Orca Security vs The NodeZero Platform comparison

Orca Security and Horizon3.ai are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. Orca Security is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.6, while Horizon3.ai is ranked #33 with an average rating of 7.5. Orca Security holds a 3.7% mindshare in VM, compared to Horizon3.ai’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Orca Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 83% of Horizon3.ai users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

Orca Security and NodeZero Platform compete in cloud security solutions. NodeZero Platform is considered superior due to its advanced features and higher perceived value.

Features: Orca Security provides a comprehensive cloud-native application protection platform, wide visibility across multiple cloud environments, and automated risk prioritization. NodeZero Platform focuses on autonomous threat emulation, continuous security validation, and advanced threat detection.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Orca Security offers quick deployment without additional software or hardware and strong customer service. NodeZero Platform involves more complex deployment but provides superior automation in security testing, with customer support needing improvement.

Pricing and ROI: Orca Security generally has lower initial setup costs with its cloud-native architecture, reducing ongoing expenses. NodeZero Platform may have higher upfront costs but promises significant ROI through advanced threat emulation and improved security posture.

To learn more, read our detailed Orca Security vs. The NodeZero Platform Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Orca Security vs. The NodeZero Platform

September 2025

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 1.0%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Orca Security is 3.7%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of The NodeZero Platform is 1.2%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Orca Security	3.7%
Zafran Security	1.0%
The NodeZero Platform	1.2%
Other	94.1%

Vulnerability Management

Featured Reviews

Israel Cavazos Landini

Associate Director IT Security Operations at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

Weekly insights and risk analysis facilitate informed security decisions

I appreciate the weekly insights Zafran provides, which include critical topics for networks and IT security, allowing us to evaluate which insights apply to our environment. The organization score feature is valuable to keep the leadership team updated on how our infrastructure fares security-wise. The applicable risk level versus base risk level feature is beneficial because prior to Zafran, we only used the base risk level, but now understand that risk depends on the asset itself. Zafran is an excellent tool.

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CHINTAN MEHTA

Cloud Security Automation Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Consolidating security tools with comprehensive cloud visibility

The documentation for Orca Security could be improved. The compliance framework also needs enhancements, especially concerning integrations with other tools like ServiceNow's vulnerability modules, which are not as mature as expected. It should also increase its capability to ingest data from other security tools like CloudSight for endpoint detection and provide real-time monitoring.

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Brian W.

Director of IT Security at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Effectively prioritizes vulnerabilities and has been one of the most transformative technologies

Prioritization is really key; it's a massive differentiator. The prioritization aspect is crucial. The ability to capture or crack credentials and then use that to move laterally and identify additional vulnerabilities is significant. Their password-cracking capability is a distinct function that is very helpful. Additionally, when a new vulnerability, such as a zero-day exploit, is identified, they review your previous scans to determine if you might be vulnerable to it, and they proactively notify you. That's a huge benefit. Also, the fact that they provide fixes alongside all their identified vulnerabilities means you don’t have to search for fixes yourself. They give you specific actions to take, which is incredibly helpful and saves a lot of time.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 is an excellent tool."

"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."

"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."

"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."

"I recommend Orca Security to others looking for a cloud security solution due to its seamless integration and side-scanning technology that does not hamper cloud asset performance."

"Another valuable feature with Orca, something that's not talked about enough, is its ability to rank your gaps and your tasks... You can get visibility with agents and there are a lot of ways to do that. But the ranking and the context across the entire environment, that is what is unique about Orca."

"Orca gives you great visibility into your assets. It shows you the issues and the things that you need to attend to first, by prioritizing things. You can see a lot of information that is not always visible, even to DevOps, to help you know about the machines and their status. It's very easy to see everything in a single dashboard. That makes it a very useful tool."

"Orca Security has patented technologies. It's an agentless solution, so you don't need to install an agent. Instead, it contacts your account provider and fetches metadata, eliminating the need for snapshots or reserved space to copy client infrastructure."

"The best features of Orca Security include its ability to perform a lot of security controls without requiring any installation of agents, making it very easy to set up."

"The most valuable feature of Orca Security is the automated scanning tool, user-friendliness, and ease of use."

"Orca Security has updated its interface, making it more user-friendly. I find it particularly useful as it allows me to easily navigate the dashboard and prioritize actions based on severity and criticality."

"The reporting and automated remediation capabilities are valuable to me. They're real game-changers."

More Orca Security pros

"Horizon 3's capabilities are unique, with insights and reporting that provide transparency with offensive security or red team tools the system calls."

"Overall, I'd rate NodeZero at nine to 9.5 out of ten."

"Penetration testing and scans are useful features."

"I rate the stability of the NodeZero Platform a ten out of ten."

"Honestly, it's one of the most transformational technologies we've implemented in our company."

"The NodeZero Platform is amazing; what I love most about it is that it's automated and comparable to the manual pen testing we did with a third-party company, but with the added benefit of unlimited retesting to validate fixes."

"We experienced a threat that could have severely crippled us, but we were able to shut it down before it escalated, thanks to internal vulnerability testing and addressing critical vulnerabilities using their tool."

Cons

"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."

"The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvements."

"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."

"I would like to see an option to do security checks on a code level. This is possible because they have access to all of the code running in the cloud provider, and combining their site-scanning solution with that would be a nice add-on."

"It's not all clouds that they are currently onboarded with. For instance, they are not yet with public cloud and many other private clouds."

"I would like to see better customization options for security frameworks and better integration with reporting tools like Power BI or Grafana dashboards."

"Another improvement would be that, in addition to focusing on endpoint compliance, they would focus on general compliance."

"Orca Security could improve its ticket creation process."

"The documentation for Orca Security could be improved."

"I think Orca could give me more alerts. It could give me a dashboard with all the specific types of alerts I want to see for the day. It should just be one click."

"A notable limitation with Orca Security is its scanning feature. The automatic scan only runs every 24 hours, and if an alert is remediated within an hour, it still remains until the next scheduled scan."

More Orca Security cons

"I encountered challenges with patch management, as we struggled to test and implement patches due to time constraints. This led to our patch management process being ineffective."

"The reports are quite useless."

"The only issue we’ve encountered is that sometimes the scans take a long time to complete."

"The rooms for improvement for The NodeZero Platform can be numerous, and they can enhance user experience."

"One of the areas where improvement is needed is in the visibility and reporting for large enterprises."

"You need to be cautious about what it scans, as it could potentially cause issues."

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"Its license is a bit expensive."

"Orca Security is cheaper compared to other solutions in the same space."

"While it's competitive with Palo Alto Prisma, I think Orca's list price is very high. I would advise Orca to lower it because, at that price, I might consider alternatives like Wiz, which also offers agentless services."

"Orca is very competitive when compared to the alternatives and is not the most expensive in the market, that's for sure."

"The pricing depends on how many assets you have running in your cloud and how many environments you have. If you have a dev environment, test environment, and a production environment then it's really important that you have coverage for all of them."

"Orca Security charges are based on cloud workloads. So, it's based on workloads. If we look at one feature, it might be expensive."

"The price is a bit expensive for smaller organizations."

"It is the cost of the visibility that you get. When you really sit down and think about what do you need to do to secure an environment with a low impact on the business, and you take a look out into the world, I think this tool is well justified around cost."

More Orca Security pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

University

Computer Software Company

11%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	2

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...

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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...

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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...

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What do you like most about Orca Security?

It's for protection. It's an agentless tool. We don't need to install anything at a customer's premises. We can just ...

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What needs improvement with Orca Security?

I really love the way Orca Security worked. A potential improvement could be additional security features for the two...

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What is your primary use case for Orca Security?

We used Orca Security ( /products/orca-security-reviews ) for about two to three months until I left the company. The...

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What do you like most about Horizon3.ai?

Penetration testing and scans are useful features.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Horizon3.ai?

One significant area to focus on is external vulnerabilities, particularly in the web application space. This often r...

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What is your primary use case for Horizon3.ai?

The primary use case that we have for The NodeZero Platform is for scanning the environment and identifying vulnerabi...

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Comparisons

Wiz Code vs Zafran Security

Compared 34% of the time

Vulcan Cyber vs Zafran Security

Compared 14% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Zafran Security

Compared 8% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs Zafran Security

Compared 7% of the time

Nucleus vs Zafran Security

Compared 7% of the time

More Zafran Security Competitors

Wiz vs Orca Security

Compared 28% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Orca Security

Compared 8% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Orca Security

Compared 5% of the time

Upwind vs Orca Security

Compared 5% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security vs Orca Security

Compared 4% of the time

More Orca Security Competitors

Pentera vs The NodeZero Platform

Compared 35% of the time

Tenable Security Center vs The NodeZero Platform

Compared 11% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs The NodeZero Platform

Compared 8% of the time

vPentest vs The NodeZero Platform

Compared 8% of the time

Tenable Nessus vs The NodeZero Platform

Compared 5% of the time

More The NodeZero Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Zafran Security

September 2025

Download Zafran Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Orca Security

September 2025

Download Orca Security product report

Buyer's Guide

The NodeZero Platform

September 2025

Download The NodeZero Platform product report

Also Known As

No data available

Horizon3.ai

Overview

Zafran Security integrates with existing security tools to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities effectively, proving that most critical vulnerabilities are not exploitable, optimizing threat management.

Zafran Security introduces an innovative operating model for managing security threats and vulnerabilities. By leveraging the threat exposure management platform, it pinpoints and prioritizes exploitable vulnerabilities, reducing risk through immediate remediation. This platform enhances your hybrid cloud security by normalizing vulnerability signals and integrating specific IT context data, such as CVE runtime presence and internet asset reachability, into its analysis. No longer reliant on patch windows, Zafran Security allows you to manage risks actively.

What are the key features of Zafran Security?

Threat Exposure Management: Utilizes existing tools to prioritize vulnerabilities and manage threats.
Integrative Analysis: Combines security data with IT context for precise vulnerability management.
Real-time Risk Reduction: Enables immediate risk management without waiting for patches.
Hybrid Cloud Compatibility: Functions across diverse cloud environments for comprehensive security.

What benefits can users expect from Zafran Security?

Improved Security: Enhances protection by efficiently identifying and mitigating risks.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces unnecessary patching expenses by confirming non-exploitable vulnerabilities.
Time Savings: Frees developers to focus on root causes by handling immediate threats.
Comprehensive Insight: Offers a holistic view of security threats and vulnerabilities.

In industries where security is paramount, such as finance and healthcare, Zafran Security provides invaluable protection by ensuring that only exploitable vulnerabilities are addressed. It allows entities to maintain robust security measures while allocating resources efficiently, fitting seamlessly into existing security strategies.

Zafran Security

Orca Security is the pioneer of agentless cloud security that is trusted by hundreds of enterprises globally. Orca makes cloud security possible for enterprises moving to and scaling in the cloud with its patented SideScanning™ technology and Unified Data Model. The Orca Cloud Security Platform delivers the world's most comprehensive coverage and visibility of risks across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and Kubernetes.

At Orca Security, we’re on a mission to make it fast, easy, and cost effective for organizations to address critical cloud security issues so they can operate in the cloud with confidence.

Key Platform Features:

Agentless: Complete, centralized coverage of the entire cloud estate, without the need for installing and configuring agents or layering together multiple siloed tools. Full visibility of cloud misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, workload protection, malware scanning, image scanning, file integrity monitoring and more.
Asset Inventory: Get a complete inventory of all your public cloud assets, including detailed information on installed OSes, software, and applications, as well as data and network assets such as storage buckets, Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs), and Security Groups.

Attack Path Analysis: Visualize attack vectors to critical assets or crown jewels. See which assets are susceptible to lateral movement, assume roles, privilege escalation, and more.

Risk Prioritization: Prioritize the 1% of risks that matter the most, based on impact scores. Secure the vulnerabilities and misconfigured targets (critical assets) and eliminate the potential risks residing on the attack paths to those targets.
Cloud Threat Detection: Monitor for malicious activity within your entire cloud estate. Be aware of detected threats, user behavior anomalies and more.

Breach Forensics: Log every change and all activity into a central repository for investigation procedures to confirm or deny entry and compromises within the cloud estate.
Cloud To Dev (Shift Left): Orca’s built-in shift left capabilities enables DevOps to focus more security attention earlier in the CI/CD pipelines. Security teams are able to trace a production risk (misconfiguration or vulnerability) directly to the original source code repository from which it came, even down to the exact line of code that is at the root of the identified risk.
Compliance: Choose from over 60 preconfigured compliance frameworks, cloud security best practices, CIS Benchmarks, or design and build your own compliance framework for fast and continuous reporting.
Security Score: The Orca Security Score is found on Orca’s Risk Dashboard and is updated daily. The overall score is calculated based on performance in the following five categories - Suspicious Activity, IAM, Data at Risk, Vulnerable Assets, and Responsiveness. Since the scores are percentage based and not raw numbers, you can objectively make comparisons to other organizations within your industry or business units of different sizes. In addition to reporting to senior management, the Orca Security Score can help with internal self-monitoring, as a way of measuring risk mitigation efforts, to know where to focus efforts, and track progress.

Orca Security Benefits

Consolidate technologies to reduce costs and complexity:

“The more I can get out of this one solution, the better. I see Orca as the tool where we get all cloud-related security data.” - Joshua Scott, Head of Security and IT | Postman

Avoid costly breaches:

"I look at proactive asset discovery, configuration management, and vulnerability management as being able to find a vulnerability before the bad guys do and being able to deal with it before something exploits it. This is what Orca does for us." - Doug Graham, CSO & CPO | Lionbridge

Increase team productivity and efficiency by focusing on high-value activities and solving the 1% of risks that matter most:

"Orca is unique in that it locates vulnerabilities with precision and delivers tangible, actionable results – without having to sift through all the noise." - Aaron Brown, Senior Cloud Security Engineer | Sisense

Quick Time-to-Value with Immediate ROI:

"Orca told us we could have some visibility within 5 or 10 minutes, and I thought, ‘There’s no way.’ Well, I was wrong. They really did it." - Thomas Hill, CISO | Live Oak Bank

Reduce MTTR and remove operational friction:

“We can’t ask developers things like ‘Did you think about security? When you start a new VM on AWS, can you please let me know so I’m able to scan it? Can you please deploy an agent on that machine for me?’ We need a better way to work. Orca provides that better way by eliminating organizational friction.” - Erwin Geirnaert, Cloud Security Architect | NG Data

Orca Security

NodeZero by Horizon3.ai empowers organizations to view security from an attacker's perspective, enhancing vulnerability management and defense validation.

NodeZero is an offensive security platform designed to identify network vulnerabilities and validate defenses. It specializes in demonstrating how attackers exploit misconfigurations and exposures, offering proof-based insights to prioritize security measures. NodeZero automates large-scale penetration tests, integrates hybrid cloud coverage, and supports continuous threat exposure management, making it essential for risk-based vulnerability management.

What are NodeZero's key features?

Autonomous Pentesting: Large-scale tests without manual effort.
Hybrid Cloud Coverage: Seamless on-prem and cloud environment transitions.
Proof of Exploitation: Validated findings with impact evidence.
Fix Validation: Quick retests to confirm remediation.
NodeZero Tripwires™: Deploy deception tokens to detect adversaries.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Prioritization: Focus on truly exploitable vulnerabilities.
Efficiency: Streamlined workflows with MCP Server.
Validation: Ensure EDR/XDR and cloud controls' effectiveness.
Cost Reduction: Lower pentest costs with repeatable assessments.
Compliance: Meet standards with automated testing and validation.

NodeZero's application spans industries like finance and healthcare, primarily for penetration testing, vulnerability assessment, and compliance. It acts as an extension or alternative to traditional systems, aiding rapid response and complementing tools like Rapid7 and CrowdStrike, enhancing comprehensive security views.

Horizon3.ai

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

BeyondTrust, Postman, Digital Turbine, Solarisbank, Lemonade, C6 Bank, Docebo, Vercel, and Vivino

Government agencies, Defense Industrial Base organizations, and enterprises in regulated industries such as finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and criticalinfrastructure rely on NodeZero to meet rigorous security and compliance requirements with continuous, scheduled, and on-demand testing.

Buyer's Guide

Orca Security vs. The NodeZero Platform

September 2025

Free Report: Orca Security vs. The NodeZero Platform

Find out what your peers are saying about Orca Security vs. The NodeZero Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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