AD Tripwires vs sshd-honeypot: 2026 Comparison
AD Tripwires is a commercial honeypots & deception tool by Horizon3.ai. sshd-honeypot 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 that treat Active Directory as a detection problem, not just a hardening problem, should evaluate AD Tripwires. It deploys honeypot objects directly into AD to catch reconnaissance and lateral movement before it reaches production assets, and the integration with Horizon3.ai's NodeZero platform means you validate that your tripwires actually work against your real attack surface. Skip this if your team lacks the AD expertise to maintain decoy objects or if you're looking for a tool that also handles response automation; AD Tripwires is detection and alerting only.
Security teams running Linux infrastructure who want to observe actual attacker behavior on exposed SSH ports should deploy sshd-honeypot; it intercepts brute force attempts and shell commands in real time without the overhead of full Cowrie instances. The setup is straightforward,a modified OpenSSH daemon that logs to Cowrie,and costs nothing, making it practical for teams that need threat intelligence on SSH reconnaissance patterns. Skip this if you need centralized log aggregation, alerting, or forensics across multiple honeypots; sshd-honeypot is a thin instrumentation layer, not a management platform.
