IT AI Index

Index › Products › Proofpoint Shadow · October 2026 Edition

Proofpoint · 1 category · Named, not ranked

Proofpoint Shadow

16Judge labels

0First choices

7Negative labels

8 / 14Models named it

1Category

October 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table v2026-10.8, 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. Proofpoint Shadow was named 5 times in Deception, where Thinkst Canary led with 37%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business71 of 95

under the label threshold

Mid-market33 of 94

under the label threshold

Enterprise81 of 83

under the label threshold

In deception · 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 Proofpoint Shadow 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
Deception technology	Security operations	0%	33 of 94	20%	5	under 10 labels · led by Thinkst Canary at 37%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Proofpoint Shadow 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 Proofpoint Shadow across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.

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

Direct4 labelsNone

Paraphrase0 labelsNone

Comparative5 labelsNone

Budget-constrained3 labelsNone

Scale-constrained0 labelsNone

Negative4 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative16 labels in all, every segment counted; 0 of the 0 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.

“If you want identity-focused deception, Proofpoint Shadow is notable because it is agentless” Perplexity Sonar · Deception · comparative prompt · alternative

“Pure cloud/SaaS shop? → Illusive/Proofpoint Shadow” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Deception · comparative prompt · alternative

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.

“stronger but typically far less budget-friendly” Perplexity Sonar · Deception · budget prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Proofpoint Shadow, over the 16 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Proofpoint Shadow was named but was not.

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ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Acalvio ShadowPlex13 of 167Not among the top eight

Zscaler Deception9 of 161Not among the top eight

Thinkst Canary7 of 162Not among the top eight

CounterCraft6 of 161Not among the top eight

Fidelis Deception6 of 160Not among the top eight

Fortinet FortiDeceptor6 of 160Not among the top eight

SentinelOne Singularity5 of 161Not among the top eight

FortiDeceptor5 of 160Not among the top eight

Illusive Networks3 of 160Not among the top eight

Tracebit3 of 160Not 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 Proofpoint Shadow. 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 16 of the 16 answers that named Proofpoint Shadow and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

expertinsights.com13

acalvio.com12

guideflow.com11

linkedin.com8

sourceforge.net8

techtarget.com8

slashdot.org7

csoonline.com6

dataintelo.com6

g2.com6

Eighty-five of the eighty-five domain citations in answers naming Proofpoint Shadow came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

expertinsights.com/network-security/best-deception-technology-companies13

guideflow.com/blog/deception-technology-software11

acalvio.com/preemptive-security/competitive-intelligence-cyber-deception8

techtarget.com/cybersecurity/tip/7-top-deception-technology-vendors-for-active-defense8

linkedin.com/pulse/cyber-deception-technology-cisos-guide-choosing-right-anand-akela-zbmlc7

acalvio.com/agentic-ai-security/deception-technology-solutions-an-enterprise-buyers-framew6

csoonline.com/article/570063/5-top-deception-tools-and-how-they-ensnare-attackers.html6

g2.com/categories/deception-technology6

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Search and answers

Where Proofpoint Shadow stands in Google search beside where it stands in the models' answers.

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In search

Google, US estimates

Searches for its name, Google: 10 a month (“proofpoint shadow”)
AI search demand for its name, est.: 0 a month
Its own site: It sits on Proofpoint's site (proofpoint.com), so there are no site figures for it alone

In answers

This edition

Share of first choices

rank 33 of 94 in deception

Segment leader

37%

Thinkst Canary

First choices: 0 across its categories
Named in: 16 answers
Its own site cited: in 16 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.

Names read as Proofpoint Shadow

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

Illusive/Proofpoint Shadow 1

Follow Proofpoint Shadow

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

Proofpoint is the company behind Proofpoint Shadow.

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On record

Company records

Also from Proofpoint: Proofpoint 365 Total Protection, Proofpoint Archive, Proofpoint DSPM, Proofpoint Digital Communications Governance, Proofpoint Digital Risk Protection, Proofpoint Email Protection, Proofpoint Enterprise Archive, Proofpoint Enterprise Communications Archive and 8 more

In its own words

Stated by the vendor, not checked

Free plan or trial: Inizia una Prova Gratuita proofpoint.com/it/threat-reference/shadow-ai
Not stated on the pages read: Positioning, who it is for, price, starting price, integrations, certifications, hosting, customers

What Proofpoint Shadow's own pages state, read October 5, 2026: proofpoint.com/it/threat-reference/shadow-it, proofpoint.com/it/threat-reference/shadow-ai, proofpoint.com/us/threat-reference/shadow-it, proofpoint.com/de/threat-reference/shadow-it, proofpoint.com/es/threat-reference/shadow-it. 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 Proofpoint Shadow'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 Proofpoint Shadow, 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 Proofpoint Shadow by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:

where Proofpoint Shadow 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 Proofpoint Shadow, 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.