AquaSec vs Prisma Cloud Container Security Comparison

Compare AquaSec and Prisma Cloud. Also see why Global DevSecOps Teams choose AccuKnox instead

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Overview

AquaSec is container-first. Prisma Cloud offers broader features but is complex.

AccuKnox gives you a sweet spot—deep container security with full-stack observability, compliance, and runtime control.

This page compares AquaSec and Prisma Cloud, and shows why AccuKnox fits your needs better.

Parameters

Aquasec

Palo Alto Cortex Cloud

Application Security Coverage

Registry scan (ECR, GCR, Nexus, Docker Hub, ACR, Harbor, Quay, jFrog, OpenShift, GAR)

Supports registry scanning

Repo Scan - Nexus, Alibaba Cloud Container Registry, ECR, ACR, Docker Registry v2, GitLab Container Registry, GAR, GCR, Harbor, IBM Cloud Container Registry, JFrog Artifactory Docker Registry, OpenShift integrated Docker Registry, CoreOS Quay, Trigger Registry scans with webhooks

Identify 3rd party dependencies and their vulnerabilities (SCA), scan for vulnerability in code (SAST) and evaluate applications for vulnerabilities (DAST)

Cannot perform deep analysis of statis code and lacks the ability to perform DAST.

Helps identify 3rd party dependencies and licensing issues(SCA), limited languages supported for SAST Does not provide DAST

Integrate with CI/CD for Shift Left automation with prioritization

Limited CI/CD Integrations

Integrates with CI/CD for software supply chain security

Observability & Remediation

Deep observability with context by making use of eBPF

Only eBPF based observability is supported

Runs in user space with capabilities of net_admin, sys_admin, sys_ptrace, mknod, and setfcap to interact with host and containers. IPTables to observe network traffic

Point in time scans for cloud configuration. Realtime visibility is in Roadmap

Realtime scanning of cloud accounts is supported

Agents installed as Daemon set on k8s or as a process on host for complete observability. No changes needed on application level

Requires instrumenting the container runtime of each application with Prisma runC which is intrusive.

Visibility of identities and workloads on Kubernetes as a graph via KIEM

Not supported

Graphical view of identities in Kubernetes with customizable queries to define least permissive posture

Can audit the activities on the cluster and limited visualization features

Hardening and Prevention

Hardening policies based on MITRE, NIST Frameworks to reduce the attack surface

Helps in detecting policy violations but does not provide inline protection

Can prevent files from being created but cannot prevent write/delete to existing files

Auto generate zero trust policies to allow only the expected behavior of the application while denying everything else

Supports policies to identify malicious activity but performs remediations after the rule violation is detected

Allows performing tests on the application dynamically and reporting of activities by the application in the CI/CD and prevent deployment if issues are identified

Performs only static analysis of the application

Proactive prevention of attacks by denying access at the kernel layer using LSMs

Limited support. Certain activities like file modification cannot be prevented

Admission controller and PSA to prevent vulnerable deployments

Supports Admission Controllers

Deployment Models

Air-gapped and on-prem support

Supports On Prem deployment

Supports on prem with some limitations

Agent based protection and scanners for identifying vulnerabilities

Can deploy scanners for agentless scanning and provide agent based security

Open vs Proprietary

Built on KubeArmor which is a CNCF sandbox project

Uses open source tools such as Checkov to perform scans

Supports ingesting vulnerability scan results from open source tools

Supports integrations with Proprietary tools

Integrations

Integrates with both Open source and Proprietary tools for security

Can integrate with only Proprietary tools

Integrate with 3rd party scanning tools to provide additional context and stitch all the findings together in one place

Does not integrate with other open source or commercial scanners that maybe already available. Cannot extend capabilities via integrations

Future Proof Security

5G and IoT/Edge Security

Not supported for 5G and IoT

Supports 5G and IoT/Edge Security as separate modules

Only CNAPP without of the box Kubernetes security via posture management (KSPM) & identity management (KIEM)

Aqua provides KSPM and identity related checks in Kubernetes

Provides benchmarking checks for kubernetes to identify misconfigurations and identity issues

AI Security with ModelKnox (AI-SPM)

Aqua provides AI security

Provides security for AI with AI-SPM module

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“Choosing AccuKnox was driven by opensource KubeArmor’s novel use of eBPF and LSM technologies, delivering runtime security”

Golan Ben-Oni

Chief Information Officer

“At Prudent, we advocate for a comprehensive end-to-end methodology in application and cloud security. AccuKnox excelled in all areas in our in depth evaluation.”