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Acunetix vs Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Zafran Security
Sponsored
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
18th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) (3rd)
Acunetix
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
19th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (12th), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), DevSecOps (6th)
Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto N...
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
38th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (17th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (23rd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (16th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (14th), Software Supply Chain Security (14th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th), Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) (9th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (9th)
 

Featured Reviews

Reviewer6233 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal
While Zafran Security is already a powerful tool, there are areas where it could be further improved to provide even greater value. One key area for enhancement is the searching capabilities within its vulnerabilities module. By incorporating the ability to create Boolean searches, users would gain the ability to apply more complex filters and customize their search criteria. This would greatly enhance the precision and efficiency with which security teams can identify and prioritize vulnerabilities. Having such tailored search capabilities would save time and resources by narrowing down vast lists of vulnerabilities to those that meet specific parameters relevant to our unique risk environment. Additionally, integrating more robust reporting and visualization tools would be advantageous. Enhanced dashboards that offer customizable visual representations of risk configurations and threat landscapes would facilitate better communication with stakeholders, making it easier to explain vulnerabilities and the rationale behind certain security measures. This would also aid in demonstrating the improvements and value derived from existing security investments to leadership and non-technical team members.
Rahul Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Engineer - Penetration Tester at a government with 10,001+ employees
Identifies vulnerabilities across bulk web applications but needs better support and cleaner reports
The best feature Acunetix offers is the centralized dashboard and the quality of reports it generates, which includes various options for selecting reports and developer options for directly sharing the reports with developers. The centralized dashboard of Acunetix gives visibility into the security aspects of mass applications; for instance, with more than 200 applications, it provides a valuable overview of findings and necessary fixes, along with a high-level summary that helps us achieve compliance through monthly and sometimes weekly scanning. In terms of reporting, Acunetix is excellent because it can generate different types of reports, such as an executive summary report, detailed reports, and developer reports that can be shared directly with developers. Acunetix positively impacts my organization by helping identify outdated libraries and applications, including legacy applications vulnerable to old attacks based on OWASP Top 10, thus aiding in compliance checks for PCI DSS and OWASP. Acunetix provides a centralized report with compliance-related aspects and a vulnerability timeline, effectively helping reduce vulnerabilities and save time.
Nuno-Santos - PeerSpot reviewer
Cybersecurity Analyst at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Has improved real-time threat detection and unified cloud protection through AI and automation
Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is creating some confusion in terms of names because this is recent. They changed the names of the products and are now clarifying their offer. The family of the products is not easy to follow because it's very recent. Regarding the generative AI security tool, I know for sure it's Agentic. Based on my experience with Palo Alto, I can suggest what Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks could make better or what additional functions could be added. This is the best tool in the market. It's not the time to tell what they could do better because it's a recent tool. The market is now adopting it. Our experience doesn't show that they need to do more.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."
"Zafran is an excellent tool."
"Overall, we have seen about eighty-seven percent reduction of the number of vulnerabilities that require urgency to remediate, specifically the number of criticals."
"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."
"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."
"With Zafran Security, it integrates with your security controls, allowing you to take that risk score and reduce it based on the controls in place or increase the risk based on different factors, such as if the issue is internet reachable or if there's an exploit in the wild."
"We use the solution for the scanning of vulnerabilities like SQL injections."
"The centralized dashboard of Acunetix gives visibility into the security aspects of mass applications; for instance, with more than 200 applications, it provides a valuable overview of findings and necessary fixes, along with a high-level summary that helps us achieve compliance through monthly and sometimes weekly scanning."
"By helping me patch vulnerabilities, Acunetix has led to measurable outcomes like time saved and fewer incidents."
"Their technical support has been very active. If I have an issue, I can reach out to them and get an answer pretty quick."
"Our developers can run the attacks directly from their environments, desktops."
"We are able to create a report which shows the PCI DSS scoring and share it with the application teams. Then, they can correlate and see exactly what they need to fix, and why."
"I find it to be one of the most comprehensive tools, with support for manual intervention."
"Acunetix helps reduce the man-days and effort needed for scanning bulk applications through automated assessments, allowing good dashboard visualization that can be reported easily to management, providing complete visibility on vulnerability metrics."
"I have seen several benefits from using Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks: It was easy to use and easy to migrate from the IBM platform."
"The AI and automation features in detecting and responding to high-risk threats are impressive; it's one of the best tools regarding AI technology and unifies security in one platform in real-time, improving vulnerability analysis, incident response, and compliance reporting."
"Overall, Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is a technically strong product, and I rate it ten out of ten."
"I have absolutely seen improvements in our incident close rates, with mean time to detect and respond reduced significantly, sometimes by at least forty to fifty percent."
"Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks has impacted our organization positively by keeping our machines secure and our team using the dashboard to find issues quickly."
 

Cons

"The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvements."
"Initially, we were somewhat concerned about the scalability of Zafran due to our large asset count and the substantial amount of information we needed to process."
"I think the ability to have some enhanced reporting capabilities is something they can improve on, as they have good reports but we have asked for some specific reporting enhancements."
"Tools that would allow us to work more efficiently with the mobile environment, with Android and iOS."
"There was an issue related to updates from the internet."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the way the licensing model is currently is not very convenient for us because initially, when we bought it, the licensing model was very flexible, but now it restricts us."
"I believe Acunetix can improve customer support, as the dedicated support staff are often unfamiliar with problems and troubleshooting, leading to communication gaps that delay issue resolution."
"Improving the handling of false positives would be beneficial because it can be challenging to trust the findings flagged by Acunetix, and those findings must be manually validated."
"Integration into other tools is very limited for Acunetix. While we're trying to incorporate a CI/CD process where we're integrating with JIRA and we're integrating with Jenkins and Chef, it becomes problematic. Other tools give you a high integration capability to connect into different solutions that you may already have, like JIRA."
"While we do have it integrated with other solutions, it could still offer more integrations."
"The vulnerability identification speed should be improved."
"Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is creating some confusion in terms of names because this is recent."
"Some aspects of the GUI can be confusing and make it difficult for me to find certain options or navigate where needed."
"Overall, I rate Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks as an eight out of ten. I think that it could improve on price, as I know that the Google solution has the best price, and this is one of the conditions."
"The pricing is high, making ROI challenging to justify, especially during transitions between solutions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The pricing is a little high, and moreover, it's kind of domain-based."
"Acunetix was around the same price as all the other vendors we looked at, nothing special."
"I would say that Acunetix is expensive because there are products on the market with similar features that are equally or better-priced."
"When compared with other products, the pricing is a little bit high. But it gives value for the price. It serves the purpose and is worthwhile for the price we pay."
"All things considered, I think it has a good price/value ratio."
"When we looked at all other vendors and what they were asking for, to provide a third of what Acunetix was capable of doing, it was an easy decision... But now that it's coming to a cost where it's line with market value, it becomes more of a competition... Acunetix is raising the cost of licensing. It's 3.5 times what we were initially quoted."
"The pricing and licensing are reasonable to a point. In order to run multiple scans at a time, we are going to have to purchase a 100 count license, which is an overkill. Though, compared to what we were paying for, the cost seems reasonable."
"The cost is based on two types of licenses, ConsultLite, and ConsultPlus, as well as the number of domains that are scanned."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Performing Arts
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise17
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zafran Security?
Since we stood Zafran Security up in our private cloud, we handle the maintenance on our side. As we opted not to use...
What needs improvement with Zafran Security?
In terms of areas for improvement, Zafran Security is doing a really great job as a new and emerging company. Oftenti...
What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?
My use cases for Zafran Security revolve around two primary areas. One is around vulnerability management and priorit...
What do you like most about Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner?
The tool's most valuable feature is scan configurations. We use it for external physical applications. The scanning t...
What is your primary use case for Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner?
My main use case for Acunetix is providing a vulnerability scanner for our web application server. I use Acunetix to ...
What advice do you have for others considering Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner?
My advice to others looking into using Acunetix is that it is really helpful to discover the web attacks and have gre...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?
The solution is costly, with high-end capabilities suitable for enterprises. It is less affordable for startups or sm...
What needs improvement with Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?
Regarding areas for improvement, the tool performs its functions well, but frequent name changes across Palo Alto Net...
What is your primary use case for Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?
Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks serves as our primary tool for understanding our assets and performing API integra...
 

Also Known As

No data available
AcuSensor
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Joomla!, Digicure, Team Random, Credit Suisse, Samsung, Air New Zealand
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Acunetix vs. Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.