisma Cloud, you can directly go to the AWS account. When you click on an alert, a resource, or a resource ID, it takes you to the AWS console where you need to log in. If you are already logged in, it will take you to that instance directly, and you can fix the issue there. I have found this feature very useful."
"It is geographically dispersed, and it sits on top of Google and AWS platforms. Therefore, you don't face the standard issues, such as latency or bandwidth issues, that you usually face in the case of on-prem data centers."
"Prisma Access protects all app traffic, so that users can gain access to all apps and that's very important because we need to be able to access everything. It also allows us to access non-web apps; anything internal that we need access to, we can access."
"It's quite reliable and performs well for users."
"Prisma integrates well with Cortex XDR and Cortex Data Lake. My company has been also using Prisma Access in-house for nearly a year, and it integrates seamlessly."
"It is flexible to use the internet connection via local breakouts without going to data centers."
"Prisma's analytics provide a lot of valuable data. I like the internet health chart that shows latency, dropped packets, MOS for data quality, etc. It also runs a continuous speed test in the background. I've used it multiple times to troubleshoot internet connections when the service provider has attempted to claim nothing is wrong with the circuit. It gives me data to send them showing we're not getting the speed we should, or there is constant packet loss."
"When it comes to supporting large, complex, network architectures, it's a very simple architecture. The main component is the fabric. It's very easy to troubleshoot if there is an issue happening in the underlying network."
"From the main controller, we can administer the customer's devices, QoS, network, and traffic. We can monitor it and we can change and create policies as well as upgrade the software. We can totally control a customer's network from one site, the Prisma SD-WAN portal."
"Prisma supports all of the applications we're currently using."
"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."
"The gateway is available on the cloud which allows you access from anywhere and still connects to your home gateway."
"I like the link monitoring and analytics. These are the features that set Prisma apart from other products. Prisma works well with large, complex networks. One of my clients is a top bank in the United States, and Prisma has performed well for that customer."
"The stability depends on the service from where you access it. Because sometimes, the place you are in, you have Gateway. You don't have Gateway. The gateway is overutilized. At the end, you need to go through their gateways. And this is the key point here. You have a tracking point. If it's not well orchestrated, and it scales up as you add more to the existing team, you will suffer"
"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now."
"Palo Alto needs to improve the GlobalProtect agent to work as a secure web gateway agent, not only as a VPN agent because some companies would want only a secure gateway. They wouldn't want a full VPN. So, Palo Alto has to make the VPN agent work as a secure web gateway agent for those customers who want only the secure web gateway solution."
"I would like to see better pricing and an easier logging process. Also, if there was a way to log a global log, everything could go onto the system. It would be better if there was a third log, otherwise one would have to do everything manually."
"The documentation is generally good, but they could provide a more detailed description of all the configuration steps. I have to search for information or call support. Palo Alto could add more knowledge base articles about configuration with screenshots and walkthroughs. That would be helpful. When configuring a product, you want to see examples of how it is done."
"There should be a dedicated portal or SASE-based solution. They're trying to add a plugin but it needs a dedicated portal because it is now an enterprise solution for multiple organizations. People should be able to directly log in to a dedicated page for Prisma Access, rather than going into a Panorama plugin, and always having to update the plugin."
"I haven't seen any SD-WAN configuration capability. If Prisma Access would support SD-WAN, that would help... SD-WAN devices should be able to reach Prisma Access, and Palo Alto should support different, vendor-specific devices, not just Palo Alto devices, for SD-WAN configuration."
"I would like the solution to support a different type of authentication. We can't configure a secondary method for our portal."
"If you compare Prisma SaaS against other products, such as Cloud Log, it's a little bit tricky to understand, but it offers different functionality that other products don't have. From a user usability point of view, you need some training for this product, as an admin, you need a couple of demos."
"It wasn't so satisfying to work with it. There is room for improvement in the policy management. It is difficult to cover the entire scenery through Palo Alto products."
"There are two parallel things that we want Palo Alto to work on. First, customers want a unified appliance that does the work of all firewalls in addition to SD-WAN. Second, the cloud presence should be completely automated. If I purchase the SASE architecture, I shouldn't worry about deployments in Prisma Access or on Prisma SD-WAN. It should be deployed in one go."
"Prisma SD-WAN's technical support should be improved."
"Prisma SD-WAN should provide more flexibility and scalability on the hardware."
"We are incorporating their zone-based firewalls. Prisma SD-WAN has limited documentation on how it manipulates traffic, e.g., how it is interacting with TCP and UDP. We recently had some traffic that was black holing. We literally had to do packet captures to see that the new zone-based firewall, which runs on top of Prisma SD-WAN, was causing issues."
"The only con is the pricing because it's more premium."
"I'd like to see them move more towards CASB."
"Sometimes, during the product's initial setup phase, bypass pair or couple ports don't come up normally, and it requires an hour and a half to troubleshoot to reset the box from Prisma SD-WAN to factory default."
"Prisma could be a little cheaper."
More Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks Pricing and Cost Advice →
Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is ranked 1st in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) with 58 reviews while Prisma SD-WAN is ranked 10th in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) with 12 reviews. Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is rated 8.2, while Prisma SD-WAN is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks writes "Integration with Palo Alto platforms such as Cortex Data Lake and Autofocus gives us visibility into our attack surface". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Prisma SD-WAN writes "A stable tool that offers a good uptime and ensures a return on investment". Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is most compared with Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, Netskope , Cisco Umbrella, Zscaler Internet Access and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, whereas Prisma SD-WAN is most compared with Cisco SD-WAN, Meraki SD-WAN, Fortinet FortiGate, Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform and VMware SD-WAN. See our Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs. Prisma SD-WAN report.
See our list of best Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) vendors.
We monitor all Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.