Cisco Secure Workload vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks comparison

The compared Cisco and Palo Alto Networks solutions aren't in the same category. Cisco is ranked #8 in CDCS , with an average rating of 9.5, and holds a 11.5% mindshare in the category. Palo Alto Networks is ranked #2 in CNAP , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 12.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of Palo Alto Networks users who would recommend it.

Cisco Secure Workload

Read 15 Cisco Secure Workload reviews

4,501 Views
3,151 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...

Read 113 Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks reviews

21,981 Views
11,210 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Cisco Secure Workload

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 11, 2026

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and Cisco Secure Workload are software products competing in the cloud security solutions category. Based on data comparisons, Prisma Cloud seems to have the upper hand in customer satisfaction related to pricing and support, whereas Cisco Secure Workload features appear stronger and perceived as worth the investment.

Features: Prisma Cloud includes comprehensive security coverage such as web application and API security, identity security, and compliance monitoring. Cisco Secure Workload provides robust workload protection, micro-segmentation, and innovative threat detection capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Prisma Cloud may improve its feature set to align with feature-rich competitors. Some users suggest enhancements in integration capabilities and in-depth real-time monitoring features. Cisco Secure Workload might improve user experience with easier policy configuration, enhance scalability, and provide more detailed documentation to simplify complex deployments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Prisma Cloud offers straightforward deployment and harmonizes seamlessly with existing infrastructure, supported by solid customer service. Cisco Secure Workload, while offering sophisticated features that contribute to complex deployments, benefits from expert guidance and solutions. Those prioritizing swift deployment may favor Prisma Cloud, whereas Cisco’s services support tailored requirements effectively.

Pricing and ROI: Prisma Cloud typically provides a more competitive setup cost with efficient ROI due to its broad security coverage and resource management. Conversely, Cisco Secure Workload may have higher initial expenses, justified by its enhanced capabilities and deliverance of premium solutions targeted at specific security needs.

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

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

March 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 881,114 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

Cisco Secure Workload

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud and Data Center Security (8th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (14th), Microsegmentation Software (4th), Cisco Security Portfolio (7th)

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

113

Ranking in other categories

Web Application Firewall (WAF) (8th), Container Security (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Cisco Secure Workload is designed for Cloud and Data Center Security and holds a mindshare of 11.5%, down 13.3% compared to last year.
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP), holds 12.8% mindshare, down 19.7% since last year.

Cloud and Data Center Security Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cisco Secure Workload	11.5%
Illumio	19.5%
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation	18.8%
Other	50.2%

Cloud and Data Center Security

Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks	12.8%
Wiz	20.2%
Microsoft Defender for Cloud	9.8%
Other	57.2%

Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)

Featured Reviews

Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

Discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map

We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration allows Cisco Secure Workload to learn about our networks and network tags, providing valuable insights into vulnerabilities related to the operating system and various applications installed on our servers. Recently, Cisco announced a new product called HyperShield, an AI-based autonomous micro-segmentation solution. While Cisco has not stated that HyperShield will replace Cisco Secure Workload, it represents a natural evolution for the company. HyperShield features dynamic policy discovery and enforcement; however, once policies are enforced, they do not change until a discovery occurs, requiring a re-enforcement process. This new platform operates autonomously, minimizing the need for user or security engineer intervention. I would have expected Cisco to incorporate more automatic discovery and enforcement features within the existing Cisco Secure Workload product. Instead of enhancing the current product, they have introduced a new solution. Cisco plans to honor existing Tetration licenses, allowing users to transition to HyperShield without additional costs, reflecting the investment enterprises have already made. From Cisco’s perspective, this represents a natural progression in their product line. While the product name changes, it seems more of a rebranding effort. The enhancements are greater autonomy, improved discovery, and automatic enforcement, which are now being introduced in HyperShield. Cisco Secure Workload offers automatic policy enforcement but cannot adjust policies dynamically as the application needs to change. Having used the platform for the past five years, the recent announcement has been reassuring. Cisco has confirmed that our investment in the platform will not go to waste. They will honor our existing licenses, providing a natural migration path to the new solution without any disruption

Read full review

reviewer2776578

Cyber Security Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Image scanning has supported consistent security practices during cloud deployment

On a scale of ten, we would say people are happy with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks for the part we use. People are okay with it. We probably would give an eight. We don't give ten because if we don't use the other parts of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, it's because it was difficult to implement from an operational point of view. We could have deployed the runtime monitoring with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, but within our organization at our company, it was very difficult to find who would be the owner for the alerts. People have other tools and in the end, we don't use the full capabilities of a product that we pay for. It's partially related to the difficulty to integrate Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks runtime in our company's support process. We don't use the real-time monitoring part of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks. We don't know about the automated remediation feature of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks.

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

"Scalability is its most valuable feature."

"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is security."

"It's stable."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network."

"The product provides multiple-device integration."

"The product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."

"The only use case I can see that makes sense is micro-segmentation. I think there are other use cases for it. The main purpose of the product is to do micro-segmentation by collecting IP. That could be done by installing an agent, and then you have all the communication coming in and out. You could also use some flow sensors installed in the network that receive a copy of the traffic and then report that back to the system."

More Cisco Secure Workload pros

"Prisma Cloud's most valuable asset is its ability to provide detailed visibility into container activity."

"I would rate Prisma Cloud a ten out of ten."

"Prisma Cloud provides the needed visibility and control regardless of how complex and distributed the cloud environments become."

"The most valuable feature is the continuous cloud compliance monitoring and alerting."

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

"Prisma Cloud's inventory reporting is pretty good."

"The opportunity in our company is good because we are already using Red Hat at different stages of cloud computing."

"It scans our containers in real time. Also, as they're built, it's looking into the container repository where the images are built, telling us ahead of time, "You have vulnerabilities here, and you should update this code before you deploy." And once it's deployed, it's scanning for vulnerabilities that are in production as the container is running."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pros

Cons

"The interface is really helpful for technical people, but it is not user-friendly."

"I'd like to see better documentation for advanced features. The documentation is fairly basic. I would also like to see better integration with other applications."

"The emailed notifications are either hard to find or they are not available. Search capabilities can be improved."

"It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."

"There is some overlap between Cisco Tetration and AppDynamics and I need to have a single pane of glass, rather than have to jump between different tools."

"They should scale down the hardware a bit. The initial hardware investment is two million dollars so it's a price point problem. The issue with the price comes from the fact that you have to have it with enormous storage and enormous computes."

"The multi-tenancy, redundancy, backup and restore functionalities, as well as the monitoring aspects of the solution, need improvement. The solution offers virtually no enterprise-grade possibility for monitoring."

"Secure Workload is a little complicated to use, and the dashboard isn't intuitive, so it takes a while to learn how to use it."

More Cisco Secure Workload cons

"The Application Security dashboard was not as user-friendly as the Cloud Security dashboard."

"They can improve the integrations into the SDLC lifecycle."

"We have discovered that Prisma is not functioning properly with GCP."

"It provides all the cloud details but is not entirely linked to the compute model."

"They should improve the user experience."

"There needs to be a mechanism that allows me to manually configure compliance more easily."

"A couple of exporting functionalities should be more user-friendly because if I want to export something, I can get a lot of data visible to that particular CSV."

"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."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Regarding price, Cisco Secure Workload can be expensive if you don't have a budget. If you're not doing micro-segmentation, every extra security measure or enforcement you're putting on top of your existing environment will be an extra cost. It's not a cheap solution at all. But from my point of view, if you need to do micro-segmentation, this is one of the best tools I've seen for it. I can't compare that to Microsoft's solution because I haven't looked into it. I've looked into VMware and Cisco. Those are the only two that I know of. I didn't know that Microsoft could do micro-segmentation at all. Maybe they can, but I haven't heard anything about it."

"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."

"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."

"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."

"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."

"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."

"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."

"This solution is good for a company with at least 400 people that must be connected remotely. For smaller companies, it can be too expensive."

"In general, Prisma Cloud is much cheaper than cloud-native services."

"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."

"Its price is reasonable as compared to other products. The main challenge is explaining the licensing model to customers. It isn't a problem related to Palo Alto. Commonly, people don't understand cloud licensing or security licensing. When they have fixed virtual machines, they know what they are going to be charged, but when it comes to cloud automation, it is hard for them to get clarity in case of high workloads or when they have enabled auto-scaling, etc. It would be helpful if Palo Alto can educate people on their licensing programs."

"The pricing structure is easy to understand. Depending on the use case the pricing of the solution can be different. There are not any additional costs to the standard living fees."

"We are encountering some resistance in the African market regarding the cost of Prisma Cloud."

"The price for Prisma Cloud is reasonable."

"The pricing of the solution is fair."

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 Cloud and Data Center Security solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	36
Midsize Enterprise	22
Large Enterprise	56

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Secure Workload?

The product provides multiple-device integration.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Workload?

CloudStrike offers antivirus capabilities and firewall features for servers and VDI but lacks automatic policy discovery. This raises questions about the resources required to discover and write po...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?

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 are able to easily see where our container vulnerabilities lie and and where cl...

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 valuable feature and their speed of integration is very good. The initial setup was ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Illumio vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 18% of the time

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 15% of the time

Cisco Hypershield vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 14% of the time

VMware NSX vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 10% of the time

Wiz vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 2% of the time

More Cisco Secure Workload Competitors

Wiz vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 11% of the time

Cyera vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 8% of the time

Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 6% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon 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

Cisco Secure Workload

January 2026

Download Cisco Secure Workload product report

Buyer's Guide

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

January 2026

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

Download Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks product report

Also Known As

Cisco Tetration

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

Overview

Cisco Secure Workload is a cloud and data security solution that offers a zero-trust policy of keeping an organization’s application workloads safe and secure throughout the entire on-premise and cloud data center ecosystems.

Cisco Secure Workload will consistently provide protection by discovering workload process anomalies, stopping threats immediately, minimizing the risk threat surface, and aborting any lateral movement.

Today’s ecosystems are very elastic, and in the application-focused dynamic of today’s aggressive marketplace, Cisco Secure Workload delivers a robust security solution that works effectively with today’s most popular applications. The solution uniquely surrounds each and every workload to ensure organizations are able to keep their data, network, and applications safe and secure at all times. Cisco Secure Workload ensures that enterprise organizations can maintain secure applications by consistently building firewalls around every workload level throughout the entire ecosystem. The solution can manage applications that are deployed on containers, virtual machines, or bare-metal servers.

Cisco Secure workload is able to meet an organization's busy needs and offers flexible options such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and on-premises options. Using the Secure Workload SaaS options, users receive all the benefits of Cisco Secure Workload protection without the hassle of having to deploy and maintain the platform on premises. Users are responsible for acquiring the necessary software licensing and deploying software agents. Using SaaS, Secure Workload runs in the cloud and is operated and maintained by Cisco. This option offers the ability to scale easily and is a popular choice for SaaS-first and SaaS-only clients. Many organizations find they get the best TCO and achieve the best productivity and profitability using the SaaS options.

When choosing on-premises options, organizations choose between hardware-based appliance models (large or small form factors). Platform selection is dependent on scalability goals, the desired fidelity level of flow telemetry, and the actual number of workloads. When a user chooses to configure Cisco Secure Workload for a conversation-only flow telemetry for all workloads, each platform has the capability to scale up vertically twice the default platform scale. Additionally, with Secure Workload, it is possible for the platform to be scaled horizontally in order to satisfy the demands of extra large widely distributed enterprise environments using federation capabilities.

Cisco Secure Workload also provides a robust disaster recovery (DR) tool, which helps to make it a complete, comprehensive solution. The DR allows for continuous restore and backup capabilities that enable users to quickly remediate operations and data to a standby cluster in the event of a drastic failure or disaster.

Reviews from Real Users

“The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage. The telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent. It's complete. You see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network. Other valuable features include vast support for annotations, flexible user applications, machine learning, automatic classification, and hierarchical policies.” - CTO at a tech vendor

Cisco

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks provides comprehensive cloud-native security solutions. It covers dynamic workload identity, automated forensics, and multi-cloud protection, ensuring robust security across diverse cloud platforms.

Prisma Cloud delivers advanced capabilities for managing cloud security across AWS, Azure, and GCP platforms. It offers dynamic workload identity creation, real-time monitoring, and seamless integration into CI/CD pipelines. With automation, centralized dashboards, and enhanced visibility, users effectively manage security misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. While optimizing cloud environments through runtime protection and compliance, Prisma Cloud faces challenges with its navigation, pricing, and limited automation capabilities. Users seek improvements in API security, role-based access controls, and documentation quality, emphasizing the need for enhanced customization and reporting features.

What are the important features of Prisma Cloud?

Dynamic Workload Identity: Enables unique workload identities for security purposes.
Automated Forensics: Offers detailed insights into threats and incidents automatically.
Runtime Protection: Provides ongoing detection and blocking of suspicious activities.
Multi-Cloud Security: Protects environments on AWS, Azure, and GCP simultaneously.
Compliance Management: Assists in meeting regulatory standards across cloud platforms.

What benefits or ROI should users consider in reviews?

Enhanced Security Posture: Strengthens cloud defense lines with proactive monitoring.
Centralized Dashboard: Offers unified oversight of multiple cloud environments.
Efficient Misconfiguration Handling: Quickly identifies and addresses security lapses.
Seamless CI/CD Integration: Integrates security within development workflows.
Improved Visibility: Provides transparent insights into security operations and alerts.

Industries like finance and telecom rely on Prisma Cloud for managing cloud security posture and container security. Teams utilize its capabilities across hybrid and multi-cloud settings to ensure compliance and robust threat protection. Features like misconfiguration detection and runtime monitoring are critical in promoting security objectives in these sectors.

Palo Alto Networks

Sample Customers

ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)

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

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

March 2025

Free Report: Cisco Secure Workload vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

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

DOWNLOAD NOW

881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Cisco Secure Workload vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report.

We monitor all Cloud and Data Center Security 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.