Top 10 Cloud Security Companies in 2026

Palo Alto Networks operates the most comprehensive enterprise CNAPP in the market, Prisma Cloud, now being unified within Cortex Cloud as Palo Alto’s AI-powered security operations platform integrates cloud security with broader SOC capabilities. Its CNAPP covers the full spectrum: CSPM (posture management), CWPP (workload protection), CIEM (entitlement management), DSPM (data security posture), container and Kubernetes security, IaC scanning, software supply chain security, and CI/CD pipeline integration, across AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI, and Alibaba Cloud. KuppingerCole named Palo Alto Networks an Overall Leader in its 2025 CNAPP Leadership Compass. Gartner designated it a Representative Vendor in the 2025 Market Guide for CNAPP.

Palo Alto’s November 2024 expansion of Prisma Cloud with AI-driven alert deduplication, reducing false positives in cloud security findings, addresses the primary operational challenge of CNAPP platforms: alert fatigue from overly sensitive misconfiguration detection. Prisma Cloud’s integration with Cortex XSIAM creates the SOC convergence that Gartner identified as the defining differentiator of mature CNAPPs: cloud security posture findings feed directly into the security operations workflow rather than existing in a separate tool. Palo Alto’s CyberArk acquisition ($25B, closed February 2026) adds identity security, the cloud identity attack surface that CNAPP platforms historically addressed incompletely through CIEM alone.

• KuppingerCole Overall Leader; Gartner CNAPP Representative Vendor (Aug 2025)
• Broadest CNAPP: CSPM + CWPP + CIEM + DSPM + container + IaC + supply chain
• Multi-cloud: AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI, Alibaba Cloud coverage
• AI alert deduplication (Nov 2024): reduces cloud security false positives
• Cortex Cloud: Prisma integrated with XSIAM for SOC-converged cloud security
• CyberArk acquisition (closed Feb 2026): adds deep identity security to CNAPP

Wiz is the cloud security company that changed how enterprises think about cloud-native security, by delivering comprehensive multi-cloud security posture in hours through an agentless API-based architecture, rather than the weeks or months required to deploy agent-based alternatives. Its $500M+ ARR (the fastest in cybersecurity history), $32 billion Google acquisition, and KuppingerCole/Gartner recognition confirm that agentless cloud security posture is not just a deployment convenience, it is a capability category that enterprises overwhelmingly prefer when available at the required depth. Wiz’s Security Graph maps all cloud assets, identities, data, configurations, and vulnerabilities simultaneously, enabling attack path visualization that identifies which combination of misconfigurations creates a realistic path to sensitive data or critical resources.

In February 2025, Wiz introduced Wiz Defend, adding real-time detection and automated incident response capabilities to its previously posture-focused platform. Wiz Defend uses runtime sensors for threat detection while maintaining Wiz’s agentless foundation for posture visibility, giving Wiz the hybrid architecture that addresses both cloud hygiene and active threat detection. In December 2024, Wiz acquired Dazz Inc. for $450 million to add supply-chain remediation capabilities. In February 2025, Check Point partnered with Wiz to provide Wiz’s CNAPP capabilities to Check Point customers, the partnership validation that Wiz’s technology is good enough to white-label to a 30-year enterprise security company.

• $500M+ ARR; $32B Google acquisition; KuppingerCole Overall Leader
• Security Graph: attack path visualization across all cloud assets and identities
• Wiz Defend (Feb 2025): real-time detection + automated incident response added
• Dazz acquisition ($450M, Dec 2024): supply chain remediation capabilities
• Check Point CNAPP partnership (Feb 2025): technology validated by legacy vendor
• 2,300+ cloud misconfiguration rules; 150+ compliance frameworks

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is the cloud security platform that Azure-committed enterprises are already partially deployed on, because basic CSPM for Azure workloads is included at no additional cost with any Azure subscription, and advanced Defender for Cloud plans extend coverage to AWS, GCP, and hybrid environments at incremental cost above existing Microsoft commitments. For the millions of enterprises running their primary cloud workloads on Azure, Defender for Cloud provides the deepest native integration of any CNAPP: understanding Azure resource configurations at a level that third-party CNAPPs connecting through Azure APIs cannot match. KuppingerCole named Microsoft an Overall Leader in its 2025 CNAPP Leadership Compass, and Gartner designated it a Representative Vendor in the 2025 Market Guide.

Defender for Cloud provides both agentless vulnerability scanning and agent-based workload protection through the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (MDE) agent, giving enterprises deployment flexibility across workloads that need deep runtime protection and those where agentless scanning provides sufficient coverage. Its IaC vulnerability assessment and DevOps configuration monitoring extend security into Azure DevOps, GitHub, and GitLab CI/CD pipelines. Microsoft Security Copilot integration brings AI-assisted cloud security investigation to Defender for Cloud findings, enabling natural language queries against cloud security data and AI-generated remediation guidance.

• KuppingerCole Overall Leader; Gartner CNAPP Representative Vendor
• Free basic Azure CSPM included with any Azure subscription
• Multi-cloud: Azure + AWS + GCP + hybrid in unified console
• Agentless scanning + MDE agent: flexible deployment for all workload types
• IaC + DevOps monitoring: Azure DevOps + GitHub + GitLab integration
• Security Copilot: AI-assisted cloud security investigation and remediation

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security is the cloud security platform for the 29,000+ organizations already running CrowdStrike Falcon for endpoint protection, because extending the same single, lightweight agent into cloud workloads provides unified endpoint-and-cloud visibility without the operational overhead of deploying a separate cloud security tool with a separate agent and separate management console. The competitive advantage is consolidation: organizations that extend their CrowdStrike deployment to cloud workloads get cloud workload protection, CSPM, CIEM, and container security within their existing Falcon platform subscription, their existing Falcon console, and their existing Falcon data pipeline, at incremental cost without incremental complexity.

Falcon Cloud Security’s competitive strength is its AI-powered threat detection for cloud workloads, the same behavioral analytics engine that makes CrowdStrike the leading endpoint security platform applies to cloud workload runtime events, detecting novel attack techniques that signature-based alternatives miss. CrowdStrike’s acquisition of Bionic (application security posture management) extended Falcon Cloud Security into the DevSecOps layer. Its threat intelligence on 230+ tracked adversaries informs cloud workload detections, correlating cloud activity patterns against known threat actor techniques. KuppingerCole named CrowdStrike an Overall Leader in its 2025 CNAPP Leadership Compass.

• KuppingerCole Overall Leader; Gartner CNAPP Representative Vendor
• Single agent: endpoint + cloud workload coverage in one lightweight deployment
• Bionic acquisition: application security posture integrated into Falcon
• 230+ adversary threat intelligence: cloud workload detections against known TTPs
• Falcon + Cloud unified: single console, data model, and risk view
• CSPM + CWPP + CIEM + container + IaC in unified Falcon platform

Orca Security is the cloud security platform built around a specific conviction: that the deployment friction of agent-based cloud security is not a minor inconvenience but a fundamental barrier to enterprise security posture improvement, and that eliminating it through agentless SideScanning technology unlocks security coverage at a speed and scale that agent deployments cannot match. Orca’s patented SideScanning reads cloud workloads from the outside by analyzing cloud storage snapshots, delivering vulnerability assessment, misconfiguration detection, malware scanning, secrets detection, and data risk identification without touching running workloads. Gartner designated Orca a Representative Vendor in the 2025 Market Guide for CNAPP, and Orca published its analysis of the 2025 Gartner Market Guide as a reference customer perspective.

In 2025, Orca introduced the Orca Sensor, an optional lightweight agent providing real-time runtime visibility for workloads where periodic snapshot scanning provides insufficient threat detection depth. This hybrid architecture, agentless SideScanning for broad coverage plus optional runtime sensors for deep detection, directly addresses the primary criticism of agentless-only approaches: that they capture security state through scheduled snapshots rather than persistent real-time monitoring. Orca’s generative AI capabilities, simplifying complex cloud security investigations, explaining risks in plain language, and generating automated remediation steps, reduce the expertise barrier for cloud security teams that lack dedicated cloud security engineering resources.

• Gartner CNAPP Representative Vendor (Aug 2025)
• Patented SideScanning: agentless workload analysis without touching running systems
• Orca Sensor (2025): optional runtime agents for real-time depth where needed
• GenAI investigation: plain-language risk explanation and remediation generation
• 2,300+ misconfiguration rules; 150+ compliance frameworks; IaC scanning
• Unified view: vulnerabilities + misconfigurations + malware + secrets + data risk

Sysdig is the cloud security platform that built its entire architecture around a core conviction that differentiates it from posture-first competitors: that runtime visibility, knowing what is happening inside cloud workloads in real time, is more valuable than snapshot-based posture assessment because active threats exist in the runtime layer, not the configuration layer. Sysdig’s foundation is Falco, the open-source cloud-native runtime security engine that has become the de facto standard for container and Kubernetes threat detection, with thousands of community-contributed detection rules and integrations across the cloud-native ecosystem. Sysdig contributes to and commercializes Falco, giving it an open-source ecosystem that no proprietary alternative can replicate. Gartner designated Sysdig a Representative Vendor in the 2025 Market Guide for CNAPP.

Sysdig Secure provides comprehensive container lifecycle security from build to runtime, integrating with CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab, GitHub Actions) for pre-deployment scanning, and providing persistent runtime protection for container, Kubernetes, serverless, and VM workloads. Its AI-powered event analysis prioritizes security events by correlating runtime behavior with posture findings, reducing alert fatigue by surfacing only events where runtime activity confirms that a misconfigured resource is actively being exploited. Sysdig serves 700+ enterprise customers, with particular strength in financial services, healthcare, and technology enterprises with large Kubernetes deployments.

• Gartner CNAPP Representative Vendor; 700+ enterprise customers
• Falco: open-source cloud-native runtime detection engine — industry standard
• Runtime-first: persistent real-time detection vs. periodic snapshot scanning
• Container lifecycle: build + registry + deploy + runtime in one platform
• CI/CD integration: Jenkins + GitLab + GitHub Actions + Docker security
• AI event analysis: runtime + posture correlation for high-fidelity alerting

Fortinet’s 2024 acquisition of Lacework brought one of the most technically distinctive cloud security platforms into the world’s largest network security company, creating a combined cloud and network security vendor with genuine depth in both domains. KuppingerCole named Fortinet (incorporating Lacework) an Overall Leader in its 2025 CNAPP Leadership Compass. Lacework’s Polygraph Data Platform provides behavioral cloud security through a fundamentally different approach than rule-based detection: rather than matching cloud activity against known-bad patterns, Polygraph models normal behavior across accounts, workloads, users, and applications, detecting anomalies that represent genuine security events without the false positive burden of rule-based alerts.

Lacework’s behavioral anomaly approach is particularly effective for detecting insider threats, credential abuse, and novel attack techniques that do not match any existing rule signature, because it identifies deviations from established baselines rather than matching known patterns. Its integration with Fortinet’s FortiGate NGFW, FortiSASE, and FortiCloud creates a combined network-and-cloud security architecture for Fortinet customers extending into cloud workload protection. This integration positions Lacework as the cloud security layer of Fortinet’s Security Fabric, giving organizations that already rely on FortiGate for network security a natural cloud workload security extension.

• KuppingerCole Overall Leader (as Fortinet); Gartner Representative Vendor
• Polygraph: behavioral anomaly detection without rule authoring
• Acquired by Fortinet 2024: integrated with Security Fabric ecosystem
• FortiGate + Lacework: combined network + cloud behavioral security
• Agent + agentless: flexible deployment across cloud environments
• Effective against: credential abuse, insider threat, novel attack techniques

Aqua Security is the cloud security platform purpose-built for containerized and cloud-native application environments, providing the most complete container security lifecycle coverage in the market, from image scanning in registries through deployment policy enforcement to runtime threat detection in running containers. Its philosophy is code-to-cloud protection: securing the entire container lifecycle from the first line of code through the production runtime, with security controls embedded at each stage rather than bolted on at the perimeter. Aqua serves enterprises with deeply containerized application architectures, particularly financial services, technology, and healthcare organizations where microservices on Kubernetes represent the primary application delivery model. Gartner designated Aqua a Representative Vendor in the 2025 Market Guide for CNAPP.

Aqua CNAPP provides vulnerability scanning, CI/CD pipeline security (with native integrations for Jenkins, GitLab, GitHub Actions, and Azure DevOps), runtime container protection with granular control, Kubernetes admission control, serverless function security, and cloud service configuration scanning. Its Dynamic Threat Analysis (DTA) sandboxes container images in isolated environments to detect malicious behavior that static scanning misses, including malware that activates only after deployment. Aqua’s software supply chain security capabilities, scanning base images, third-party packages, and infrastructure code for vulnerabilities and malicious components, extend Aqua’s coverage upstream into the software development process.

• Gartner CNAPP Representative Vendor (Aug 2025)
• Container lifecycle: image → registry → deploy → runtime in one platform
• Dynamic Threat Analysis: sandbox container images before production deployment
• CI/CD integration: Jenkins + GitLab + GitHub Actions + Azure DevOps
• Kubernetes admission control: block non-compliant workloads pre-deployment
• Software supply chain security: base images + dependencies + IaC scanning

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security occupies a unique position in the cloud security landscape: it is the first platform to deliver unified EDR (endpoint detection and response), CNAPP (cloud-native application protection), and SIEM (security information and event management) in a single FedRAMP High-authorized platform, creating the most operationally unified security platform for government and regulated enterprise environments. This combination eliminates the three-platform architecture (separate endpoint security, cloud security, and SIEM) that most enterprises currently maintain, replacing it with a single data lake, single AI engine, and single analyst interface that correlates signals across endpoint, cloud, and log management simultaneously.

SentinelOne was named a Customers’ Choice in the Gartner Peer Insights Voice of the Customer for CNAPP in 2024, reflecting strong user satisfaction rather than analyst positioning. Its Purple AI assistant applies to cloud security investigations with the same natural language threat hunting and automated investigation capabilities it provides for endpoint security. SentinelOne’s Strong Performer recognition in the 2025 Gartner Peer Insights Voice of the Customer for CSPM confirms growing cloud security adoption. The FedRAMP High authorization for the unified platform is a procurement requirement for US government agencies that no competitor currently offers for an equivalent EDR+CNAPP+SIEM combination.

• First EDR + CNAPP + SIEM unified platform with FedRAMP High authorization
• Gartner Customers’ Choice CNAPP (2024); Strong Performer CSPM (2025)
• Purple AI: natural language cloud threat hunting + automated investigation
• Singularity Data Lake: unified log retention for endpoint + cloud + network
• Agent + agentless: flexible cloud deployment alongside endpoint agent
• CNAPP + EDR unified: correlates endpoint and cloud signals for cross-domain detection

Check Point CloudGuard is the cloud security platform for enterprises invested in the Check Point security ecosystem, providing cloud-native application protection through 52 distinct security engines covering CSPM, CWPP, DSPM, CIEM, network security, and API protection in an integrated CNAPP. Check Point’s February 2025 partnership with Wiz, integrating Wiz’s CNAPP technology into Check Point’s CloudGuard offering, is the most significant development in CloudGuard’s evolution, enabling Check Point customers to access Wiz’s Security Graph and agentless posture capabilities through their existing Check Point relationship. Gartner designated Check Point a Representative Vendor in the 2025 Market Guide for CNAPP.

CloudGuard Network Security provides micro-segmentation and network policy enforcement for cloud environments, a capability that pure posture-focused CNAPPs (Wiz, Orca) do not provide, extending Check Point’s network security expertise into cloud traffic inspection, east-west traffic control, and cloud-native firewall enforcement. CloudGuard’s ThreatCloud AI feeds real-time threat intelligence from Check Point’s global sensor network into CloudGuard’s threat detection, correlating cloud workload activity against intelligence on active threat campaigns. For enterprises already running Check Point NGFW for network security, CloudGuard provides the most natural cloud security extension without requiring new vendor relationships or security data model integrations.

• Gartner CNAPP Representative Vendor; Wiz partnership (Feb 2025)
• 52 security engines: CSPM + CWPP + DSPM + CIEM + network + API security
• CloudGuard Network: micro-segmentation + cloud traffic inspection
• ThreatCloud AI: threat intelligence-enriched cloud workload detection
• Wiz CNAPP partnership: Security Graph posture capabilities via Check Point
• Multi-cloud: AWS + Azure + GCP + OCI + Alibaba Cloud