AWS and Cloudanix team co-authored this blog: Real-Time Threat and Anomaly Detection for Workloads on AWS
Comparison · honest take

Cloudanix vs Lacework.
Independent, or inside Fortinet's Security Fabric?

Lacework pioneered the Polygraph behavioural baseline approach. In 2024 Fortinet acquired Lacework and rebranded it Lacework FortiCNAPP — now the cloud module of Fortinet's Security Fabric. For Fortinet-shop buyers, that's real consolidation value. For buyers who picked Lacework because it was independent and cloud-native, the centre of gravity has changed. Cloudanix is a graph-first CNAPP+ with no parent-vendor consolidation pull.

✓ Hyperscaler-independent✓ No Fortinet pull✓ Agentic JIT & DAM first-class
cloudanix vs lacework · capability diff
Cloudanix
Lacework
  1. MCP-native broker for AI coding agents
  2. JIT broker (humans · machines · agents)
  3. Database JIT & live DAM
  4. India / ME control plane & CloudPrem
  5. Hyperscaler / vendor independence
    Inside Fortinet
  6. Behavioural baseline (UEBA)
    ✓ Graph-filtered
    ✓ Polygraph
  7. Fortinet Security Fabric integration
    ✓ Native
  8. Code Security in same product
    Limited
  9. Published pricing on website
    Quote-only
Marks reflect what each vendor publicly ships today.
The 30-second version

If you only read one section.

Pick Lacework when
  • You're standardising on Fortinet's Security Fabric — firewall + endpoint + cloud as one bundle, one console, one vendor relationship.
  • You're an existing Lacework customer happy with the behavioural-baseline (Polygraph) approach and want to stay on it.
  • Your SOC is built around Fortinet field, partner ecosystem, and procurement relationships.
  • You're US-centric with US-bounded compliance scope.
  • You don't yet ship AI coding agents to production and don't have a database-tier compliance story driving the buy.
Pick Cloudanix when
  • You picked Lacework because it was independent and cloud-native — and the Fortinet consolidation pull doesn't fit your strategy.
  • You're shipping AI coding agents and need MCP-native JIT, an action firewall, and identity-stamping back to the human operator.
  • You want a JIT broker across humans, service accounts, CI/CD principals and AI agents — not just behavioural baseline analysis.
  • You want Database JIT and DAM as first-class products.
  • You need multi-region sovereignty — EU, India, Middle East — or CloudPrem (inside your VPC).
  • You want published pricing and a standard contract instead of Fortinet-style enterprise procurement.
Credit where it's due

Where Lacework / FortiCNAPP is genuinely strong.

Lacework defined behavioural CNAPP, and the Fortinet acquisition created real consolidation value for the right buyer. Three places where it earns its position.

📊

Polygraph behavioural baseline

Lacework pioneered the "build a behaviour graph of every workload and identity, alert on what deviates" approach. The Polygraph approach is mature, well-tuned, and has real history of reducing noise versus rule-only CNAPPs.

🧱

Fortinet Security Fabric

Post-acquisition, Lacework FortiCNAPP integrates into the broader Fortinet Security Fabric — FortiGate firewalls, FortiEDR endpoint, FortiSIEM. For buyers consolidating on Fortinet, the integration story is real and the procurement is simplified.

🌐

Fortinet field & partners

Fortinet's field organisation is one of the largest in network and security. Buyers who value enterprise field coverage, MSSP partner depth, and large-vendor procurement infrastructure get all of that with the Fortinet umbrella.

Now the other side

Where Cloudanix is the better pick.

01

Hyperscaler- and vendor-independent

Cloudanix is an independent CNAPP+ vendor. We don't push you toward a firewall product, an endpoint product, or any other vendor's portfolio. Lacework FortiCNAPP makes more sense the deeper you go into Fortinet's portfolio; if you're not consolidating on Fortinet, that pull becomes a friction.

02

MCP-native Agentic JIT & Coding Agent Firewall

Cloudanix exposes itself as an MCP server. Claude Code, Cursor, Kiro, Codex and Aider broker credentials through Cloudanix; risky actions gate on human approval, destructive ones block at the policy layer. Lacework's AI security posture is behavioural-baseline-shaped — the MCP-broker primitive for autonomous coding agents is not a current product.

03

JIT broker for humans, machines, agents

Lacework does CIEM analysis and behavioural detection on identity activity. Cloudanix is a JIT broker: short-lived intent-scoped credentials minted at the moment of use, across cloud APIs, Kubernetes namespaces, databases and SaaS — for humans, service accounts, CI/CD principals and AI agents.

04

Database JIT & live DAM together

Cloudanix Database JIT mints short-lived database credentials with optional data masking; Database Activity Monitoring gives live query observability with anomaly detection. Lacework's data security work is workload-shaped; the database tier (SQL flowing into RDS / Cosmos / Cloud SQL) isn't where the centre of gravity sits.

05

Multi-region sovereignty & CloudPrem

Four independent regional control planes — US, EU (Frankfurt), India (Mumbai), Middle East — plus CloudPrem (inside your VPC, your KMS keys). Lacework's regional footprint is broadly US/EU; India- and ME-resident control planes and in-customer-VPC deployment aren't current products in the same way.

06

Published pricing & standard contract

Cloudanix publishes pricing on the website with a standard contract you can read end-to-end. Lacework's pricing has historically been quote-only enterprise selling, and post-acquisition that's now Fortinet's enterprise procurement model. For procurement teams that need pricing transparency early, that's worth a conversation.

Feature-by-feature

The capability table.

CapabilityCloudanixLacework
AI & agentic security
MCP-native credential broker
Action firewall for AI agents
Access & identity
JIT broker for humans
JIT for service accounts & CI/CD principals
Database JIT (keyless, audited)
Database Activity Monitoring (DAM)
CIEM & permission analysis
CNAPP core
CSPM AWS · Azure · GCP
CWPP — container & K8s runtime
Cloud Detection & Response✓ + UEBA✓ Polygraph
Attack-path / graph traversal
Code Security (SAST · SCA · secrets · IaC)✓ NativeLimited
Vendor / portfolio
Hyperscaler- & vendor-independentInside Fortinet
Security Fabric / firewall integrationVia partners✓ Native Fortinet
Sovereignty
India- / ME-resident control plane
CloudPrem (in customer VPC)
Compliance
SOC 2 · PCI · HIPAA · NIST · ISO
DPDPA · RBI · IRDAI
SAMA · PDPL · UAE FDPL
Commercial
Pricing published on websiteQuote-only

What Our Users Are Saying

Customer Reviews

Cloudanix is trusted by security leaders worldwide to deliver proactive, reliable, and cutting-edge cloud security.

One day, I changed the password of a root account, and my CTO called me within less than a minute to confirm if I did so. I was not expecting a reaction this quick. He told me Cloudanix alerted him of this password change and that he wanted to confirm as it was a critical security notification. I couldn't believe it!

Ritesh Agarwal
Ritesh Agarwal
CEO, Airgap Networks

Compliance is one way of staying secure, but what I want is the ability to go deeper and attain 'true security.' Cloudanix provides us the capability to do so.

Vishal Madan
Vishal Madan
Head of Engineering, iMocha

Cloudanix is building for the future of the cloud, which makes the product all the more desirable.

Ritesh Agarwal
Ritesh Agarwal
CEO, Airgap Networks

Cloudanix gave us the visibility we were missing. Being able to move from permanent access to a robust Just-In-Time (JIT) workflow has fundamentally changed our security posture without slowing down our engineering velocity.

Pavan Kumar Lekkala
Pavan Kumar Lekkala
SRE Lead, HugoHub

We are excited to leverage Cloudanix's comprehensive multi-cloud DevSecOps solution to secure our production workloads on AWS. Cloudanix has demonstrated that it can solve many challenges that DevSecOps teams face while continually adding new features such as SOC2 compliance and drift detection.

Satish Mohan
Satish Mohan
Co-founder & CTO, Airgap Networks

Managing third-party partner access was once a major concern for our security posture. With Cloudanix JIT Cloud, we've effectively achieved zero third-party risk. We can now grant access confidently, knowing that it is temporary, audited, and automatically revoked, resulting in a 100% reduction in our privileged access exposure.

Okesh Badhiye
Okesh Badhiye
Head of Technical Engineering, Finfinity

The snooze feature and responsible alerts have helped us save time and prioritize what to tackle first.

Satish Mohan
Satish Mohan
Co-founder & CTO, Airgap Networks

Implementing Cloudanix JIT internally allowed us to practice what we preach. By eliminating permanent access to our own clouds and databases, we've neutralized the risk of standing privileges, ensuring our own 'keys to the kingdom' are never left exposed.

Girish Manghnani
Girish Manghnani
Managing Partner, Tech Inspira

The problem with permissions is a lot of times, the gaps are left open due to oversights from inside the organization itself. With Cloudanix's CIEM, we get a complete view of user permissions and access. This enables us to update the permissions, reducing the attack surface.

Nilesh Pethani
Nilesh Pethani
Application Architect, iMocha

In the world of Fintech, trust is our currency. Cloudanix provided the frictionless visibility we needed to secure our EKS workloads across AWS, ensuring we stay audit-ready for SOC2 and GDPR without slowing down our engineering velocity.

Amol Naik
Amol Naik
Head of Security & Infrastructure, HugoHub

Cloudanix delivered value within 5 minutes of onboarding. Continuous monitoring, timely detection, and excellent documentation helped us attain a great cloud security posture.

Divyanshu Shukla
Senior DevSecOps, Meesho

Technology strategies and business strategies are in a state of constant change which includes centralization and decentralization of responsibilities. Regardless of strategic shift, we still have intellectual property to protect. Cloudanix are critical partners for us in our public cloud security posture across our three cloud providers.

Jerry Locke
Jerry Locke
Senior Director Global Solutions Engineering, Eversana

Cloudanix has been amazing. They opened up a common Slack channel with us — and it feels like we are talking to our own team and getting things done with Cloud security. The support team is always available, friendly, helpful, and ready to go out of their way.

Satish Mohan
Satish Mohan
CTO, Airgap Networks

Beyond just access management, Cloudanix CSPM has given us a unified view of our AWS environment. The real-time alerting and anomaly detection allow us to prevent any untoward activity before it happens, which is critical for a marketplace connecting 50+ financial institutions.

Okesh Badhiye
Okesh Badhiye
Head of Technical Engineering, Finfinity

For a Fintech company, data is our most valuable — and most sensitive — asset. Cloudanix DAM hasn't just improved our visibility; it has given us control. The ability to mask data and prevent unauthorized queries in real-time is a game-changer for our compliance and customer trust.

Jiten Gala
Jiten Gala
President Engineering and Product, Kapittx

Our clients, especially in the Middle East financial sector, demand absolute accountability. Cloudanix JIT Cloud has been a competitive differentiator for us, allowing us to provide secure, governed access to customer accounts that meet their strictest audit and compliance requirements.

Girish Manghnani
Girish Manghnani
Managing Partner, Tech Inspira

Cloudanix is always on my team's lips because of its exceptional support. Be it a small or big query, Cloudanix has gone above and beyond to resolve them. This one's a keeper for us.

Sujit Karpe
Sujit Karpe
CTO, iMocha

For a long-lasting partnership, great support goes a long way. Cloudanix has delivered exceptional support whenever required. Their edge is their team is always ready to go beyond to solve any issues that we have. This speaks volumes about the culture at Cloudanix.

Akash Maheshwari
Akash Maheshwari
Co-founder, MoveInSync

Beyond the technology, Cloudanix feels like an extension of our own team. Their willingness to stand up a dedicated Middle East tenant for us and provide exceptional support at a sensible price makes them a long-term partner for Hugosave.

Surya Tamada
Surya Tamada
CTO, HugoHub

The real-time notifications that Cloudanix provides are a real lifesaver. Their adaptive notifications ensure that my team stays productive and doesn't get interrupted all the time.

Digvijay Singh
Staff Security Engineer, Meesho

The whole point in technological evolution is to help improve the world we live in. We must protect that and to do so requires an effective and efficient security strategy. The Cloudanix team helped make our public cloud security posture management strategy a reality. The symbiotic relationship we have allows for a continuous feedback loop which is how business should operate.

Larry Wheat
Larry Wheat
Staff Solutions Engineer, Eversana
Common questions

What buyers ask us about Lacework.

What changed after Fortinet acquired Lacework?

Fortinet acquired Lacework in 2024 and rebranded it Lacework FortiCNAPP. The product itself continues to ship, with deeper integration into the Fortinet Security Fabric (FortiGate, FortiEDR, FortiSIEM). For Fortinet-shop buyers, that integration is genuine consolidation value. For buyers who picked Lacework *because* it was an independent cloud-native vendor, the strategic positioning has shifted toward "the cloud module of Fortinet" — that's worth re-evaluating during your next renewal.

Is Cloudanix a Lacework alternative?

Yes — particularly for buyers who picked Lacework for its independence and don't intend to consolidate on Fortinet. Cloudanix is an independent CNAPP+ vendor with no portfolio-consolidation pull, multi-region sovereignty including India and Middle East, MCP-native Agentic JIT, Database JIT and live DAM, and published pricing. For buyers committed to the Fortinet Security Fabric, FortiCNAPP is the stronger fit on that axis.

How does Cloudanix's behavioural detection compare to Polygraph?

Lacework's Polygraph is a strong, mature behavioural baseline. Cloudanix's UEBA approach is graph-filtered — per-identity baselines for humans, service accounts and AI agents, with the security graph filtering anomalies down to ones that actually matter (high-blast-radius identity, on an attack-path, near a crown jewel). Both approaches reduce noise versus rule-only CNAPPs; the difference is how the noise is filtered (Polygraph baseline trust vs. graph-context relevance). See Cloud UEBA →

How does Cloudanix handle AI coding agents differently?

Cloudanix exposes itself as an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server. When Claude Code, Cursor, Kiro, Codex or Aider needs cloud credentials, the request goes through Cloudanix — short-lived intent-scoped credentials are brokered to the agent, risky actions can be gated on human approval, destructive ones block at the policy layer, every action is identity-stamped to the human operator. Lacework's AI security posture today is behavioural-baseline-shaped (detecting AI-driven anomalies); the MCP-broker primitive for autonomous coding agents isn't a current product. See the Coding Agent Firewall →

What about Database security?

Cloudanix Database JIT mints short-lived database credentials with optional masking; Database Activity Monitoring provides live query observability with anomaly detection. Lacework's data security work is workload-shaped — the database tier (SQL flowing into RDS / Cosmos / Cloud SQL) isn't where the centre of gravity sits. For data-first regulated programs where the database IS the asset, Cloudanix is the closer fit. See DAM →

What about regional / sovereign deployment?

Cloudanix runs four independent regional control planes — US, EU (Frankfurt), India (Mumbai), Middle East — plus CloudPrem (inside your own VPC). Lacework's regional footprint is broadly US/EU; India- and ME-resident control planes and in-customer-VPC deployment aren't products in the same way. For Indian financials under RBI / DPDPA, Saudi banks under SAMA, or any buyer with "data and control plane in our account" procurement requirements, that's the deciding factor.

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