Bowtie Zero Trust Network Access vs Valarian ACRA: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)

Bowtie Zero Trust Network Access

Security teams managing distributed workforces across multiple cloud regions should prioritize Bowtie Zero Trust Network Access for its refusal to backhaul traffic through centralized gateways, which eliminates the bottleneck that tanks performance in traditional ZTNA deployments. The distributed control plane runs entirely on your infrastructure, not Bowtie's, and WireGuard encryption keeps private keys out of vendor hands, addressing the NIST PR.AA identity and access control requirement without trust dependency. This isn't for buyers seeking integrated secure web gateway capabilities from a single vendor; Bowtie's on-device SWG component is functional but plays second fiddle to its network access core.

Valarian ACRA

Mid-market and enterprise security teams that need hard isolation between sensitive workloads will get the most from Valarian ACRA; its compartmentalized architecture actually enforces data and compute boundaries rather than just controlling access to them. The platform covers PR.AA, PR.DS, and PR.IR across NIST CSF 2.0, meaning identity, data protection, and infrastructure resilience are built into the enclave model from the start. Skip this if your priority is detection and response speed; ACRA prioritizes containment and audit over continuous monitoring, making it a better fit for compliance-heavy environments than incident response teams.