Acalvio ShadowPlex Cloud Security vs Hornet: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
Acalvio ShadowPlex Cloud Security is a commercial honeypots & deception tool by Acalvio Technologies. Hornet is a free honeypots & deception tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best honeypots & deception fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, company size fit, deployment model, here is our conclusion:
Acalvio ShadowPlex Cloud Security
Enterprise and mid-market teams managing multi-cloud infrastructure should adopt ShadowPlex Cloud Security if detecting lateral movement and privilege escalation in cloud identities is your weakest detection layer. Agentless deployment via native cloud APIs means you're live in AWS, Azure, and GCP without touching workloads, and the honeytoken approach catches attackers during reconnaissance when they're still gathering credentials rather than after breach. This tool prioritizes detection and intent capture over response automation, so it's less valuable for teams already confident in their cloud identity monitoring or those expecting the platform to enforce remediation workflows.
Small teams running SSH-exposed infrastructure who need fast honeypot deployment without licensing friction should start with Hornet; its multiple virtual hosts and sandboxed filesystems let you simulate realistic attack surfaces that catch reconnaissance patterns agentless tools miss. The free pricing and 24 GitHub stars signal active maintenance from practitioners rather than enterprise-first bloat. Skip this if you need persistent threat intelligence feeds or automated response integration; Hornet excels at tactical deception but treats detection as the end goal, not the start of your incident workflow.
