Amazon Inspector vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks comparison

The compared Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Palo Alto Networks solutions aren't in the same category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #16 in VM , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 3.0% mindshare in the category. Palo Alto Networks is ranked #1 in CNAP , with an average rating of 8.6, and holds a 15.6% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of Palo Alto Networks users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 2025

Prisma Cloud and Amazon Inspector are prominent competitors in the cloud security category. While Prisma Cloud offers a comprehensive multi-cloud security management suite, Amazon Inspector is more focused on vulnerability assessments, mostly for AWS environments, giving Prisma Cloud the edge in broad security applications.

Features: Prisma Cloud provides extensive security across multi-cloud environments, emphasizing workload identity creation and cryptographic identity for communications. It includes components such as RedLock, PureSec, and automated compliance alerting, integrating seamlessly with AWS. Amazon Inspector automates vulnerability assessments, offering detailed insights into vulnerabilities across AWS assets, particularly focusing on EC2 instances, making it effective for vulnerability categorization.

Room for Improvement: Prisma Cloud users would benefit from enhanced documentation, a better user interface, and clearer pricing information. Despite its comprehensive feature set, the complexity and slow updates in security automation could be improved. Amazon Inspector could improve by expanding its real-time monitoring and assessments beyond EC2s, along with introducing automated countermeasures and more comprehensive reporting.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Prisma Cloud supports a wide range of environments from private to hybrid cloud setups, with reliability on integration capabilities. While customer service is generally good, there are reports of inconsistent support across regions. Amazon Inspector, tailored for AWS users, offers straightforward deployment and highly responsive customer support, making it efficient for streamlined AWS integrations.

Pricing and ROI: Prisma Cloud’s pricing is seen as high, yet justified due to its extensive multi-cloud security features, offering strong ROI through productivity gains. However, initial high costs might be a barrier for smaller entities. Amazon Inspector’s tiered pricing is scalable based on usage, presenting a cost-effective solution with rapid deployment benefits and enhanced visibility within AWS environments, especially appealing to businesses already integrated with AWS services.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Inspector vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Inspector vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

March 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 860,592 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Zafran Security

Mindshare comparison

Vulnerability Management

Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)

Featured Reviews

Israel Cavazos Landini

Associate Director IT Security Operations at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

Weekly insights and risk analysis facilitate informed security decisions

I appreciate the weekly insights Zafran provides, which include critical topics for networks and IT security, allowing us to evaluate which insights apply to our environment. The organization score feature is valuable to keep the leadership team updated on how our infrastructure fares security-wise. The applicable risk level versus base risk level feature is beneficial because prior to Zafran, we only used the base risk level, but now understand that risk depends on the asset itself. Zafran is an excellent tool.

Read full review

John D'Arcy

Co-Founder, Professional AWS Cloud Architect at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Automated vulnerability assessments continuously enhance security

The most valuable features probably are the ability to do automated vulnerability assessments, which it does with Amazon Inspector version two. It operates continuously, so as soon as resources are created, it scans them for vulnerabilities. This allows me to pinpoint potential security vulnerabilities and provide actionable recommendations relatively quickly. Larger enterprises usually use Inspector to gather all the vulnerabilities, the CVEs, across all accounts in an AWS organization. The enterprises I work for typically have many accounts in their organization, such as thousands of accounts where I am at the moment. It is a way to gather the vulnerabilities that are present on EC2 instances, container images, and Lambda functions.

Read full review

Mohammad Qaw

Senior Security Consultant at helpag

It gives you one console to see all of your assets, review their configurations, and build your processes

Most customers use Prisma Cloud for visibility and compliance. Prisma has so many features, but many organizations do not use them. They primarily use the visibility part to connect all their cloud accounts and hosts for visibility to see if they are missing any security controls or if they have any misconfigurations. You can connect it to cloud environments such as Azure, AWS, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba, etc., or to an on-prem data center. Prisma Cloud gives you so many options to automate processes related to your daily operations. When it comes to cybersecurity, you can automate things with their existing APIs. They also have out-of-the-box integrations with many solutions. I have not seen any limitations. Everything is customizable. You can do whatever you want, defining the reporting and custom use cases. They recently updated the UI, so it's much better than before.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Overall, we have seen about eighty-seven percent reduction of the number of vulnerabilities that require urgency to remediate, specifically the number of criticals."

"Zafran is an excellent tool."

"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."

"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."

"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."

"The vulnerability discovery is valuable, and they also rank those vulnerabilities for you. So, you could rapidly attack some of the higher, severe vulnerabilities as they pop up, if they do pop up."

"The scalability of the solution itself is unparalleled."

"Amazon Inspector is highly stable, rated ten out of ten, and this stability impacts business security and administration positively."

"I recommend Amazon Inspector because it allows the automation of processes and requires less manual monitoring."

"It operates continuously, so as soon as resources are created, it scans them for vulnerabilities."

"The findings dashboards are neat and easy to understand, offering clear demarcations for different types of findings and detailed insights into specific vulnerabilities and their associated instances. It is not a place where everything is dumped together. It offers an easy-to-understand layout."

"The most valuable feature of Amazon Inspector is the categorization of findings, which filters vulnerabilities by instance, container image, container repository, and Lambda function."

"The automated vulnerability detection aspect is most valuable."

More Amazon Inspector pros

"The most valuable features of the solution are areas like compliance and asset inventories, along with runtime protection."

"The features of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks are overall satisfying, although I would like to verify some aspects."

"We found it to be easy and flexible. We could easily configure it for our needs, and we could spread the Prisma Cloud platform to 16 countries without encountering any kind of problem."

"I like the scanning features provided by Prisma Cloud, including the image scan and source scan."

"It is a good solution. Each team should utilize it. Every good organization is now moving towards or trying to be provider agnostic, so if you are using multiple providers, you should at least give Prisma Cloud a try."

"Syslog CLIs are the best feature."

"It has helped us build confidence in our security and compliance. Prisma Cloud enables us to implement all these SOC 2 compliances and check the security. It provides visibility and control regardless of how complex our environment is."

"One of the main reasons we like Prisma Cloud so much is that they also provide an API. You can't expect to give someone an account on Prisma Cloud, or on any tool for that matter, and say, "Go find your things and fix them." It doesn't work like that... We pull down the information from the API that Prisma Cloud provides, which is multi-cloud, multi-account—hundreds and hundreds of different types of alerts graded by severity—and then we can clearly identify that these alerts belong to these people, and they're the people who must remediate them."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pros

Cons

"Initially, we were somewhat concerned about the scalability of Zafran due to our large asset count and the substantial amount of information we needed to process."

"I think the ability to have some enhanced reporting capabilities is something they can improve on, as they have good reports but we have asked for some specific reporting enhancements."

"The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvements."

"There are challenges associated with the interdependencies in AWS services, like requiring an Active Directory for other services, resulting in additional charges."

"It has automated vulnerability assessment, yet I seek more flexibility in defining custom vulnerability checks tailored to my needs, which is more difficult."

"There isn't too much to improve right now. Scanning on demand or as a part of the pipeline versus a post pipeline solution would be good, but it is not a deal breaker by any means."

"There is room for improvement in the scanning capabilities. I'd like to see broader coverage in terms of the vulnerabilities detected."

"The other point is that the reporting features of Inspector need improvement. For example, I am in an organization with millions of CVEs, and getting an overview of all this is challenging."

"It has a limited scope. So, AWS Inspector primarily focuses on the security of the EC2 instance. So, if your architecture includes other AWS services, then you may need to use additional tools for your comprehensive security assessment. So that is one con. Another is, like, we have a dependency on agents."

"One area for improvement in Amazon Inspector is the automation aspect."

"One major area for improvement is remediation. My team works on remediating findings over time, likely using available patches. However, easier integration with Amazon's patching services would be very helpful."

"Prisma Cloud's application security capabilities should be enhanced."

"Based on my experience, the customization—especially the interface and some of the product identification components—is not as customizable as it could be. But it makes up for that with the fact that we can access the API and then build our own systems to read the data and then process and parse it and hand it to our teams."

"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."

"The first time I looked at Prisma Cloud, it took me a while to understand how to implement the integration or how to enable features by using the interface for integration. That portion can probably be improved."

"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."

"They need to make the settings more flexible to fit our internal policies about data. We didn't want developers to see some data, but we wanted them to have access to the console because it was going to help them... It was a pain to have to set up the access to some languages and some data."

"Prisma Cloud supports generating CSV files, but I would also like it to generate PDF files for reporting."

"Some of the usability within the Compute functionality needs improvement. I think when Palo Alto added on the Twistlock functionality, they added a Compute tab on the left side of the navigation. Some of the navigation is just a little dense. There is a lot of navigation where there is a tab and dropdowns. So, just improving some of the navigation where there is just a very dense amount of buttons and drop-down menus, that is probably the only thing, which comes from having a lot of features. Because there are a lot of buttons, just navigating around the platform can be a little challenging for new users."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"It is scaled as you go. There are probably a certain number of scans per month, and there are tiers. If you're under a certain tier, it is free. The second level is pennies, and then all the way up to like a million. So, it has a tiered pricing program. They're pretty good with your initial scanning, and there is room to scale based on being affordable, but it is fairly cheap. There are no additional costs. They pretty much think about it as a pay-per-scan type model."

"The lowest cost would be around $10 for a few small accounts, however, for thousands of accounts, it could be around $5000 to $6000 dollars per month."

"The pricing is very transparent and clear."

"It's priced according to market standards for its services."

"One thing we're very pleased about is how the licensing model for Prisma is based on work resources. You buy a certain amount of work resources and then, as they enable new capabilities within Prisma, it just takes those work resource units and applies them to new features. This enables us to test and use the new features without having to go back and ask for and procure a whole new product, which could require going through weeks, and maybe months, of a procurement process."

"The licensing cost is a bit high on the compute side."

"If a competitor came along and said, "We'll give you half the price," that doesn't necessarily mean that's the right answer, at all. We wouldn't necessarily entertain it that way. Does it do what we need it to do? Does it work with the things that we want it to work with? That is the important part for us. Pricing wasn't the big consideration it might be in some organizations. We spend millions on public cloud. In that context, it would not make sense to worry about the small price differences that you get between the products."

"The price for Prisma Cloud is reasonable."

"Prisma Cloud is a high-end enterprise solution, making it quite expensive."

"The price is high. In the future, when there are more competitors at the same level with different clouds, maybe the position will be different."

"The pricing of the solution is fair."

"If you pay for three years of Palo Alto, it's better. If you're planning on doing this, it's obviously not going to be for one year, so it's better if you go with a three-year license... The only challenge we have is with the public cloud vendor pricing. The biggest lesson I have learned is around the issues related to pricing for public cloud. So when you are doing your segmentation and design, it is extremely important that you work with someone who knows and understands what kinds of needs you will have in the future and how what you are doing will affect you in terms of costs."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Vulnerability Management solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zafran Security?

The current pricing of Zafran Security is fair overall. They were good to work with to accommodate our organization w...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Zafran Security?

The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvement...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?

Zafran Security is helping reduce the amount of critical vulnerabilities in our environments that require prompt reme...

See all answers

What do you like most about Amazon Inspector?

The integration of Amazon Inspector with other AWS services has enhanced our security. Security Hub is a major asset...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Inspector?

I manage pricing and purchase reserved instances, yet face challenges due to dependencies and lack of options for res...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon Inspector?

There are challenges associated with the interdependencies in AWS services, like requiring an Active Directory for ot...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?

Prisma Cloud helps support DevSecOps methodologies, making those responsibilities easier to manage.

See all answers

What Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform do you recommend?

We like Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, since it offers us incredible visibility into our entire cloud system. We...

See all answers

What do you think of Aqua Security vs Prisma Cloud?

Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valu...

See all answers

Comparisons

Wiz Code vs Zafran Security

Compared 42% of the time

Vulcan Cyber vs Zafran Security

Compared 16% of the time

ServiceNow Security Operations vs Zafran Security

Compared 9% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Zafran Security

Compared 9% of the time

Nucleus vs Zafran Security

Compared 7% of the time

More Zafran Security Competitors

Tenable Nessus vs Amazon Inspector

Compared 21% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Amazon Inspector

Compared 18% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Amazon Inspector

Compared 12% of the time

Wiz vs Amazon Inspector

Compared 8% of the time

Tanium vs Amazon Inspector

Compared 2% of the time

More Amazon Inspector Competitors

Wiz vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 19% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 11% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 5% of the time

Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 4% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 4% of the time

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)

June 2025

Download Zafran Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Inspector

June 2025

Download Amazon Inspector product report

Buyer's Guide

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

June 2025

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

Download Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks product report

Also Known As

No data available

Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto

Overview

Zafran Security integrates with existing security tools to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities effectively, proving that most critical vulnerabilities are not exploitable, optimizing threat management.

Zafran Security introduces an innovative operating model for managing security threats and vulnerabilities. By leveraging the threat exposure management platform, it pinpoints and prioritizes exploitable vulnerabilities, reducing risk through immediate remediation. This platform enhances your hybrid cloud security by normalizing vulnerability signals and integrating specific IT context data, such as CVE runtime presence and internet asset reachability, into its analysis. No longer reliant on patch windows, Zafran Security allows you to manage risks actively.

What are the key features of Zafran Security?

Threat Exposure Management: Utilizes existing tools to prioritize vulnerabilities and manage threats.
Integrative Analysis: Combines security data with IT context for precise vulnerability management.
Real-time Risk Reduction: Enables immediate risk management without waiting for patches.
Hybrid Cloud Compatibility: Functions across diverse cloud environments for comprehensive security.

What benefits can users expect from Zafran Security?

Improved Security: Enhances protection by efficiently identifying and mitigating risks.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces unnecessary patching expenses by confirming non-exploitable vulnerabilities.
Time Savings: Frees developers to focus on root causes by handling immediate threats.
Comprehensive Insight: Offers a holistic view of security threats and vulnerabilities.

In industries where security is paramount, such as finance and healthcare, Zafran Security provides invaluable protection by ensuring that only exploitable vulnerabilities are addressed. It allows entities to maintain robust security measures while allocating resources efficiently, fitting seamlessly into existing security strategies.

Zafran Security

Amazon Inspector is an automated security assessment service that helps improve the security and compliance of applications deployed on AWS. Amazon Inspector automatically assesses applications for exposure, vulnerabilities, and deviations from best practices. After performing an assessment, Amazon Inspector produces a detailed list of security findings prioritized by level of severity. These findings can be reviewed directly or as part of detailed assessment reports which are available via the Amazon Inspector console or API.

Amazon Inspector security assessments help you check for unintended network accessibility of your Amazon EC2 instances and for vulnerabilities on those EC2 instances. Amazon Inspector assessments are offered to you as pre-defined rules packages mapped to common security best practices and vulnerability definitions. Examples of built-in rules include checking for access to your EC2 instances from the internet, remote root login being enabled, or vulnerable software versions installed. These rules are regularly updated by AWS security researchers.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks delivers comprehensive security for cloud environments, focusing on workload protection, identity creation, and seamless AWS integration. Its cloud visibility and control, combined with thorough vulnerability scanning, help maintain robust security across multi-cloud platforms.

Prisma Cloud provides essential capabilities for cloud security posture management, container security, and compliance monitoring. Enterprises utilize it to secure cloud configurations, detect vulnerabilities, and ensure regulatory compliance, spanning AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Its runtime management, identity-based micro-segmentation, and threat detection enhance cybersecurity. Despite needing improvements in documentation, integration complexities, UI, and the need for role-based access control refinement, it remains pivotal for securing assets across cloud infrastructures, particularly with its capabilities for vulnerability scanning and CI/CD pipeline integration.

What are the key features?

Workload Identity Creation: Establishes identities for cloud workloads, enhancing security through precise access management.
Dynamic Workload Protection: Protects applications dynamically, securing resources during runtime.
Integration with AWS Products: Seamlessly integrates with AWS services, maximizing the efficiency of cloud operations.
Automated Forensics: Provides detailed insights through automated investigations and runtime mapping between containers.
Application Dependency Map: Enables compliance and asset management through comprehensive inventory functionality.

What benefits or ROI should users expect?

Proactive Threat Prevention: Enhances security measures with advanced threat detection and prevention.
Cloud Visibility and Control: Offers control across multi-cloud environments, ensuring users maintain a strong security posture.
Prevention Capabilities: Users value its ability to prevent vulnerabilities and threats effectively.
Integration Capabilities: Supports seamless integration into existing cloud infrastructures and CI/CD pipelines.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and retail, Prisma Cloud is implemented to strengthen cybersecurity measures, facilitate regulatory compliance, and enhance governance. Organizations leverage its features to secure sensitive data, monitor configurations, and integrate security processes within CI/CD workflows, ensuring robust protection across complex cloud infrastructures.

Palo Alto Networks

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

betterment, caplinked, flatiron, university of nutri dame

Amgen, Genpact, Western Asset, Zipongo, Proofpoint, NerdWallet, Axfood, 21st Century Fox, Veeva Systems, Reinsurance Group of America

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Inspector vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

March 2025

Free Report: Amazon Inspector vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Inspector vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Amazon Inspector vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report.

We monitor all Vulnerability Management 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.