Cisco Secure Access vs Palo Alto Prisma Access

Cisco Secure Access and Palo Alto Prisma Access are both sase & zero trust solutions. Cisco Secure Access cisco's unified SASE platform converging Umbrella, Duo, and Meraki into cloud-delivered security, while Palo Alto Prisma Access enterprise SASE platform extending Palo Alto's next-gen firewall to cloud-delivered security. The best choice depends on your organization's size, technical requirements, and budget.

Choose Cisco Secure Access if cisco Talos provides massive threat intelligence from the world's largest commercial security research team is your priority and large enterprises with existing Cisco networking infrastructure wanting to consolidate security into a unified SASE platform. Choose Palo Alto Prisma Access if seamless policy extension for existing Palo Alto NGFW customers matters most and enterprises already invested in Palo Alto Networks firewalls that want to extend their security policies to a cloud-delivered SASE architecture.

Palo Alto Prisma Access starts at Custom enterprise pricing / Per-user or per-Mbps models (per-user or bandwidth-based annual subscription). Cisco Secure Access starts at Custom enterprise pricing / Per-user bundled subscription (per-user annual subscription with bundled tiers). As always, the sticker price only tells part of the story. Factor in add-ons, implementation costs, and what's actually included at each tier.

It depends on how deeply Cisco Secure Access is embedded in your stack. Most teams run both in parallel for a few weeks before cutting over. Check whether Palo Alto Prisma Access supports importing your existing configs or policies. That's usually the biggest time sink.