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Report: Wiz vs Orca

5 min read
11/19/2025
Regenerate

Overview

Wiz and Orca Security are two leading cloud-native security platforms that both emphasise agentless visibility and prioritized findings, but they take different technical approaches and carry distinct trade-offs.

  • Wiz promotes an API-driven, agentless Security Graph that correlates cloud configuration, identity, network, and vulnerability data to prioritize truly exploitable risks across AWS, Azure, GCP, and Kubernetes. (See Wiz marketing and Security Graph overview) (source).
  • Orca Security uses patented SideScanning™ to reconstruct workload file systems from runtime block storage and combine that with cloud control-plane data to deliver full-stack, agentless coverage and attack-path prioritization. (See Orca SideScanning overview) (source).

Where they deliver on their promises

  • Agentless, fast onboarding

    • Wiz: "Connect within minutes using API connectors to scan and take inventory of your entire cloud environment" and the Security Graph gives immediate contextualization (source).
    • Orca: "Configured in minutes, and in under 24 hours delivers a complete risk profile of your entire cloud estate" using SideScanning without installing agents (source).

  • Contextual prioritization and attack-path analysis

    • Wiz: Their Security Graph "surfaces what's truly exploitable by correlating misconfigs, vulnerabilities, network paths, and identity access" to reduce noise and focus remediation (source).
    • Orca: The platform claims to "prioritize the 1% of alerts that truly matter" and surfaces attack paths with the greatest business impact (source).

  • Broad asset coverage

    • Wiz: API-first scanning targets VMs, containers, serverless, registries, and cloud services across major providers (source).
    • Orca: SideScanning is presented as covering VMs, containers, serverless, storage buckets, databases and more — including paused or stopped machines — without per-host agents (source).

Practical limitations and trade-offs

  • Depth vs. breadth (application and runtime coverage)

    • Wiz is strong at cloud infrastructure breadth and cross-source correlation but has acknowledged gaps in deep application-layer security; SAST/SCA/other app-focused analysis often requires external tools or integrations (Checkmarx, Contrast, Cycode) to fill the gap. "Wiz excels in cloud security but lacks comprehensive application security capabilities" (source).
    • Orca's SideScanning gives file-system level reconstruction without agents, which increases coverage for workload artifacts, but agentless snapshot approaches can miss very short-lived ephemeral activity unless supplemented by higher-frequency snapshots or additional sensors (source).

  • Real-time telemetry and active controls

    • Agentless-first platforms (both Wiz and Orca) trade some real-time telemetry and on-host control for zero-impact scanning. Critics point out that without persistent agents you may lack process-level telemetry, memory forensics, or immediate in-host remediation, which agent-based tools can execute directly (source; source).

  • Dependency on cloud provider APIs (Orca) and API rate/behavior limits (both)

    • Orca depends heavily on cloud provider data and snapshots; any API limitations, changes, or outages can create visibility gaps until adaptations are made. "Any changes or disruptions in these APIs can impact Orca's visibility" (source).
    • Wiz similarly uses cloud APIs, but its architecture emphasizes correlating multiple sources (config, identity, registry, etc.) which can mitigate some single-API blind spots; still, API rate limits and permissions complexity are real deployment considerations (source).

  • Noise and false positives (Wiz in SAST context)

    • Static analysis and SAST-style findings (where Wiz integrates or ingests results) can create noisy results without runtime context; Wiz recommends rule tuning, CI/CD integration, and using runtime/cloud context to reprioritize findings (source).

How to choose (practical guidance)

  • If you need the fastest, lowest-friction inventory and prioritized cloud posture with tight correlation across identities, configs, and vulnerabilities, Wiz's Security Graph and API-first model are compelling—particularly when combined with SAST/DAST integrations for application-layer coverage.

  • If you want the broadest agentless workload artifact visibility (including file-system reconstruction and malware/file analysis) and an approach that claims near-100% coverage without installing agents, Orca's SideScanning and attack-path prioritization are strong — but be aware of snapshot-frequency and API-dependence trade-offs for ephemeral workloads and immediate remediation.

Direct excerpts and citations

"The graph unifies data from code repos, pipelines, infrastructure, and runtime. Every cloud asset, identity, and relationship is mapped—so your team sees the complete lifecycle of every resource in one place." (Wiz Security Graph)

"Orca's SideScanning™ technology collects data from workloads' runtime block storage without requiring agents, reconstructing the workload's file system in a virtual read-only view. This approach enables a full risk analysis with zero performance impact on the workloads themselves." (Orca SideScanning)

"Wiz operates without the need for agents or sidecars, connecting directly to cloud environments via APIs. This approach allows for rapid deployment and immediate value, scanning every layer of the cloud stack without operational overhead." (CompareYourTech on Wiz)

"The agentless-first Orca Cloud Security Platform is configured in minutes, and in under 24 hours delivers a complete risk profile of your entire cloud estate without sending a single packet over the network or running a single line of code in your environment." (Orca SideScanning)

Bottom line

Both Wiz and Orca deliver on the core promise of rapid, agentless visibility and prioritized findings, but they serve slightly different needs:

  • Wiz: stronger emphasis on cross-source correlation via the Security Graph and rapid API-based deployment; pairs well with additional app-security tools for full code-to-cloud coverage.
  • Orca: unique SideScanning provides deep artifact visibility without agents and strong attack-path prioritization, but depends more on snapshots and cloud APIs (watch for ephemeral workload coverage and API-change windows).

Pick Wiz when you want an API-first graph-based CNAPP that centralizes cloud signals and you are prepared to augment for deep app-layer analysis. Pick Orca when you want agentless file-system-level visibility across workloads with fast time-to-insight and a lower operations burden for agent deployment — and accept the trade-offs around real-time telemetry and API-dependency.

Wiz Security Graph explained Does Wiz support runtime sensors? Orca SideScanning technical brief Does Orca handle ephemeral workloads? Wiz vs Orca: deployment time and onboarding

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