Prisma Cloud and AWS WAF offer competitive pricing and effective security measures, with Prisma Cloud focusing on multi-cloud visibility and automation, while AWS WAF is highlighted for its web protection capabilities and seamless integration with other AWS services. Prisma Cloud users value the ease of use and advanced threat detection, while AWS WAF users appreciate the customization options and real-time monitoring features.
The summary above is based on 142 interviews we conducted recently with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and AWS WAF users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The stability of AWS WAF is valuable."
"AWS WAF is something that someone from a cloud background or cloud security background leverages. If they want to natively use a solution in the cloud, AWS WAF comes in handy. It's very useful for that, and the way we can fine-tune the WAF rules is also nice."
"Stable and scalable web application firewall. Setting it up is straightforward."
"The customized billing is the most valuable feature."
"It is Amazon. Everything is scalable. It is beyond what we need."
"The ability to take multiple data sets and match those data sets together is the solution's most valuable feature. The data lake that comes with it is very useful because that allows us to match data sets with different configurations that we wouldn't normally be able to match."
"We preferred the product based on its cost. AWS WAF is an out-of-the-box solution and integrates with the AWS services that we use. It's natively integrated with AWS."
"The most valuable feature is the security, making sure that files are protected, preventing unauthorized users from accessing the system."
"The initial setup is seamless."
"The most valuable feature of Prisma Cloud is WAF (web application firewall)."
"The most valuable feature is its cloud security posture management."
"Prisma Access provides comprehensive security. It provides URL filtering, application control, SSL, DLP, etc. It provides complete security for the cloud environment."
"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."
"The solution's dashboard looks very user-friendly."
"Visibility is a key feature. Integration with other technologies across the board, whether they are Palo Alto technologies, Windows technologies, or cloud technologies, is probably the biggest thing."
"It supports the multi-cloud environment beautifully."
"The solution should identify why it blocks particular websites."
"Technical support for AWS WAF needs improvement."
"The serverless product from AWS WAF could be improved. For example, they have only one serverless series, Lambda, but they should extend and improve it. Additionally, the firewall rules are not very easy to configure."
"The solution is cloud-based, and therefore the billing model that comes with it could be more intuitive, in my opinion. It's very easy to not fully understand how you tag things for billing and then you can quite easily run up a high bill without realizing it. The solution needs to be more intuitive around the tagging system, which enables the billing. Right now, I have a cloud architect that does that on our behalf and it isn't something that a business user could use because it still requires quite a lot of technical knowledge to do effectively."
"We must monitor and clean up the WAF manually."
"It would be better if AWS WAF were more flexible. For example, if you take a third-party WAF like Imperva, they maintain the rule set, and these rule sets are constantly updated. They push security insights or new rules into the firewall. However, when it comes to AWS, it has a standard set of rules, and only those sets of rules in the application firewalls trigger alerts, block, and manage traffic. Alternative WAFs have something like bot mitigation or bot control within the WAF, but you don't have such things in AWS WAF. I will say there could have been better bot mitigation plans, there could have been better dealer mitigation plans, and there could be better-updated rule sets for every security issue which arises in web applications. In the next release, I would like to see if AWS WAF could take on DDoS protection within itself rather than being in a stand-alone solution like AWS Shield. I would also like a solution like a bot mitigation."
"One area that could be improved is the DDoS protection."
"It is sometimes a lot of work going through the rules and making sure you have everything covered for a use case. It is just the way rules are set and maintained in this solution. Some UI changes will probably be helpful. It is not easy to find the documentation of new features. Documentation not being updated is a common problem with all services, including this one. You have different versions of the console, and the options shown in the documentation are not there. For a new feature, there is probably an announcement about being released, but when it comes out, there is no actual documentation about how to use it. This makes you either go to technical support or community, which probably doesn't have an idea either. The documentation on the cloud should be the latest one. Finding information about a specific event can be a bit challenging. For this solution, not much documentation is available in the community. It could be because it is a new tool. Whenever there is an issue, it is just not that simple to resolve, especially if you don't have premium support. You have pretty much nowhere to look around, and you just need to poke around to try and make it work right."
"We'd like to have more native integration with clouds and additional security checks in the future."
"Currently, custom reports are available, but I feel that those reports are targeting just the L1 or L2 engineers because they are very verbose. So, for every alert, there is a proper description, but as a security posture management portal, Prisma Cloud should give me a dashboard that I can present to my stakeholders, such as CSO, CRO, or CTO. It should be at a little bit higher level. They should definitely put effort into reporting because the reporting does not reflect the requirements of a dashboard for your stakeholders. There are a couple of things that are present on the portal, but we don't have the option to customize dashboards or widgets. There are a limited set of widgets, and those widgets don't add value from the perspective of a security team or any professional who is above L1 or L2 level. Because of this, the reach of Prisma Cloud in an organization or the access to Prisma Cloud will be limited only to L1 and L2 engineers. This is something that their development team should look into."
"It can be too expensive for small companies."
"Its security is good. Everything is good, but the way the dashboard responds can be improved. It takes time to implement a policy. If you change only two or three lines and push the policy to make the change work, it takes 20 to 30 minutes even for a small change. That is something very irritating from the implementation perspective."
"They need to improve the API gateway."
"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."
"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."
"While Prisma provides a lot of visibility, it also creates a ton of work. Most customers that implement Prisma Cloud have thousands of alerts that are urgent."
More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Pricing and Cost Advice →
AWS WAF is ranked 1st in Web Application Firewall (WAF) with 52 reviews while Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is ranked 5th in Web Application Firewall (WAF) with 83 reviews. AWS WAF is rated 8.0, while Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of AWS WAF writes "A highly stable solution that helps mitigate different kinds of bot attacks and SQL injection attacks". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks writes "The dashboard is very user-friendly and can be used to generate custom RQL based on user requirements". AWS WAF is most compared with Azure Web Application Firewall, Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, F5 Advanced WAF, Imperva Web Application Firewall and Akamai App and API Protector, whereas Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is most compared with Wiz, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Aqua Cloud Security Platform, AWS Security Hub and SUSE NeuVector. See our AWS WAF vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report.
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