Acalvio ShadowPlex vs Monkey-Spider: 2026 Comparison
Acalvio ShadowPlex is a commercial honeypots & deception tool by Acalvio Technologies. Monkey-Spider 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:
Mid-market and enterprise security teams with exposed APIs, web applications, or IoT infrastructure should use ShadowPlex to catch reconnaissance and credential attacks before they reach production systems. The platform's external-facing decoys generate high-fidelity threat intelligence in STIX format while monitoring for password spraying and brute-force attempts, directly addressing ID.RA and DE.CM in NIST CSF 2.0. Skip this if your attack surface is entirely internal or if you need deep visibility into post-breach lateral movement; ShadowPlex is optimized for early detection at the perimeter, not incident response.
Security teams running client-facing web applications will get the most from Monkey-Spider because it catches malware and exploit kits that traditional server-side monitoring misses by simulating real browser behavior. The crawler-based approach means you're testing actual attack paths against your site without needing to maintain a fleet of isolated honeypot servers. Skip this if your threat model centers on internal network compromise or you need high-interaction deception that mimics production systems in full; Monkey-Spider trades realism for operational simplicity.
