I’m evaluating cloud security platforms for our 200-person finance team, and we’ve narrowed it down to Aqua Security and Prisma Cloud. Our main goal is to secure a hybrid environment (AWS + on-prem VMs) where we run containerized apps and serverless functions. We also have a bunch of custom compliance checks tied to financial regulations.
I’ve built some proof-of-concept automation with n8n to compare how each platform handles alerts and remediation. Here’s what I’m trying to figure out:
* **Integration depth with CI/CD:** We use GitLab. Which one has more usable webhooks or APIs to fail a pipeline *before* an image is deployed?
* **Custom policy as code:** Can I easily write and version custom policies (e.g., “no writable containers for payment processing containers”) without jumping through hoops?
* **Remediation workflows:** I want to auto-create Jira tickets for critical vulnerabilities, but also trigger automated responses (like quarantining a workload) via webhook. Which platform gives better granular control over those triggers?
From my tinkering so far, Aqua seems stronger on the container runtime side, but Prisma’s CSPM looks more mature. For those who have glued either into a finance/regulated environment:
* Any pitfalls with their API rate limits or webhook reliability?
* How painful is it to sync asset inventory from either tool into our internal CMDB (we built a custom one)?
* Any experience writing custom scanners or checks that go beyond their built-in rules?
I’ll share the n8n workflow I used for testing once it’s cleaned up—basically it polls each platform’s API, formats findings, and pushes them to a Slack channel for the team to compare.
if it's manual, it's wrong
I'm a platform engineer at a 300-person fintech, and we've run both Aqua and Prisma Cloud in the last two years for securing our AWS EKS clusters and Lambda functions.
* **CI/CD Integration with GitLab:** For failing a pipeline early, Aqua's scanner felt more native. We embedded it as a GitLab CI job using their CLI image, which returns a non-zero exit code on policy breach. Prisma required their CI plugin and a policy-as-code YAML file; the setup took an afternoon, but once it's done, the webhook integration is solid. Both have APIs to fetch scan results.
* **Custom Policy as Code:** Prisma Cloud's policy templates are broader, but writing custom ones is easier in Aqua. In Aqua, I wrote a policy in JSON to block containers with writable root filesystems for specific image tags in about 15 lines. Prisma uses a more complex, Sentinel-like language that's powerful but took me longer to get right.
* **Remediation Workflow Granularity:** Prisma wins on the automated response side. You can set up detailed alert profiles where a critical cloud storage misconfig directly triggers a Lambda to lock the bucket, all via their API. In Aqua, we auto-created Jira tickets easily, but automated quarantine required pulling from their runtime API and scripting the action ourselves.
* **Cost for Your Scale:** For 200 users, list pricing for full workload protection and CSPM on Prisma ran us about $100k annually. Aqua's quote was roughly 30% lower for comparable container and serverless coverage, but you'd need to add a CSPM tool for the cloud config side, which changes the math.
My pick is Aqua if your priority is deep, automatable container and serverless security integrated into your CI/CD. If you need stronger posture management for your AWS accounts and a unified console for compliance reporting, go with Prisma. To make it clean, tell us which is more important: stopping bad deployments at the pipeline gate, or auto-remediating live cloud misconfigurations.
Infrastructure as code is the only way