Orca Security
Cloud security platform built around SideScanning — agentless snapshots of cloud workloads and storage to surface misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, exposed secrets, and identity risk across major clouds.
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Blackglass vs Orca Security
Orca's SideScanning is excellent at giving a single, near-complete view of your cloud without installing anything on workloads. The trade-off: agentless can only see what's in the snapshot, not what changes between snapshots, and it can't reach hosts outside the snapshot perimeter (on-prem, edge, air-gapped). Blackglass picks up exactly there — continuous in-server visibility with every drift event captured against an operator-approved baseline.
Blackglass
Server-side configuration integrity for Linux fleets. Captures trusted baselines per host, detects every drift event against them, and exports auditor-readable evidence — including for hosts Orca's snapshot model can't see.
Capability comparison
Drawn from Orca Security’s public product pages and Blackglass docs as of May 2026. Capabilities not listed are typically out of scope for both products.
| Capability | Orca Security | Blackglass |
|---|---|---|
| Collection model | Agentless SideScanning — periodic snapshots of cloud workload disks and storage analysed out-of-band. | SSH pull, push agent (systemd timer / cron), or hybrid. Continuous between scans, not snapshot-bounded. |
| Coverage scope | Cloud workloads (AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI, Kubernetes). Limited or no coverage for on-prem, edge, or air-gapped Linux. | Any Linux host reachable by SSH or running the push agent — cloud, on-prem, edge, or air-gapped (self-hosted Helm chart). |
| Linux configuration drift detection | Snapshot-time view — sees the state at scan, not the change history. Not designed to surface every sshd_config / sudoers edit between snapshots. | Primary use case — every drift event captured with severity, timestamp, and per-line diff against an approved baseline. |
| Identity, IAM, attack paths | Strong — cloud-native attack-path analysis, identity risk, exposure scoring across the cloud graph. | Out of scope. Charon add-on covers idle / orphaned cloud resources but does not analyse IAM or attack paths. |
| Compliance evidence | Maps findings to CIS, NIST, PCI, SOC 2, and similar frameworks with cloud-side controls. | Per-host evidence exports (PDF + JSON) tied to baseline approval — designed for SOX-style change-control evidence and CIS Linux benchmarks. |
| Pricing posture | Enterprise sales motion; per-workload or per-asset pricing typically discussed under NDA. | Public price ladder from $59/mo (Starter, 15 hosts) up to a $2,500/mo Enterprise anchor. Free Lab tier and a 14-day trial without a card. |
| Air-gap / self-hosted | SaaS; coverage outside the cloud perimeter is limited by the SideScanning model. | Self-hosted Helm chart, BYOK encryption with rotation, and an air-gap probe for fully disconnected deployments. |
Pick Orca when
- Your fleet is overwhelmingly cloud-native and you want a single tool with broad agentless coverage.
- Cloud attack-path analysis and identity risk are top of your concern list.
- You prefer no agents on workloads and accept snapshot-time visibility as the trade-off.
- You're running an enterprise CNAPP procurement and want one platform for cloud-side findings.
Add (or pick) Blackglass when
- You need to know about every change inside a Linux server — not just the state at the last snapshot.
- Your fleet includes hosts outside Orca's snapshot perimeter: on-prem, edge boxes, air-gapped, customer-deployed.
- Auditors want per-line drift evidence with operator approval timestamps, not snapshot-time posture summaries.
- Your team is platform / SRE / IT, not cloud security, and a calmer drift-based dashboard fits how you actually work.
- Your budget for in-server visibility is $59 – $2,500 per month, not enterprise CNAPP pricing.
- You want optional cloud-waste cleanup (Charon) as a side benefit at no extra platform cost.
Try Blackglass against the Orca Security sales motion
Most prospects evaluating both end up keeping Orca Securityfor cloud-posture and adding Blackglass for the in-server visibility their existing tool can’t reach. The 14-day trial covers up to 10 hosts and doesn’t need a card.