IT AI Index

Index › Vendors › Palo Alto Networks Cortex Cloud · September 2026 Edition

Palo Alto Networks · 3 categories · Named, not ranked

Palo Alto Networks Cortex Cloud

18Judge labels

0First choices

8Negative labels

10 of 12Models named it

3Categories

September 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table vv2026-09.2, every buyer segment counted.

Standing

5 labels, too few to rank

A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. Palo Alto Networks Cortex Cloud was named 5 times in CNAPP and 2 other categories, where Wiz led with 46%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business65 of 67

under the label threshold

Mid-market57 of 57

under the label threshold

Enterprise14 of 35

under the label threshold

In cnapp · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading

Standing by category

Every category where a model named Palo Alto Networks Cortex Cloud for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
Cloud-native application protection	Cloud and infrastructure	0%	57 of 57	100%	3	under 10 labels · led by Wiz at 46%
Endpoint protection	IT operations and endpoint	0%	57 of 99	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Microsoft Defender for Cloud at 22%
SOAR platforms	Security operations	0%	44 of 49	100%	1	under 10 labels · led by Tines at 47%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Palo Alto Networks Cortex Cloud yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Palo Alto Networks Cortex Cloud across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	0	0
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	3	3
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	0	0
Mistral Small	0	0	0
DeepSeek V4 Flash	1	0	1
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	1	1
Kimi K2	0	0	0
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	0	0
MiniMax M2.5	0	0	0

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct1 labelNone

Paraphrase0 labelsNone

Comparative3 labels1not counted in share

Budget-constrained5 labelsNone

Scale-constrained3 labelsNone

Negative6 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative18 labels in all, every segment counted; 0 of the 1 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

No positive label carried a quote.

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“Why You Should Avoid Heavy Enterprise Platforms (e.g., Palo Alto's Cortex Cloud)... generally a poor fit for the mid-market” Gemini 3.5 Flash · CNAPP · direct prompt · hard negative

“Cons: Historically complex to manage, deploy, and license compared to pure-play agentless solutions.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · CNAPP · comparative prompt · soft negative

“exceptionally powerful but can sometimes be overly complex and heavy for a 500-person company” Gemini 3.5 Flash · CNAPP · scale prompt · soft negative

“powerful but usually too expensive and require significant engineering resources to set up” Qwen 3.7 Flash · SOAR · budget prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Palo Alto Networks Cortex Cloud, over the 18 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Palo Alto Networks Cortex Cloud was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Wiz11 of 183Not in the top three

Microsoft Defender for Cloud7 of 182Not in the top three

Orca Security6 of 184Not in the top three

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security5 of 180Not in the top three

Datadog4 of 180Not in the top three

Prometheus4 of 180Not in the top three

Thanos4 of 180Not in the top three

Nagios3 of 180Not in the top three

Prisma Cloud3 of 180Not in the top three

Splunk3 of 180Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Palo Alto Networks Cortex Cloud. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 10 of the 18 answers that named Palo Alto Networks Cortex Cloud and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

gartner.com7

cipherssecurity.com4

cloudaware.com4

sentinelone.com4

accuknox.com3

chronosphere.io3

cyberpress.org3

g2.com3

guptadeepak.com3

sysdig.com3

Thirty-seven of the thirty-seven domain citations in answers naming Palo Alto Networks Cortex Cloud came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

chronosphere.io/learn/the-challenges-to-scaling-with-prometheus-monitoring-and-how-you-can3

cipherssecurity.com/best-cloud-security-cnapp-platforms-20263

cloudaware.com/blog/cnapp-tools3

cyberpress.org/cnapp-platforms-by-business-size-23

sentinelone.com/cybersecurity-101/cloud-security/cnapp-vendors3

accuknox.com/blog/cnapp-vendors2

aikido.dev/blog/top-cloud-native-application-protection-platforms-cnapp2

checkmk.com/blog/why-you-should-replace-nagios2

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Palo Alto Networks Cortex Cloud

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Palo Alto Networks Cortex Cloud; a claim can dispute any of them.

Cortex Cloud 1Cortex Cloud (Palo Alto Networks) 1Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks 1Palo Alto Networks Cortex (Demisto) 1Palo Alto Networks Cortex / Cortex XDR 1

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Palo Alto Networks Cortex Cloud's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Palo Alto Networks Cortex Cloud, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at palo.ai is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.