Cloud Security Compare

Buyer note

Six CNAPP comparison myths, checked against vendor pages

Cloud Security Compare editors · · Editorial assessment

The short version

Six assumptions come up again and again when buyers compare cloud security platforms, and each one is out of date or only half true. Agentless-first vendors now sell sensors, Wiz states it remains multicloud under Google, Prisma Cloud has become Cortex Cloud, a free posture tier is not a CNAPP, open-source familiarity is not commercial fit, and a higher total does not make a vendor better at everything.

Myth 1: do agentless platforms have no agent?

They do have one. Both agentless-first leaders sell a sensor. Wiz connects by cloud API and adds the Wiz Sensor, which is eBPF-based and, Wiz states, blocks threats on VMs, containers and serverless containers. Orca Security's SideScanning reads workload block storage without an agent, and the optional Orca Sensor, also eBPF-based, can be configured to terminate processes. The reverse holds too: Upwind and CrowdStrike, both sensor-first, also scan without agents. Every platform we compare now does both; what differs is where the design starts. See Agentless vs agent-based.

Myth 2: does Google owning Wiz make it a Google Cloud product?

Not on Wiz's account. Google completed its acquisition of Wiz on 11 March 2026, after announcing the $32 billion deal on 18 March 2025, and Wiz states it remains a multi-cloud platform across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and OCI. Wiz has kept shipping under its own name since, including Penetration Test Findings, generally available from 19 August 2026, and GovRAMP High authorization for Wiz for Gov on 10 September 2026. What a buyer on another cloud cannot read from public pages is how commercial terms will develop, which is why it belongs in the contract rather than in a score. See Wiz alternatives.

Myth 3: is Prisma Cloud still a separate product?

No. Palo Alto Networks announced on 13 February 2025 that Prisma Cloud was merged with Cortex CDR to form Cortex Cloud, and that Prisma Cloud customers would upgrade to Cortex Cloud. Comparisons built on Prisma Cloud reviews from before 2025 describe a product that is no longer sold in that form. We score Cortex Cloud and keep "Prisma Cloud" in page names only because buyers still search for it. See Wiz vs Prisma Cloud.

Myth 4: does Defender for Cloud give you a CNAPP for free?

Only the posture tier is free. Foundational CSPM covers posture. Attack path analysis, the cloud security explorer, agentless VM and secrets scanning, agentless Kubernetes discovery, code-to-cloud mapping and AI-SPM are in the paid Defender CSPM plan, and agentless server scanning sits in Defender for Servers Plan 2. From 27 October 2026, Foundational CSPM also becomes opt-in for new Azure subscriptions. Defender for Cloud is still the only platform here with public per-resource pricing, which is why it leads our pricing transparency criterion, but compare the plans you would need, not the free tier. See Orca vs Microsoft Defender.

Myth 5: if your team runs Falco or Trivy, is the vendor behind it the natural choice?

Familiarity helps, but the commercial platform is a different product. Falco, created by Sysdig, is a CNCF graduated runtime detection project; Trivy is an Apache-2.0 scanner maintained by Aqua Security. Both can be run on their own. Sysdig Secure and the Aqua platform add management, policy, prioritization and response on top, and those are what a purchase buys. Test the commercial product against your requirement, not the open-source project you already know. See Sysdig vs Aqua.

Myth 6: is the vendor with the higher total better at everything?

No. Totals average away the differences that decide most purchases. Wiz has the highest total in our matrix (4.4) and still trails six vendors on runtime protection depth. Orca Security is second overall (4.2), leads agentless coverage, and has the lowest runtime score of the nine (3.8). Microsoft Defender for Cloud ties for third and leads pricing transparency by a wide margin. The right comparison is the criterion you weight most, which is why every head-to-head on this site shows one bar per criterion and the score calculator lets you apply your own weights.

How did we check these?

Each fact above comes from the vendor's own product pages, documentation or press releases, reviewed in September 2026 and listed below. The scores are our editorial assessment of that material, not the result of testing the products.

Sources

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