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Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs iboss comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 2024

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

iboss
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
10th
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
8th
Ranking in ZTNA as a Service
11th
Ranking in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (4th), Web Content Filtering (3rd)
Prisma Access by Palo Alto ...
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
3rd
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
1st
Ranking in ZTNA as a Service
2nd
Ranking in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) category, the mindshare of iboss is 1.6%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is 17.1%, down from 19.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
 

Featured Reviews

Matt Crockford - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless
One aspect we value about iboss is its simplicity. Their customer service is brilliant, and they are super responsive and knowledgeable. It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless. We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times. The user interface is highly intuitive. Our IT team picked it up with minimal training. It's arranged so that it's easy to find where things are. Another advantage is the single pane of glass console, which gives you visibility into what's happening. We're not fully there yet because we haven't implemented zero trust, but we're excited about the possibilities from the demos we've seen. We launched a POC of iboss' ChatGPT Risk Protection feature two weeks ago. AI is a great tool, but you need to be careful what you put into it. My biggest fear is employees inputting sensitive corporate information or customer PII data into one of these chatbots. I was impressed by our trial of the feature. It's exactly what we wanted. Now, when a user goes to ChatGPT, there's a banner warning them not to share information, and we can block conversations containing customer data like bank details and email addresses. I don't want to stop people from using it, but we need visibility. We've only tried it on a test group of 15 people. You can configure it to look for specific keywords or integrate it with your DLP policy if you have that configured
Partha Dash - PeerSpot reviewer
Makes us part of a bigger security ecosystem with updates taken care of for us, but pricing and support need work
There are definitely a number of things that could be improved. One of them is geographic coverage. China is still an issue because the solution does not operate there properly due to government regulations. I believe Palo Alto is trying pretty hard to get into partnerships with Alibaba and other cloud providers, but they do not have the same compelling offering in China that they have in the rest of the world. Businesses that are operating within China have to be very sure to evaluate the solution before making a buying decision. It is not an issue with Palo Alto, rather it is predominantly the result of government rules, but it's something that Palo Alto needs to work on. There is also room for improvement when it comes to latency in a couple of regions, including India and South America. They might have to increase their presence in those locations and come up with more modern cloud architectures. The third area is that, while Palo Alto has understood the essence of building capabilities around cloud technology and have come up with a CASB offering, that is a very new product. There are other companies that have better offerings for understanding cloud applications and have more graceful controls. That's something that Palo Alto needs to work on.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"iboss is pretty scalable. They provide good support. The case managers you work with to coordinate what you need are pretty good."
"The security aspect of the solution, particularly the malware behind it, is excellent. That's something that really helped us out. It's not just a simple proxy that just blocks the insights of potential threats that come on behind it. They do malware detection and that helps us a lot."
"We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times."
"Our primary use case for this product is DLP,"
"The solution has massively improved our security posture, giving us full visibility into what our staff does online."
"Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss."
"iboss is easy to use despite its complexity. Multiple engineers manage it, but it's significantly more straightforward to administer than traditional VPNs and web proxies."
"The features I find most valuable is WildFire, user integration, and the basic technology features."
"There is a system for monitoring the traffic. You can monitor the traffic of the connected people and point out any issues on the connection part."
"The tool's consolidation is pretty quick."
"The most valuable feature of Prisma Cloud-native, in my opinion, is that it assists in identifying, analyzing, and remediating vulnerabilities."
"There are plenty of features this solution provides and the most valuable would be the complete security protection we are receiving. We are provided with similar security that the Palo Alto AWS solution has. This includes features such as a firewall and machine learning AI."
"Prisma Access protects all app traffic, so that users can gain access to all apps and that's very important because we need to be able to access everything. It also allows us to access non-web apps; anything internal that we need access to, we can access."
"It protects all app traffic so that users can gain access to all apps. Unlike other solutions that only work from ports 80 and 443, which are predominantly for web traffic, Prisma Access covers all protocols and works on all traffic patterns... The most sophisticated attacks can arise from sources that are not behind 80/443."
"It's great that we can make sure a machine meets the minimum requirements before users are allowed to log in."
 

Cons

"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"The reporting feature needs improvement."
"The reporting feature needs improvement. It doesn't give you the expected results. It is quite difficult to get the specific reports needed, and it is not as intuitive as the rest of the platform."
"I am currently doing a PoC of the zero trust aspect of it. Compared to other similar solutions, it is hard to get around each feature. It takes a while to get used to it."
"The area I would like to see improvement in is the ability with in the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing. It is kind of there, but it's not perfect. Quite frequently, I receive links that lead me to pages with error messages."
"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."
"My clients would like to see a more feature-rich product."
"The BGP filtering options on Prisma Access should be improved."
"We are using the SaaS offering. We use our applications for microservices. We use Twistlock to scan containers, and it displays these results in Prisma, which is a good feature because we can see vulnerabilities with respect to these containers. We can see everything in a very detailed manner. However, when you have different environments for a single application, such as DEV, QA, PROD, and TEST, all these environments run multiple containers, which can lead to a very high number of containers. In such a scenario, it shows you the alerts for all those containers that have vulnerabilities. If you show the results of all the containers that share the same image, it is not going to add any value. Therefore, they should narrow down the alerts based on a container. It should show information for a single container. Otherwise, the person who is looking at the results gets the impression that he has to fix all these issues. This is something that they can improve."
"They can add some new characteristics. For example, when an incident triggers, they can automatically send a template for a particular match that is related to the policy. We don't have that right now. It is something to improve. There could be more automation for certain actions. For example, for a particular group, it can send an administrator alert to their manager. It was one of the concerns of our customers."
"It's not really Prisma's fault, but when you try to create exceptions you don't really have those abilities. You cannot say, on the management platform, "Hey, for these users I want to create these exceptions." That is one thing that I have gotten some complaints about, and we have faced some challenges there."
"Though the monitoring is fine, the solution should improve its application graphs and interface monitoring."
"I haven't seen any SD-WAN configuration capability. If Prisma Access would support SD-WAN, that would help... SD-WAN devices should be able to reach Prisma Access, and Palo Alto should support different, vendor-specific devices, not just Palo Alto devices, for SD-WAN configuration."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"Prisma Access is a little bit expensive."
"The licensing model for this product is complicated and changes all the time, making it very hard for the user to comprehend the configuration."
"The solution is expensive."
"This is not an expensive product and everything is included with one license."
"It's pricey, it's not cheap. But you get what you pay for."
"There's no reason not to buy the enterprise version that gives you unlimited PoPs, but you must understand the limitations you impose on yourself if you do that. If you go crazy, that allowlist will be too big for Kubernetes clusters."
"The pricing can be difficult because it came to us with another agreement, but it can be negotiated. I highly recommend people to compare this product's performance and pricing against BetterCloud, because I feel BetterCloud is better than Prisma SaaS if they're starting from scratch."
"The solution requires a license and the technical support has extra costs. The licensing model could improve."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about iboss?
Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss.
What needs improvement with iboss?
I have the same complaint about them that I have about other software companies. Sometimes when you call in support, you get someone who is just following a sheet. It feels like a runaround. You fe...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We are a PreK-12 public school district, and we use iboss to filter internet content for our students at home and staff member devices to ensure they do not access inappropriate sites.
What is the better solution - Prisma Access or Zscaler Private Access?
We looked into Prisma Access before choosing Zscaler Private Access (ZPA). Palo Alto’s Prisma Access is a secure access service edge (SASE) designed to deliver network security in a cloud-deliver...
What do you like most about Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks?
The most valuable features of the solution are in the areas of the secure remote access it provides while also being user-friendly.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks?
The pricing is on the higher side, rating it around eight to nine out of ten. While it is justified for its value, there is room for price reduction.
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
Palo Alto Networks Prisma Access, Prisma Access, GlobalProtect, Palo Alto GlobalProtect Mobile Security Manager, Prisma SaaS by Palo Alto Networks, Prisma Access
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
Concord Hospital, State of Colorado, Essilor International, RheinLand Versicherungsgruppe, University of Westminster, Universidade Nove de Julho, SPAR Austria, CAME Group, ZipRealty, Greenhill & Co., IKT Agder, Aviva Stadium, Animal Logic, Management & Training Corporation, Brigham Young University Hawaii, School District of Chilliwack
Find out what your peers are saying about Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs. iboss and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.