AD Tripwires vs sshlowpot: 2026 Comparison
AD Tripwires is a commercial honeypots & deception tool by Horizon3.ai. sshlowpot 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 small-scale SSH infrastructure who want to collect brute-force patterns without operational overhead should deploy sshlowpot; it's free, requires minimal configuration, and generates clean authentication logs you can feed directly into SIEM or threat intel workflows. The 16 GitHub stars and active commit history suggest it's stable enough for production honeypots, though you'll be managing a single-purpose tool rather than a multi-protocol deception platform. Skip this if you need Windows RDP honeypoting or centralized management across dozens of sensors; sshlowpot does one thing deliberately and doesn't pretend otherwise.
