Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks are cloud security solutions. Defender is a Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) focused on securing access to cloud applications, while Prisma Access is a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform that offers broader network security functionality, including CASB capabilities. While they have some overlap, they can also be considered complementary solutions.
The summary above is based on 63 interviews we conducted recently with Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"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."
"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 solution is stable."
"The product helps us with privileged identity management to control who has access to what and for how long."
"Defender helps us control which applications are being used and gain more security insight into remote and hybrid users based on user identity and log in location. You can also integrate Defender for Cloud Apps with Defender for Endpoint to extend its capabilities."
"Defender's integration with our identity solutions is critical in our current setup."
"The feature that helps us in detecting the sensitive information being shared has been very useful. In addition, the feature that allows MCAS to apply policies with SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive is being used predominantly."
"All of the features are valuable because all of the features are related."
"Better logging allows us to find problems and take appropriate steps to lock them out."
"If your business requirements are relatively simple, it can get the job done."
"Threat detection is its key feature, and that's why we use this tool. It gives an alert if a PC is attacked or there is any kind of anomaly, such as there is a spike in sending emails or we see an unauthorized website being accessed. So, it keeps us on our toes. We get to know that there is something wrong, and we can isolate the user and find any issues with it. So, threat detection is very robust in this tool."
"The product's initial setup phase is simple."
"The tool's consolidation is pretty quick."
"It is easy to use, easy to integrate, and is stable. It's scalable as well."
"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."
"The solution also provides traffic analysis, threat prevention, URL filtering, and segmentation. That combination is important because it enhances the protection and makes the traffic more secure. It also keeps things more up-to-date, enabling us to deal with more of the current threats."
"This solution provides a DLP on the cloud and very few people have a scanning device for data at rest."
"Its hands-off security and the fact that we don't have to maintain it are the most valuable features."
"Palo Alto Firewall is one of the best firewalls in the world."
"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."
"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."
"I would like more customization of notifications. Currently, you either get everything or you get limited information. I would like to have something in between where we can customize the data that is included in notifications."
"I want them to enhance in-session policy."
"Generally, the pricing can always be improved along with the management system."
"Defender for Cloud Apps could come with more configured policies out of the box. Also, integration could be easier. Integration is moderately difficult because Microsoft hasn't developed a solution that unifies device onboarding and management. You have to use Intune to manage devices and Defender for Endpoint to enforce policies. They need to fix their integration, but I believe they will straighten it out by the end of the year."
"Sometimes the support is actually lacking."
"Defender for Cloud apps is primarily useful for Azure apps. It has limited capabilities for applications based on other cloud platforms."
"This service would be better if it had a separate license, only for this service, that could be used to track usage."
"There could be more granular roles that are out of the box included in the product."
"The user interface could be better. They need to work a little bit on the console. It is similar to their firewalls but not exactly. They need to clean it up a bit."
"When we deploy firewall rules via Panorama, we find it's a little bit slow. We have a global environment and might have 100 gateways or VPNs in the cloud. When we deploy something, it tries to deploy it one-by-one, and that can be slow."
"The BGP filtering options on Prisma Access should be improved."
"The frequency of updates could be reduced."
"There is some particular traffic that the security team wants to filter out and apply their own policies and they cannot."
"They automatically update and they should give us time to fully understand what they're updating so that we can make sure it doesn't impact production."
"Though the monitoring is fine, the solution should improve its application graphs and interface monitoring."
"It applies commits to the firewalls slowly. There isn't an API you can use for anything. We've previously had trouble with the egress IP addresses though we expressed to engineering that those mustn't change. They changed several times without warning, causing a lot of headaches."
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Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is ranked 2nd in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) with 30 reviews while Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is ranked 3rd in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) with 59 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is rated 8.4, while Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps writes "Integrates well and helps us in protecting sensitive information, but takes time to scan and apply the policies and cannot detect everything we need". On the other hand, 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". Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Cisco Umbrella, Netskope , Qualys VMDR and FortiSASE , whereas Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is most compared with Netskope , Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, Cisco Umbrella, Zscaler Internet Access and Cloudflare Access. See our Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs. Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks report.
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