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FortiCNAPP vs Sophos Cloud Optix comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 18, 2025

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

FortiCNAPP
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
28th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (42nd), Container Security (32nd), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (19th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (17th), Compliance Management (11th)
Sophos Cloud Optix
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
31st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) category, the mindshare of FortiCNAPP is 2.7%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sophos Cloud Optix is 0.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
FortiCNAPP2.7%
Sophos Cloud Optix0.6%
Other96.7%
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
 

Featured Reviews

SK
Software Engineer at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees
Improving security insights has been helpful but inconsistent vulnerability tracking needs attention
The vulnerability part is not systematically organized; it is all clumsy in the web UI, and it is not user-friendly. Regarding improvements, the vulnerability part, recent changes with user management, and Fortinet IM coming into place, which is not helpful at all because it cuts out the automation part, are the most important things. Lacework FortiCNAPP should have a new clean UI and ease of access for the users as that should be the main concern. There are limitations regarding the scalability of Lacework FortiCNAPP. There are also more limitations with integrations like GitHub or any other pipeline, CI/CD, or ISD. It is glitchy and works well only sometimes, and most of the time, the reports or other things are not properly calculated or circulated with the teams.
Tanzeel Iqbal - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Architect at Testware ApS
Cloud posture has improved and security reports drive ongoing compliance and cost control
I really appreciate most aspects of Sophos Cloud Optix, especially that we can set it up on AWS marketplace without needing to host a new machine. We can use their trial version where we can monitor a small number of resources without any additional cost. Setting up Sophos Cloud Optix on AWS is not difficult at all, also because my team has experience with it, making it very easy and quick to set up a trial version that helps us see the initial posture of our security setup as we grow, and then they charge based on the cloud resources. Sophos Cloud Optix impacts us positively in many ways, particularly in security, which is an important part. It is not just about fixing everything without a clear picture of what we have done to improve security, as there must be a portal explaining our progress, which I really appreciate, and it helps us save time and in optimization for performance and cost. While I have not seen much for cost optimization as we have another great tool for it, Sophos Cloud Optix aids us to set up our infrastructure appropriately, making sure databases are in a private network, and if systems are wrongly set up, it helps us quickly mitigate those issues and provides a report indicating the problem. I am really impressed with the way Sophos Cloud Optix provides its features, so I am not sure about any specific improvements needed. I am really satisfied about the reports Sophos Cloud Optix generates, provided in a PDF format which is very useful for our recording purposes.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is Lacework's ability to distill all the security and audit logs. I recommend it to my customers. Normally, when I consult for other customers that are getting into the cloud, we use native security tools. It's more of a rule-based engine."
"Lacework is helping a lot in reducing the noise of the alerts. Usually, whenever you have a tool in place, you have a lot of noise in terms of alerts, but the time for an engineer to look into those alerts is limited. Lacework is helping us to consolidate the information that we are getting from the agents and other sources. We are able to focus only on the things that matter, which is the most valuable thing for us. It saves time, and for investigations, we have the right context to take action."
"The most valuable aspects are identifying vulnerabilities—things that are out there that we aren't aware of—as well as finding what path of access attackers could use, and being able to see open SSL or S3 buckets and the like."
"The machine learning capability in Lacework FortiCNAPP is used for threat detection, and automated policy recommendation helps to improve my security measures in general."
"Polygraph compliance is a valuable feature. In our perspective, it delivers significant benefits. The clarity it offers, along with the ability to identify and address misconfigurations, is invaluable. When such issues arise, we promptly acknowledge and take action, effectively collaborating with our teams and the responsible parties for those assets. This enables us to promptly manage problems as soon as they arise."
"The best feature, in my opinion, is the ease of use."
"There are many valuable features that I use in my daily work. The first are alerts and the event dossier that it generates, based on the severity. That is very insightful and helps me to have a security cap in our infrastructure. The second thing I like is the agent-based vulnerability management, which is the most accurate information."
"The compliance reports are definitely most valuable because they save time and are accurate. So, instead of relying on a human going through and checking or providing me with a report, I could just log into Lacework and see for myself."
"I find Cloud Optix to be a valuable solution since it provides a single, unified dashboard to monitor cloud assets, such as AWS and Azure."
"Sophos Cloud Optix impacts us positively in many ways, particularly in security, which is an important part, and it helps us save time and in optimization for performance and cost."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos Cloud Optix is the simple way to manage my devices on the network. Additionally, it is easy to navigate and has a user-friendly interface."
"I find Cloud Optix to be a valuable solution since it provides a single, unified dashboard to monitor cloud assets, such as AWS and Azure."
"DLP is a valuable feature that we use a lot for info audits."
"The most valuable feature for me would be the solution's endpoint protection."
 

Cons

"The configuration and setup of alerts should be easier. They should make it easier to integrate with systems like Slack and Datadog. I didn't spend too much time on it, but to me, it wasn't as simple as the alerting that I've seen on other systems."
"Visibility is lacking, and both compliance-related metrics and IAM security control could be improved."
"The biggest thing I would like to see improved is for them to pursue and obtain a FedRAMP moderate authorization... I don't believe they have any immediate plans to get FedRAMP moderate authorized, which is a bit of a challenge for us because we can only use Lacework in our commercial environment."
"The solution lacks a cohesive data model, making extracting the necessary data from the platform challenging. It uses its own LQL query language, and each database across different layers and modules is structured differently, complicating correlation efforts. Consequently, I had to create extensive custom reports outside Lacework because their default dashboards didn't communicate risk metrics. They're addressing these issues by redesigning their tools, including introducing the dashboard, which is a step closer to actionable insights but still needs refinement."
"I would like to see a remote access assistance feature. And the threat-hunting platform could be better."
"Its integrations with third-party SIEMs can be better. That is one of the things that we discussed with them."
"A feature that I have requested from them is the ability to sort alerts and policies based on a security framework. Right now, when you go into alerts, you have hundreds and hundreds of them that you have to manually pick. It would be useful to have categories for CIS Benchmark or SOC 2 and be able to display all the alerts and policies for one security framework."
"The vulnerability part is not systematically organized; it is all clumsy in the web UI, and it is not user-friendly."
"Sophos should enhance its AI-driven detection features and anomaly detection."
"There are times when the devices are at maximum capacity, and it takes a while before the device is updated. For example, if the device has a virus, and it's not aligned to connect to the network, even after you've scanned the device, and cleaned out the virus, once the management clears the system to allow it back on the network it takes some time. It can be frustrating when you have your line manager or in management affected trying to access the network."
"I have not connected with Sophos Cloud Optix customer support yet, but I had a bad experience when our AWS cloud got compromised, leading to many resources being provisioned, and while Sophos Cloud Optix identified those resources, the resulting bill from AWS was quite high due to the usage charges, which I tried to investigate with the Sophos team, though I am not sure if they assisted with the refund."
"The dashboard and the process for applying policies could be more intuitive. Cloud Optix isn't that difficult once you get the hang of it, but the IT folks managing this want it to be more user-friendly."
"Sophos should enhance its AI-driven detection features and anomaly detection."
"The setup was a little bit complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is slightly expensive. It depends on how big your environment is, but it is expensive. Right now, we are spending a lot of money. We have covered all of the cloud providers and most of our colocation facilities as well, so we cannot complain, but it is slightly expensive. It is not super expensive."
"My smaller deployments cost around 200,000 a year, which is probably not as expensive as Wiz."
"The licensing fee was approximately $80,000 USD, per year."
"The pricing has gotten better. That scenario was somewhat unstable. They have a rather interesting licensing structure. I believe you get 200 resources per "Lacework unit." It was difficult, in the beginning, to figure out exactly what a "resource" was... That was a problem until about a year or so ago. They have improved it and it has stabilized quite a bit."
"Regarding the pricing for Sophos Cloud Optix, I would say that it was a very good price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
6%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
8%
Media Company
8%
Insurance Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise4
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Lacework?
My smaller deployments cost around 200,000 a year, which is probably not as expensive as Wiz.
What needs improvement with Lacework?
The vulnerability part is not systematically organized; it is all clumsy in the web UI, and it is not user-friendly. Regarding improvements, the vulnerability part, recent changes with user managem...
What is your primary use case for Lacework?
The major use case for Lacework FortiCNAPP is for security. I'm using it for security internally for my company.
What needs improvement with Sophos Cloud Optix?
I believe there can be improvements in the logging mechanism, with more detailed information available about systems or network logs being beneficial.
What is your primary use case for Sophos Cloud Optix?
I use Sophos Cloud Optix most of the time to harden our AWS infrastructure or Azure infrastructure, and sometimes I use it to meet different types of compliance requirements such as SOC 2 and ISO 2...
What advice do you have for others considering Sophos Cloud Optix?
I have not integrated Sophos Cloud Optix with other tools, but I believe there are many integration options available. The learning curve for new users on my team with Sophos Cloud Optix is not muc...
 

Also Known As

Polygraph, FortiCNP, Lacework
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

J.Crew, AdRoll, Snowflake, VMWare, Iterable, Pure Storage, TrueCar, NerdWallet, and more.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about FortiCNAPP vs. Sophos Cloud Optix and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.