Every category where a model named Portnox 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	Since September 2026
Network access control	Network and edge	35%	1 of 111	7%	45	endorsed leader

Movement

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

By model

How each model treated Portnox Cloud across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.

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Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	1	0	0	1
GPT-5.4 mini	0	1	0	0	1
Gemini 3.5 Flash	3	3	0	0	6
Perplexity Sonar	3	1	0	0	4
Grok 4.1 Fast	2	1	0	0	3
Mistral Small	0	2	0	0	2
DeepSeek V4 Flash	3	1	0	1	5
Llama 4 Maverick	1	1	2	0	4
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	0	0	0	0
Kimi K2	3	1	0	0	4
GLM 4.7 FlashX	1	1	1	1	4
MiniMax M2.5	2	2	0	0	4
GPT-6 Luna	2	1	0	0	3
Muse Glimmer 30B	1	2	0	1	4

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

Direct28 labels17

Paraphrase21 labels15

Comparative33 labels11not counted in share

Budget-constrained22 labels11

Scale-constrained21 labels10

Negative16 labels6not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative141 labels in all, every segment counted; 53 of the 70 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.

“Best budget-friendly dedicated NAC: Portnox Cloud, because it is cloud-native and emphasizes continuous access control without heavy deployment burden.” Perplexity Sonar · NAC · budget prompt · first choice

“Portnox Cloud or OPSWAT MetaAccess give you device profiling, posture enforcement and guest/BYOD without standing up dedicated appliances.” Muse Glimmer 30B · NAC · paraphrase prompt · first choice

“Modern Alternatives: Agentless, cloud-native, or microsegmentation-focused (e.g., Portnox, Elisity for quick deploys without 802.1X pain)” Grok 4.1 Fast · NAC · negative prompt · first choice

“Cloud-native or hybrid options from vendors like Portnox or macmon are generally the right weight class” DeepSeek V4 Flash · NAC · scale prompt · first choice

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.

“Users experience performance issues with Portnox, finding it misrepresented and encountering frequent authentication problems.” Muse Glimmer 30B · NAC · negative prompt · soft negative

“Performance issues, misrepresented capabilities, frequent authentication failures, poor UI, non‑intuitive workflows.” GLM 4.7 FlashX · NAC · negative prompt · soft negative

“Caution if you need rock-solid RADIUS or have complex identity federation.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · NAC · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Portnox Cloud, over the 140 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Portnox Cloud was named but was not.

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ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Cisco ISE68 of 14010Compare →

Forescout57 of 1401Not among the top eight

Aruba ClearPass52 of 1404Compare →

Fortinet FortiNAC49 of 1401Not among the top eight

Cisco Identity Services Engine36 of 14017Not among the top eight

HPE Aruba ClearPass28 of 1406Not among the top eight

PacketFence23 of 1407Compare →

FortiNAC18 of 1400Not among the top eight

OPSWAT MetaAccess16 of 1402Compare →

macmon NAC13 of 1400Not among the top eight

A head-to-head page exists where both products are among a category's top eight. 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 Portnox Cloud. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, five of the fourteen in this edition, so these counts come from 138 of the 140 answers that named Portnox Cloud and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

portnox.comYour site98

cyberpress.org86

us.fitgap.com69

cybersecuritynews.com58

g2.com54

comparitech.com51

peerspot.com48

purple.ai47

esecurityplanet.com44

thectoclub.com44

501 of the 599 domain citations in answers naming Portnox Cloud came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

cyberpress.org/nac-solutions-by-business-size86

cybersecuritynews.com/best-nac-solutions57

comparitech.com/net-admin/network-access-control-software51

portnox.com/cybersecurity-101/access-control/top-nac-solutions45

thectoclub.com/tools/best-network-access-control-software44

geekflare.com/cybersecurity/best-nac-software43

esecurityplanet.com/products/network-access-control-solutions41

us.fitgap.com/search/network-access-control-software40

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Search and answers

Where Portnox Cloud stands in Google search beside where it stands in the models' answers.

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In search

Google, US estimates

Position for “network access control solution”

Position for “network access control solutions”

–

not in the top ten

Searches for its name, Google: 20 a month (“portnox cloud”)
AI search demand for its name, est.: 0 a month
Organic visits to its site: about 77,065 a month
Searches its site ranks for: 10,721 · 752 in the top three
Sites linking to it: 2,262
Paid Google search: No ads found in the estimate; that does not mean it runs none

Ads on GoogleDetailLess

79 ads · 56 text, 15 image, 8 video · 11 shown in the last 30 days

First shown March 2023, as Portnox, Inc., verified. Ads started 2025-11 to 2026-10: 20 in the year, 59 before.

On Google's pages: 1 2 3 4

In answers

This edition

Share of first choices

35%

rank 1 of 111 in NAC

First choices

across its categories

Named in: 140 answers
Its own site cited: in 138 of the answers that named it

Search figures are US estimates from DataForSEO, read October 5, 2026; AI search demand is its modeled, directional estimate, not a count of queries to any assistant. The answers are this edition's. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.

What it publishes

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Addresses on portnox.com

2,255

subdomains included

Content

1,190

counted in the table below

Documentation

Product · Integration

44 · 11

Kind	Pages	Last 90 days	Latest	Categories named
Blog	781	11	2026-09-24	ZTNA, MFA
Glossary or explainer	166	4	2026-09-11	ZTNA, MFA
News or press	155	3	2026-09-23	ZTNA, MFA
Report or ebook	25	0	2026-04-23	SD-WAN, SASE
Comparison	24	4	2026-08-17	MFA, SASE
Webinar or virtual event	19	1	2026-09-10	ZTNA
Case study	11	0	2026-04-22
Conference or event	6	0	2025-04-29
Template or tool	3	0	2025-07-15	ZTNA

Most recent

2026-09-24The systems that grant access are now the ones under attack blog
2026-09-24Your firewall doesnt know who your ip is blog
2026-09-23Portnox closes the gap on shadow ai visibility control news or press
2026-09-22Once its in where can an unauthorized device go blog
2026-09-22Your employees already gave chatgpt and half a dozen other tools access to everything blog
2026-09-22The three parties now asking manufacturers to prove whats on their network blog

How it is countedHide how it is counted

Every page portnox.com exposes, subdomains included. Kind is read from the address and title. The last 90 days, the latest date and the twelve months count pages by when they were published, from the site's feeds, a date in the address, or the page's own publication date, read from up to a hundred of its most recently changed pages; a page that says only when it last changed is counted in its kind but not in when, so the recent counts are a floor, and a kind none of whose pages gives a publication date reads undated. Of its titles that name a category, most name ZTNA (29); 0 name the category the models place it in. An event counts as online when its address or title says so (webinar, on demand, virtual or online summit); a conference, summit, trade show, expo or roadshow that does not say so is counted as a conference or event, which on a vendor's site is mostly in person. Read September 29, 2026.

Names read as Portnox Cloud

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

Portnox 21Portnox CLEAR / Portnox Cloud 1

Follow Portnox Cloud

An email the morning each edition publishes: where this product moved, where it held, and by how much against the noise floor. One address, confirmed by a click; a stop link in every email.

Already following? Everything you follow, with a stop for each.

The company

Portnox Cloud is its own company.

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In its own words

Stated by the vendor, not checked

Positioning: The universal zero trust platform that reimagines enterprise access.
portnox.com
For: enterprise
portnox.com
Price stated: Volume discounts available for all products. portnox.com/pricing
Starting price: $1 / device portnox.com/pricing
Free plan or trial: Start a free trial. portnox.com
Certifications: SOC 2 Type II
Hosting: USEUAPACUnited StatesEuropeAsia/Pacific
Not stated on the pages read: Integrations, customers

What Portnox Cloud's own pages state, read October 5, 2026: portnox.com, portnox.com/pricing, portnox.com/use-cases/compliance, portnox.com/use-cases, portnox.com/partners. A claimed page can correct any of them.

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 Portnox 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 Portnox Cloud, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

What a new claim receivesHide what a new claim receives

A new claim receives the current edition's vendor brief for Portnox Cloud by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:

where Portnox Cloud is named, by buyer and by framing, and which cells hold its first choices;
the claims the models make when they name it, ranked, with the strongest and the weakest quoted;
its vocabulary against the segment leader's, and the pages the models cited;
who was chosen in the answers that did not name Portnox Cloud, and every reason the record gives;
a battlecard for each top rival: the head-to-head split, why they win, and the reservation quoted against them;
one page of published figures cleared to show a buyer.

Badges

Wins only: a badge exists where Portnox Cloud is ranked in a category's top three this edition. Three sizes, one file each, light and dark; the code is under each.

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AI models recommend Portnox Cloud first in Network access control this edition. Each badge says so in the buyer's words, names the edition, and links to the standing. The next edition issues a new badge; this one stays true as a record of October 2026.

Wide · 320 × 104 Website, beside other badges

Show the code

<a href="https://it-ai-index.com/network/network-access-control/"><img src="https://it-ai-index.com/badges/2026-10/portnox-cloud--network-access-control-wide.svg" alt="AI models' first choice in Network access control, October 2026 Edition, IT AI Recommendation Index" width="320" height="104"></a>

Copy the code as it is. The link is part of the badge: it points at the Network access control standing, where the claim can be checked.

Square · 240 × 240 LinkedIn, slides

Show the code

<a href="https://it-ai-index.com/network/network-access-control/"><img src="https://it-ai-index.com/badges/2026-10/portnox-cloud--network-access-control-square.svg" alt="AI models' first choice in Network access control, October 2026 Edition, IT AI Recommendation Index" width="240" height="240"></a>

Copy the code as it is. The link is part of the badge: it points at the Network access control standing, where the claim can be checked.

Compact · 200 × 56 Email signature, footer

Show the code

<a href="https://it-ai-index.com/network/network-access-control/"><img src="https://it-ai-index.com/badges/2026-10/portnox-cloud--network-access-control-compact.svg" alt="AI models' first choice in Network access control, October 2026 Edition, IT AI Recommendation Index" width="200" height="56"></a>

Copy the code as it is. The link is part of the badge: it points at the Network access control standing, where the claim can be checked.

Badges read on light and dark pages. Alt text carries the claim, the category, the edition and the index, so it stays a citation where the image does not load.