Aqua Real-Time CSPM vs Dow Jones Hammer: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)

Aqua Real-Time CSPM

Mid-market and enterprise teams managing AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud simultaneously will get the most from Aqua Real-Time CSPM because its agentless scanning paired with in-workload visibility actually catches misconfigurations that surface-level inventory tools miss. The vendor's support for VMs, containers, serverless, and Kubernetes clusters across 30+ compliance frameworks means you're not rebuilding mappings for HIPAA one year and PCI the next. Skip this if your organization runs primarily on a single cloud or needs sophisticated identity and access governance; Aqua prioritizes configuration posture over the identity layer, leaving supply chain risk assessment to adjacent tools.

Dow Jones Hammer

Teams with AWS-only multi-account sprawl who need fast remediation without vendor lock-in should start with Dow Jones Hammer; it's free, which means you can validate misconfig detection across hundreds of instances before committing budget elsewhere. The 448 GitHub stars and open-source model give you transparency into what the tool actually checks and the option to fork it if Dow Jones stops maintaining it. Skip this if your environment is multi-cloud or if you need CIEM and identity governance layered in; Hammer stays disciplined around infrastructure misconfiguration and doesn't pretend to be a platform.