Deception Platform vs Zscaler Deception (Smokescreen): Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)

Deception Platform

Mid-market and enterprise SOC teams that struggle with alert fatigue and slow incident response will see the clearest ROI from Deception Platform; its high-interaction decoys force attackers to reveal intent while generating minimal false positives, meaning your analysts actually investigate real threats. The platform scores across NIST DE.AE and RS.MI, with particular strength in adversary behavior capture and automated containment that cuts response time materially. Skip this if your organization lacks the staffing to actively tune decoys or integrate with existing SOAR workflows; Deception Platform demands an engaged security team, not a set-and-forget deployment.

Zscaler Deception (Smokescreen)

Mid-market and enterprise security teams with mature identity programs will see the most value from Zscaler Deception (Smokescreen) because it catches compromised users and stolen credentials actually moving through your infrastructure, not just at entry. The platform detects lateral movement across endpoints, cloud, and applications with near-zero false positives on decoy interaction, which means your SOC won't waste cycles on phantom alerts. Skip this if you're still building foundational detection; Smokescreen assumes you already know your baseline traffic and can operationalize high-confidence incident signals into zero trust containment policies.