Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

BMC Helix Cloud Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2025

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

BMC Helix Cloud Security
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
29th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (22nd)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (6th), Container Security (1st), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) category, the mindshare of BMC Helix Cloud Security is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is 12.3%, down from 18.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
 

Featured Reviews

GregoireSoukiassian - PeerSpot reviewer
Effectively addresses security concerns but could use enhancement in terms of integration
BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features. It currently consists of separate point solutions that don't flow together as seamlessly as they could. This lack of integration, unlike platforms like ServiceNow, may be due to historical factors. Enhancing this integration would make it a more compelling choice from a business perspective and offer a smoother user experience. In the next release of BMC Helix Cloud Security, I would like to see additional features, particularly AI integration, which has already been announced. AI integration could bring more precision to the platform, making it even more interesting and effective.
Mohammad Qaw - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The features that I've found most valuable are its container security aspect. I also like its vulnerability management tools."
"The cool feature of Helix Cloud Security is that you can do all that — understand and remediate issues — in one dashboard, based on the different policies that are available for security, out-of-the-box."
"The best feature is time to value. With very minimal effort, you are able to have a cohesive view into your security posture on one or multiple cloud accounts, particularly if you are dealing with multicloud. If you have Azure and AWS deployments, you might have multiple subscriptions in Azure and usually multiple accounts in AWS. You may even be doing some GCP work (around Google Cloud Platform). It's very difficult to manage a common set of policies, even less reporting, across multiple subscriptions, accounts, and cloud environments. What BMC Helix Cloud Security does is provide a unified view or single pane of glass as to your baseline. Then, it also facilitates the ability for Level 1 or 2 operations support to take action and report on security vulnerabilities."
"Role-based security is a valuable feature."
"The most valuable aspects of BMC Helix Cloud Security are its security features and regulatory compliance capabilities."
"It's also multi-cloud. You can look at several cloud providers: AWS, Azure, or GCP."
"The support is excellent."
"Prisma Cloud's inventory reporting is pretty good."
"With the query language, we can analyze logs and find out which IPs are malicious. It also provides a graphical representation. It provides the overall visibility and how the traffic is flowing. We can see where the malicious IP is and whether it is an insider threat or an outsider threat."
"Integrating with a CI/CD pipeline and incorporating a vulnerability assessment process are highly effective features, especially when combined with runtime protection."
"Visibility and control are the most utilized features. A dashboard is available to us where we can view different categories. We can see any IAM-related risks, any discovered vulnerabilities, any incidents, or any network-level issues."
"Through Prisma Cloud, we can write Lambda functions, configure policies to check the security posture, and get reports. We can do a lot more."
"CSPM is the most valuable feature."
"The ability to monitor the artifact repository is one of the most valuable features because we have a disparate set of development processes, but everything tends to land in a common set of artifact repositories. The solution gives us a single point where we can apply security control for monitoring. That's really helpful."
 

Cons

"I want the role-based security feature to be improved."
"The UI could be more user-friendly."
"BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features."
"Every organization out there doesn't rely on just one control body. They use FISMA control. They may use HIPAA, CIS, PCI, or SOX, then blend them. One of the things that is now in big demand for BMC Helix Cloud Security is content. That's the next journey in its lifespan, making it easier for the community to share and collaborate on content for security controls that can be measured and remediated."
"We've had some with issues connectors. The connectors have seemed to have caused a little bit of trouble, perhaps with the APIs trying to scan the environment. The only time I've had to reach out to tech support was for that. It seems it may not have been scanning correctly or I wasn't seeing data within a specific time. But we've set up a couple of connectors in the past couple of weeks and they actually scanned the AWS environment and we had data within about 10 minutes. It's working a lot faster and I think they're making improvements as they go."
"One major observation is that it is not possible to implement Prisma Cloud on-premises. This is the limitation. Prisma Cloud itself is on a cloud. It is sitting on AWS and Google Cloud. It is a SaaS solution, but some of my clients have a local regulatory requirement, and they want to install it locally on their premises. That capability is not there, but government entities and ministries want to have Prisma Cloud installed locally."
"One thing that is missing is Cloud Run runtime security—serverless. That would be great to have in the tool. It's not that easy to have Cloud Run in specific environments."
"Technical support could use some improvement."
"The licensing is a bit confusing."
"The UX part of Prisma's user interface could be simplified and the metrics tool should be highlighted more."
"The cloud integration is too complex. It should be simple to integrate Prisma Cloud with any cloud environment. Policy management could also be simpler."
"Prisma Cloud's dashboards should be customizable. That's very important. Other similar solutions are more elastic so you have the power to create customized dashboards. In Prisma Cloud, you cannot do that."
"Sometimes we do get false alerts. That should be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is based on an annual subscription, upfront, and it's based on cloud assets. Whether your assets are in Azure and AWS combined, the tool tells you how many assets are being scanned and that's the number used for pricing."
"It is a subscription model with term licensing that is usually yearly. This includes, not only the product, but support and maintenance. It is based on cloud assets. Therefore, if you have 100 cloud assets, those cloud assets are measured based on evaluation or transactions. For example, if I'm evaluating that cloud asset for CIS compliance, PCI compliance, and AWS best practices, that asset gets evaluated three times, as those are three transactions. However, the license model is based on peak asset usage. So, over a year, if you deploy 100, 1000, 500, and then 2000 assets, you will be charged for the 2000 peak of assets managed by Helix Cloud Security."
"The purchasing process was easy and quick. It is a very economical solution."
"You can expect a premium price because it is a premium quality product by a leading supplier."
"In general, Prisma Cloud is much cheaper than cloud-native services."
"Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is a highly expensive solution."
"I don't know a better way to do it, but their licensing is a little confusing. That's due to the breadth of different types of technologies they are trying to cover. The way you license depends on where you're securing. When they were Twistlock it was a simple licensing scheme and you could tell what you were doing. Now that they've changed that scheme with Palo Alto, it is quite confusing. It's very difficult to predict what your costs are going to be as you try to expand coverage."
"Regarding Prisma Cloud's pricing, we started small, and then we just kept on growing."
"Almost all the CSPM tools are pretty expensive."
"We are encountering some resistance in the African market regarding the cost of Prisma Cloud."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solutions are best for your needs.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Performing Arts
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BMC Helix Cloud Security?
The most valuable aspects of BMC Helix Cloud Security are its security features and regulatory compliance capabilities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BMC Helix Cloud Security?
I would rate the price of BMC Helix Cloud Security as a seven in terms of costliness. It is not the cheapest option available, as it tends to be more expensive than some competitors, but it offers ...
What needs improvement with BMC Helix Cloud Security?
BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features. It currently consists of separate point solutions that don't flow together as seamlessly as they coul...
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.
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 are able to easily see where our container vulnerabilities lie and and where cl...
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 valuable feature and their speed of integration is very good. The initial setup was ...
 

Also Known As

TrueSight Cloud Security, SecOps Policy Service
Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NHS, Vodafone, Kansas City Life, SKY Italia, Cybera
Amgen, Genpact, Western Asset, Zipongo, Proofpoint, NerdWallet, Axfood, 21st Century Fox, Veeva Systems, Reinsurance Group of America
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Helix Cloud Security vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.