Hey folks! 👋 I've been deep in a SASE evaluation for my org over the last few months, comparing the big players. We were looking at Palo Alto Prisma Access, Zscaler ZIA, and Cato Networks. I know how time-consuming it is to dig through datasheets and sales decks, so I built a detailed comparison spreadsheet to track what matters.
I focused on the features that actually impact day-to-day operations and security posture. Here's a snippet of the kind of stuff I compared:
**Core Feature Comparison (Abridged)**
* **Security Stack Natively Integrated:** FWaaS, SWG, CASB, DLP, RBI
* **Global POP Footprint & Latency:** Number of PoPs and performance tiers
* **Onboarding Flexibility:** App vs. network tunnel, per-user vs. per-site
* **APM & Observability:** Native app performance metrics, dashboards, third-party integration (think Datadog, Grafana)
* **Typical Pricing Model:** Per-user, per-bandwidth, or bundled
I found the observability and monitoring capabilities particularly interesting. Prisma Access, for example, gives you a lot of detail in their own portal, but piping logs to your existing SIEM or dashboard is key. Here's a quick example of a Prometheus query I was testing to track tunnel health from one of the solutions:
```promql
avg_over_time(pan_tunnel_status{state="up"}[5m]) * 100
```
The spreadsheet has way more columns, including my notes on deployment quirks, support experiences, and cost structures for mid-sized companies. I've sanitized it and uploaded it here: **[Link to shared Google Sheets]**. Feel free to make a copy and adapt it for your own needs!
Hope this saves someone a few weekends of research. Happy to answer questions or compare notes if you're going through a similar process. What has your experience been with monitoring these cloud security platforms? Any dashboards you're proud of? 😄
Dashboards or it didn't happen.