WIZ Cloud Infrastructure Security Platform

My use cases for Wiz  mostly revolve around cloud security posture management, compliance, internal opex reporting, and shift-left security tooling, centered around compliance and cloud security shift-left.

What I appreciate most about Wiz  is that the compliance and CSPM aspects of this cloud-native application protection offering are genuinely better than other products available in the market. Having worked on Prisma, Orca , and Qualys as well, when I compare Wiz with everything else, it definitely has an edge. The graph queries and graph explorer in Wiz are exceptionally well done by their team, giving me a complete view of resources, how they relate to other resources in the account or in other accounts, and how they pose an external threat or risk.

I have created boards in Wiz for internal projects and teams depending on what product line it is, and I have tried creating custom dashboards. My experience with creating custom dashboards is that it is neither easy nor difficult; it is somewhere in between. Obviously, it is not the same as Power BI or any other visualization tool, so I understand it will not be at that level, but it gets the job done. I get a high-level overview of trends of the findings or non-compliant items, and it accomplishes what I need. I also do not expect it to be at that level because that is not what it is built for.

I really cannot think of anything that Wiz can improve, because the use cases I deal with have almost all features that cater to them, so I really do not have anything in mind right now.

One thing Wiz can do better is regarding support for the open-source fork of Terraform  called OpenTofu. Many organizations are moving from Terraform  to OpenTofu to save costs in licensing, but their documentation does not officially state that they are supporting OpenTofu, so that would be beneficial to have. Since it is just a copy of Terraform, it should not be a difficult addition, but that would be a valuable feature.

I have been using Wiz in my career for close to one and a half years.

I have seen some lagging or downtime a couple of times, but I am not sure why it happened. It was just a couple of times, and it did not impact what I was doing.

Wiz is very scalable.

I have contacted Wiz's technical support. The quality and speed of the support are very good; most of the time, I do get the answers I am looking for, and if not, the team works internally. If there is no feature, they raise a feature request for us, so it has been very good. On a scale from 1 to 10, I would give Wiz's support a 10.

The initial deployment of Wiz is very easy for me. The first time I deployed Wiz, it took me approximately 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the availability of the other team. When they are available, I usually get it done within 10 or 15 minutes, or even less than that when we have all the prerequisites ready.

Wiz does require some maintenance on my end, but it is minimal. The maintenance involves configuring connectors for Wiz, and it does require a few permissions for Wiz to scan the cloud accounts and other resources. That is the only maintenance needed, such as adding or updating the role in Wiz if other permissions or services introduced by the cloud provider are not covered.

I have used some alternatives and similar solutions to Wiz. I remember the names of those alternatives; one is Palo Alto's Prisma Cloud, and the other was Qualys' tool, which was kind of a makeshift tool, not a full-fledged CSPM, but they called it CSPM. When I compare Wiz to those tools, I prefer Wiz a lot more because it is definitely a couple of notches above all those tools. They have done much better with their UI, which is very organized, whereas Prisma is mostly a lot of acquisitions and a lot of tools stitched together and offered as a SaaS solution. Not saying it is bad, but Wiz does it better than what they have been doing.

I personally have not worked on Wiz Runtime Sensor, so I cannot really comment on whether it has helped identify active threats more effectively compared to any other solutions that I have used. We have plans, but not yet. I would rate this review overall as a 9.

I have used Wiz  for security findings, which includes dashboards with the main purpose of Cloud Security Posture Management. Wiz  scans all cloud accounts to detect misconfigurations, open ports, publicly exposed resources, and weak IAM  permissions. I also utilize it for vulnerability management, such as VMs, containers, serverless functions, and any IAM  risky visibilities. I use Wiz for all these things as I work on these areas most of the time. Essentially, it is a cloud risk tool that prioritizes the most critical issues, allowing me to address high-yield issues quickly with the help of Wiz's architecture.

Achieving zero critical issues in Wiz means eliminating all critical severity securities across the cloud platform, which is a significant goal for our cloud security teams. I utilize the Risk Graph to identify real critical issues, prioritizing the resolution of public exposures and patching high and critical CVEs. I track OS-level and package vulnerabilities that need fixing, and sometimes when our OS isn't updated, it flags the errors. My processes involve patching libraries, upgrading AMIs, and removing secrets found in workloads, such as rotating keys for public IPs or un-updated software and databases. It is critical to implement least privilege measures for IAM  risks, ensuring admin access is minimized. Moreover, I encrypt all storage and use tags to separate non-production issues according to different environments such as dev, stage, or prod. Utilizing Wiz projects, I segment teams such as network, platform, application, or DevOps so that each team handles their assigned issues, boosting closure speed. I also automate workflows through Jira  to create tickets for critical exposures or IAM  risks. Thus, achieving zero criticals in Wiz reflects my commitment to eradicating public exposures, patching critical vulnerabilities, and addressing IAM risks, ensuring I adhere to cloud best practices.

I love this interface because it is very clean, neat, and easy to understand. It includes the CNAPP  and CSPM security features and extensively uses detection for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations. Everything is present on the dashboard. My personal interest lies in agentless scanning, which I consider the most powerful feature. The unique capability I can highlight is Attack Path Analysis, which identifies the exact path an attacker can exploit by correlating network exposure and any misconfigurations. Additionally, the unified Risk Graph is a very strong feature that helps teams find the most critical issues. I appreciate the accurate prioritization, which saves a great deal of time. Overall, Wiz provides a full CNAPP  platform, encompassing CSPM, vulnerability management, IaC  scanning, and more. I really appreciate these elements, and the dashboard is also very good.

I do not identify many areas for improvement, but I believe dashboard customization is somewhat limited. While the dashboards are quite good, the variety of widget types is restricted; I cannot fully customize colors or create complex multi-level dashboards. There is also alert noise in larger environments that generates duplicate alerts for the same issues under different categories. Furthermore, remediation automation is limited; Wiz suggests fixes but lacks auto-remediation for many issues. Compared to Prisma, the auto-resolve options are fewer. Although I have heard about deeper container and K8s scanning capabilities, I do not have a clear understanding of what that entails. I perceive that real-time cluster events are also somewhat limited. Regarding the reports, I face limitations in fully customizing PDF reports.

I have been using Wiz for more than eight months.

The setup for Wiz is a one-time configuration, similar to setups in ServiceNow  or Ultimatics. This one-time setup ensures proper cloud integration, assessing the type of cloud account, the API permissions in place, and avoiding mistakes during the initial configuration. It highlights any missing requirements, such as IAM roles or permissions, and shows failed connections to allow for quick fixes. Agentless scanning is feasible, so this setup ensures proper configurations are in place. Additionally, it aids the administration in understanding what has been completed versus what remains pending. In summary, it guides onboarding tools to configure cloud accounts, permissions, and integrations accurately and prevents security visibility gaps while reducing onboarding errors.

The deployment time is not measured in days, weeks, or months; rather, it typically takes between five to ten minutes at most. IAM configurations and similar setups may take about two to three minutes.

When comparing Wiz with other solutions on the market, I note that my initial experience was with Prisma Cloud. Wiz stands out for its strengths, particularly in agentless scanning and graph-based risk prioritization, in addition to its comprehensive CNAPP capabilities and multi-cloud coverage. However, I recognize that certain areas, such as runtime threat detection and response, might be handled better by other vendors; while Wiz excels in posture and risk analysis, its runtime protection may not be as advanced as specialized tools designed for workload protection. Other tools might offer better capabilities for behavioral or anomaly detection, as Wiz may not capture the most subtle runtime issues. For instance, scanning public and private buckets requires waiting for scheduled scans or conducting manual scans, which can take significant time to yield updated records. While other vendors might possess better flexibility, the overall effectiveness depends heavily on data size and volume. I observe that legacy security vendor solutions offer mature enterprise support, while newer CNAPP solutions such as Wiz move rapidly but face trade-offs in large regulated enterprises. Overall, Wiz receives high ratings for its innovation and speed, which are great qualities despite some areas requiring improvement. So, in summary, I consider Wiz one of the strongest CNAPP platforms due to its agentless scanning architecture, making it lighter to deploy than competitors such as Prisma Cloud or Lacework . Nonetheless, organizations needing deep runtime protection or specialized identity entitlement management might want to explore other platforms, but I can definitely recommend Wiz for various needs.

For the dashboard itself, it is a very simple and clear function. I generally go to the dashboards to create and add widgets for vulnerability by severity, public exposure, or misconfigurations. I also include widgets such as graphs or tables based on my requirements. I utilize saved views for custom data, which filters the exact information I have in the dashboard, for example, all AWS  EC2  instances with critical CVEs or public-facing VMs with secret keys. Multiple sections include critical compliance and posture scores, and I apply filters at the dashboard level too. Essentially, I have almost everything available in terms of customization. I simply need to understand how to use Wiz dashboard in conjunction with my project requirements. Although Wiz is a relatively new tool and I have only worked on a portion of its capabilities, I can refer to the documentation to successfully carry out the needed customizations.

I find the pricing to be cost-effective, as Wiz includes features that many other vendors lack. It seems reasonable when compared to alternatives. Overall, pricing can vary significantly based on Wiz's licensing of workloads, which depends on the number of VMs, containers, and functions I deploy. However, I can request volume-based discounts for larger deployments, especially if managing numerous workloads. Hence, I classify Wiz as cost-effective.

I notice that redeployment is generally very easy compared to other CNAPP tools because it is agentless. The agentless architecture permits multiple operations without the need for redeployment. I only need to connect to the cloud, set up scans, and ensure workload visibility, making the entire process straightforward.

The results from using Wiz have been quite positive; it effectively reduces alert fatigue within my organization. It is clearly a time-efficient solution, which enhances operational efficiency.

I indeed consolidate tools when using Wiz, effectively streamlining processes to enhance focus on critical risks. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.